GovReads – Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki – Chat 3/29

**We are hosting a live chat with Guy Kawasaki on 3/29 at 2pm. RSVP…it’ll be awesome**

I’ve always been a big fan of the author Guy Kawasaki (especially his book Art of the Start). So when his new book Enchantment came out, I knew I had to check it out.

For those that don’t know, Guy’s claim to fame is he was one of the early Apple employees and helped build the Apple community evangelist program. Since then, he’s been an investor, prominent author, speaker, and founder (check out his site alltop.com)

His new book is title Enchantment – The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

His basic premise is that in order to convince people to do what you want (volunteer for your charity, buy your product, agree with your internal idea) you have to be enchanting – which he basically defines in 3 steps:

1) Be likeable,

2) Be trustworthy, and

3) Have a great cause/product.

In some ways it seems like common sense, but I actually appreciate that as it reminds one to focus on the key parts and not all the small tricks.

Besides the general framework, I liked Guy’s specific tips including these 5 below

1) No more than 5% of your tweets should be promotional

2) Key is endurance – it takes awhile and is most important to build long-term relationships

3) Tell a story – not just facts

4) Reduce the number of choices

5) Love the chapter on “resisting enchantment” – important to see who is not authentic/genuine and focus on working with and supporting genuine enchantment

So I thought to myself – Can Government Be Enchanting?

That’s the question I’ll ask Guy tomorrow (3/29 at 2pm EST)

But….my general sense is yes:

-Government has a great cause – helping serve the citizen
-It can create a great product – “good enough for government work” started out as a compliment
-It can design great citizen experiences

But…my other sense is we don’t focus enough on it…