go ahead and applaud yourselves – if I
were you I’d be patting myself on the
back for attending a conference all
about collective genius yep I’d be
feeling pretty smart right about now
maybe even a little genius II I get all
that out of your system right now though
because I’m about to get you in touch
with your inner idiot you’ve probably
guessed that collective genius is a darn
good idea since all these other
whip-smart speakers are talking about it
and it is but it’s even better if you
inject a little craziness into it you’re
about to meet the madman who did
precisely that 60 years before the
Harvard Business Review coined the
phrase collective genius
in fact decades before those Harvard
folks even expense their first business
lunch the gang at Mad Magazine invented
creative madness pioneering a creative
philosophy that we can all use to
release our hidden creative potential by
the end of the grant by the old beardo
on the red carpet you will see that the
maddest leaders foster extreme diversity
of thought and that means embracing
oddballs nuts and weirdos of all kinds
if we really want to unleash collective
genius we’re all going to have to commit
ourselves and go a little mad before we
get started though let’s remind each
other of what collective genius actually
is in 2014 the Harvard Business Review
published groundbreaking work that junk
conventional thinking about leadership
and replaced it with a brand spanking
new philosophy or at least to convince
executives to throw out their old unread
management books and buy some new
management books to not read instead if
I were going to condense their hundreds
of pages into some bullet points for you
to cheat on your management 101 midterm
next well next month I would go for one
build a community of diverse talents
with shared values in a sense of
purpose to allow conflicts and debate
within this community
3-channel these conflicts and to new
ideas for practice a jet agility through
the rapid deployment of these ideas and
five stand back and watch the innovation
explode that’s real good thinking there
Harvard pretty pretty good but I think
you might have forgotten something and I
think I know some folks who can help us
find our way yeah I know these are the
kind of words your mom told you not to
say in public I’m gonna say them a lot
though in the next few minutes to get
you used to hearing them saying them and
being them all of these terms need to be
reclaimed and celebrated just do me a
favor and don’t tell your mom where you
picked them up weird is one of my
all-time favorite words it originally
came from the old English word for
destiny or weird so for me weird means
that special kind of inspired not who
sees the world a little differently and
can peek into the future
I think you know the type today we’re
talking about one of the weirdest of
them all a man who bounced from the
Bible to horror to humor lilamon Gaines
was a comics publisher who practiced mad
leadership turning American business
practice over onto its head and teaching
generations of wise asses how to go mad
but before we see how he created
collective madness let’s see what drove
him mad in the first place it was the
1950s Americans after years of belt
tightening during World War Two had to
be lured back into the pleasures of
buying lots and lots of new crap to
kick-start the economy enter advertisers
and their new electronic Trojan horse
television every households newest
family member
soon everyone loved Lucy father always
knew best and we all left it to the
beaver we watch what everyone else
watched but what everyone else bought
everyone dreamed of being part of a
nuclear family
with a television and every atomic
fallout shelter wives were marched from
the wartime assembly line back into the
home husbands became obedient
organization men conformist armies of
men and grey flannel suits
unsurprisingly men and women were soon
stocking up on his and her martini
glasses and prescription tranquilizers
but if you listened closely you could
hear the rumblings of resistance
snapping fingers at beatnik poetry
recitals growling creatures at driving
monster movies screams of Elvis Presley
fans you could even still hear the faint
echoes of that resistance today if you
took those damn earbuds out every once
in a while
the all-night radio host Jean Shepard
also heard the resistance and the voices
as The Kooks who called him to talk
about mind control and UFOs and bebop
and in 1957 he described the sound for
the squares and what became the most
important intellectual manifesto of the
century Shepard divided the country into
two the night people the weirdos who’ve
listened to the strange sounds of the
world after the normals dropped off to
sleep and the mind numbed mediocre
mainstream whom he called the creeping
meatballs people today people today have
a genuine fear of stepping out and
thinking on their own
he warned creeping meatball ISM is this
rejection of individuality the idea of
thinking individually has become a big
joke only one magazine had the mad
genius to publish this bold attack on
American blandness and it was at the
Harvard Business Review yep you guessed
it gene Shepard was only one of mads
many mad contributors as will say bill
Gaines was good at a lot of things but
his greatest genius was collecting other
geniuses he led mad but mostly it’s
madness and it’s madmen led him
when Bill inherited his dad’s company
educational comics in the 1940s he found
himself cranking out respectable Bible
and history comics that parents and
