Social Capital Mentor

30% More Productive

I was on an airplane a few days ago reading an article in the February issue of Harvard Business Review (How Social Networks Network Best, by Alex Pentland). Alex is the director of human dynamics research at the MIT Media Lab and has been studying the way teams of business people work together. Here’s some mildly [...]

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Reminder from HBR: Stay Active & Organized

We’ve said it before, and I’m going to keep saying it: You’ve got to stay active in a downturn. David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter wrote a great article in the February issue of Harvard Business Review titled Seize Advantage in a Downturn. It’s about developing a corporate assessment and action plan for dealing with the [...]

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What We Can Learn from Great Presenters

Saturday night a bunch of us were hanging out in the beautiful Peabody hotel lobby after a full day of attending, presenting, socializing, and networking at the IA Summit in Memphis. A new friend, Kristi, said “I felt sorry for our presenter. Her talk was good, but we kept hearing all this laughter coming through [...]

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I’m Going to Memphis

I love conferences. The apathetic, pessimistic, burned out folks stay home. Cool by me. I’d rather spend time with the motivated and energized. It’s a great way to meet people, connect, get inspired. I’m going to Memphis for the IA Summit, as part of my Awasu Design work. Richard Anderson and I are running a working [...]

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It’s the Social, not the Media

“Social media” is all the rage these days. Facebook updates, Twitter “tweets”, and LinkedIn… links? I’m a big fan, but to be totally clear: these tools, just like email, webinars, and others are just tools. They don’t produce business for you. Human beings are social creatures Alexandra Levit says it quite well in today’s article in Forbes.com: Finally, [...]

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Is Social Capital Saving Jobs at Beth Israel Deasoness Medical Center?

It’s pretty easy to be pleased with all the key players in this story; from Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, to the countless lower-wage hospital employees who make patients comfortable, to all the rest of the hospital staff at Beth Israel who recently applauded Mr. Levy when he asked them [...]

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Social Capital and Inauthenticity

One of our readers recently brought up an issue that I think deserves its own post. It’s the cause of much misunderstanding regarding the development of Social Capital and why many people have shied away from actively working to increase their portion of it. It’s not an easy issue to talk about so I ask [...]

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What Makes Us Different

We’re not academics. While we enjoy intellectual debate, we’re not doing this to make a point. Mark, Craig and I want to help people through Social Capital. All of us had to learn to negotiate the business world the hard way and want to save others from the same pain. Success for us isn’t measured [...]

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Avoiding the Chopping Block: Internal Networking

When people talk about networking, they are usually referring to something external. If they’re a hard skills-type of person like an engineer or scientist, they tend to think of networking as an activity for “salespeople” and other less-evolved beings. This is absolutely the wrong attitude, especially for the current time. In our current times of regular [...]

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Is the Power Lunch Dead?

Michelle Goodman, of ABC, wrote an article The Death of the Power Lunch that suggests that people are foregoing the power lunch in place for other less costly activities. We love articles like Michelle’s. They help you think about why you’re doing what you’re doing. What are your goals for this lunch? Are you doing lunch [...]

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