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If I hear lovecat one more time, I’ll reach for my AK

Love is the killer app is the most annoying book I’ve read this book, and there were many. Its author, Tim Sanders, has deserved this rant largely because of his habit of prefixing many words with “biz” (such as bizcontacts, bizworld, etc.) without merit – their meaning is clear enough without it (reminds me of that horrendous “2.0″ suffix we’ve been seeing for way too long, too – I am dreading the “3.0″).

I tell you, to erase the experience of this book I’ve had to load Amarok with Tupac tracks. It’s this bad.

First of all, the book recycles arguments well known since Dale Carnegie’s book on making friends or whatever. I wonder if our collective memory is so shallow. All the good stuff you need to behave like a decent human being in a business environment (and everywhere else) can be found in the Bible.

Second, the Big Thought lies in gathering ideas in books, then being the unsolicited Know-It-All and quote them to our friends and expect a meaningful return on attention. It works when used sparingly and with caution. Mentioning a new book 3 times a week will just make you look like either an aspiring book critic or someone who can’t produce an original thought.

Third, the chapter on exchanging business cards. Yeah.

I don’t have a fourth, since I couldn’t bear the thought of never being able to justify the remaining hour I would have spent on finishing it.

HOWEVER…

It pays to read the highlights for a reminder that boundaries between our work and personal lives are becoming blurred. That it makes sense to nurture relationships and create value whenever possible, even without an immediate compensation, because those things will help our relationships and those will, in time, yield value to us.

It was written in 2002, so it feels a bit outdated already (it mentions Siebel as a vendor of SFA … come again?) (no word on blogs, etc.). I would argue that its title is the most valuable thing about it, and that it should be rewritten from scratch and consider not the relationships we have in our workplace but the relationships between companies (their representatives – sales reps, service reps) and customers and how the technocratic worldview (pragmatic value exchange) doesn’t work anymore because we’re seeking experiences, and those go far beyond exchanging cash for a product. And those involve emotions, though love is perhaps too strong.

But that would be a theme for another book. Pity the title has already been used.

December 14, 2007 | Filed Under Rants 

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