teachers loved but Bill’s personal taste
lurked elsewhere by 1950 he had turned
pops EC into entertaining comics bill
collected the wildest creatives he could
find and let them loose on some of the
most fantastic gruesome disturbing and
thrilling comics of all time and a
barely profitable 10-cent comedy comic –
that’s number one right there but soon
the creepy meatballs struck back and one
party-pooper in particular a shrink
named dr. Frederic wertham told
Americans that comics were responsible
for destroying our nation’s youth in his
infamous scare screed the seduction of
the innocent he deserves it now as hard
as this might be to believe the US
Senate took dr. wertham seriously and
yeah I know that’s as nuts as if
Congress people today blamed video games
for teenage violence you know something
insane bill Gaines
I’m sorry Congress left Gaines in front
of the Subcommittee on juvenile
delinquency he brought his snarkiness
along with him explaining to the
legislators why he thought this cover
was within the bounds of good taste bill
told the Senators a cover and bad taste
for example might be defined as holding
her head a little higher so the blood
could be seen dripping from it Congress
was not amused and neither was the rest
of the comics industry who got the
government off their backs by creating
the comics code Authority a
self-censoring seal of approval that
promised that comics would never again
see adult themes or wild flights of
creativity this imposed conformity make
made gains lose all interest in comics
fortunately for the history of a
and culture though he didn’t give up but
brainstormed a new direction what if
instead of publishing comics he made fun
of them in a magazine that could run
around the comics code what if he at
least the Krrish the crazies that made
his sci-fi and horror books so
subversive and let him loose to parody
the meatball world around them gains
collective of geniuses became mad
magazines bullpen brain trust and the
world was never the same
other 1950s business leaders police
their employees with community
destroying soul-crushing time management
techniques but gains inked where they
zagged as long as the magazine goes out
on time and it’s funny I let the staff
do whatever they want and if that
included spiking the office water cooler
with booze every once in a while as a
gag so be it gains team was diverse by a
1950 standards there were a lot of
Jewish New Yorkers several of whom were
first-generation Americans mad also
picked up an exile from Castro’s Cuba a
Spanish immigrant via Mexico a refugee
from a Madison Avenue ad agency a
portrait painter from the Ladies Home
Journal a photographer who blew flew
bomber missions during World War two a
Georgia boy who thought it’d be fun to
hop in a car and give New York City a
try and many many other oddballs and
misfits these strong personalities led
to strong disagreements Mad staff was an
equal-opportunity in Soul parade where
everyone shared of the mockery as mad
writer dick DeBartolo explained no
matter how good anything or anybody is
you dump on them and their work mutual
admiration led to mutual trashing and
the battle scars resulted in a better
mad advertisers fought with gains about
Mad satires of their ads gains and the
team doubled down on the gags and
dropped all outside advertising creating
mad unique independence and this is
decades before HBO Netflix hopped on the
No
bandwagon instead of boring staff
meetings gains would load up on mads
madmen and take them on crazy group
vacation one mad rider compared them to
an unrehearsed Marx Brothers movie on
vacation on location or he’d invite all
the madman over to his apartment to put
on a musical revue in which all the
songs made fun of the boss no idea was
deemed too stupid or unbusinesslike to
try editor al Feldstein dubbed them all
the usual gang of idiots and the
fractious family were the Humboldt that
insult as a badge of honor and that
humble brag insult is still on the
magazine’s masthead in fact it’s in the
current rebooted number one issue that
you can find at your friendly
neighborhood comic shop now I don’t mean
to suggest that the only route to
innovation is to collect a bunch of
weirdos encourage them to prank each
other
mock the boss and all authority figures
and fight like a dysfunctional family
but I will say that I’ve tried it myself
working in the wild days of cable
television in the 1980s and kicked me
signs prank phone calls making faces
behind the boss when he talked and many
more matter stunts helped us to create
of revolution and television at least
that’s true for TNT TBS TCM and all the
other projects for which I’m proud to
have been one of the usual gang of
idiots and here’s the thing the Harvard
eggheads weren’t wrong diverse teams
healthy disagreements and agile
improvisation really are the keys to
innovation but the management gurus
forgot the most important part of the
puzzle making sure to encourage the
madness of the collective the best
leaders learn to cultivate their groups
weirdness collecting a variety pack of
crazies odd balls and misfits to dream
up futures that only weirdos can really
imagine you can channel Bill Gaines
create a sandbox for your mad team to
play in and stand back and lots of
results or better yet you can find your
own
in our weirdo and proudly go a little
mad yourself after all what’s the worst
that can happen you’ve got nothing to
worry about
thanks [Applause]
were you I’d be patting myself on the
back for attending a conference all
about collective genius yep I’d be
feeling pretty smart right about now
