Product Description

Yahoo! director Tim Sanders shows that the only way to succeed in business in the 21st Century is through love. A killer APP is an idea that is wildly successful, difficult to compete with, and contagious. The author discovered along his career path that the best way to succeed in the business world is through love. By love, Sanders means sharing your knowledge, network and compassion with colleagues to support their growth, thereby enhancing your business prowess. In this motivational book, he presents a three-step programme for optimum success and happiness in the workplace. Sanders offers advice on how to gain and communicate as much knowledge as you can; stories and tips on how to build a large, meaningful network - generating new business possibilities for all involved; and suggestions on how to become compassionate at work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #533500 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

About the Author
Tim Sanders is the director of Yahoo!'s in-house think tank, the ValueLab. He regularly consults with dozens of Fortune 500 companies and market leaders, and lives in Northern California.

Excerpted from Love Is the Killer: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chris had worked with me for only a few weeks when I invited him to join a roundtable meeting with several outside consultants. He sat through the two-hour presentation stony-faced and silent until asked by the lead consultant if he had any comments. Then he nodded impatiently.
“This has been totally bush-league,” he said. “I can ’t believe that we actually pay you to do this.”
He went on to point out many serious flaws in the consultants’ research, but he wasn’t watching carefully enough to see the color drain from the consultants’ faces...
By the time they’d slunk out of the room, Chris had embarrassed me and everyone else present. He didn’t quite figure this out until the next month’s meeting, to which he pointedly wasn’t invited.
Had Chris been smarter and nicer, he would have made his excellent points and become a hero for it. Poor Chris. He was armed to the teeth, well educated and wired for decision speed. But he was completely misdirected about how to use his many talents because he was also wired for war —always hostile, always battle-ready. He believed that success in business meant that you crush the weak. You always win. You disdain people who aren’t as smart as you. You protect everything you know —and everyone you know —lest your weapons fall into enemy hands.
I dubbed him Mad Dog, and the name stuck.
Still, there was something beneath Chris’s surface that was truly sweet.In an off-moment, when his defenses were down, he would flash a glimmer of tenderness, a ray of goodness. It was his tough background more than his personality that was making him mean. And he was smart enough to realize that his behavior was his Achilles’ heel.
His world stayed small while others around him were growing their networks before his eyes. He was having a bad ride in his career vehicle.
On top of that, he was miserable. Although he liked his actual work, he was unhappy in the workplace. He felt lost. He was doing what he had been told to do —Win at All Cost —but it didn’t feel like winning.
I told Chris that his attitude was dangerous and that if he didn’t believe me, he only had to watch how others treated him. He admitted that he’d been repeatedly taken off projects, and he now realized that his peers disliked him. One day he sent me this e-mail: “I have to change. I’m out of step. I’m acting like someone from my father’s generation.”
Chris had approached me because he saw that the company listened to me and supported my projects; he knew that people thrived around me, that my network seemed to grow day to day and exponentially quarter to quarter. Chris was ready to listen.
“What do I do?” he asked.
“Be a lovecat,” I replied. “And that means: Offer your wisdom freely. Give away your address book to everyone who wants it. And always be human.”
I then told him about the advantages of being a lovecat, and the three necessary steps to getting there: sharing your knowledge, sharing your network, sharing your compassion.
We went right to work. First I helped him organize his reading. Chris didn’t have a lot to offer that was portable to people —he could tell you what was wrong but he couldn’t help make it right. His learning habits were screwed up. He’d taken such hard subjects in school that the moment he finished his graduate work, he stopped studying. He read only to get him through sleepless nights in his spartan Silicon Valley apartment. So I put him on a new curriculum. Reading is a source of potency, I said, so manage it like an asset. Become a walking encyclopedia of answers for anyone who has questions.
Then I showed him how to share his network.
Because he was young, Chris didn’t have many contacts.
But he had the potential to make new ones; he was dealing with dozens of people on a weekly basis. Soon he was organizing internal meetings for his peers, pollinating them with new ideas he’d picked up from his reading and giving them access to his newly found contacts. Recently I saw him walk out of a twenty-person meeting that he had chaired masterfully, just months after wondering how he would ever get airtime at these gatherings. He had built his own little nest.
Mostly we talked about the third step: compassion, or the willingness to demonstrate your humanity at the office. At first Chris resisted because he thought it sounded trite, but the more he thought it over, the more he saw the light. Last month I received an e-mail from him saying,“ Guess what? I just made someone’s year.”

