Love: The Killer App

"Love is act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your knowledge, networks, and compassion with your business partners." --Tim Sanders, Chief Solutions Officer, Yahoo

Yahoo senior executive, Tim Sanders, published a book on Valentine's Day titled Love Is Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends. In his book he explains that road to prosperity is paved with a commitment to generosity. He believes that what business world needs is less greed and more love. "When you help others grow to become best people that they can be, you are being loving -- and as a result, you grow. The most powerful force in business is love. It's what will help your company grow and become stronger. It's what will propel your career forward. It's what will give you a sense of meaning and satisfaction in your work."

Sanders believes there are three critical drivers of professional success. He calls them "three elemental particles of love in business." They are knowledge, networks, and compassion.

Knowledge: We must learn as much as we can as quickly as we can and then aggressively share that knowledge with others. Sanders says "that means taking power of ideas seriously, reading books voraciously, and developing a system of organizing what you've learned. To be an impact player in business, you simply have to know more than most other people know." One of tremendous benefits of sharing your knowledge with others is that they will be eager to give you helpful feedback in return. "They'll tell you which ideas worked out well and which didn't work out so well. They'll tell you which contacts were helpful and which weren't. They'll keep talking to you. And you'll keep learning from them. It's a loop."

Networks: Our knowledge does not hold much value if we don't have a network of people to share it with. Sanders encourages us to expand our network of people who share our values, and to connect as many of them with each other as possible. Success is based on people we know. Everyone in our contact database is a potential partner for everyone we meet. The value of our network is in our willingness to share it. The purpose of collecting contacts is to give them away … to match them with other contacts. Sanders notes that those who appear insignificant today "may be stars waiting to rise. Someday, they may become key nodes in your network -- and create a huge opportunity for you. And they will remember that it was you who was on their side before everyone else was."

Compassion: Most important, Sanders says, is to "be as openly human as you can be and find courage to express genuine emotion in harried, pressure-filled world of work." We should behave this way, not because we expect something in return, but because it's right way to behave. Sanders notes that "the less you expect in return for acts of professional generosity, more you will receive." Your success is a direct result of their success. Lennon and McCartney said it better than anyone else: "In end, love you take is equal to love you make."

Authentic Promotion

In nature, ‘path of least resistance’ explains why rivers wind their way across landscape, rather than take a straighter, shorter route. Water flowing down river simply follows easiest path available to it. The water doesn’t care that it is taking long way home. The ENERGY of river simply follows path of least resistance.

The path of least resistance affects our behaviour in same way, but with a twist. Rather than minimise just expense of energy at any given moment, we tend to give preference to minimising our level of THOUGHT.