How a tuna fish sandwich can turbocharge your career
Peter Guber is a Hollywood legend. The movies he’s produced — including The Color Purple, Midnight Express, Batman, and Flashdance —Â have earned over $3 billion worldwide and have snagged more than 50 Academy Award nominations, including winning Best Picture for Rain Man. Â (He also owns the Golden State Warriors which, IMHO, is even cooler.)
If there’s anybody who knows the power of story, it’s this guy. Fortunately for us all, Peter has accumulated his wisdom in a terrific new book, Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, which comes out today.
The book offers some fascinating lessons on how to use the force of narrative to get stuff done and to make a difference in the world. And the pages are a veritable calvalcade of stars. Hey, it’s Gene Simmons. Look, it’s Bill Clinton. OMG, it’s Michael Jackson!
Now Peter has offered to share — exclusively for Pink Blog readers — a short excerpt of the book about what (no joke) he learned from a tuna sandwich. You can read the excerpt below. Â You can also order the book from Amazon, BN.com, or Indie Bound.
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“Arriving in Hollywood in the late ‘60’s as a young man, a fast track ascension up the career ladder seemed challenging to me. The men at the ‘big table’ who made the major decisions were all in their 60’s with white hair or no hair. I needed to distinguish myself from my colleagues who had similar aspirations as I did.  I found it in solving a problem that the senior executives didn’t even know they had.
“When any movie is made, one of the most critical decisions is who the director will be. This choice was currently being decided upon by the central figure at the table who I once heard announce that, ‘he was having a tuna fish sandwich yesterday with a particular filmmaker and he believed he was available.’ Was this the whole criteria to choose a filmmaker based on a tuna fish sandwich and ‘available?!’
“Even in these pre-internet days, I had a sense that information was currency, so I set about to organize the data about all the Hollywood directors on a corked wall in my office with thousands of stick pins. Like a giant Wikipedia, everyone coming or going could add to it or take from it information about availability, propensity for staying on budget and core strengths of all the directors cross-referenced against other categories as well as talent.
“Without realizing it, I’d constructed a launch pad for my career by giving concrete form to the call to action of my tuna sandwich ahha! moment—the story I’d tell forward to every visitor who asked why I was doing this giant board of directors. By surrendering control of my board of directors, I allowed my listeners to embrace it, participate in it, and own it. One person told another my story, who told another person about the story, which brought more talent and influencers to my office, and my star steadily rose.
“The story spread and reflected light on me as an innovator, distinguishing me from the many other folks competing to climb the ladder.  And every time that they told my professional story for me, it propelled my career.”
From Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story by Peter Guber (Crown Business, 2011)
Good post, Dan. In fact, I just finished reading a nice article by Guber entitled “The Four Truths of the Storyteller” in the Harvard Business Review. I look forward to the book as I am sure he will expand on the themes in the article, which you and your readers can find in PDF here: http://bit.ly/h1NBWk
Cheers!
John
PS – What I really want to know is whether the tuna fish sandwich was made with or without mayonnaise.
Hey Dan,
The excerpt summarizes why I “… told my sentence to all of the great folks at the National Convention in SF last week.
Dr. Bob
John for sharing.From the time we are young we are used to hearing stories.mothers ,grandmothers told stories to make us eat,sleep .At school and church we listened to stories.Jesus told stories in the form of parables to get his point across and therefore there is no doubt that stories are compelling. listen to this story.A teacher of mine came into class one day and said: There was a man named Rama Manavala Ramanajam .As the name implied the man was an Indian and everyone called him Rama Manavala Ramanajam .When he went to America the americans found it difficult to pronounce his name and so called him R.M.R.Jam!!When he came back to India however,everyone called him Rama Manavalla Ramanajam! From this we learn that “Heat expands and cold contracts “.I have never forgotton that story although I heard it 45 years back.
Samuel.
Great story Dan, thank you. I think the critical moment is when he let go of the board – trusting in and wanting something larger. I think that is a more powerful transition to big things than creating the board in the first place.
Similar story: in the early 90’s I heard Scott McNealy the president of Sun Microsystems at the launch of the SPARC station say something along the lines of “I would rather have a small piece of a gigantic pie than the whole of a tiny pie.” Today Sun is not the visionary they once were – but they truly once were and it’s because of that attitude of the corporate leaders.
Thank you for another great recommended read, Dan. I appreciate the generosity (and lessons) of these postings. But please, please, never use “OMG” here again.
@Bruce — LOL. But WTF? You don’t like acronoymic shorthanded symbols (ASS)? IMHO, they’re aweseome! BFN!
Aaaand, I’m hooked. Can’t wait to get my hands on this. Thanks for the recommendation/excerpt!
I wonder if in Gruber’s book there is a chapter (or at least section) on the history of ‘story.’ Back before there was the internet, TV, radio, or even the printing press, story was the way that many things were communicated in the world. The children would gather around an elder who would tell a tale of wonder and wisdom.
While we’ve had many advances (technologically), it would seem that at the heart of wisdom still resides these ‘stories.’
With Love and Gratitude,
Jeremiah
perhaps, instead, a tuna sandwich ahi moment?
Dan…always good: your serendipitous insights…and, OMG in repetoire works for me
Barbara
I dont know where to insert the sentence about the radio link up on the 21st (my birthday) to validate my purchase of DRIVE. I have one copy (signed by Daniel Pink) which I bought at the Mind and Its Potential conference in Sydney last year, I bought another for a friend. The receipts are at the bottom of that cardboard box my accountant awaits.
I’ll be buying the new edition of DRIVE for my assistant in a new publishing venture I am setting up – inspired by the writings of Daniel H Pink. Thanks