Love is the Killer App
“Nice, smart people succeed.”
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 through the sharing of knowledge, network, and 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 the time to read and 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 of cliffing (think Cliff Notes) so that we retain useful information after reading. Here he provides us with 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 is about compiling a good list of contacts that is properly stored 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 be a great collector. This is what he says: Through the powerful word-of-mouse, love springs eternal in the connected world. Word-of-mouth equals incremental growth. Word-of-mouse equals exponential growth. … Our network will be equal 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 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 by helping others in one way or another, it may ultimately help us. There is, no doubt, many advantages of being a lovecat. So go forth, be one, and multiply the value!
