Collaboration - Affect/Possibility: Ken Blanchard at TEDxSanDiego

tedx you know I tell you being a TEDx speaker being here all days pretty amazing it's a kind of a humility training you know just about the time you think maybe you made a difference in the world the next speakers up and so it's interesting as I travel around the world the big thing people are asking me is that I needed to know more about collaboration I think people are finally getting with the speed of change nowadays that you can't learn everything by yourself if you want to stay up-to-date you need to learn from other people and that people are finally getting that no one of us is as smart as all of us and so you might say well Blanchard you know you're going to talk to us about collaboration would what's your credentials well I've I've written over 50 books which I guess is not too bad for a guy that both of my professors told me in graduate school I couldn't write and they said if you want to be around a university you better be a college administrator could stuff with the publisher perish you'll never make it so it's no interesting I never forget my mom said to me one day she said Ken why don't you write a book by yourself and I have only written two books by myself and all the rest of them with other people at my 70th birthday party I invited all my co-authors to come together kind of for you know Tuesdays at Morey gathering you know and it was really kind of fun to spend a day and a half kind of sharing some of the simple truths that we had learned over the years and it was really a hoot but the biggest question people ask me is how could you collaborate with so many different people with different personalities and different egos and so what I want to do is share with you three collaborations that I've had this to maybe give you some thoughts about collaboration for yourself because I think all of us today need to be able to reach out to people around us and learn from them and then learn from from us my first job coming out of graduate school I was assistant to the Dean of the College of Business at Ohio University and when I got there the Dean said to me can II said I want you to teach a course now of course I never thought about teaching of course because of the publisher perish kind of thing because I don't care anything about that I want you to teach a course so I did and after about two weeks I came home to my wife Margie and I said you know this is what I ought to be doing this teaching is really fun she said well what about the writing I said I don't know I'll figure something out about that but at the same time that I came Paul her she had just come as chairman of the management department and he was kind of a rising star in the leadership area and I heard he taught a great leadership course so in the fall of 1966 I went up to Paul and I said boy I understand you teach a great leadership course do you mind if I sit in next semester and he said nobody ought it's my course so you want to take it for credit you're welcome and he walked away I thought that's really kind of nice in that you know I mean I had a PhD and he didn't and and he wants me to take his course so I went home of course for my chief adviser Margie and she said to me well is he any good as a teacher I say he's supposed to be great she said we'll get your ego out of the way and take his damn course so which is exactly what I did and I took the course and I wrote the papers with everybody else and in June 1967 after the course her she comes into my office and he says can ii said you know I've been teaching leadership for 10 years and I think I'm better than anybody but I can't write I'm a nervous wreck and they want me to write a textbook and I've been looking for a good writer like you oh isn't that great you know I almost laughed out loud but he had read my papers and I said well why don't we do it we ought to be a great team you can't write and I'm not supposed to why not why don't we do and so we wrote a textbook called management of organizational behavior that the students loved because her see I don't know any big words and and it just came out in its tenth edition and it sells more today that it did in 1960s unbelievable and so now what did I learned from that a couple of things I think you ought all think about don't let anybody else tell you what you can do or can't do if you've got a vision about what you want to do go for it have that vision you'll figure a way out to do it don't let anybody limit you and the other thing is that if you meet somebody who really wants to accomplish something and you also want to accomplish something and together you can do it wow that's a really powerful collaboration and Paul wanted to write this textbook so he could be promoted to full professor and I wanted to write something so I could become a professor and in fact it was interesting I went to the Dean and after the book came out and I said I quit as an administrator he said you can't quit I said why not he said I was going to fire you I said why I said here allows the administrator which I guess I was and so we finally agreed it was a photo finish between him firing me of my quitting and but that was my first big collaboration writing the second big one happened when Margie and I moved here to San Diego and we were invited to a cocktail party for authors in San Diego and I guess because I had a textbook I qualified and Margie met Spencer Johnson at the cocktail party and Spencer at that time was a children's book writer some of you might even read some of his books his kids called value tales you know a whole series of books like the value of a sense of humor the store your Will Rogers and then all MRG kind of brought Spencer over to me and he said you two should write a children's book for managers they won't read anything else and and that was the beginning of one of the most amazing collaborations around the one minute manager and we met in the first week in November we had a first draft of that book by the end of December the book wrote us but the interesting learning on that is sometimes the most interesting collaborations is when you both bring to the party very different things and here's a children's book writer and an emerging guy in the leadership area working together and deciding and this changed publishing for business to write a parable a little hundred page book about this one minute manager because I was a storyteller and he was a children's book writer and we were on the Today Show on September 1982 one week later went on the bestseller list and this never left for years and we just celebrated the 30th anniversary of that book can you imagine and so that was an amazing collaboration of two people bringing different skills and different things to the party the third collaboration I want to tell you about was probably my most fun one it was a collaboration with norman vincent peale some of you might have heard