Over the weekend, I started reading Guy Kawasaki's Enchantment and, like sampling a great snack food, I just couldn't stop! I'm on page 36, and find Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions to be inspirational, encouraging and motivational...much like the author. (And I dare you to read Erik Dawson's story and not get choked up...)
Book Gem #9 is from the section Bake a Bigger Pie:
There are two kinds of people and organizations in the world: eaters and bakers. Eaters want a bigger slice of an existing pie; bakers want to make a bigger pie. Eaters think that if they win, you lose, and if you win, they lose. Bakers think that everyone can win with a bigger pie.
Twitter made a bigger pie because anyone could provide news and updates. Southwest Airlines moved people from cars and buses to airplanes. Google wrested advertising out of the hands of agencies and gave it to small businesses. All these companies baked a bigger pie instead of eating more of the same pie.
Baking a bigger pie increases your trustworthiness and yields these benefits:
• People work together. Even your competitors will work with you, because everyone can benefit, and the more people working on an idea, the better the results for everyone.
• The “state of the art” progresses and changes. If the pie stays the same, then progress comes to a halt. If the pie gets bigger, then new technology and ideas reach fruition.
• Customers increase in number and diversity. When a pie gets bigger, there are more users of products and services. With the democratization of computes and the Internet, more people used them, and many more people benefited.
As the saying goes, “A rising tide floats all boats”, and bakers are much more enchanting than eaters.
To get your copy of Enchantment from Amazon, click here. To get the Kindle edition, click here. You can visit the author online at GuyKawasaki.com.
-- Janet Boyer, author of Back in Time Tarot, Tarot in Reverse (Schiffer 2012) and the Snowland Tarot (Schiffer 2013). Featured in Tales of the Revolution: True Stories of People Who Are Poking the Box and Making a Difference (A Domino Project eBook edited by Seth Godin)
