Review | Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki

Unwittingly, Guy Kawasaki faced fierce competition on my bedside table.  I was in the midst of reading “The Greatest Hockey Stories Ever Told” by the finest writers on ice when I received an advance copy of Guy’s latest book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions.  Guy and I met playing ice hockey and while I enjoy technology and marketing, my first love continues to be ice hockey.  How could I put down stories about flaming Zambonis and a cow being killed during the intermission of a Texas minor league hockey game for Guy’s latest foray into the literary world?  (Well a deadline does serve to energize at times).

I recently asked Guy, amidst middle aged gasps for breath in between shifts of a pick-up hockey game, how many books he’s written.  ”Ten” was his response.  ”How the hell do you find the time?”  ”This is what I do.”  Simple as that . . . it is what he does.

More than just writing books though, Guy has delivered a thoughtful and at times inspiring and yet practical “guide” to understanding and hopefully harnessing the power of enchantment.  Enchantment shares the same readability and digestibility as two of my favorite books written by Guy:  The Art of the Start and Reality Check.  Its lessons are thought-provoking, personal, relevant and yet not aloof or overly academic.

Some highlights:

• A mathematical formula for the perfect handshake
• Swearing can be effective (which is good as I used the term “lame-ass product” recently during an Agile training I was delivering)
• If Richard Branson personally polishes your shoe(s), you too would likely become a Virgin America customer for life
• How the Grateful Dead promoted spreadability (and to think I thought it was an attraction to drugs)
• Taming Dr. Doolittle and the beast of the pushmi-pullyu (my words, not Guy’s – he deals with push and pull technology)
• How to suck up to your boss.:)  Actually things like responding ad nauseum, overdelivering and the like.  (What I’d really like to know is how to do this when your boss is a narcissistic, paranoid douche-bag – but perhaps that’s another book).

Enchantment may come across as new age’y with it’s origami butterfly cover, but it speeds down the ice, mucks it up on the corner and ferociously elbows all other books off your nightstand . . . and does it in the nicest and most enchanting way!