2007
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Networking for People Who Hate Networking, an on-line assessment experience, is an instrument available in conjunction with the second edition of Devora Zack's Networking for People Who Hate Networking. This tool will help you assess your networking style. Networking enables you to accomplish the goals that are most important to you. But you can't adopt a style that goes against who you are—and you don't have to. As Zack writes, “You do not succeed by denying your natural temperament; you succeed by working with your strengths.”
Format: Online Subscription
Price: $9.95 for one-year subscription, or five tests, whichever comes first
Description: This instrument consists of 20 questions. The assessment will produce a graphic of your results and interpretation from the author. You can take the test up to five times within a 12-month period and compare your results.
Author’s welcome
First, I want to say I’m in awe of you. Presumably, you hate networking. Nevertheless, you decided to shell out a few clams to invest in an online self-assessment featuring this very topic. There’s a decent chance you’ve also read (aka skimmed) the companion book Networking for People Who Hate Networking 2.0. Way to go!
I’ll make it worth your while. Now let’s get down to it.
Why is Networking so Irksome?
No offense, but that isn’t the underlying question. Allow me to gently rephrase your query:
What is Real Networking vs the Phony Facsimile Posing as Networking?
Until the first edition of Networking for People Who Hate Networking surfaced, the universal concept of networking was along the lines of: more is more, constant contact, shameless self-promotion, and get out there ASAP.
As you have always suspected, this methodology backfires for approximately 85% of the population. These so-called techniques make most of us want to run and hide, crash and burn, declare an allergic reaction to networking and proclaim to hate it.
Good news! Working a room isn’t real networking. Shmoozing doesn’t equate with a successful, fulfilled life and career. Less is (gasp!) more.
What is commonly labeled ‘Networking’ is a misnomer.
Real networking is the art of building meaningful, lasting, mutually beneficial connections one person at a time.
The world is beset with enormous problems that desperately need solutions. And as a nonprofit, NGO, foundation, impact investor, or socially responsible company, your organization is on a mission to provide those solutions.
But what exactly should you do? And how will you know whether it's working? Too many people assume that good intentions will result in meaningful actions and leave it at that. But thanks to Marc Epstein and Kristi Yuthas, social impact can now be evaluated with the same kind of precision achieved for any other organizational function.
Based on years of research and analysis of field studies from around the globe, Epstein and Yuthas offer a five-step process that will help you gain clarity about the impacts that matter most to you and will provide you with methods to measure and improve those impacts. They offer a systematic approach to deciding what resources you should invest, what problem you should address, and which activities and organizations you should support. Once you've made those decisions, they provide tools, frameworks, and metrics for defining exactly what success looks like, even for goals like reducing global warming or poverty that are extremely difficult to measure. Then they show you how to use the data you've gathered to further develop and increase your social impact.
Epstein and Yuthas personally interviewed leaders at over sixty different organizations for this book and include examples from nearly a hundred more. This is unquestionably the most complete, practical, and thoroughly researched guide to taking a rigorous, data-driven approach to expanding the good you do in the world.
Describes three principles that form the basis for entrepreneurial leadership, a new leadership approach for today's world
In years past, the keywords for leaders were confidence, single-minded purpose, and strategic planning. But today's vastly complex, globalized, and fast-evolving world requires a different kind of leadership. This game-changing book details a new approach-entrepreneurial leadership-developed at Babson College, the number-one school for entrepreneurship in the world.
Entrepreneurial leadership is inspired by, but is separate from, entrepreneurship. It is a leadership approach that can be applied in any organizational situation, not just start-ups. Based on two years of extensive research, it embraces three principles that add up to nothing less than a fundamentally new worldview of business and a new logic of decision making.
The authors discovered that rapid change and increasing uncertainty require leaders to be "cognitively ambidextrous," able to shift between traditional "prediction logic" (choosing actions based on analysis of known trends) and "creation logic" (taking action despite considerable unknowns). Guiding this different way of thinking and acting is a different worldview of business and society, where simultaneous creation of social, environmental, and economic value is the order of the day. Entrepreneurial leaders also leverage their understanding of themselves and their social context to guide effective action.
Danna Greenberg, Kate McKone-Sweet, and H. James Wilson, along with some of the top faculty at Babson, examine the three facets of this new model in detail. Each chapter offers concrete examples of how educators across all disciplines are integrating these ideas into their courses-and even their entire curricula. The New Entrepreneurial Leader lays out a comprehensive new paradigm for reinventing management education in order to mold leaders who will shape social and economic opportunity.
Offers a complete guide to the details of implementing and measuring the impact of CSR initiatives
Most companies today have some commitment to corporate social responsibility, but implementing these initiatives can be particularly challenging. While a lot has been written on ethical and strategic factors, there is still a dearth of information on the practical nuts and bolts. And whereas with most other organizational initiatives the sole objective is improved financial performance, sustainability broadens the focus to include social and environmental performance, which is much more difficult to measure.
Now updated throughout with new examples and new research, this is a complete guide to implementing and measuring the effectiveness of sustainability initiatives. It draws on Marc Epstein's and new coauthor Adriana Rejc Buhovac's solid academic foundation and extensive consulting work and includes best practices from dozens of companies in Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Australia, and Africa. This is the ultimate how-to guide for corporate leaders, strategists, academics, sustainability consultants, and anyone else with an interest in actually putting sustainability ideas into practice and making sure they accomplish their goals.
The best practices in corporate social responsibility (CSR) are no longer the exclusive domain of companies like Ben & Jerry's or the Body Shop; now even companies like GE and Wal-Mart are making significant financial and organizational commitments to social and environmental issues. But senior executives are realizing that implementing sustainability is particularly challenging. While a lot has been written on ethical and strategic factors, there is a dearth of information on the practical nuts and bolts of implementation and virtually nothing on how to measure the results.
In Making Sustainability Work, Marc Epstein builds on his influential and highly respected previous work to produce the ultimate how-to guide for corporate leaders, strategists, academics, sustainability consultants, and anyone else with an interest in actually putting sustainability ideas into practice.