An Interview with Guy Kawasaki

...Is divided into four sections:

Foundations
Relationships
Systems
Balance

In my leadership work, I group skills and strategies into the four areas above. First, Foundations give the leader the clarity to know how to lead the team because the final result in clear; second, build and maintain effective relationship to assist in getting to the vision; next, develop effective systems allowing each team member to excel and to work together efficiently; and finally, create balance in work, in life, and between work and life.

The format for this year consists of interviews with Christian leaders from many different types of leadership styles and perspectives - some pastors, some musicians, some lay leaders, some Christian business professionals, and more. My guest this month is well-known author and tech guru Guy Kawasaki.

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an "online magazine rack" of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University.

INTRODUCTION

Hugh Ballou: Guy, thank you for being, here today, to share your wisdom and experience, for church leaders. Before we get started, there's probably some people that aren't fully acquainted with you and your role as a leader. And then, your experience with church. So would you give us a brief overview of who Guy Kawasaki is?

Guy Kawasaki: Sure. I worked for Apple from 1983 to 1987. I was Apple's software evangelist. So it was my job to convince people to write Macintosh software, and create hardware products. I left Apple to start a Macintosh software company myself. I became a writer, speaker and venture capitalist. I returned to Apple a second time as Apple's chief evangelist. And now, I am a writer and speaker again. So, you know, I have a hard time holding down a steady job. I've written ten books. My last is called Enchantment, and that kind of brings us up to speed.

FOUNDATIONS

Ballou: Great. We're going to talk about enchantment today. I have four areas of leadership that I champion especially in this column for those who plan and lead worship. So, Foundations is the first part of this - our responsibility as leaders to know our vision. I've always talked about engaging members in church. And your book, Enchantment, really appealed to me. I wanted you to talk about leadership from that perspective. What's the role and responsibility of the leader in this area of clarity of vision and the leader’s skill set to be able to create that enchantment?

Kawasaki: Well, enchantment starts with 3 pillars - it's likeability, trustworthiness, and quality. So, likeability comes about with personal skills, smiling, shaking hands, dressing. Trustworthiness comes across because you trust others before you expect them to trust you. You think of life as not a zero sum game, but the game that everybody can win. I like to use the analogy of, you can either be a baker or an eater. An eater sees the world as, I need to eat as much and as fast as possible. A baker sees the world as, I can bake more pies, and everybody can eat more. So you want to be a baker. You also want to default to a yes attitude, where you're always thinking about how you could help others, as opposed to how they could help you, or what they might want from you. And the last component is quality.

I have an acronym, it's called DICEE, that defines, high quality. So, the ‘D’ stands for depth, in terms of features and benefits; ‘I’ stand for intelligence. when you look at it, you understand that people understood your problem and have anticipated what you need; the ‘C’ stands for complete, using a software analogy, it's not just the software, it's the software and the documentation and the conferences and everything that goes around it; the first ‘E’ stands for elegance, that is the user interface; and the last ‘E’, or you can swap either order, stands for empowering. The great products, great services make people feel empowered, more creative, more productive, giving them peace of mind. You don't fight the product or service. So those are the three basics, and if you did that, arguably you wouldn't need to read the book.

Ballou: No, I want to read the book. You’re familiar with those of us that work in church ministries and lead?

Kawasaki: Yes.

Ballou: We don't connect with some of those principles as church leaders. As a part of our foundation from your experience, what do we need to do as church leaders to empower ourselves to think? Those are some fundamental business terms, but they also apply in the church community. We talk about selling in business, but that's what we do as evangelism in the church. Engaging members and being enchanted starts with us. In this area of foundations, do you have any challenge or wisdom for church leaders to start thinking in different terms?

