Copyright The HUMOR Project, Inc 1988 -- All rights reserved
This first appeared in Laughing Matters Volume 4, Number 4

In my doctoral program, I had the good fortune to cross paths with Dr. Ken Blanchard. I took a number of courses from him and was struck by his effectiveness as a teacher. Not only did he convey simple, useful, and powerful ideas, he did it in a way that was enjoyable. His easy-going sense of humor made learning easier-- and more fun.

I have been delighted to see the incredible success he has achieved since our time together in 1970 at the University of Massachusetts. In fact, few individuals have impacted the day-to-day management of companies as has Ken. A gregarious and sought-after speaker, Ken has helped many Fortune 500 companies in his capacity as President of Blanchard Training and Development, a San Diego-based training company which he founded with his wife, Dr. Marjorie Blanchard.

Ken is the co-author of THE ONE MINUTE MANAGER (on THE NEW YORK TIMES best-seller list for three years), PUTTING THE ONE MINUTE MANAGER TO WORK, LEADERSHIP AND THE ONE MINUTE MANAGER, and THE ONE MINUTE MANAGER GETS FIT, which collectively have sold over seven million copies. Ken is also the co-author of the most widely-used text on leadership and organizational behavior, MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR: UTILIZING HUMAN RESOURCES. His latest book has just been released-- THE POWER OF ETHICAL MANAGEMENT co- authored with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.

Ken is very effective in managing his own resources, and it's clear he enjoys his work. He believes that "the ultimate in self- actualization is when a person is confused about the difference between employment and recreation." He practices what he preaches when it comes to the effective use of humor in his personal life as well as on-the-job.

I had the opportunity to rendezvous recently with Ken in getting a new project off the ground. We took some time for this interview-- I'm very pleased to provide you with more than one minute to learn from and laugh with this down-to-earth, innovative, and influential management thinker/doer.

Joel Goodman: Do you have any early memories about the role of humor in your life?

Ken Blanchard: In the sixth grade elementary school basketball championship, our school got to the finals. We played Lincoln, and they had this big guy who in sixth grade seemed like he must have been well over six feet tall. All the kids on the team called him Meatball. I had one of those days you dream about-- everything I tossed up went in. People couldn't believe it-- we won.

At the end of the game we went in to change. Meatball was sitting on the bench. As I walked by I just patted him on the back and said "Good game, Meatball." He jumped up, grabbed me by the shirt, threw me against this locker, and said, "Only my friends call me Meatball." I don't know where I got the composure, but I said, "Well then why don't we be friends." He laughed like crazy, and thought it was about the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He put me down and he said, "You're alright, man."

JG: And that's why you're here today. Are there any other people from early in your life who played a role in your developing sense of humor?

KB: My dad had the tremendous capacity to take a situation and find humor in it. During the Second World War, he was in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, and 70% of his men were killed or wounded. Later, the guys I met said that one of the things that really kept them going was my father using the intercom system and finding humor in things.

When I went to junior high, I was nominated for the president of the class, and I had to give a speech. Dad sat down to help me with the speech and he said, "The first thing you've got to recognize to give a speech is you need to get humor in here and you have to make people laugh."

On the day of the speeches, I got up in front of the entire seventh grade and said, "As the cow said to the farmer when the milking machine broke down, thanks for that warm hand." People got a big kick out of it. By the way, Meatball served as my campaign manager.

JG: Did you continue to receive a "warm hand" later in school?

KB: People just got to expect that humor was part of my style, and that I could find some humor in most any situation. I gave the graduation speech at both junior high and high school in front of thousands of people. What I noticed was that many other people gave talks and the audience looked very bored. I realized that I couldn't let people go more than a couple of minutes without a good laugh, or I knew I'd start to lose people. So my quotient is to get in your serious points in about that two minutes that you've got them, and then you'd better hit 'em with some humor.

JG: So that was really honed early on then. Down the road a bit, where else did you find humor...or did humor find you?

KB: At Ohio University, I was teaching a Business Policy course. Using humor, we just had a marvelous time. I had never imagined that I would ever be in front of students with everybody laughing and enjoying. The ratings on the class were fabulous, and so I decided then to move into teaching, because the students said, "You're just not like any of these other professors 'cause you're not dry." This was especially wonderful for me to hear, because I had known what it was like to be bored in class-- most of my professors had tight underwear and never really could see the funny side of anything.

So I started to use humor, and what's really interesting is people began to call me with stories that I could use. I like to look at reality and just call it the way it is. I watch Neil Simon-- all he does is just take life and then just replay it. And look at what Cosby's doing on his show- - I mean that is a marvel.

JG: When I interviewed Steve Allen (Volume II,

KB: I think that's the real skill. I spent some time one night with Art Buchwald. I asked him, "How do you keep things in perspective?" He thinks life is a chuckle-- life is funny, it's just really absurd. If you look at the funny side of things, there's just plenty of humor out there. He also "doesn't read his own press"--he's really so unimpressed with himself.

