“As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” I met Spencer Johnson at a cocktail party in San Diego- he was a children’s book writer. I don’t know if you remember the the value tale series, the value of honesty, the story of Abe Lincoln. My wife met him first and hand carried him over and said ‘you guys ought to write a children’s book for managers, they won’t read anything else.’ Spencer was working on a mother’s on scolding book with a psychiatrist, and I invited him to a seminar. He stood in the back and he laughed and ran up and said, ‘forget the parenting book, let’s do the One Minute Manager.’ Since he was a children’s book writer and I was a story teller we decided to do a parable. It came out on Labour Day in 1982- next week in was on the New York Times’ best seller’s list because we were on the today’s show. It never left the list for 2-3 years. Now that it’s 30 years later it’s still on the best seller’s list. That really launched my career of writing parables.
“This other book, (Fit at Last), has been fun. I’ve worked with Berret Kholer on a number of books, two with Mark Miller, who was the head of training for Chick-fil-a, one called, The Secret, What Do Great Leaders Think and Do. And we wrote a follow up book called, Great Leaders Grow, because if you stop learning, you might as well lie down and let them put the dirt on you.
“I’m always looking for ways to communicate with people, in a way that can make a difference in their lives. When I work on these kind of things, it helps me too. So it’s not just about me saying I’m going to help al you idiots out there, overtime I work on a book, it helps me get down the road a little bit myself” -Ken Blanchard
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