Episode 291 · 9 April 2026 · 46:51

They Said "One Minute Manager" Would Embarrass Him. It Sold 15 Million Copies, With Martha Lawrence

Featuring Martha Lawrence

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The professors who said Ken couldn't write
interview#writing #academia #overcoming-doubt
Martha's journey from Simon & Schuster to Ken Blanchard
interview#publishing #editing #career-journey
Why 100 pages changed business publishing forever
interview#business-books #publishing-history #impact
The parents who shaped Ken's leadership philosophy
interview#leadership #influences #family
The calculated decision behind the short book
interview#book-writing #strategy #brevity
Ken and Tom Peters — fast friends
interview#authors #friendship #business-networking
Would The One Minute Manager work if released today?
interview#book-relevance #timelessness #business-advice
Stories that stop you in your tracks
interview#storytelling #inspiration #memoir
What leading with love really looks like in practice
interview#leadership #love #practical-application
Getting yourself out of the way
interview#listening #leadership #self-awareness

Show notes

Why the Author of "The One Minute Manager" Was Told It Would Ruin His Career — with Martha Lawrence

Guest: Martha Lawrence — longtime editor (started her career at Simon & Schuster in Rockefeller Center), novelist, and the woman who spent 22 years working directly alongside Ken Blanchard. She recently wrote his biography, Catch People Doing Things Right.

Ken Blanchard was told in college he couldn't write. His graduate professors said he lacked academic ability. When he finished The One Minute Manager, his colleagues warned him it would embarrass him professionally. It went on to sell 15 million copies and become one of the most influential business books ever written.

Martha joins Al to share what she learned about the man, the philosophy, and why his ideas matter more than ever in today's leadership landscape — including what "leading with love" actually means, why ego stands for "Edging Good Out," and the story of what Ken did after 9/11 when his company was losing millions.

Top 3 Takeaways

Leading with love is harder than command-and-control. It means getting yourself out of the way so other people can be magnificent. It's not soft — it produces better results because people follow leaders they trust, not leaders with impressive titles.
Ego stands for "Edging Good Out." In a world of loud, title-obsessed leaders, Ken's definition of ego was shaped by his father's advice on the day he became seventh grade class president. The best leaders check their ego at the door.
Values are lived, not talked about. The difference between someone who talks about values and someone who actually lives them shows up in the moments nobody's watching — like what Ken did when an employee's widow visited the office, and what he did the night his own father was dying.

🔥 What We Discuss with Martha Lawrence

1. The Book That Broke the Rules In 1982, business books were dense, academic, and hundreds of pages long. Ken Blanchard wrote a 100-page parable — and invented an entirely new category. Martha explains how a chance meeting at a cocktail party led to one of the most counterintuitive publishing decisions in history, and why Ken's colleagues thought it would ruin his reputation.

2. Leading With Love — What It Actually Means "Leading with love" sounds soft. It isn't. Martha unpacks what Ken really meant: getting yourself out of the way so other people can be magnificent. She explains why this philosophy is harder to execute than command-and-control leadership — and why it produces better results.

3. EGO = Edging Good Out In a world of loud, aggressive, title-obsessed leaders, Ken had a different definition of ego. Martha shares how his father's advice on the day he became seventh grade class president shaped his entire leadership philosophy — and why people follow leaders they trust, not leaders with impressive job titles.

4. What He Did With a Tape Recorder Two stories from Martha's biography that stop you in your tracks: what Ken did when an employee's widow visited the office, and what he did the night his own father was dying. Both reveal the difference between someone who talks about values and someone who actually lives them.

5. The 9/11 Test After 9/11, the Blanchard organisation was losing millions. The leadership team discussed layoffs for the first time in company history. What Ken did next is one of the most striking examples of transparent, human leadership you'll hear — and it ended with the whole company in Maui.

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

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Al ElliottThis man's university professors said that he wasn't intelligent enough to write a book. His colleagues warned him that publishing this book would embarrass him professionally, and one of the most respected academic publishers in the world told him it was too simple to take seriously. Well, he published it anyway. You've probably heard of it. It's called The One Minute Manager, and it sold 15 million copies, spent years on the New York Times bestsellers list, and quietly changed how an entire generation thinks about leadership. Our guest today, Martha Lawrence, spent 22 years working directly alongside Ken Blanchard, first as his writing partner and eventually as the person who wrote his biography. She's seen the man behind the myth up close, and she's seen him time after time ignore what other people think and just do what he wants anyway.