JG: I've always seen you as a down-to-earth humorist. Back in graduate school, you were using humor and just weaving it naturally and gently into what you were doing. I've always appreciated that in you.

KB: It's really served me well. For instance, we got into the parable format in THE ONE MINUTE MANAGER in order to tell stories about managers. Through that format it's much easier to use humor than with a textbook. You get the banter back and forth between the characters, then you can start to build the humor into the dialogue. With humor in stories, people can laugh because they say, "That's just like my mother," or "That's just like me," and they become part of the thing. And they're bumpin' each other.

JG: That bump of recognition or identification is what Cosby's show is based on: people seeing themselves in those scenes.

KB: He just takes a simple thing. I was watching him in a rerun last week in which he was great at gadgets. He would bring in a new juicer and other new contraptions, and they had a whole show around his bringing in, "oh yeah, here comes another gadget." In fact, his wife had a whole closet full of his former gadgets. And all of a sudden everybody just laughs 'cause there's somebody you know in your life who is into buying the next new gadget.

JG: From my own experience in doing corporate consulting and in-house programs on the positive use of humor in management and organizations, I have bumped into folks who at first glance would see humor as a gadget or as a gimmick- - people who would say, "What are you talking about, humor, let's get down to the bottom line," or "Let's cut out the funny business." Any words of wisdom to managers who might find humor to be an effective tool?

KB: One of the classic concepts that we all learned in school was the difference between process and product. Product is the end result, what you're trying to accomplish, while process is how you go about doing it and the interaction. I heard this marvelous quote when I was in Japan: "Managing for profit or bottom-line only is like playing tennis with your eye on the scoreboard and not on the ball." People who keep on saying "Let's get back to business" are forgetting the whole process piece, and the ball.

Through the use of humor and laughter you permit people to self-heal. Another quote that I really love is "In life, what you resist persists." Humor can be a wonderful release for people, because if you deal with what's bothering you, in the very process of dealing with it, it will go away. One of the neatest ways to deal with it is through humor-- then everybody knows what you're doing, they all laugh, and you don't have to say anything more.

Humor and laughter in organizations can increase: the amount of feedback you can get, the honesty, and the capacity for people to tell you good things. All the solutions to problems in organizations are within your own people, but the problem is half of them don't want to say anything, because they usually get zapped-- you kill the messenger.

It's through humor that you can open up the lines to communication. People in our organization are willing to tell me things that they don't tell other people, because they know that I will receive it well, that I can and do laugh about the challenges we face.

JG: One of the tenets I put out in a number of the programs I do is there's a difference between being a solemn manager and a serious manager. It's very appropriate to be serious about your job, but not to take yourself too seriously.

KB: That's the pride issue. False pride means you can't laugh at yourself. When you have self-esteem and things in perspective, you laugh at yourself and your foibles. You're not up for grabs. As Norman Vincent Peale says, "You know that God did not make junk," and that you're okay.

It was interesting, on one of my birthdays, my staff threw a party for me. A whole bunch of them got together one night, and came up with 21 different skits that they could do on my behaviors. They finally picked about seven or eight and it was hysterical. I have pictures of me with tears coming out of my eyes. And my wife, Marge, said, "Watching that whole process I realized what a real character I was living with." And I said, "Well, everybody's really a character-- it's just that you wouldn't kid most people about their characterness, because they're too serious about it."

For my father, on his death bed, humor was still his main way of dealing with people. I'll never forget. He had had a stroke, and was on a life support system. He was trying to tell me something I couldn't understand. A nurse came up and said, "Admiral, why don't you write your son a note." He handed Dad a clipboard. My father started to write, and I said with a laugh, "I couldn't even read his handwriting when he was feeling good!" So the nurse then wrote the alphabet in big letters, A-B-C, and suggested that my Dad just point to what he wanted to say. My father looked at me, got this twinkle in his eye, and pointed S-H-I-T. Looking at the funny side can get you through all kinds of things.

It's like Yogi Berra being asked, "Why did you win today?" He said, "We didn't make any wrong mistakes." Then somebody asked him, "If you had to divide a hundred percent in baseball, what percent is mental and what is physical. He said simply that 90% is mental and the other 50% is physical.

JG: Do you have any other favorite stories that you use in your programs to illustrate ideas or concepts?

KB: A famous playwrite sent Churchill a note: "I'm sending you two tickets to my opening night. Bring a friend if you can find one." Churchill wrote back saying, "I really appreciate the invitation. I'm sorry I can't go the first night, but I'd like to go another night, if there is one."

