NEW BOOK
“Little Black Book of Connections: 6.5 Assets for Networking Your Way to Rich Relationships,” by Jeffrey Gitomer, Bard Press, $19.95
To climb the ladder of success, you don’t need more techniques and strategies, you need more friends, says Gitomer. So who you know does make a difference. And how many you know makes a bigger difference. Just remember that friends won’t risk their reputations promoting you unless they’re sure you’re the real deal. How do you convince them you’re for real? By making their days. By connecting their dots.
Networking is about giving; building a reputation as a go-to, make-it-happen person. When you give you’re automatically ascribing to Gitomer’s “Universal Truths of Connecting.”
The first: Your mother taught you everything you need to know about connecting before you were 10 years old: Make friends, play nice, take a bath, do your homework. You can’t make friends if you don’t play nice. If people think you are trying to “play” them, they may go along if there’s something in it for them too. But they’ll always view you as an opportunist, not a friend.
–Jim Pawlak, BizBooks
NEW BOOK
“Idea Mapping: How to Access Your Hidden Brain Power, Learn Faster, Remember More, and Achieve Success in Business,” by Jamie Nast, John Wiley & Sons, $24.95
Idea mapping equals individual brainstorming. Its visual cues make it easy to engage the creative part of the brain. By putting the situation on the center of an unlined sheet of paper, you free your brain from process-based, linear thinking.
From the situation, draw lines that affect the situation. Label the lines with keywords/information. Then branch these. Then branch again. Soon you’ll have a visual picture of the situation. With a picture, it’s easy to organize the information.
While you can use idea-mapping to tackle projects, the author’s example of tackling a To Do list in Chapter 3 shows how mapping can be used as a time management tool.
The 21-day trial CD included lets you idea map on your PC; if you want to buy the software, the basic version costs $229.
–Jim Pawlak, BizBooks
