What do the US Army, Russian weightlifting, Chinese factories, US D1 Athletics, AI, and Consumer Electronics all have in common?

They are all specialized worlds, with their own set of rules, their own culture, and their own unique traditions.

But having traveled and worked in all of those worlds (plus a few more), I can say that they have more in common than appears from the outside.  Change some nouns and verbs, and the way people relate to each other, cooperate, disagree, and ultimately produce things is frighteningly similar.

Being a complete outsider in every world was an advantage actually.  One of the common threads in all these worlds is that people want to help – they want to help me understand, they want to help me learn, and they want to help me do the thing that may ultimately make their world a little bit better (i.e., a new product).

We are more similar than we think and I blame I blame social media, identity politics and cultural fear mongering for creating divisions that don’t exist once we’re immersed in someone else’s world.