Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

Employment law attorney Michael P. Maslanka reviews Guy Kawasaki’s book Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions and shares some key points on persuasion that can easily be adapted to your business.

Less Is More

First off, keep it short. Kawasaki suggests looking at the best slogans (e.g., “Got milk?” or “Just do it!”) to get the idea. Short phrases are memorable and repeatable. Here are his guidelines for brevity:

• limit e-mails to six sentences;

• keep videos to 60 seconds; and

• include no more than 10 slides in PowerPoint presentations and keynote speeches, and limit business plans to no more than 20 pages.

Finally, try using tricolons. A tricolon is a sentence containing three parts of equal length such as the 1940s Chevrolet slogan “Eye it, try it, buy it” or FDR’s advice to speakers, “Be sincere, be brief, be seated.”

Why do we not create messages that are short, simple, and easy to swallow? Kawasaki says there are two reasons. First, a committee gets involved and a “group grope” results. (I love that phrase.) It’s sort of like what Mark Twain said about a camel ― namely, that it is a horse designed by a committee. Second, people get overenthusiastic about how great their idea is, lose touch with reality, and go on and on about it.

Actions Count

Kawasaki also adheres to something I strongly believe in and like to call “show me, don’t tell me.” I looked at a resume the other day in which the applicant talked about the “ability to energize employees.” He stated that he “achieved optimum efficiency by multitasking” and had a “track record of harmonizing different viewpoints.” Like chocolate donuts, these are empty calories. As I suggest to new lawyers, don’t tell me, show me.

Kawasaki offers the following example. When selling a car, explain how much it saves on yearly fuel costs, not that it gets “x” miles to the gallon. When educating someone on dietary information, speak of gaining one-half pound, not the 1,500 calories consumed by chowing down on a cheeseburger. When describing the value of an iPod, eschew gigabyte talk in favor of how many songs it stores. As my mother taught me, “always speak to people in a language they can understand.” We believe that facts speak for themselves, but they don’t. They often need our help and advocacy to get the point across.

Kawasaki also has an interesting take on reciprocity. When you do someone a favor and they thank you for doing it, do you say “you’re welcome”? That’s what I was taught. After all, it’s the polite thing to do. Kawasaki cites research that instructs us to say “I know you’d do the same for me” instead of “you’re welcome.” Why? It tells the person that you believe she is honorable and that she is someone who would reciprocate. It’s a lot more memorable than a simple “you’re welcome.” Remember, ask for reciprocation.

Social Proof

Kawasaki offers an interesting comment on what’s called “social proof.” In Arizona’s Petrified Forest, visitors were picking up little pieces of petrified wood as souvenirs. If it continued, pretty soon there would be no Petrified Forest. So the Forest Service put up signs stating that people were taking pieces of the Petrified Forest and they needed to stop if there was going to be anything left for the rest of us to enjoy. What happened? That’s right, the amount of Petrified Forest being taken actually increased because people were afraid that if they didn’t take their piece of it when they were there, they wouldn’t get any.

Kawasaki suggests appealing to the angels of peoples’ better nature, and that’s what the Forest Service did. Signs went up stating that 99.9 percent of visitors didn’t take a piece of the Petrified Forest and the agency hoped that visitors would follow that example. What happened? Visitors conformed their conduct to what they thought the vast majority of people were doing ― not taking pieces of the forest. It worked.

Michael Maslanka is a partner in the Dallas, Texas, office of Constangy, Brooks & Smith, LLP. He has 30 years of experience in litigation and trial of employment law cases. He is the editor of Texas Employment Law Letter, and he also authors the “Work Matters” blog for Texas Lawyer.