 | Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions |
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Product Description
The author of the international bestseller The Art of the Start offers a new perspective on the art of influence.
Guy Kawasaki's acclaimed books have established him as the entrepreneur's entrepreneur, and in The Art of the Start he wrote the essential contemporary guide for starting any new enterprise. Now Kawasaki turns to the mystery of influence and offers a compelling new take on this key force that drives any successful business or personal interaction.
Enchantment's fundamental message is that in any transaction the goal is not to get your own way, but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change of heart in other people, by working with and through them and enlisting their own goals and desires. It's enchantment that enables us to maneuver through difficult decisions, break people's entrenched habits, defy the wisdom of crowds, and get colleagues to work for long-term goals.
Kawasaki's advice includes:
• How to Achieve Rapport, Credibility, and Trust
• How to Help People Enchant Themselves
• How to Overcome Resistance
• How to Enchant Your Employees...and Your Boss
• How to Resist Enchantment
Anchored by his road-tested wisdom and inimitable wit, Enchantment is another classic from one of the most respected voices in business today.
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Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
Apple's former chief evangelist leads businessfolk down the path to enchantment.
The entrepreneur's entrepreneur is back with his 10th book, this time tackling the tricky art of influence and persuasion. Kawasaki (Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging and Outmarketing Your Competition, 2011, etc.) transforms the otherwise exhausted and overwrought tropes of how to win friends and influence people with a complete makeover here, whether he's talking about wardrobe choice or tips for effective swearing.
The author, a modern-day Dale Carnegie, offers explanations on how to wield the most influence in the digital age: Push Technologies like presentations, e-mails and Twitter are discussed as active means of enchanting others, while Pull Technologies like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn passively draw them in. The author's suggestions for achieving likeability and trustworthiness, as well as overcoming resistance, are thoroughly explained and can easily translate from the workplace to the real world.
Kawasaki makes good use of subheads and bullet points, rendering information in a searchable format. He ends each chapter with an anecdote that illuminates the effectiveness of his techniques—while it's not original, it's effective. The author's trademark light and airy style is on display, but it's his humor and empathy that makes the heavy use of BusinessSpeak and buzzwords more easily palatable.
Informative, concise guide from one of America's most influential and, yes, enchanting entrepreneurs.
Review
"Read this book to create a company as enchanting as Apple."
-Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple
"Guy's book captures the importance - and the art - of believing in an idea that delivers something entirely unique to the customer. The power of a really good idea to transform the marketplace and individual customer experiences is huge, and this book offers a wealth of insights to help businesses and entrepreneurs tap into that potential."
-Sir Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group
"Kawasaki provides insights so valuable we all wish we'd had them first."
-Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence: Science and Practice
"The best overall treatise on interpersonal relationships since Dale Carnegie wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People."
-Michael Gartenberg, research director, Gartner
"Guy has written the small-business manifesto. There is nothing more important for entrepreneurs than to enchant their customers, and Guy explains exactly how to do this."
-Jane Applegate, small-business management expert and author of 201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business
"Guy teaches you how to pull gems from people's hearts and minds and how to become an effective practitioner of life's crucial domains. Clearly, I taught him well."
-Dr. Phil Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology, Stanford University
"You feel it when you drive a BMW, touch an Apple iPad, shop in a Sephora store, or buy shoes from Zappos. Kawasaki reveals how you can deliver the same enchanting experiences as these famous brands."
-Robert Scoble, Rackspace videoblogger
About the Author
Guy Kawasaki is the former chief evangelist of Apple. He is also the cofounder of Alltop.com (an online magazine rack of popular topics on the Web) and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. His nine previous books include the international bestseller The Art of the Start, as well as Reality Check, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA. He lives in Silicon Valley with his wife and four children.
Visit www.facebook.com/enchantment
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
64 of 69 people found the following review helpful.
By Aaron Armstrong
Marketing and leadership books are strange animals. Some are great and others make you want to stab yourself in the eye with a fork. Almost all, though, usually fall into one of two categories:
1. How to develop a large and successful business; and
2. Why all marketers are liars
Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki is neither of these; instead, it's a book about one thing:
Influence.
"How can I influence others without moral compromise?" is the question at the heart of Enchantment. And it's an important one. There are a number of easy cheats to convince people to follow your leadership (carrots and sticks) or to buy your product or join your cause (incentives), but eventually those things always fail.
Why? Because they're disingenuous. They don't tap into people's passions. They don't move the heart.
And without that happening, whatever impact you have is fleeting at best.