Martha LawrenceThat's what made The One Minute Manager so different. There wasn't even a category called business books early in those days. It was just kind of lumped into nonfiction, you know, and they were long, heavy tomes, boring. And here comes Ken writing this. It was actually the invention of the business parable. He wrote a story about a young man who was looking for an effective manager, and it was so engaging and so simple to read. And yet, because of Ken's background as a professor of organizational development, it was jam-packed in the most concise way with the most powerful leadership techniques available.

Al ElliottBut this episode isn't just a tribute to a management It's about what Ken's philosophy actually means and whether any of us are brave enough to lead the way that he did. Because let's face it, right now, in a world full of loud, ego-driven leaders— yes, you know who we're talking about, these people who mistake aggression for strength— Ken Blanchard's idea of leading with love sounds either radical or perhaps a little naive. Martha's here to tell you it's neither. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination of choice for For business professionals. As you can probably tell, Leanne's not here this week. She's in the UK enjoying a bit of family and friend time. However, I am going to bring you one of my favorite interviews of the year so far with the wonderful Martha Lawrence. So after the short break, we'll meet Martha properly. We'll hear how a children's book changed management forever and find out what Ken did with a tape recorder that made a nurse cry. So don't go anywhere. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems, and in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.

Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story, and when you know more, you grow more.

Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. I'm joined here by one of the nicest women in the world. I will tell you why, what are some of the reasons why I think she's amazing in just a second. But Martha Lawrence, Martha, can you introduce yourself? Can you tell us who you are, what you do, and what you might be famous for?

Martha LawrenceWell, Al, it's wonderful to be with you today. And To introduce myself, I am a longtime editor, started my career in New York publishing, and for the past 22 years, I have worked directly with Ken Blanchard, the famous management guru. And that's what Al and I will be talking about today.

Al ElliottYeah. And if I read, it was Simon Schuster you were working with, was it?

Martha LawrenceYeah, that's where I started my career at Simon Schuster at in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Really great place to cut your teeth in the publishing world. Worked with some of the most famous editors in the world, and then worked for Harcourt for many years. Then I published a series of mystery novels myself. And it was, in fact, I was publicizing my 5th mystery novel when 9/11 happened.

Leanne ElliottWow.

Martha LawrenceAnd when I got back from the book tours that I was doing for that book, I looked at the manuscript I was working on and it was all about catching people doing things wrong, about catching the bad guys. And I thought, this is not aligned with what I wanna do for a living. I wanna make a difference in the world. I wanna lift people up. And that is about the time that I found out that Ken Blanchard was looking for a writing partner to help him with all the many books he was doing. And I just jumped at the chance to do that.

Al ElliottSo from Elizabeth Chase to Ken Blanchard, that's probably quite a big step. Tell me, what were your first impressions of Ken?

Martha LawrenceOh my goodness. Well, of course, for listeners who may not know, Ken Blanchard published a little book called The One Minute Manager in 1982. That book, it's hard to imagine now in the 21st century, but back in those days, if you had a bestselling book, it was everywhere because the world was not flooded with the books that there are today. So everyone knew, was talking about The One Minute Manager. It was in the window of every bookstore. It was on TV, it was on the radio, and the book had changed my view of leadership. So I had admired Ken for decades, and when I met him, I was blown away by how kind he was. He acted like he was excited to meet me instead of the other way around. It was just, he was just the kindest, most wonderful person I'd ever met.

Al ElliottI think it's worth noting that back in 1982, before any social media networks were invented, the equivalent of Ken's books were like a LinkedIn post compared to the Drucker's 400-page books. You know, a lot of the texts that were around management back then were big, long books, whereas Ken's books were around about 100, 200 pages. Is that right?

Martha LawrenceYeah, 100 pages. Well, that's what made The One Minute Manager so different. There wasn't even a category called business books early in those days. It was just kind of lumped into nonfiction, and they were long, heavy tomes, boring. And here comes Ken writing this. It was actually the invention of the business parable. He wrote a story about a young man who was looking for an effective manager, and it was so engaging and so simple to read. And yet, because of Ken's background as a professor of organizational development, it was jam-packed in the most concise way with the most powerful leadership techniques available in a simple way that anybody could implement. The 3 secrets: 1-minute goals, 1-minute praisings, 1-minute redirects. I mean, I remember early in my career, somebody handed me that book. I had a leadership role and they were like, this is how we lead around here. So it was everywhere.

