Allow me to gush.
Let me recommend a new candid business biography, Catch People Doing Things Right, which reveals how bestselling author, speaker, and business consultant, Ken Blanchard, revolutionized management by leading with love.
Ken Blanchard, 86, has transformed modern business leadership theory through unlikely means—by catching people doing things right.
Biographer Martha Lawrence has woven an inspiring American success story of someone who achieved greatness not through ruthless ambition but by genuinely caring about people and helping them reach their full potential.
Through extensive access to personal papers, letters, and interviews spanning six decades, Lawrence paints an intimate portrait of the man behind The One Minute Manager and dozens of other influential books.
For full transparency, he has been for me a hero, mentor, client, and as we say in journalism, “great copy.”
Great journalistic copy is defined as a story that is compelling, clear, and in the public interest. He has given me great copy many times, and I have gladly promoted his books in newspapers, magazines, and in TV interviews.
He has been a huge supporter of my work as an author and publisher, and was generous in giving advice and help.
A decade ago, when my company, Indie Books International, was just a start-up, I staged my first national author’s conference. I asked the Blanchard company if they could send anyone to speak, but we had no money to pay an honorarium. If they sent the junior assistant publishing coordinator we would have been overjoyed. The speaker they sent was Ken.
The last time I interviewed him in person, I was impressed by a life-size statue that he had outside his office window of Jesus washing the feet of a disciple. In my graduate studies, we would call that a piece of CEO symbolic communication.
Ken taught me that nice guys can finish first by focusing on serving rather than being served.
When I taught grad students at UC San Diego, I took a page from this Ivy League-educated professor’s playbook. Like Ken, on the first day of class, I would hand my students the final exam. The students wanted to know, “Professor DeVries, what’s the catch?”
“No catch,” I replied, “but I am going to spend the entire term teaching you the answers.”
Early in my career, I became the number two person at a big regional advertising agency. I knew marketing, but I did not know how to manage people. I devoured the ABC approach of his The One Minute Manager. This was a game-changer in managing people. Later, I learned that managing is really about serving.
This humble man, who changed the way the world leads, has a motto: “None of us is as smart as all of us.”
“I’ve written over 60 books, and only two of those have been by myself,” Ken once told me in an interview for a magazine cover story. “One about golf because so many people have helped me with my game, and another is about my spiritual journey. The rest are coauthored. I continue to grow because I want to learn from people.”
Lawrence, a former editor for Simon & Schuster and Harcourt Publishers, is an executive editor at Blanchard and has worked closely with Ken Blanchard for more than twenty years. Over the course of her career, she has edited hundreds of books. She is also the author of five Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, and Shamus award-nominated mystery novels featuring private investigator Elizabeth Chase.
Many times through the years, I have worked with Lawrence, who is a true professional. She always modeled the servant leadership approach.
Written like a novel with warmth and humor, this authorized biography by Lawrence, a Blanchard insider and mystery writer, cracks the code on how a mediocre student who was told he “couldn’t write” became a bestselling author and a globally renowned management expert.
Ken’s impact as an author is impressive. His iconic 1982 classic, The One Minute Manager, coauthored with Spencer Johnson, MD, has sold more than 13 million copies and remains on bestseller lists today. In the past three decades, he has authored or coauthored books whose combined sales total more than 21 million copies.
His groundbreaking works—including Raving Fans, The Secret, and Leading at a Higher Level, to name just a few—have been translated into more than 42 languages. In 2005, he was inducted into Amazon’s Hall of Fame as one of the top 25 bestselling authors of all time.
Ken Blanchard, PhD, is the cofounder and Chief Spiritual Officer of Blanchard, an international management training and consulting firm that he and his wife, Margie Blanchard, PhD, began in 1979 in San Diego, California.
In addition to being a renowned speaker and consultant, he is a trustee emeritus of the Board of Trustees at his alma mater, Cornell University, cofounder of Lead Like Jesus, a worldwide Servant Leadership ministry, and he also teaches students in the Master of Science in Executive Leadership Program at the University of San Diego.
Kenneth Blanchard was born on May 6, 1939, in Orange, New Jersey. In 1961, he completed his undergraduate degree in government and philosophy at Cornell University. He followed this with a master’s degree in sociology and counseling from Colgate University in 1963. In 1967, he earned his PhD in education administration and leadership from Cornell University.
After earning his PhD, he joined the faculty of Ohio University as an assistant dean. He later served as a dean at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.