of Norman he wrote a fabulous book if you haven't read it it's called the power of positive thinking it came out 1952 still as a major sell seller he was 86 years old when I met him and a friend told me an interesting thing about collaboration and really listened to this one because it's so important he said there are two parts of collaborating with anybody else one is essence and the other is form essence is heart-to-heart values to values and form is how you're going to do it and he said be careful in a relationship when somebody wants to go to forum right away because if they do that you always get bit right in the tail by essence essence has got to come first and it was interesting at the time I had an idea of writing a book called the power of positive management so I went to a well-known author in that whole positive thinking field to see if he wanted to write it with me and all he wanted to talk about was form who was going to do what how are we going to divide the royalties what are we going to do about marketing and all that so I decided to pass about a week later I get a call from Larry use who was the president of William Morrow publishing company our publisher at the time and he said I heard you a disappointed in your meeting a week or so ago he said have you ever thought about writing a book with norman vincent peale and I said is he still alive I mean my parents a gun to his church before I was born and they said not oh is he alive he's unbelievable and so I flew to New York and had lunch with Norman and his wife Ruth in Larry Anna and our agent and I want to tell you in a three-hour lunch there was not one mention of form it was all essence Norman and Ruth said Ken tell me about yourself tell me about Margie tell me about what you guys value and what this and this is who we are and all and at the end of that lunch Norman turned to Ruth and asked her the ultimate essence question he said Ruth should we write this book with this young man I mean I was over 40 years younger than he would and Ruth said absolutely under one condition I said what condition is that instead from now on when we get together you will bring your wife Margie the four of us will work on this together and it was unbelievable we would fly there and dis meet them for two days over a weekend with a tape recorder and the form was not clear when we started and we ended up actually writing a book called the power of ethical management integrity pays you don't have to choose to win and what an impact the two of them had in our lives not only in terms of our thinking about things but our own spiritual journey and all those kinds of things so you know how many of you here would really like to make a difference in the world okay how many of you have a plan see when I ask that most people don't have a plan but you know you have to think about how can you make the difference in the world what is your strategy and I guess my strategy has been to collaborate with other people to find people who have a message that maybe need to get it out that I could learn from I could do something with that could maybe do a difference in the world and I think that's important for each of you here to think about have you met here somebody today or is there somebody you know you're kind of fascinated about that might be really interesting to see if there's a way you can work on something together so that one plus one is a lot greater than two because you know what the world is really needs it is about is people who want to make a difference and we've heard that constantly today that you finally become an adult I think when you realize you're here to serve not to be served that you're here to give not to get and I think it's only appropriate I end my remarks with you about collaboration telling you a story from a good friend of mine John Ortberg who's a wonderful pastor writer and wrote a wonderful book called at the end of the game it all goes back in the box and it's a wonderful story about he and his grandmother and when he was young his grandmother was a terrific monopoly player how many of you ever played Monopoly and you're like he said his grandmother was a vicious monopoly when she played she act like she was the illegitimate child of an affair between Donald Trump and Martha Stewart and and at the end of the game at the end of the game she had everything and she had nothing he had nothing and grandma would get this smile on her face and she say John someday you're going to learn how to play the game in one summer when he was about 12 or 13 this kid moved next door who was an incredible monopoly player and John practiced with his kid every summer there all summer because he knew his grandmother was coming in September when Grandma arrived you ran the house gave her a hug enough kiss and he says grandma how about a Monopoly game and her eyes lit up let's go John but he was ready for this time when he came out of the chute and he grew wiped his grandmother out at the end of the game he had everything he had Broadway he had Park Place she had nothing he said it was the greatest day of his life and his grammar smiled he said John now you know how to play the game let me tell you a lesson about life it all goes back in the box so what everything you bought everything you accumulated the only thing you get to save in life is your soul and that's where you store who you love and who loves you I love the ending of ghosts if you've seen that it got more play recently because Patrick Swayze had died but the story of this financial adviser who is killed by a supposed friend he gets to stay on earth as a ghost to protect his girlfriend Molly played by Demi Moore and he gets to communicate for this real character the Whoopi Goldberg plays cold in May and at the end of the movie he avenged his death it's the three of them on the rooftop of Molly's apartment and almost looks up and this white light is coming towards them Oda Mae says they're coming for you Sam he goes and stands in front of Molly and if you saw that movie he never told Molly he loved her Molly would say Sam I love you would Sam say ditto and now with tears coming down his eyes he says Molly I always loved you I really love you and she's crying and she says ditto and he turns to face to light and he turns back one last time he says Molly the remarkable thing about this is that you can take the love with you and that's all you're going to take out of here and I want to tell you if you want to continue to grow and develop reach out to other people work with other people learn from other people and love other people that's what it's all about you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 170,636

Rating: 4.8996038 out of 5

Keywords: tedx talks, Business, \Ken Blanchard\, ted x, ted talks, tedx, US, tedx talk, Collaboration, ted, TEDxSanDiego, English, ted talk, Leadership

Id: HKGkBRk1kSo

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 27 2012