Al ElliottThere's a quote that I think is attributed to Mark Twain saying, I would've made this letter shorter, but I ran out of time, or something.

Martha LawrenceYes.

Al ElliottAnd I feel that couple that with the idea that I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that Ken was told he wasn't a good writer at one point in time. How has all this come together to get him to create one of the greatest business books of all time?

Martha LawrenceWell, forgive me for being an editor here. The quote attributed to Twain, I actually looked that up recently and it was actually Pascal who said that. But That's it. It takes a lot of work to make something more concise. If I had more time, I would make it shorter. So that's absolutely true.

Al ElliottSo your biography, Catch People Doing Things Right, is about his life, his ethics, his thoughts. What made you want to write this book?

Martha LawrenceKen is just one of the most remarkable people I've ever met, and I knew that somebody had to document his life. I mean, here was a guy who was told in college that he couldn't write, and he goes on to pen one of the bestselling business books of all time. He was told in graduate school that he had no academic interest and he wasn't intelligent enough, and he goes on to co-create one of the most widely developed, widely distributed leadership models in the world. By his own admission, he couldn't even balance his own checkbook, and yet he goes on to co-found a leadership development company that's global. So, you know, how does someone do that? I found it very interesting. How, what does it take to live that kind of life and to overcome those kinds of challenges? Who, what created this man? So I thought that was worth looking into.

Al ElliottMartha, I don't want to give you too much away from the book, but how did this man get created? It sounds like at the beginning, there was a lot of things against him, but towards, you know, in the last 50 years, he's just done amazing things. What did spur this man on to become the famous Ken Blanchard?

Martha LawrenceI think one of the primary influences was his parents. He had some incredible parents. His father was in the Navy. He retired as a rear admiral in the Navy and quite the leadership role model for him. Ken learned some of his earliest leadership lessons from his dad. One example is he— Ken was always a popular kid in school, and he became the president of his 7th grade class. And he was so proud of himself, and he came running home and he said, Mom, Dad, I won the president of the 7th grade class. And his dad pulled him aside and said, Son, that's great. We're so proud of you. But now that you've got that title, don't ever use it. People follow leaders not because they have a fancy title, but because they trust and respect them. So always be the kind of guy that people trust and respect. And his mom too was a great leadership role model. I mean, she told him early on, nobody is better than you, but you're not better than anybody else. There's a pearl of goodness in everyone, so dig for it. And so I think those were really— he really was influenced by great leadership role models in his parents. And he learned that leadership is an influence process. You don't have to have a fancy title to lead.

Al ElliottI think there are a lot of people out there who do enjoy a title, and we're going to take those people to one side because they're not real leaders, in my opinion. You don't need to agree with that, but they're not, in my opinion, they're not real leaders. So let's talk about the people who don't worry about the title. What do they do instead?

Martha LawrenceWell, the title, that's great. It gives you position power, but there are many other kinds of power. Ken also taught about using relationship power, using personal power. You know, so the title is not as important. And that's one of the things I love about your podcast because it's really about people. It's not about profits, profits, profits, and title, title, title.

Al ElliottI'm curious, when all of Ken's peers at the time were writing 300, 400-page books, he decided to write one that was a quarter the size. What went through his head, do you think, when he was writing that book?

Martha LawrenceThat was actually quite calculated on Ken's part. The story, the first book he wrote that was short like that was called The One Minute Manager, as we've talked about. He actually met his co-author of that book, Spencer Johnson, who wrote a little book called Who Moved My Cheese?, another humongous global bestseller. They met at a cocktail party, and at that time, Spencer was writing children's books, and Ken was working on a book for managers, and his wife, Margie, introduced the two and she said, Ken, Spencer's writing children's books. You're writing a book for managers. I think you should write a children's book for managers. They won't read anything else. And what Ken and Spencer had researched was people don't often read beyond the first chapter, which is very sad for someone like me who writes a lot of books. But they don't have the attention spans. Even back in the '80s, they don't have the attention span. So they decided— Let's front-load everything into that first 100 pages and let's make it easy. Let's make it breezy. Let's make it fun to read. And that is why he did that. And he had colleagues who said, oh my God, you can't publish this. This is embarrassing, because they were steeped in research and wanted that sort of official respect that comes with deep research and all of that. And Ken Ken's motivation was not to impress people, but to help people. And it's like, if what you're writing is off-putting to people, how are you helping anyone be a better manager? Yeah.