Kawasaki: Well first of all, who am I to comment on how church leaders work because laugh, because I'm merely a businessperson. I would say that, first of all, there's good news and bad news. The good news is, arguably, you have the best product of all - eternal life. It's hard to beat that. That beats an iPod, iPad, Macintosh, or iPhone on the scale of the hierarchical needs. So that's the good news. The bad news is, it's not as tangible as an iPhone, iPod, iPad, or a Macintosh. So, I think you have to just apply the 3 pillars - do you have a great cause? Do you have a direction that appeals to people (It doesn't have to appeal to every person, but it has to appeal to some people.) that's kind of the start of great marketing, and, are you a likeable and trustworthy person? because, especially in your “business”, trustworthiness is everything. And, I think, in many cases, where religious leaders go awry is when they start thinking that they, the person, is more important than the cause, i.e., God, and when that happens, you see people going askew, and they start to try to create these personal cults and things, which I think is a huge mistake.

 

RELATIONSHIPS

Ballou: Absolutely. Moving from Foundations, to my second principle, which is Relationships - one of the things that I'm quite aware of is if we had a somebody like a Guy Kawasaki sitting in the pew, who was a specialist in certain kinds of knowledge related to business, and we wanted to create relationships to move into this enchantment area, how is relationship important as a leader in this area? If we're gonna do those things you just talked about, what's important about the relationship piece of leadership that would compel somebody like you to say, I've got something to share. And I want to be involved because, it's important to me.

Kawasaki: Well, I hate to sound repetitious, but I keep coming back to likability, trustworthiness, and quality. That's, no pun intended, the Holy Grail. That's the three things that would make anything appeal to me - any particular church, any particular pastor - Likability, trustworthiness, and quality.

SYSTEMS

Ballou: You're not being repetitive. You're emphasizing the truth. The third area of leadership is Systems. Now, being a computer guy with software skills, you create systems that people can function in. We talk about these principles that you so carefully and eloquently articulated. How do we take those from being just theory to actually making them work and making them parts of our system of leadership?

Kawasaki: Well, Steve Jobs had a saying, relative to programmers, but I think it's completely applicable here, which is, he said that real programmers ship, as opposed to not real programmers, who constantly are fiddling. So, at the end of the day, you have to ship. Think of it as a product you've got to go and take it to market, and that's the key.

Ballou: Yes. We, we tend to want to perfect things. Now as, as I spent 40 years as a church musician and we have to produce every Sunday. So that's probably the analogy. We have the theory, but we have to put it into real time practice. Now, the culture that you mention with Steve Jobs and the culture of Apple, there's one piece that I'd like to divert from enchantment a minute. Talk about the culture of excellence there. We tend to dumb down sometimes in leadership in the church because we don't think people will follow. But some of the really good churches have a standard of excellence in which people rise to a different place. Do you have any thoughts from your experience in Apple that you'd like to insert here that would encourage people to think about excellence in leadership?

Kawasaki: Well, you know a lot of people claimed that Apple became a religion. And if you, buy into that analogy, a logical extension of that would be that I was one of the priests, in that religion. maybe even close to the Pope. laugh So it’s an extension of people. They didn't see it as something that they fight. They see it as something that made them more creative and more productive. And if you apply that to your question, if people can see that worshiping God extends them, empowers them, makes them more creative, more productive, gives them peace of mind, I think that's when they become an evangelist of it.

Ballou: Absolutely, so enchantment is about engaging people emotionally, isn't it?

Kawasaki: Yes, very much so. When all is said and done in human nature, I think it's all relationships. Intellectualism is vastly overrated. People are too clever. It's really simple.

Ballou: Yes, it would seem to me. I follow you on social media and blogs, and what not. And you have a lot of systems in place that you can take your wisdom and your ideas, and your connections, and you can share them. So, I think that you think in systems. Am I right?

Kawasaki: I think you're giving me too much credit. But, feel free to. I don't really look at anything as I do as systematic. I just have at it. I'm just, laugh, I just go for it.

Ballou: Well, you know, it inspires me to think in systems. So you've inspired me.

Kawasaki: Well, God bless you laugh.

