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Foreword by Ken Blanchard
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Play To Win!
Choosing Growth Over Fear In Work and Life FOREWORD BY KEN BLANCHARD In 1979, I heard a young and dynamic speaker talk to an audience of business leaders from the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) The "ABC's of Personal Power was an intense and entertaining hour on how to play to win - to go for it - in work and in life. It was a powerful speech and the audience was held spellbound not only by the passion of the speaker but also by the potency of his ideas. The speaker was Larry Wilson. Larry and I have since shared the speaker's platform all over the world. He continues to be a powerful, dynamic, and wise presence on the dais. I admire him principally because his life's work has been to help individuals grasp the significance of their lives and to use their courage and creativity to face challenges, handle adversity and grow as individuals. It has been in the last fifteen years, as the founder and driving force of Pecos River Change Management, that Larry's message has really caught fire. He has the ability to look straight into the eyes and souls of people - from CEOs of some of our largest institutions to people who have spent their working lives on factory floors. He often asks them the same questions: What is your life about? How are you making the world a better place? What will your legacy be? These are the questions that, in our "permanent whitewater" world, we often neglect. We are so busy being busy that we don't take the time to reflect on and ask the questions that can reshape our lives. As a result, all around us people are arriving at their deaths, at the end of their adventure, unfulfilled, lost, and wondering what could have been... and it doesn't matter a whit at that moment whether they were a CEO or a factory worker. So Larry asks the simple but profound questions and, as important, he has developed a way of thinking and a way of working and living that can get us closer to the answers. It is called Play to Win. What an odd phrase. Life certainly isn't about playing, and yet if you watch children play, beyond the fun they're having you see intensity, focus, learning, and relating. Life is certainly more than defeating others - the commonly accepted criterion of winning - it is about going as far as you can, using up everything that you've been given to live a full and meaningful life. Play to Win! is a guide to doing all of that: to living with meaning, passion, and purpose and doing it in a way that resembles children at play - intensely, while learning, having fun, and relating to the other "kids." The "playground," if you will, that most of us have chosen is the world of work, of business, of professions, of "what we do." Helping you thrive in that playground is one of the important elements of Play to Win! And, of course, if you are thinking about how you are going to thrive at work, how you are going to continually change, adjust, and adapt as we rapidly move deeper into the unknown of the information revolution - read this book! Otherwise you might quickly get left behind. Why? Look around! The companies we work for are reinventing themselves as we move from the industrial era to something else. In the very same way, we need to reinvent ourselves. We need to become something different from the employees of another era who checked their brains and their passion at the gate and became solely "hired hands." To be continually successful in the new era will require us, whether we are employees or entrepreneurs, to use all of our creativity, intellectual ability, and courage. We will each need to play to win - to go as far as we can using everything we have in order to thrive. In this paradoxical time of great opportunity and no job security it is the people who understand and grasp this that have a shot at being successful and fulfilled. Play to Win! will give you the insights and the tools to be better able to deal successfully with permanent whitewater. The ideas are simply presented, easy to use, and can make a profound difference in your life and work. This book is potentially life changing. The philosophy of Play to Win! - going as far as you can with all that you have - is the consummate thinking strategy for anyone who wants to achieve high performance and fulfillment against the background of our wild and woolly times. I'm excited by this book and by the potential it creates for thousands
of readers. It represents the distillation of thirty years of work, thinking,
and creation in the pursuit of helping people grow by one of the most
innovative thinkers of our era. Read, learn, apply, and enjoy. God bless!
Ken Blanchard
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