Al ElliottAnd I think that what's cool about that is that I think I've got the timeline right, that Tom Peters came after One Minute Manager, and he was one of— he was a slightly larger book, but the way it was written was almost like he was just talking to you rather than the dense tomes you'd get before. And again, nothing against Drucker, but it was kind of textbook, wasn't it?

Martha LawrenceWell, yeah. Tom, I actually interviewed Tom Peters for this biography, and he and Ken were fast friends. They knew each other back at Cornell, and they were of the same mind. Tom had waged a war against the bean counters. His focus was on if you're overly concerned with the finances, you're going to stifle creativity, you're going to stifle innovation, you're going to shut people down. As Ken always says, profits are the applause you get for taking care of your people so that they can take care of your customers or your clients, and that takes care of your bottom line, and then everything goes ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. But you don't put the profits first, you put the people first. And Tom was of that same mindset.

Al ElliottWhat's interesting is that's not the first time I've heard profit is the applause. I had Gary Ridge, who you know very well. He was on and he used a very similar idea.

Martha LawrenceWell, Gary Ridge learned it from Ken Blanchard. Ken Blanchard is actually Gary Ridge's— I love Gary— Gary Ridge's mentor. And the story there is that Gary Ridge, who is the erstwhile CEO of a little company called WD-40, a $3 billion company, He enrolled in Ken's master's in leadership course in San Diego and studied with Ken and was so blown away by Ken's philosophy of, don't mark my paper, help me get an A. Now, let me give you some background on that. When Ken was a professor at Cornell, he taught leadership, and on the first day of class, he would pass out the final exam so that everybody could see what was going to be on the final. And when the faculty heard about that, they said, Blanchard, what are you doing? And he said, I thought I was supposed to be teaching these students. And they said, yeah, you are, but you can't pass out the final exam. That's not fair. And he said, not only am I going to pass out the final exam, what do you think I'm going to do all semester? I'm going to teach them the answers so that they can get A's because life is about getting A's, not competing on some stupid normal distribution curve. And so Gary was so impressed by that philosophy of not punishing people, not rank ordering people. That's ridiculous. You just want to lift them up and empower them. And eventually Ken and Gary wrote a book together called Don't Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A.

Al ElliottDo you think if One Minute Manager series didn't exist right now, And it was released this year, do you think it would do as well?

Martha LawrenceBoy, that's hard to say because the number of books being published today is exponentially greater than the number of books in 1982. So it's really hard to get your signal through the noise because of the explosion of publishing technology. But I do think it would be tremendously successful. It's still in print after 40 years. It's been revised, the new One Minute Manager, but it's It's still a bestseller. So the principles are timeless and they're easy to apply.

Al ElliottMartha, let me ask you, your book is full of amazing stories about Ken and your life together. Can you, I mean, don't want to spoil it, but can you give us some of your favorite moments?

Martha LawrenceWell, there are a lot of stories in the book that I hope people will find inspiring in terms of leading their own lives and becoming leaders themselves. But let's talk about servant leadership for a moment. That was one of Ken's major principles, that if you are in a position of leadership, you are there to serve, not to be served. It's very different than the kind of leadership we see today, unfortunately. And one of the guys I interviewed for the book was an author, Mack Anderson, and he said, Ken is such the real deal. I remember I was visiting him. They were talking about a collaboration together. They were in a business meeting, and Mac said there was a knock on the door, and it was a woman who wanted to see Ken. She was the wife of an employee who had passed away. Ken said to Mac, do you mind? You have a few minutes. I'd like to spend some time with her. He took Mac, and he took this woman, and he grabbed a tape recorder, and he went to the warehouse where the the woman's husband had worked and went around to all the colleagues that the man had and said, tell us your favorite memory of this person, and recorded all these wonderful memories and people talking about her husband. And at the end, he gave it to her and he said, here, I want you to have this as a memento. We loved your husband. He was such a big part of this company. And thank you so much for coming in. That to me, that's an example of someone who is leading from the heart and not, you know, he saw the need to lift someone else up in that moment. A lot of stories like that from the book. Another story I really, that always touches me is, it's similar when Ken's father was dying. He had been teaching at a seminar and he got a call that his father was in the hospital. He went to see him and his dad was in a really bad way. He knew the end was near. And so when he left the hospital room, he did the same thing. He took a tape recorder and he poured into this tape recorder all the things his father had done over his lifetime that made a difference and all the ways he loved him and just specifically the things that his father had done and what a difference he'd made in so many lives. And before he left for the night, he took the tape recorder and the tape into his dad and he said, Dad, listen to this. I think you might enjoy it. And later that night at the hotel, he got a call from the nurse that his father had passed away and he burst into tears and he said, you know, I gave my dad a tape recorder and a tape. Did he get a chance to listen to that? And she said, He listened to it over and over and over again. So, you know, to me, that is a little peek into the real guy, not just the guy on stage who could, you know, command audiences and win awards and all that, but he was the real deal.