Chris had befriended a woman who worked in a section that was politically at risk. Chris opened up to the woman, whom he admired but had never told, letting her know how great she was at her job, and how valued her contributions were, at the time when she most needed support.“I will help you,” he said. “I will tell people how excellent you are. You should feel secure.”
Those words turned her around. She was able to calm herself, which improved her work performance. And it gave Chris such a profound sense of satisfaction that he finally began to enjoy the office environment. He felt he belonged. He felt a sense of purpose.
Today I see a more potent Chris. I see a monster of knowledge, a connector of people, and the kind man who always existed within him, deep inside. Chris has changed his brand. He’s found a way to use love more than hate.
He is no longer Mad Dog. He is a lovecat. And being a lovecat is exactly what all of us must do if we want to succeed in the twenty-first century. Read on.

Customer Reviews

What the World Needs NOW
Having read "LOVE is the Killer App" from cover to cover, I can't believe we have gotten so far way from what our grandparents and parents taught us. Be nice. Say thank you. Look out for friends and colleagues. Keep your word and Share!!
Tim Sanders has got it right with a beautiful book that is elegantly told. His book speaks volumes to our personal and business world. The Golden Rule applies more than EVER. This is a deeply inspiring book that I hope changes the world one reader at a time. I loved it's message.

DO GOOD and walk lightly across the business landscape. A wonderful book for the 21st Century.

This Book is the Killer App - Love It!
CONCEPT

The principles of this book have been covered before, but the simplicity and context with which they have been delivered makes it truly memorable and fun to read. Furthermore, the references to other great books on a wide variety of subjects is a real benefit. In essence, the book is about LOVE BUSINESS - the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles with your bizpartners. These intangibles are separated into 3 key themes: knowledge, network and compassion. Get this all going and you're a LOVECAT - and it's worth committing to becoming a LOVECAT with your bizpartners. As Tim says, it's the difference between having people's time and their attention - like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved, the pig is committed.

BACKGROUND

Knowledge

Tim describes knowledge as everything you have learned and everything you continue to learn. He suggests that news gives you awareness - a measurement of today - whereas books give you knowledge - a measure of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Awareness is finite whereas knowledge is forever. He suggests a four-step programme to help make knowledge work: aggregation - getting the right books; encoding - effectively annotating and commenting on the content of the book as you read each section; processing - assimilating the content of the books you read, knowing its `Big Thought' and maybe writing a review on it; and application - the employment and effective sharing of the knowledge you gain with your colleagues and bizpartners.

Network

The benefit and need for networking in the 21st Century is generally well understood. As Tim says, our future success will be based on the people we know. He suggests following a networking system comprising 3 steps: collecting - ensuring you have the right people in your network and not screening out the little people; connecting - taking your assortment of contacts and thinking about ways in which they can be linked - tune your receiver for opportunities to make connections and fuse the connection once made; and disappearing - only remain active until the relationship can survive without you - building trust in your motives and scale in your ability to build a network.

Compassion

Tim declares that compassion in business is not just possible but necessary - the perfect complement to knowledge and network - the holy trinity the Lovecat way. "Lovecats don't just give you what you need - we are what you need." Tim describes six benefits for a Lovecat: you build an outstanding brand as a person; you create an experience - a critical factor in today's experience economy; you have access to people's attention (ham and eggs); you harness the power of positive presumption; you receive exceptional feedback - the best and fastest method for continual personal improvement; and you gain personal satisfaction.

COMMENT

This is just a great book with insight and fresh perspectives throughout - from the principles of Silicon Valley innovation through to the concept of dot.communists. Tim tells us to be distinct or be extinct - think about Return on Attention rather than just Return on Investment - time is short so add some value! It's a lot to take on and try to achieve but to pull a quote from the Dalai Lama that Tim uses in the book, "You don't have to be a god. Just stop hurting people." Love is the Killer App is a superb book. Get it. Read it. Do it.

A loving attitude in business can work if you have know how
If you like to look out for your colleagues, encourage them to be the best, connect people who like to get things done, and you do this just for the buzz and pleasure of seeing things happen, then you're a Love cat at heart.

Read this book to improve your ways.

Love Cat recommendations by the author:

1. Knowledge
Read, anotate, disseminate in your network.

2. Network
Build based on common interests and pass on knowledge

3. Love
Effort, and commitment to your network based on connecting people to share and achieve great things.

Note:
This reviewer did not give the author a five star rating because the motivation for improving yourself appeared to be driven by fear. You had to improved not to be caught by fresher ideas, and people who were more knowledgable than you.