Identifying and Leveraging the Hidden Social Networks That Drive Corporate Performance In today's flatter organizations, collaboration in employee networks has become critical to innovation and to both individual and companywide performance. Executives spend millions on new organizational designs, cultural initiatives, and technologies to promote the sharing of knowledge and expertise across functional, hierarchical, and divisional lines. Yet these efforts have achieved disappointing results. Rob Cross and Andrew Parker argue that's because most managers have little understanding of how their employees actually interact to get work done. In fact, formal "org charts" fail to reveal the often hidden social networks that truly drive--or hinder--an organization's performance. In this eye-opening book, Cross and Parker show managers how to find, assess, and support the networks most crucial to competitive success. Based on their in-depth study of more than sixty informal networks within organizations around the world, Cross and Parker show how managers can implement a wide range of specific and inexpensive actions-from bridging strategically important disconnects in a network to eliminating information "bottlenecks" to recognizing key connectors-that will enhance the powerful impact networks can have on performance and innovation.

A powerful, visual framework helps managers discover how employees really communicate and collaborate to get work done - and helps them identify ways they can influence these social networks to improve performance and innovation. In The Hidden Power of Social Networks, Cross and Parker, experts in "social network analysis"—a technique that visually maps relationships between people in large, distributed groups - apply this powerful tool to management for the first time. Based on their in-depth study of sixty informal employee networks in well-known companies around the world, Cross and Parker show managers how to conduct a social network analysis of their organization.

An internationally known public speaker, entrepreneur, and marketing executive shares practical, up-to-date tips for mastering the skills of networking. Networking doesn’t have to be that frenzied old-school game of calendars packed with stuffy power lunches and sterile evenings at community business gatherings. We’ve entered a new era, one in which shifting cultural values and the explosion of digital technology enable us to network in vastly more efficient, more focused, and more enjoyable ways. A fresh take on How to Win Friends and Influence People, Your Network Is Your Net Worth is an entertaining, straightforward guide filled with revealing case studies, hands-on advice, and innovative strategies for building your network. Written by sought-after speaker, entrepreneur, and marketing executive Porter Gale, with a foreword by Apple evangelist and bestselling author Guy Kawasaki, this book shows you how to establish, expand, and nurture your connections both online and off. New ways to network are popping up every day—and Gale tells you how to make the most of them—but even traditional networking opportunities are not the same animals that they once were, and we need to shift our attitudes and approaches accordingly. Networking has evolved from a transactional game to a transformational process. Whereas once it was about power plays, now it’s about charting your own course, following your passions, and making meaningful connections, which in turn increase your happiness and productivity. In addition to chronicling her own rise from an ad agency intern to an in-demand consultant, Gale also shares the inspiring stories of so many others who live by this networking model: a military wife who connects with social media communities while her husband is deployed overseas, a young woman blog-ger battling leukemia, a dyslexic politician who wins elections by telling stories, and the CEO of a Major League Baseball team who once made a phone call that changed the course of his life. When you focus on your passions and reorganize your networking around your values and beliefs, you will discover the kind of lasting relationships, personal transformation, and, ultimately, tangible wealth that are the foundation for happiness and success. With a message both timely and important, Your Network Is Your Net Worth is the definitive handbook to Networking 2.0.

Celebrated scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler explain the amazing power of social networks and our profound influence on one another's lives. Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Dr. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. In Connected, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.

Driving Results Through Social Networks shows executives and managers how to obtain substantial performance and innovation impact by better leveraging these traditionally invisible assets. For the past decade, Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas have worked closely with executives from over a hundred top-level companies and government agencies. In this groundbreaking book, they describe in-depth how these leaders are using network thinking to increase revenues, lower costs, and accelerate innovation.

What should we make of the outsized role organized crime plays in conflict and crisis, from drug wars in Mexico to human smuggling in North Africa, from the struggle in Crimea to scandals in Kabul? How can we deal with the convergence of politics and crime in so-called 'mafia states' such as Guinea-Bissau, North Korea or, as some argue, Russia? Drawing on unpublished government documents and mafia memoirs, James Cockayne discovers the strategic logic of organized crime, hidden in a century of forgotten political--criminal collaboration in New York, Sicily and the Caribbean. He reveals states and mafias competing - and collaborating -- in a competition for governmental power. He discovers mafias influencing elections, changing constitutions, organizing domestic insurgencies and transnational terrorism, negotiating peace deals, and forming governmental joint ventures with ruling groups. And he sees mafias working with the US government to spy on American citizens, catch Nazis, try to assassinate Fidel Castro, invade and govern Sicily, and playing unappreciated roles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

From the former Head of Brand Strategy at Reddit comes a proven and thought-provoking approach to the digital economy and how brands can create authentic engagement that is rooted in the fundamental motivations behind human psychology Leading marketing practitioner and thought leader Joe Federer draws on evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroanatomy, and psychology, as well as more than a decade of hands-on experience, to explain why people act so differently in various online spaces and what they are seeking from participating in each one. With a framework based on Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego model of the human psyche, he demonstrates how the internet is a digital reflection of the collective human psyche and how different social networks correspond to different mindsets: platforms like Reddit to the unfiltered Id, Facebook and Twitter to the managed Ego, and Instagram to the ideal Superego. In the same way you behave differently when you’re home alone, out with friends, communicating with family, or interacting with coworkers, people act and express themselves differently in these various online spaces. Context matters. Understanding this will enable you to develop and execute effective engagement strategies to reach your target audiences on each social network. Learn: how to create content that drives sharing and word-of-mouth how brands can fit natively into different types of social channels how to balance branded social presences across different networks why authenticity will only grow in importance to consumers Fascinating and deeply compelling, The Hidden Psychology of Social Networks will equip you to make vastly more efficient use of your media buys, establish more thoughtful strategies, develop better creative, and, in the end, deliver more effective marketing that provides value.