Al ElliottThat's such an incredible story, but I'm thinking some people might think, okay, so to be a good manager, be a good leader, you just need to walk around with a tape recorder. That's not really the lesson you're trying to teach us here, is it?

Martha LawrenceNo, no, no, no. No, it's just about being present to people. And there are moments when leading with love looks like being forthright with someone, telling them if they are not performing in the way that they need to be performing to achieve the goals and the vision, what love looks like is helping them, coming alongside them, that side-by-side leadership and Directing them and then praising them and helping them until they do achieve that vision and get that high. So it's no, it's not about, it's not about just being nice to people. There's a whole other aspect to it.

Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's us by the way, and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?

Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common.

Leanne ElliottWe both use behavioral And we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.

Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not going to say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.

Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Fel. Well, I'm really excited about this episode. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.

Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science. in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?

Al ElliottIt can.

Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?

Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottBut come back.

Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.

Leanne ElliottSo come back.

Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. I mean, we've got lots of notes down here about leading with love. I think some people might look at that and say there are 2 possible problems with that. One is I don't want to be trodden on and looked as weak. And the other person might go, well, where's just, where is leading with love too much? So which of those do you want to tackle first to sort of teach people what leading with love really means?

Martha LawrenceYeah, leading with love is really about It's really about getting yourself out of the way so that other people can be magnificent. It's really about where your focus is. If your focus is on you and your needs and your authority and power, that's not leading with love. If your focus is on what you can do to help others achieve the goal, that's leading with love.

Al ElliottI have a sense that a lot of great leaders are great listeners. Is that something which you've come across in your career?

Martha LawrenceAbsolutely. If you don't listen, you don't learn. It really depends on your values. One of the things that Ken always taught was you go back to the values. And so the values at Blanchard early on were ethical behavior, relationships, success, And learning. And he rank ordered those values. So if there was a conflict between, let's say, success and relationships, and relationships was ranked higher than success, if something you were going to do was going to destroy a relationship with a client or customer, you would weigh that more heavily than you would the financial success.

Al ElliottThere does seem to be a bit of a theme at the moment with people in the press who sort of almost bully their way into leadership, who almost see leadership as showing how strong they are and how decisive they are and how awesome they are. This just seems like a worrying trend.

Martha LawrenceOh boy.

Al ElliottYeah.

Martha LawrenceWhat can we say about that, Al? Ken would call that ego-oriented leadership, and ego stands for edging good out. Again, if you are in a leadership position, Ken's philosophy is that you are there to serve, not to be served. You are there to establish the vision and the values, And then turn that hierarchical pyramid upside down so that you are now serving the people who are working toward that vision. It's not about you, it's about the vision, and you're guided by the values. And that is not what we see in a lot of leadership today.

Al ElliottNo, and we won't name any names, but I think a lot of people have an idea of who we're talking about and which people we're talking about. Ken's famous for using simple words, maybe using one word when, you know, When a lot of people would use 3. So any particular situation that springs to mind when I say that? Any stories?

Martha LawrenceOh, absolutely. When I first started editing and writing with Ken, I was coming from a literary publisher. Harcourt Brace published a lot of literary books, and my language tended to be aimed at, let's say, graduate college, graduate level. I would watch Ken just translate that into something that an 8th grader could understand, and it made it better. He laughs at the 25-cent words. I guess now with inflation, they'd be the $5 words. But I think for Ken, the question is always, are you trying to teach someone? Are you trying to help them understand, or are you trying to impress someone? Again, it's that taking yourself out of it and serving others. His Writing, in the writing itself, you can see his servant leadership.

Al ElliottI would worry if I was Ken that people would think I was stupid because I'm using these 25-cent words you've just mentioned rather than fancy words. How did he deal with that?

