Love Is the Killer App How to Win Business and Influence Friends

Not long ago, after I had delivered a speech on the new economy, a woman entering the job market approached me to talk about her career anxiety. "I'm not worried that I won't land something good," she explained. "I'm afraid that work will be too cold and impersonal. What can I do to guarantee I'll be successful but also happy?" The answer? The same advice I gave Chris: "Be a lovecat." At a large sales conference last month, I met two men, one in accounting, the other in management; both of them were afraid. It wasn't that they feared the changes going on around them -- they feared being left out of them. "How do I drill into this World Wide Web thing?" one of them asked. "I don't know what to work on because this isn't my skill set. Am I still relevant? Is there anything I have to offer that can add value?" The other man said, "I don't think I can compete with these kids bying out of schools loaded with their new-economy knowledge and jargon. Everyone else seems to be jumping into new roles, but I think the world is limiting me with all its rules and biases." "That's not how the world is run," I replied. "It's run via intangibles -- knowledge, networks, and compassion." It never seems to change. No matter how and where I meet these people, and no matter what their age or experience level, I have found one common truth: Men and women across the country are trying desperately to understand how to maintain their value as professionals in the face of rapidly changing times. Until recently, bizpeople could survive for years without advice, without connection skills, perhaps even without new ideas. But now that the bizworld is moving at a velocity once unheard of, many of us can't keep up. We've made some bad decisions, we've received some bad advice, we didn't get connected to the right opportunities, we're feeling left behind or left out. Technology has revolutionized our landscape. Before the information revolution, business changed gradually and business models became antiquated even more slowly. The value progression evolved over decades and double decades. You could go to college, get an M.B.A. and work for forty years, and your pure on-the-job knowledge stayed relevant. Relationships were for the most part geo-bound, and only a handful of people comprised your entire business network. That was yesterday. Forget about today, because tomorrow is upon us. And to succeed in tomorrow's workplace, you need a killer application. (What's a killer app? There's no standard definition, but basically it's an excellent new idea that either supersedes an existing idea or establishes a new category in its field. It soon becomes so popular that it devastates the original business model.) What is that application? Simply put: Love is the killer app. Those of us who use love as a point of differentiation in business will separate ourselves from our competitors just as world-class distance runners separate themselves from the rest of the pack trailing behind them. This isn't just a feel-good message that I sense audiences want to hear. I believe that the most important new trend in business is the downfall of the barracudas, sharks, and piranhas, and the ascendancy of nice, smart people -- because they are what I call lovecats. They will succeed for all the reasons you will discover in this book. But first, what do I mean by love? The best general definition I have ever read is in the noted philosopher and writer Milton Mayeroff's 1972 book On Caring: "Love is the selbess promotion of the growth of the other." When you are able to help others grow to become the best people they can be, you are being loving -- and you, too, grow. Mayeroff actually used the word caring more often than the word love, although love isSanders, Tim is the author of 'Love Is the Killer App How to Win Business and Influence Friends' with ISBN 9780609609224 and ISBN 060960922X.