BALANCE

Ballou: Well, thank you. My last area is, is Balance. Some of us like to work a lot. I worked for a pastor in a large church that actually wore out his body and died in Christian service because there wasn't a Sabbath for him. And so, to do all these things, we need to care for ourselves. And, being a Christian, Sabbath is something that's part of my DNA. It's hard to have that discipline as a leader. So, part of this may not be part of enchantment, but as a leader, to make these things work. What would you say to people about balance in their lives?

Kawasaki: laugh. I'd say, don't ask me, laugh.

Ballou: laugh. That's a good piece of advice. Well, what would you do differently to create it? You want to take a shot at it before we leave here?

Kawasaki: Nope, laugh. One of the things God has blessed me with is He has taught me that I know what I don't know which is different than most people who don't know what they don't know

WRAP UP

Ballou: Well, that's a wise place to be. And I think that that's inspiration in itself.
Now, I want you to think about a parting tip to leave with people as just a general leadership perspective, and you know you're a person who comes and sits in a pew, and I think can provide a very helpful perspective to church leaders. Before I'd like to do that, I'm going to mention here that at the bottom of this interview you've got a special offer on your Enchantment book, so I'm going to put links to where people can find that offer. Anything you want to say about that before I get you to do the final tip.

Kawasaki:I have a friend named Garr Reynolds who wrote a great book called Presentation Zen. I've been to many churches, and I've seen many many pastors speak. And, I'll tell you that a lot of them are now embracing technology. specifically, things like PowerPoint and multimedia presentations and I would just like to provide some basic tips, like - Number 1 you should use a dark background. Many people use a very light background and it's very difficult to read because think about it. When you go to a movie the scene where it's bright daylight that's the scene that's hardest to watch. Right? Because it's to bright for your eyes. You want a dark background with a light font. So, that's number 1. Number 2 is I see many people put up words to the hymns, they use center justify for the whole thing. And I for the life of me I can't figure out, did I miss that chapter in the Bible where it says center justify? Because that is so hard to read and they also use very intricate fonts, which is also hard to read. So you should use left justify or full justify and a sans serif font. It's that simple. And I think a lot of people look at the power point on their computer which is 18 inches from their eyes, but they have to realize that in the hall setting, people are 50 to 60 feet from that screen. So you may read it 18 inches from your eyes, but when people are 60 feet from that screen, it's a very different thing. They should look at what the people are seeing. So those are some of my tactical tips.

Ballou: And that relates to your book Enchantment?

Kawasaki: Yes, actually if you want to be a great enchanter, you have to be a great presenter. So anyway, it’s long path to tell you that, if you buy Enchantment, in any form in any country, in any way, other than you pull up to an intersection in Mumbai and some kid offers it to you for 20 rupees, because they photocopied it. If you buy a copy, you can get a free copy of Presentation Zen.

Ballou: Great. I will put that BELOW. So, as we part here from this interview, is there a thought you'd like to leave to church leaders, just a general inspiration?

Kawasaki: Sure. I want to leave one more thought or one more test that people can think about, which is one of the things I learned in business is you should never ask people to do something that you yourself would not do. And I think that is a good test for anyone. Are you asking people to do something that you personally would not do, but you think other people should. If you're doing that, I think you need to check yourself. It's a very good test.

Ballou: Wise words. That doesn't mean you have to do it all. But it means you have to be willing to do it, absolutely. And I think that's genuine. And so, Guy Kawasaki, thank you for your time. Have a blessed day.

Kawasaki: Okay, thank you. You too.

SPECIAL OFFERS LINKS

Special offer for free copy of Presentation Zen
Special offer for Personalized cover of Enchantment

CONCLUSION

Arrive at your place of comfort utilizing the best of what you can learn from others. Build your foundation, maintain your relationships, utilize effective systems and keep a healthy balance in your life. Begin today. There's not an arrival point. It's simple a journey.

Grace and Peace to you in your duty and delight as a Christian leader.