Martha LawrenceSo one of the superpowers Ken has is that he has never been embarrassed. He almost doesn't have the same ego that the rest of of us have. So if you don't have an ego that can be bruised or embarrassed, when his colleagues told him, Ken, this is going to undermine your authority as an organizational development leader, and he didn't care about undermining his authority. He cared about reaching people and teaching people. So to Ken, being fancy is just silly. And that's true. You read a lot of books and they just go on and on and they drone on and on and they put people to sleep. One of the reasons Ken wrote parables is because when you write a story, somebody gets caught up in the story and it kind of silences that inner critic. If you write a piece of nonfiction, there's an inner critic that can say, well, I don't agree with that and I don't agree with that. But if you're following a story and the character is doing this and doing that, he's showing you, he's not telling you. And Ken really understood the power of story.

Al ElliottSo is there a way in which someone listening who is a manager or a leader can use these stories, this story idea in real life?

Martha LawrenceI think anecdotes are very powerful. You know, it takes a gift to be able to tell stories. Ken has a special gift. It takes a special gift to be able able to synthesize complex ideas in a way that doesn't make them simply dumb, that makes them still powerful. So I don't know that the average reader or the average listener can actually tell stories that would help their people, but they can certainly learn a lot from reading Ken Blanchard's books and see how managers— if you were to read The One Minute Manager or The Secret, you can see how—

Al ElliottSo as an editor, Martha, I'm sure you see lots of book or manuscripts that could really have been a blog post. And so why is this theme of people just adding more and more stuff to make it into a book? What's your thoughts on that?

Martha LawrenceI have strong thoughts on that, Al. I have strong thoughts. Back in the day before Before the internet, before the Google machine, we would look at, us editors who were buying manuscripts for publication, would look at something and say, is it a book or is it a magazine article? And now today, people take the simplest concept and blow it into a book because they want to use it as a business card. And there are whole industries who have flourished around, I'll take your simple hackneyed idea and puff it up into a book, and then you can get out there and promote it, and you will be a thought leader. Yeah, so I do have strong opinions about that. To me, a thought leader has put in the time and the experience to be able to come to conclusions that are original. And we don't see a great deal of that, or to be able to characterize it in a new way. I'm thinking about somebody, the opposite example, somebody who is a thought leader. Let's look at Brené Brown. Here comes Brené Brown, who by the way, Ken Blanchard was— she said Ken Blanchard was talking about vulnerability and love and leadership long before any of us, and The One Minute Manager. kind of was her Bible when she got her first job at AT&T. But she is somebody who has taken that concept of vulnerability and really created her own thinking around and her own leadership. And so there's a great example of somebody who is a wonderful writer. But we talked about Gary Ridge, He wrote a book called Any Dumbass Can Do It. He has a wonderful voice. He is from Australia and he has a very original writing voice. He also has decades of experience leading a company, so he's able to draw from this experience and really pack his books full of actionable leadership ideas. And he's got his own thinking. He talks about the learning moment. You know, and that there aren't mistakes, there are learning moments. These are original ideas that aren't just blog posts.

Al ElliottMartha, this sounds great. And I think we all agree nobody wants to sit there and read 400 pages when it could have been 50. But how the hell are we going to do this? How did Ken do it?

Martha LawrenceKen had the natural ability to do it because he was a good writer from the get-go. You know, they— one of the reasons they said he couldn't write in academia is because he has this breezy, accessible writing style. And of course, They want it to be turgid and difficult. I often tell my writing students, books aren't written, they're rewritten. And if you have 400 pages, I guarantee you there is some repetition in there. There are places where you can condense and combine and pull out and probably whole sections that are tangents rather than supporting your original idea.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Martha LawrenceA lot of times you'll see writing where people are just bloating their original idea. They're just adding bloat. If it's not supporting the central idea and if it's not building a case, it doesn't belong in the book. Writing is rewriting. Find a good editor. That's how you do it. Find a good editor.

Al ElliottI think I watched an interview with the guy who was Jason Bourne. What's he called? Matt Damon.

Martha LawrenceMatt Damon.

Al ElliottMatt Damon. And he was saying that now, when you write for Netflix, you have to do the opposite of what you just said there, because people are often on their phones or they're cooking or whatever. So a movie now will not be those movies from the '90s where you have to watch every single frame to understand the entire story. They actually repurpose this, like every 5 minutes, they're like reflecting and going back on the plot point.

Martha LawrenceThat is sad. That is a very sad thing. I don't know if we can generalize, Al. I think talking about books, yesterday was MLK Day. Was it yesterday? Day before yesterday was MLK Day. And one of the best books I read last year was the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of MLK, Martin Luther King, called King: A Life by Jonathan Aykroyd. That book is over 600 pages and I could not put it down. It was a page-turner. I wept for 2 days after I finished the book. So it depends on what you're trying to do. I find it very sad that you would pad scripts. My goodness, scripts are— the best scripts to me are tight and condensed. So I hope that's not a trend that will continue.