The "pillars of enchantment" Kawasaki puts forward ones you'd be hard pressed to disagree with:
1. Be likeable
2. Be trustworthy
3. Have a great cause
In other words, be someone you'd actually want to spend time with and offer something that matters. These seem like concepts that should be met with a resounding, "well, I should hope so." I mean, this seems to be common sense, doesn't it? That's thing about common sense, though. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, it's not that common sense has been tried and found lacking, it's that it's been found difficult and left untried.
Unless you're likeable, it's extremely difficult to be found trustworthy. And unless you're trustworthy, no one will rally around your cause, no matter how good it is.
Whether you're in the for-profit or non-profit world, whether you're in some form of vocational ministry or working for a huge conglomerate, who you are impacts everything you're involved with. Our character can be the scent of life or the stench of death, and we would all do well to remember that.
The rest of the book tackles the implications of being enchanting, from launching your cause, overcoming resistance, using technology, how it plays out with employees and employers, how to make enchantment endure--and even how to resist it.
A key principle that resonated with me is that of endurance. Even if you have the greatest cause, it's essential to remember that "enchantment is a process, not an event." You're working to build a relationship, not just get a sale or get someone to do something for you. And relationships take effort. This is something that is not easy for many in marketing and even in leadership positions to remember. The truth is, though, for many of us, it's easier to try to squeeze whatever we can out of our market today, and not think about the long-term consequences (like having no market in the future).
This is where social media comes in handy, especially Facebook and Twitter (two resources that Kawasaki highly recommends). These two tools allow organizations and individuals to connect in ways that previously weren't possible. And used well, they can allow you to truly enchant your customer or supporter base by engaging on their terms. Dell, among other organizations, fields support questions via Twitter (I know because an associate contacted me once after I complained about my previous laptop). This gives people a great experience with the company, even if they don't like the product.
One of the challenges with social media, though, is finding the right mix of promotion vs. conversation. Kawasaki suggests that if around 5% of your content is promotional, you should be in good shape, but he's also quick to point out that if people aren't complaining, you're probably not promoting enough (p. 115).
(Does this mean my Twitter followers will be seeing a shift in my updates? Probably, and hopefully for the better.)
Principles aside, the thing that caught my attention about this book is that it brought to mind people I know who are naturally good at this. They just seem to "get" that this is the kind of person you need to be in order to be successful. Take some time and look around your office, your school or whatever context you spend most of your day in, and I suspect you'll see at least one or two people who are naturally "enchanting" as well.
So here's the big question: Will this book help you to be "enchanting" in your sphere of influence?
Possibly. This isn't a book that guarantees that if you follow these 8 easy steps, you'll have more friends, better posture and piles of candy. What it does remind readers, though, is that the only way to really make a lasting impact on people is to act with integrity. That's a big deal and advice we would all do well to heed.
If you have a chance, do pick up a copy of Enchantment. It's definitely a worthwhile investment and just might challenge you in a few places where you won't expect it.
65 of 81 people found the following review helpful.
By Karma Yogi
I am one of the many random people worldwide that received a complimentary copy of the book. And much as I feel grateful for the gift, I'll be honest. The book did not enchant. It's mostly a collection of tips that I've come across from various sources before this. What did not help was that the author re-wrote those tips in his own writing style (which is far from enchanting...actually it is tiresome!) It seems the author is more an entrepreneur than an original thinker or writer.
p.s. Btw, I got a link to a quiz on the author's FB page that offered to tell me how enchanting I was based on my responses. After filling out some 25 questions I clicked the Submit button to see my results and got a message that asked me to 'LIKE' the author's page BEFORE I could see my results. I was not enchanted. :(
p.p.s When I last checked, the quiz had been tweaked. You can now participate only AFTER you LIKE the page. Looks like the author still doesn't get it.
19 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
By C. Reich
If you read a lot of books you eventually run into the same material fairly often. That's the case for me with "Enchantment". While I generally admire Guy's work, I was not enchanted with this book.
It is extremely basic stuff. Smile, firm handshake, don't dress like a slob---enchanting? Steve McQueen and his wife are returning to LA from Las Vegas by car and she needs to relieve herself. There's a line at the gas station restroom so she tells the gals in line that there's a movie star out front---the crowd runs to see the stars and she takes a leak. That's an example of creating a win-win situation. Well, next time I need to pee I hope there is a celebrity I can use nearby.
I'm not going to bother recapping the story about the TV producer who repeats that she just liked Howard Stern about a zillion times. (Puke)
Frankly, by mid way I had to resolve reading this book on an empty stomach. I find celeb stories dull and somewhat grating. Hell yes, if you're Bill Gates you'll be enchanting no matter what the hell you do. BTW, swearing is encouraged but must be used properly. (Bill Gates is my example)
Unless you can see the turnip truck that just dropped you off pulling away, skip this one.
Chris Reich
(2 stars because the design is very good though the content is "see Flip run" basic.)
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