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Kaplan Thaler attributes her company’s success to a corporate culture of niceness. In her 2006 book, The Power of Nice, she shares her winning business strategy — kindness as an antidote to an increasingly ruthless competitive environment. In the book, Kaplan Thaler explores the fallacy of America’s zero-sum business culture: Unless you lose, I can’t win — think survivor-like “reality shows”. She reminds us that deceitful machinations are not the stuff of true winners. The “ME vs. YOU mentality” is simply not a sustainable strategy. I’m smiling as I write this, and thinking, “Do I find her approach brilliant because she agrees with me or, or because her approach simply makes for a good business practice?” Linda Kaplan Thaler, winner of dozens Clio awards, explores collaborative success and argues that good deeds are returned, not punished. Her book is well thought out and engagingly written, offering core values, case studies and exercises to help make niceness habitual. Exercises, lik
