Acknowledgments

Whoever said writing was lonely, lied.

This book has been social in every way—from the board meeting that first inspired me to write down which ideas should be deemed passé to the vibrant discussions that evolved my first missives into more considered and complete ideas.

This includes an amazing tribe of people: Priya Parker, Julien Smith, Lisa Gansky, Bruno Giussani, Andrew Blau, Sameer Patel, Salim Ismail, Michael Mace, Harry Max, Tim Kastelle, Peter Sims, Michael Dila, Philip Auerswald, Haydn Shaughnessy, Ray Wang, Jennifer Aaker, Jimmy Guterman, Jean Russell, Sara Roberts, Whitney Johnson, Clint Korver, Alex Osterwalder, Les McKeown, Mitch Joel, Tereza Nemessanyi, Seth Cargiuolo, Vala Afshar, Leslie Bradshaw, Om Malik, Mair Dundon, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Anand Giridharadas, Jerry Michalski, Steven Wright, Craig Donato, Pam Fox Rollin, Tony Schwartz, and June Cohen. Each of you made this body of work as cogent and clear as it is. Thank you.

To all the global organizations that let me share—and pilot—11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era, your good work and courage to let go of what is known and steer into the unknown keeps showing up in your results—and the front pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Every author has a secret-agent type who makes good ideas into great ones. For me, that person is my editor, Sarah Green, at Harvard Business Review. As a fellow thinker, she has championed me and challenged me at all the right times. And I am blessed with an amazing agent in Carol Franco. Thank you both for getting me to this point. You are a dream team.

At its best, writing is as creative as it is communal and collaborative. At its worst, it is messy, nonlinear, and fundamentally difficult. When I’m writing, I have a persistent feeling that the perfect sentence or chapter lies just beyond what I’ve been able to create thus far, and that if I stretch just a little bit more, the work product will get better—maybe even be perfect. It is my inner circle who endures with me while I try to leave it all on the field, yet these same people also embolden me to get back to work when I am discouraged. I can always count on you: Julie Beckmann, Laura Strange, Tara Hunt, Terri Griffith, Christine Campbell, and Glen Lubbert. And there are two people without whose support this work would never have gotten done: my husband, Curt Beckmann, and our son, Andrew. With you, I feel anything but alone. With you, I am fully alive. You fuel my passion to shift the ways of creating value to allow everyone to be fully alive.