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 essays in this volume draw on that new store of progressive capital to sketch the outlines of a new agenda for 21st-century America. To navigate these troubled times, we need a rare combination of ideas, action, resolve, and leadership to meet the challenges that lie before us.

Features contributions from such leading organizations as Green for All, the Opportunity Agenda, the Commonweal Institute, Campaign for America’s Future, the Economic Policy Institute, Demos, and the Drum Major Institute

Offers innovative solutions to critical challenges such as implementing health-care reform, greening the economy, expanding the middle class, extending educational opportunities, and more

Concise, visionary, and pragmatic—a true blueprint for change

Times are changing. Instead of obsessing about what they’re against, progressives have begun to think about what they’re for—to prepare once again to play their role as agents of bold ideas and political and social transformation. Finding new confidence and imagination, they have begun to renew their political capital. The essays in this volume draw on that new store of capital to sketch the outlines of a progressive agenda for 21st-century America.

Authors such as Van Jones, Dean Baker, Andrea Batista Schlesinger and Miles Rapoport cover a wide array of topics and, in their policy recommendations, present a few contrasting ideas. But all these essays reflect a belief in the need for fundamental change. The problems discussed here cannot be solved, the authors agree, through charity, through volunteerism, or even by well-meaning local and state governments, though surely all have a role. The contributors make the case for the kind of concerted action that can only come through the agency of our national government. They argue that we need programs that serve our national and international needs and encourage faith in our public institutions, creating a positive cycle of political change and space for further reform.

There are many good reasons to be worried at this critical moment in history. To navigate these troubled times, we need a rare combination of ideas, action, resolve, and leadership to meet the challenges that lie before us. Thinking Big is an indispensable piece of that puzzle, arriving just when it’s most needed.

With a foreword by Robert Kuttner, author of Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency.

The Progressive Ideas Network is an alliance of multi-issue think tanks and activist organizations working together to amplify the power of ideas in advancing today’s progressive movement.

People often ask, "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we solve global hunger?"

• Offers a more dynamic, powerful, and practical way to address difficult social problems than the dominant planning approach
• Features inspiring examples of the results social labs around the world have achieved
• Provides detailed guidance on how to start a social lab in any setting and on any level

People often ask, "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we solve global hunger?" That very question demonstrates the fatal flaw in the dominant way of dealing with difficult social challenges: they're treated like straightforward technical problems. Organizations do a few studies, establish some goals, devise a plan, and attempt implementation. As a look around the world sadly shows, this hasn't worked.

Issues like poverty, ethnic conflict, and climate change are incredibly dynamic and complex, involving an ever-shifting array of factors, actors, and circumstances. They demand a more fluid and adaptive approach. The answer, says Zaid Hassan, is social labs.

Social labs bring together a diverse a group of stakeholders not to create yet more five-year plans but to develop a portfolio of prototype solutions, test those solutions in the real world, use the data to further refine them, and test them again. Their orientation is systemic-they are designed to go beyond dealing with symptoms and parts to get at the root cause of why things are not working.

Hassan builds on a decade of experience-as well as drawing from cutting-edge research in complexity science, networking theory, and sociology-to explain the core principles and daily functioning of social labs, using examples of pioneering labs from around the world. He describes a fast-growing global movement around a new generation of ambitious social labs that are tackling big challenges such as dramatically reducing global emissions, preventing the collapse of fragile states, and improving community resilience. The Social Labs Revolution offers a new generation of problem solvers an effective, practical, and exciting new vision and guide.

“There’s a new way to change the world,” writes social entrepreneur Michel Gelobter. It's called the lean startup—but it’s not just for new ventures. It’s been revolutionizing businesses of all ages for years, and Gelobter shows it can have the same transformative impact on the social sector.

Traditionally, entrepreneurs develop a detailed plan, find money to fund it, and then pursue it to its conclusion. But conditions can change drastically at any point—you can end up locked into a process based on now-obsolete assumptions. The lean startup is all about agility and flexibility. Its mantra is “build, measure, learn”: create small experimental initiatives, get real-world feedback on them quickly, and use that data to identify what works and discard what doesn’t. And then test some more.

Gelobter explains exactly how nonprofits and advocacy organizations can adapt lean startup concepts to their unique circumstances. He offers dozens of real-world examples: an established homelessness group whose data analysis showed that reducing a single overlooked metric could get many more people off the street; a technology-based literacy startup that used lean techniques to reach 2 million children in two years, when a more traditional program took fifteen; and many others. The standard approach wastes time and money—the lean startup promises to help social sector organizations vastly increase the good they do.

The idea of hierarchy is breaking down everywhere, from politics to religion to social relationships-why should leadership be any different?

• Shows that a radically decentralized approach can revolutionize leadership just as it has revolutionized computer networking
• Turns leadership on its head-the job of the leader is not to tell followers what to do but to create, enable, and facilitate a network of peer leaders
• Features examples of what some organizations are doing and what all organizations can do to implement and benefit from this new approach

Our leadership models are still stuck in a top-down, command-and-control, Industrial Age mentality. But our globalized, data-drenched, 24/7 world is just too complex, with too much information coming from too many different directions, for any single person or group of people to stay on top of it. The idea of hierarchy is breaking down everywhere, from politics to religion to social relationships-why should leadership be any different?

Mila Baker's inspiration for a new way to lead is the peer-to-peer model of computing, which is also mirrored in social networking and crowdsource technologies. She shows that a network with "equipotent" nodes of power-think peer leaders-is infinitely more powerful than a "client-server" (leader-follower) network.

In organizations of equipotent nodes, leadership isn't fixed or siloed-it shifts based on the particular strengths of individuals and the particular needs of a situation. Rather than being guided into narrow predetermined channels, information flows freely so those who need it can find it easily and are empowered to act on it immediately. Constant change is built into the very structure of these organizations, and giving feedback is no longer a separate (and often dreaded and ineffective) process but becomes an organic part of the workflow, enabling rapid course corrections.

Baker still advocates the need for top-level executives and senior leaders, but their job is to optimize the health of the network rather than issue commands. Companies such as Gore and Herman Miller practice these principles and have achieved long-term success-Baker provides a structure for this approach that any organization can adapt to build flexibility, resiliency, and accountability.