Al ElliottNo, sadly I feel it might be though. I mean, there's a fantastic book called, I think it's called Nobody Wants to read your shit by Steven Pressfield, I think.

Martha LawrenceExactly. Exactly. I want to read a new bright idea. I want to hear your voice. And this is, with the advent of AI, I can smell AI a mile away. I know what it sounds like. It has a certain cadence. It has a certain boring tone. And fake friendliness that just— there's no human in there. There's no personality. And so what I look for when I'm looking for good writing is I want to feel like I'm having a conversation with a really smart friend, and that's what the book should sound like. And that's one of the reasons Ken's books are so popular because he has a great sense of humor. You'll find a lot of humor in his books. You'll find quirky stuff. Don't edit out the humanity.

Al ElliottLet's talk about that for a second in real life then. When Ken sent you an email, for example, was it the similar tone of his books? Was it well thought out? Tell me, I'm just so curious.

Martha LawrenceKen is what they call an auditory learner. He very rarely used email. He's always going to call. He would always call you. It was actually his wife who is really an incredible PhD, Margie Blanchard. She is as responsible for his fame, I think, as he is, but she's the reader in that couple. And she would tell Ken, you've got to find this book. So Ken wasn't reading widely and he was more speaking. working on, working on his own books.

Al ElliottTalking of own books, let's talk about your book, Catch People Doing Things Right. Who's it for? Who's it not for?

Martha LawrenceHere are the main groups. If you are an aspiring author, it's an inspiring story. If you are a leader, you have a leadership role in an organization, you can watch how someone went through his life and learned and applied those lessons. It's inspiring in that way. If you are a speaker, Ken was a very well-known speaker, very celebrated speaker, and just for people who love life stories. I mean, I love biographies. I love to read biographies, and in fact, did my college dissertation on profiles from The New Yorker magazine because I just love reading about people. So for people who are curious, about others and how they did what they did. I think it's a really good read.

Al ElliottFabulous. And is there a favorite story you've got from the book?

Martha LawrenceI love the story. This story illustrates Ken's values, and it has to do with business and some of the difficult decisions we've been talking about. After 9/11, the Blanchard Organization was bleeding profits like so many companies were, particularly in those days. They were flying trainers all over the world to do management training, and all the planes were grounded. So right away, they were bleeding millions of dollars. So the leadership team got together and looked at the numbers and said, something drastic must be done or else the bank is going to take us over and we're not going to be a company anymore. In the first time in the history of the company, they talked about layoffs. And somebody who was in that meeting told me that Ken looked up from the table and he had tears streaming down his face and he said, we're not going to do it. I did not build this company to put people out on the street at a time like this. There's got to be something else we can do. And the other leaders were who were wonderful, compassionate people as well, said, Ken, that's great, but how are we going to do that? And he said, well, we always talk about transparency. Let's just open the books to everyone. Let's show everyone what we're dealing with and brainstorm ideas. And that's exactly what they did. They just laid it all out there and the company came up with all kinds of ideas for taking salary cuts, cutting here, cutting there. Everybody scrimped and saved. And Ken said, when we get through this, we're all going to go to Maui. And that's exactly what happened. They got through it and in 2005 took the whole company to Maui, including spouses. So to me, that is really putting your money where your mouth is. Now, I have to say that when COVID hit in 2020, the company was a lot larger. There were different finances involved, and we actually did have to go through some layoffs. But even then, in the way it was handled, it wasn't cold and calculated. You had Scott Blanchard, who by that time was the CEO of the company, Ken's son, You had him on a Zoom call with tears coming down his face talking about how difficult this was. When I first came to Blanchard and saw that culture, it freaked me out because it's like, well, if you love people you're working with and you don't keep them at arm's length, what happens when you have to make difficult business transactions? Well, Ken says you take those relational risks. But love is worth it. Love is worth it.

Al ElliottWas there anything else that surprised you when you joined the Blanchard organization?

Martha LawrenceI'd never seen anything like it. People were so free. Ideas, people weren't afraid to just popcorn any old ideas. People were given so much freedom to do things and create things and shine and be magnificent. And somebody would come up with an idea and they'd say, oh, you know who can help you with this person over there. And it was a little strange because it felt unstructured. I was used to such a hierarchical structure. The publishing world was very structured, but it was really, really fun.