Then there's the one about the little guy who's a clerk in a grocery store and this big Texan comes in who says, "Son, I want a half-a-head of lettuce." The clerk says, "Well, sir, I don't think we sell a half-a-head of lettuce." The Texan retorts, "Son, I don't think you heard me. I want a half-a-head of lettuce." The clerk says he'll go back and ask the manager. So he heads to the back of the store, not seeing the big Texan following him step by step. The clerk tells the manager, "There's some big jerk out there who wants a half-a-head of lettuce." All of a sudden, seeing out of the left eye the Texan behind him, he wheels around and blurts out, "And this nice man wants the other half."

JG: A brilliant example of aikido and rolling with the punches. Speaking of rolling with the punches, what about humor on the home front?

KB: I get a lot of letters about what I do for marriages. People ask me what's the number one criteria in marriage and I say it's got to be humor. If you can't laugh at what you're doing in your relationship, you're really in bad trouble, because it can be a pain in the tail living with somebody else.

I've heard people say to Marge, "What's it like living with Ken?" The number one thing she describes about me is my humor. It's not in front of a crowd, it's just the two of us. One of my great joys is to get her starting to giggle over something where I'll just take it and...

JG: Be merciless.

KB: It reminds me of my uncle who was a real character. People used to line up for him, because as a pediatrician, he made the parents so calm about their kids.

JG: That's interesting, because some of my work right now is focusing on the medical implications and applications of humor. In fact, we are completing a grant from Humana Hospital Corporation to help physicians do what your uncle evidently was putting into (his) practice.

KB: I was reading recently that it's really clear now that incompetent doctors with good bedside manner have less chance of being sued than competent doctors with lousy bedside manner. "Malpractice insurance" is to know something about getting along with people and using humor effectively.

My wife recently had an operation, and she had a fabulous doctor. I can't imagine anybody ever suing him. I watched him come onto the floor of the hospital, and the nurses looked differently, the orderlies looked differently, everybody did. He in came with a smile and he had information on everything and he would kid. People just loved to be around him.

JG: Competence and inspiring confidence can go hand in hand. Do you think there's hope for us? Can we learn to develop these humor skills?

KB: We did some consulting in some school districts recently. The number one thing we found is that nobody in school was having fun anymore. The kids didn't want to be there, the teachers didn't want to be there, the principal didn't want to be there; even the janitors who used to do most of the counseling down in the boiler room didn't want to be there. Laughter is a lost art. Nothing in schools can be that serious, I mean, we're dealing with kids' lives- - we need to laugh.

No situation can be dull if you're looking for the humor in it. And so everything is a potential learning experience.

JG: And a potential laughing experience! Thanks for taking the time to share some of your learnings and laughter with us!

Here is a sampling of some wisdom and witdom from Ken Blanchard's series of ONE-MINUTE MANAGER books:

• A university is defined as thousands of people gathered around a common parking problem.
• Train...don't strain.
• Commitment!...not announcements, make the difference.
• Remember, the way you live your life does not have to be hazardous to your health.
• I believe in the KISS method: Keep It Short and Simple.
• Only positive consequences encourage good future performance.
• Feedback is the breakfast of champions. As a manager, the important thing is not what happens when you are there, but what happens when you are not there.
• Achieving good performance is a journey-- not a destination.
• Anything worth doing does not have to be done perfectly-- at first.
• Managers should work for their people, and not the reverse.
• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. (after Emerson)
• One day a little girl asked her mother, "Mommy, why does Daddy bring so much work home at night?" "Because he doesn't have time to finish it at work," answered the mother. "Then why don't they put him in a slower group?" asked the little girl.
• When I slow down, I go faster.
• The more I know, the more I realize I don't know.
• You can expect more if you inspect more.
• When the best leader's work is done, the people say, "We did it ourselves!"
• Everyone is a potential high performer. Some people just need a little help along the way.
• Remember the old Buddhist saying, "To know and not to use is not yet to know."
• People who feel good about themselves produce good results.
• In early life, people give up their health to gain wealth...then, in later life, they give up some wealth to regain health....If you don't watch out, success could kill you!
• Help people reach their full potential. Catch them doing something right.
• If you don't blow your own horn, someone else will use it as a spittoon.
• The value of being able to laugh at ourselves when we make a mistake: it helps us get on with our work.
• The best minute I spend is the one I invest in people.
• A problem only exists if there is a difference between what is actually happening and what you desire to be happening.
• A man slipped and fell off a cliff while hiking on a mountaintop. Luckily he was able to grab a branch on his way down.

  Holding on for dear life, he looked down only to see a rock valley some 1500 feet below.

  When he looked up it was twenty feet to the cliff where he had fallen. Panicked, he yelled, "Help! Help! Is anybody up there? Help!"

  A booming voice spoke up, "I am here and I will save you if you believe in me."

  "I believe! I believe!" yelled back the man.

  "If you believe in me," said the voice, "let go of the branch and then I will save you."

  The young man, hearing what the voice said, looked down again.

  Seeing the rock valley below, he quickly looked back up and shouted, "Is there anybody else up there?"

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