Title: Enchantment (2011)
Author: Guy Kawasaki
Pages: 212, embossed hardcover copy with attractive dust-jacket, and accompanying photographs
Publisher: Penguin Group
If providing service is about delighting customers, then enchanting customers is its distant emotional cousin. The word enchantment is closely associated with magic, surprise, astonishment, curiosity and intrigue. Isn’t that what business should be about – the many indirect moments of truth? Innovation in products and services should consider the emotional impact and effect it has on the consumer, considering how the iPhone and iPad have made such a significant influence on our lives.
Despite his overarching reputation as the former-Chief Evangelist of Apple – he promoted with amazing marketing ambidexterity for Apple its Macintosh personal computer - Mr Kawasaki has firmly established himself as the business-owner’s guru, yet he still has more offerings in his bag of tricks. I enjoyed Guy’s ‘The Art of the Start’ - focused mainly on new business upstarts and startups - and how to, sensibly and ostensibly, sell and market products and services. I applied many of his ideas including adopting a Mensch-ian mindset, and closed a few business deals in the process. He insists that values matter, especially when you lead as a role model ('mensch').
This book has relevance to entrepreneurs and intra-preneurs, the latter being initiators of actions in the company. This time, he condenses his research of about 20 books and passes them through his entrepreneurial and marketing filters. He strongly integrates the landmark work of Robert Cialdini, and adapts the latter’s observed principles, and adeptly overlays it over a business fabric. Push & Pull Technology (in chapters 8 and 9 respectively) are about using Social Media 2.0 to further your cause. This he suggests that you do, through your tribes of evangelists, emphasizing the pertinent folds in the digital origami platform, which could unfold your business potential. One guarantee he makes is how to enchant your audience in the first five minutes of your presentation.
For a small book of about 200 pages, Mr Kawasaki has succeeded on several levels. Enchantment is not one of those books where you only read the preface, first and last chapters, and the rest filled with unexciting fillers. You can benefit from applying the principles from any chapter, immediately. Mr Kawasaki writes in his inimitable style with a unique sense of humour. You may be enchanted by his ideas as a venture capitalist, serial author, business consultant and a resume that is wide as it is deep (founder of Alltop.com, and has an honorary doctorate). This book is a good primer to explore his other books such as Rules of Revolutionaries. Simple concepts may be hard to implement; thus, common sense may be uncommon. Instead of becoming a convert, perhaps we can invert our wile and wistful ways of doing business towards a customized (versus customary) approach. Each chapter is supplemented with a success story of enchantment at work, and summarises the usefulness of the content. The numerous anecdotal references make this book content-rich and very readable. To reiterate a triphon, it is: content, content, and content. And this book piques your curiosity with its matter-dense content, without losing the plot.
Like the one-of-a-kind Kawasaki butterfly on his cover - derived from 250 submissions in a clever contest - by walking-his-talk, he subtly urges us to flap our action wings and flutter away to personal discoveries. I strongly recommend this magical book to you – of which mine will be dog-eared, underlined and heavily used soon - my mark of respect to an author.
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