Love Works…Joel Manby Keynote
Joel Manby is a professional businessman, not a professional speaker and I got the pleasure to see him speak well and sincerely at the International Toastmasters Conference held in Orlando, Florida on 15 August, 2012. (Yes I’ve been meaning to get this out to you for a while, the old saying about writers and procrastination may have some truth to it after all). However, the lessons Mr. Manby teaches, imbibes and lives are still true. Here is part of his story, which I may continue in future for brevity’s sake.
Manby was the CEO for the U.S. operations head for SAAB. He described how on Easter Sunday he received a life-changing call from his boss in Sweden. In fact, it was the situation that helped him to alter his life for the better and many can probably relate to it….The first quarter sales were down for the North American Saab operations, but Joel had attained three years of solid growth over the previous NA boss…
Despite this, Joel was ‘called into the boss’ office. Except…. this office was in Sweden! The call he got was at 7:30 am in the morning, which meant that it was 3 am in Sweden at the time of the call!
Joel had made 15 moves in 20 years and, as was expected, always showed concern for the bottom line, but when his boss tore into him in Sweden, in front of his peers, he felt humiliated, and a loss of dignity. In short it was his worst nightmare realized and he felt that it was unjustified.
Here was a Harvard business school graduate who had moved all over, working for top companies like General Motors and who always paid attention everywhere to the bottom line and yet he was getting what he felt was the worst treatment of his life!
This is when Joel’s emotional withdrawal began from within from Saab. He thought to himself that there had got to be a better way in business to care about people and profits! There had to be! He wanted to be authentic (same at home, work and spiritually).
That’s the exact moment when Jack Herschend entered his life. Manby says that he’s the best at what he does, and Jack asked Joel to be on his Board….Jack was getting older and he wanted someone to replace him in his growing business. Joel felt thankful and lucky that he was asked by Jack.
As they say, the rest is history….Since 2000, Herschend Family Entertainment has had 12 years of solid growth. Joel can also proudly say that he definitely balanced home and work life.
Joel now has a mission and he wants us to be inspired…so he asked us these questions during the international Conference held at Orlando, Florida.
What is love? Did you know that there are actually four kinds: Eros; philos; storge and agape love(s)…this according to the Greeks.
Agape is unconditional love. How you treat each other. All relationships are about agape. Joel asked: why do we exclude agape?
He never saw this in any previous of the companies he worked for. It’s not being ‘soft.’ (An inaccurate thought).
Go to the Bible. 1st Corinthians: “love is patient, kind, trusting, and unselfish, truthful, dedicated, forgiving….weddings (?)
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking,it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres… (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013:4-7).
Be unselfish – think of self less.
He developed this formula, (Employee unselfishness + Company unselfishness= and Sharing (our love, ideas, skills = it)) forward:
Think of yourself less…EU$ + CU$ = SIF$$$ (share it forward)…
I will follow this article up with more information as I may have piqued your interest now…gotta go! You’ve got enough information now to look into these great ideas for yourselves. Gotta keep you on your toes…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Manby
“Joel Manby is the current President and Chief Executive Officer of Herschend Family Entertainment, the largest family-owned theme park corporation in the United States. HFE creates, develops and operates entertainment, tourism and hospitality properties spanning 26 locations in ten states.”
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