Love is the Killer App

To succeed in today’s job market, you need a killer app: Love.

Everyone knows that love is a fantastic feeling, so why not introduce it to the job market? This might seem odd, but love is especially crucial today when an Ivy League education isn’t enough to secure you the job you want and need.

It’s true, a flashy degree from a well-renowned university was once the ticket to a lifelong career in which knowledge learned on the job was enough to get by on. But times have changed and, in job centers like Silicon Valley, people are paid according to what they know, not their job experience or alma mater.

So what’s the ticket to success in the workplace of tomorrow?

A killer app is a revolutionary idea that transforms its surroundings. And today’s killer app is love.

But not love in the sentimental or physical sense – love in business, which involves smartly offering your three intangible qualities: knowledge, network and compassion. First, knowledge is all the information you’ve gained and will continue to gain, whether you picked it up at school, work, or taught it to yourself.

Second is your network – your web of relationships and potential collaborators. Your network lays the foundation for your success because without it, you can’t apply your knowledge.

Last is compassion, your ability to warmly attend to those around you in a way that supports their growth. This last quality is key because the way people feel about you is much more important than the way they think about you.

In fact, these three intangibles are so essential that most passionate and successful people have already adopted them. These people are called lovecats. Basically they’re high achievers who have left the loveless ways of yesterday’s economy behind them, along with its aggressive vocabulary of predatory marketing, first-mover advantage and capturing market share.

For instance, Cisco’s metric for success is the quality of its customer relationships, not its victories over competitors. The evidence for this lies in Cisco’s basis for giving their salespeople bonuses, a decision marked largely by customer satisfaction, not sales.