I see the same things
Tired ideas broken values
Many with the notion
That to share is to lose
David Gray, ‘Birds Without Wings’.

A psychologist friend of mine once said to me, ‘great passion must be coupled to great compassion’.  He was, of course, right.  Earlier this year I was playing a game of rugby.  We were losing.  A member of the opposition broke through our defensive line, I chased back, some of my teammates didn’t, without thinking - passion not being an emotion of cognisance - I screamed, ‘fucking defence’. 

In East Yorkshire parlance, it’s fair to say, ‘I went mad’.  I was, as an angry man often is, right; the defence should have tracked back with me.  Seconds later, after the opposition scored, I started laughing, as did my teammates.  Passionate outburst coupled with a compassionate response.  Moment over.  No drama.

Wayne Bennett, the ex-coach of the Brisbane Broncos rugby league team, is well known for his compassion; you can't lead without it.  I am reading a book by Tim Sanders called Love is the Killer App.  Sanders and Bennett, I think, define love or compassion as ‘the selfless promotion of the growth of others’. (Mayeroff in Sanders, p. 12)   A team-lead coaches his juniors, taking them through JUnit or helping them with estimates, because they want them to grow, want them to do well.

Sanders’ book is about ‘love business’ which is: ‘the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles with your bizpartners’. (Sanders, p. 13) He goes on to say that the intangibles are ‘our knowledge, our network, and our compassion’. (Sanders, p. 13) After the introduction, the book is divided into three more long chapters/essays, each one dealing with an intangible.

To me, in my summer cold sick state, the book was like a meditation.  I am well versed in Sanders’ ideas, so there was not too much new stuff for me, but, just as I am well versed with healthy living, I don’t always practice it.^{This is not a critique of the book, I just happened to have spent a lot of time studying this sort of thing.}  What I found, as I went through the book, was that I was a bit more disciplined with my note making, which is what Sanders reminds us about in chapter 2.  In chapter 3, about networking, he reminded me of the importance of keeping in touch.  At that point, because I’ve recently posted ‘In Defence of Moving Forward’, I thought, yes, I probably should email Gerald Weinberg, whose book I leant on, and say thanks.  At the same time I emailed a fellow I know about FitNesse and brought to his attention a group in his area.

Gerald got back in touch with me to say,

A terrific article, and I've posted links to it all over the place.

Because of the links, within a few hours, I’d had 120 visitors. By teatime European time, 166.  By today, when I finished this note, 189.  Sanders’ point proved nicely.



The danger with this book, because it’s a double spaced stroll of a read, is that you can chug through it and then put it down thinking, ‘cool’, or ‘Americans!’, or ‘that story about Victoria’s Secret was top’.  This would be a shame.  Financial Engineers or their managers should sleep with Love is the Killer App, reading a few pages a night, and each week setting a little goal.  For example, what can you learn this week & disseminate next?  Who in your team could benefit from your coaching? If you could go ‘woodshedding’ (Sanders, p. 120), which books would you take with you? If you are a freelancer, how do you ‘collect’, ‘connect’ and ‘disappear’? (I’ve certainly reconsidered the way I ‘connect’.) (Sanders, p. 119)

The passionate would benefit, too.  Consider Fromm, in Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics,

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy to be acted out under the guise of virtue.

The so-called passionate are often bullies, using moral indignation to control or coerce.  Or the passionate are just angry, making themselves feel better - bearing in mind that tics of survival -  fighting, fucking, and feeding - often give us a lift.  Sanders’ book might help the passionate reader view himself and, if appropriate, provide compassionate counter-balances.

There are two criticisms.  The first one, that only a man as rich and free as the C-something-something of Yahoo! can afford to be so generous is easily refutable, Sanders needs no help from me.  The second, however, is worth considering.

If a stock price goes up on the day you forgot to change your socks, you might think that not changing your socks is why you made money.  There are thousands of sports-people all over the world who would agree.  Our ancestors, praying for rain, may have confused their faith with the storm that came.  Horoscopes, lucky charms, and the stories we tell ourselves about love, our successes at work, and our Pollyanna childhoods are - I am sorry to be cruel - often illusions.  (If you don’t believe me, do this thought experiment.  Why are people so happy to take credit when things go right, and so quick to blame lady-luck when they go wrong?)  Technically, this is called the illusory correlation.

The question is, how much of Sanders’ success was to do with his knowledge, networking, and compassion, and how much was it to do with luck?  Or, for example, his charm, which maybe he doesn’t consider as one of the intangibles?  The main body of the text didn’t convince me he had a point.  However, the 2003 edition, which I read, has a new afterword.  In it, to the credit of the whole project, he balances the often parochial main body with some more honest reflections. 

I will sign off with what I thought was the most important passage in the book.

Yahoo! vice chairman Tim Koogle talks about the difference between being active and being passive - or what he calls the story of “ing” versus “ed.” If you spend time with people who say, “We are talking about that,” “We are thinking about that,” “We are planning that,” be wary. These people aren’t good bizpartners. They don’t execute. (Sanders, p. 128)

What type of bizpartner or colleague are you?

References
Bennett, W. (2008) Man In The Mirror, ABC Books.

Fromm, E. (1990) Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics, Holt Paperbacks.

Mayeroff, M. ((1990) [1972]) On Caring, Harper Paperbacks.

Sanders, T, G. M. ((2003) [2002]) Love is the Killer App, Three Rivers Press.

(For an interesting and well informed view on the ‘illusory correlation’.)  Taleb, N. ((2010) [2007]) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random House.

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