Great read on relationships with key employees!

The book describes how employees are no longer working in an age of guaranteed or lifetime employment, but the relationship between companies and employees need not be transactional and mercenary. It suggests “tours of duty” as the solution, where managers and employees agree on a mission and length that benefits both parties, and an alumni network that continues the relationship even after the tenure.

A realistic outlook into today's employer-employee relationship, emphasizing the end of life-time employment and introducing "life-time alliance" instead, creating a win-win solution for both parties.

Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh have written an outstanding and important book called The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age. I encourage you to get a copy right now and read it this weekend. If you are a CEO of a company Foundry Group has invested in, there’s no need to buy it – I just ordered 100 of them and they will be in your hands soon.Reid and Ben previously wrote a book called The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. I...

It's mainly content marketing of Linkedin wrapped in a book form. However, there is quite relevant information on human resource management. It helps understand how big corporations should manage entrepreneurial employees. This could have been great HBR article

Chapter 1: Employment in the Networked Age • The fundamental disconnect of modern employment: the employer-employee relationship is based on a dishonest conversation • The goal of The Alliance is to provide a framework for moving from a transactional to a relation approach. Think of employment as an alliance: a mutually beneficial deal, with explicit terms, between independent players. • Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix: "We're a team, not a family" "Which of my people, if they me they were leaving...

Yes! It’s always satisfying to read a book from somebody who gets it. This book isn’t full of fluff or self aggrandizing stories to fill pages. I’m definitely overly deferential to the ideas presented because of who Reid is and what he has accomplished. But I figure if you’re going to cut corners on intellectual rigor somewhere I’m OK with it being on the Halo-Effect. I think it’s more likely than not he knows what he’s talking about. Anyways this book basically describes how white-collar work i...

I was afraid that this book is too short to convey a deep message and it managed to say even less than I expected, also the focus on is a bit too much on LinkedIn (feels like content marketing article). The alliance approach only works with specific type of employees (entrepreneur-minded) and is not suited for mainstream organization (i.e. employee network intelligence, corporate alumni networks). Several concepts were inspired by the employee development philosophy of Jack Welch (General Electr...

There’s no wonder that a LinkedIn co-founder will promote the benefits of a network and the advantage of hiring a well-networked talent so expect a lot on this topic. The book focuses on two main ideas: - build networks around the organisation by leveraging the networks of your employees;- have an honest and open relationship with your employees about their career journey so that the relationship survives even after their employment status ends. What I liked about the book is the proposal to tre...

Uneven, stilted writing style. At times it sounds as if it was transcribed from a conversation verbatim. I don't trust companies to have the gumption to even approach this framework until a saturation point is hit and there is no choice but to find a mechanism to promote employee retention. Given the results-oriented nature of management and companies, having the foresight and courage to actively do career development and care about employee values seems bizarre and naive...and that is a good th...

Required reading for all "Human Resources"/Talent Acquisition professionals and for companies who really wants to have a 21st Century workplace. The book is very practical and I believe should be required on any HR training.

Really liked this book especially given that i'm doing a lot of hiring and managing of people. A good framework for how to set career and employee goals.

I think the concept of “tours of duty” is really interesting and provides mutual benefits for employee and employer.

These days the idea of "lifelong employment" seems quaint and antiquated. Employment relationships simply don't work that way anymore. "The Alliance" starts from this point of view and provides a clear, focused, and practical strategy to build mutually beneficial employee employer relationships. The strategy has three parts: a "Tour of Duty" approach to career planning, a focus on leveraging the mutual benefit of "Network Intelligence", and evolving from a "lifelong employment" view to "lifelong...

'The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age' by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh is a fresh look at what it looks like to be employed in the 21st century, where there is no guaranteed employment and employees want to act like free agents. What is a company to do? The book creates a framework for employment in this age by looking at how some companies are doing this, primarily, LinkedIn. Discussed are tours of duty, where an employee and company decide on frameworks that hopefully...

In The Alliance, Hoffman et al make a convincing case for updating hiring best practices to reflect the ever-changing reality of the modern world. Hoffman explains that the current generation of workers no longer expects to spend their careers tied to a single employer or industry. Instead of pensions the current generation is focused on personal development. The Alliance suggests that employers and employees enter into mutually agreed upon "tours of duty" designed to accomplish very specific go...

I heard Ben Casnocha give a keynote speech at a conference and was intrigued by his idea on creating employment alliances. Basically, it seems like he is calling for greater transparency and authenticity of relationships in the working world. I enjoyed the book and think the concept has merit. My criticism is that I don't think it can apply well outside the business world and white collar jobs (which It might not be meant to.) I also think the book itself was trying to stretch a pretty straightf...

Overall, this is a really good read. As a manager I feel like this book has given me really great tools for conversations with people on my team. It has also given me a vision for what I'd like for conversations with my leadership to look like. All too often companies are stuck in old "lifetime employment" ways of thinking. They don't realize that the world has changed dramatically. If they did, and they adopt ideas like the ones presented here then they should be more able to attract and retain...

This book reads like a TedTalk painfully stretched out into 155-pages of spacious lettering. It could've been half as long and just as effective. In addition, the authors weave in spotless success stories which lack emotional strength, of folks who've moved up and around the ladder at Linkedin. The thought process of someone working through struggle or a tough decision would have been far more interesting and potentially more powerful as a teaching tool. That aside, the book is a great intro to

I saw Hoffman on Charlie Rose the other night talking about this book and decided to read it. This book is a really great perspective on the paradigm shift that is happening with employee/company relationships. Hoffman describes these new relationships as 'Alliances,' and discusses how LinkedIn thinks of 'Jobs' as 'Tours of Duty' where employees spend shorter periods of time working in roles to hone one skill set or another that helps them develop along their desired career path. I would highly