Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At first glance this appeared to be a dry, but relevant, book on persuasion that came up in my search for the book Influencer, a past favorite that I was looking to revisit. I started listening to it, and found it to be dated, with pre-Millenial examples.

Having said all of that, I was surprised to find myself fascinated by this book. It moved at a decent pace, and had relevant insights. I am a sucker for social science books, so that might play into my opinion quite a bit, but I appreciated the content and the presentation. I found the cult references to be fascinating, and that the reciprocation principles hit too close to home. This is a great read for anyone in sales or marketing, but really is a great read for anyone who can stay engaged with it.

The writing voice was a little dry, or at least academic, at times, but with my original expectations being low, I'm going to give this one a rare 5 stars.

Willpower Doesn't Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success by Benjamin Hardy

Willpower Doesn't Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success by Benjamin Hardy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This random selection started out 5-star strong, and after the first few chapters I was taking notes and dreaming up opportunities to practice environmental design in my life. Unfortunately, that experience was short lived.

Subsequent chapters in this anti-willpower book described scenarios that sounded good, but still had their roots in willpower. For example, if I decide to do 10 pushups when I feel the pull to go back to an old habit I'm trying to get rid of, what is the force that makes me stick to that decision? Oh, right. Willpower. Only he just undermined the idea of willpower in a very compelling way. Strike 1.

Then the small-time local entrepreneur stories and cultural references started popping up. I'm a Utah resident, and there is a distinct culture here, and I started hearing that culture in the examples he gave. Even Stevens sandwiches? Really? The willpower-is-not-the-answer platform that he defended so well at the beginning devolved into the storyline of risky entrepreneurship. Sometimes it pays off, but what does that have to do with the thesis? And to top it off, the culminating example was the publishing of this book. So the book was about publishing the book. Ouch.

To be fair, I think there are a lot of good ideas in here. Gems, if you will. At the same time, the concepts do not have the seasoning of time and experience. While I like hearing the author's story, and he sounds like he has made some good changes in his life, I wasn't here to read his memoir. He needed an editor that would focus him on his core message around why willpower isn't the answer to making life changes, and how designing your environment can fill those gaps. He gave some great examples of how to do that, but he diluted his good ideas with not-so-good, off topic tidbits. I hope he continues to develop his ideas around environmental design and that he writes a better book about it later in life when he has more experience. I equally hope he doesn't buy into the popular strategy of selling flimsy ideas with over-the-top marketing rather than delivering real value.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


So this is not a bad book, but has the misfortune of a competing title that addresses the same issues in more depth and with a more specific framework in roughly the same amount of space. I do like that it talks about change as a simple 3 step process, but Influencer just gives a better tool set. I don't know offhand which one was published first, but they share several of the same examples. Perhaps some borrowing is going on, but that is not material to me since I am focusing on my personal usefulness of the material. If you want to read a book on change, read Influencer. If you've already read Influencer and want a different vantage point on essentially the same principles, then Switch is the book for you.

If I were to call out a nugget of wisdom from this book, there is a useful sections that comes to mind. I really liked the part about action triggers. Just making the decision, setting goals, and structuring the environment doesn't guarantee success in your change effort. Adding some other features to the effort will increase your likelihood of success, and one of those is attaching required activity to outside triggers. An example is attaching a planned action--such as homework--to a specific date, time and place in relationship to an unavoidable event, such as Christmas morning.

Finally, this book does break with my common observation about business books being one third too long, with the last section of business books usually feeling like useless filler to hit a page target. This book gives great tips, examples and applications of the content at the end of the book. A small thing, but nice. Unfortunately, I think the first part of the book could have moved faster, but you can't have it all.