Al ElliottThere's a lot of talk of things like psychological safety and lots of other what might be termed as buzzwords. My wife will kill me for saying that, but That sounds like it wasn't someone implementing something from a playbook. It sounded like it was just, that was just the way it was at the Blanchard. Well, how did it evolve to that?

Martha LawrenceI think it was an outgrowth of Ken and his sharpest graduate students created this company way back in 1979, and they wanted to work together because they loved each other. They genuinely loved each other. And the company kind of built up around that for hire friends, hire family. I mean, they didn't have any problem with nepotism. Nepotism, why would you not want to work with the people you love? Al, you work with your wife. You get to see more of each other. And so that culture grew up around that. And I think over the years, that's what evolved. I don't know that the organization will be able to continue that far into the future. I hope that the grandkids maybe can keep that going. But it's really a wonderful environment.

Al ElliottI'm curious though, what are your top books? I mean, I know that all of your top 10 books are going to be written by Ken Blanchard, but what would be number 11, 12, 13? What books should people be starting to read? What's your recommendations?

Martha LawrenceI would say for contemporary books, I would say Dare to Lead, Brené Brown. Definitely. Warren Bennis, anything by Warren Bennis is going to be wonderful. Anything by Ken Blanchard is going to be wonderful. I've already mentioned Gary Ridge, but these are in the leadership space. I read widely. I'm a novelist after all. I recommend to people, take a look. If you want a really wonderful story of a leader who believed in serving others and stuck to his principles through thick and thin. King: A Life about Martin Luther King. Great book, highly recommended. I think there's a lot of leadership lessons in there. What I loved about that book is he's a human being, and that I hope I've captured in my book as well, that these are not superhumans. Ken has flaws. He's generous to a fault. He would give away, he would be penniless if he didn't have people around him keeping him from writing 5-figure checks to people. So that can be a downside. There's a downside to that, not having enough boundaries. But you can be a flawed human being and still lead with love. It's all about your values.

Al ElliottWow. What a phenomenal mic drop moment to leave that If people want to hear more about you or learn more about you or buy the book, when's the book out? How can people get in touch with you? How can people find out more?

Martha LawrenceThe book is available wherever books are sold, and you can learn more about me at marthalawrence.com. That's M-A-R-T-H-A-L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E.com. If you want to know about Ken Blanchard, there's There's a website, kenblanchardbooks.com, and you'll see his whole panoply of work, 70 titles. And if you're curious about Blanchard, blanchard.com.

Al ElliottFabulous. Thank you so much. And what was the word you used there? Panoply?

Martha LawrencePanoply. A panoply.

Al ElliottI'm writing that down now. I've never heard that before and I'll be using that tomorrow. Panoply. Fabulous. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

Martha LawrenceThank you, Al. It's been great.

Al ElliottThat was the incredible Martha Lawrence, editor, novelist, and the woman who spent 22 years watching one of the world's greatest management thinkers up close. If you haven't yet listened to the episode with Gary Ridge from WD-40, flip back to episode 251. You're gonna love it. Okay, so 3 real quick lessons. Um, leading with love is not the opposite of high standards. Uh, Ken's philosophy wasn't about being soft. It was about getting yourself out of the way so other people could be magnificent. 1-minute goals, 1-minute praisings, 1-minute redirects. They're all clear, they're direct, they're caring, and they're simple to implement. Talking of simplicity, lesson 2: simplicity is a leadership act. Ken was mocked for writing a short, breezy book. His colleagues said it would embarrass him. He didn't care because his question was always, am I trying to impress people or am I trying to help them? Remember how he gave out the final exam in the first lesson of, of the semester? And lesson 3: titles are the least interesting thing about a leader. I'm really sorry to say this to some people. Ken's dad told him the day That he became class president. Don't ever use that title. You see, people follow leaders they trust and respect, not leaders who have a fancy job description. So if your authority depends on your title, I'm afraid you're building on sand. Martha's biography of Ken Blanchard is called Catch People Doing Things Right. You can find it wherever books are sold and learn more about Martha at marthalawrence.com. That's Lawrence L A W R E N C E. If you want to explore Ken's work directly, head over to. Ken Blanchard books.com. Seventy titles and counting, and I have to be honest, it was one of the first business books that I read, and it changed the way that I managed forever until I met Leanne. Obviously, this is Truth, Lies, and Work. We will see you next week.