“Nice, smart people succeed.” — Tim Sanders
Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders is an outstanding and easy-to-digest book. He is a strong advocate of being a “lovecat.” A lovecat, according to him, thrives by sharing knowledge, building a network, and showing compassion.
At 43, Tim Sanders has deep experience in cutting-edge businesses, most recently a senior level executive at Yahoo!, serving as Yahoo!’s Leadership Coach and prior to that as Chief Solutions Officer, where he oversaw next-generation marketing programs to world class brands.
My favourite chapter of the book is Knowledge. It starts with amassing as much usable knowledge as possible by religiously carving out time to read, then pouring through as many cutting-edge books in one’s field as possible. Tim highlighted a practical four-step program to make knowledge work for its readers: (1) aggregation, (2) encoding, (3) processing, and (4) application. He also gives a practical approach to cliffing (think Cliff Notes) so that we retain useful information after reading. He gives an example of his cliffing strategy from a book he read. Finally, he urges us to make full use of the knowledge by actively sharing with others.
Following this is a chapter on Networking. It focuses on compiling a strong list of contacts and storing it in an always-accessible format. He provides readers with a system, which is composed of (1) collecting, (2) connecting, and (3) disappearing. Besides telling us ‘what,’ he also clues us in on the ‘how’ in our quest to become great collectors. This is what he says:
Through the powerful word-of-mouth, love springs eternal in the connected world. Word-of-mouth equals incremental growth. Word-of-mouth equals exponential growth. … Our network will be equal to our net worth.
Sanders concludes by advocating the true mindset of Compassion, which he says involves sharing this knowledge with our contacts. Business love isn’t always smooth. Occasionally, people may misunderstand us. Gathering knowledge requires focus and effort. Sharing a network requires building one first and then trusting it to others. Showing compassion openly at the office can make us vulnerable and, if rejected, hurt. We shouldn’t be discouraged when this happens because showing love always wins in the end. Ultimately, helping others in one way or another may help us. There are, no doubt, many advantages of being a lovecat. So go forth, be one, and multiply the value!