maybe even a little genius II I get all
that out of your system right now though
because I’m about to get you in touch
with your inner idiot you’ve probably
guessed that collective genius is a darn
good idea since all these other
whip-smart speakers are talking about it
and it is but it’s even better if you
inject a little craziness into it you’re
about to meet the madman who did
precisely that 60 years before the
Harvard Business Review coined the
phrase collective genius
in fact decades before those Harvard
folks even expense their first business
lunch the gang at Mad Magazine invented
creative madness pioneering a creative
philosophy that we can all use to
release our hidden creative potential by
the end of the grant by the old beardo
on the red carpet you will see that the
maddest leaders foster extreme diversity
of thought and that means embracing
oddballs nuts and weirdos of all kinds
if we really want to unleash collective
genius we’re all going to have to commit
ourselves and go a little mad before we
get started though let’s remind each
other of what collective genius actually
is in 2014 the Harvard Business Review
published groundbreaking work that junk
conventional thinking about leadership
and replaced it with a brand spanking
new philosophy or at least to convince
executives to throw out their old unread
management books and buy some new
management books to not read instead if
I were going to condense their hundreds
of pages into some bullet points for you
to cheat on your management 101 midterm
next well next month I would go for one
build a community of diverse talents
with shared values in a sense of
purpose to allow conflicts and debate
within this community
3-channel these conflicts and to new
ideas for practice a jet agility through
the rapid deployment of these ideas and
five stand back and watch the innovation
explode that’s real good thinking there
Harvard pretty pretty good but I think
you might have forgotten something and I
think I know some folks who can help us
find our way yeah I know these are the
kind of words your mom told you not to
say in public I’m gonna say them a lot
though in the next few minutes to get
you used to hearing them saying them and
being them all of these terms need to be
reclaimed and celebrated just do me a
favor and don’t tell your mom where you
picked them up weird is one of my
all-time favorite words it originally
came from the old English word for
destiny or weird so for me weird means
that special kind of inspired not who
sees the world a little differently and
can peek into the future
I think you know the type today we’re
talking about one of the weirdest of
them all a man who bounced from the
Bible to horror to humor lilamon Gaines
was a comics publisher who practiced mad
leadership turning American business
practice over onto its head and teaching
generations of wise asses how to go mad
but before we see how he created
collective madness let’s see what drove
him mad in the first place it was the
1950s Americans after years of belt
tightening during World War Two had to
be lured back into the pleasures of
buying lots and lots of new crap to
kick-start the economy enter advertisers
and their new electronic Trojan horse
television every households newest
family member
soon everyone loved Lucy father always
knew best and we all left it to the
beaver we watch what everyone else
watched but what everyone else bought
everyone dreamed of being part of a
nuclear family
with a television and every atomic
fallout shelter wives were marched from
the wartime assembly line back into the
home husbands became obedient
organization men conformist armies of
men and grey flannel suits
unsurprisingly men and women were soon
stocking up on his and her martini
glasses and prescription tranquilizers
but if you listened closely you could
hear the rumblings of resistance
snapping fingers at beatnik poetry
recitals growling creatures at driving
monster movies screams of Elvis Presley
fans you could even still hear the faint
echoes of that resistance today if you
took those damn earbuds out every once
in a while
the all-night radio host Jean Shepard
also heard the resistance and the voices
as The Kooks who called him to talk
about mind control and UFOs and bebop
and in 1957 he described the sound for
the squares and what became the most
important intellectual manifesto of the
century Shepard divided the country into
two the night people the weirdos who’ve
listened to the strange sounds of the
world after the normals dropped off to
sleep and the mind numbed mediocre
mainstream whom he called the creeping
meatballs people today people today have
a genuine fear of stepping out and
thinking on their own
he warned creeping meatball ISM is this
rejection of individuality the idea of
thinking individually has become a big
joke only one magazine had the mad
genius to publish this bold attack on
American blandness and it was at the
Harvard Business Review yep you guessed
it gene Shepard was only one of mads
many mad contributors as will say bill
Gaines was good at a lot of things but
his greatest genius was collecting other
geniuses he led mad but mostly it’s
madness and it’s madmen led him
when Bill inherited his dad’s company
educational comics in the 1940s he found
himself cranking out respectable Bible
and history comics that parents and
teachers loved but Bill’s personal taste
lurked elsewhere by 1950 he had turned
pops EC into entertaining comics bill
collected the wildest creatives he could
find and let them loose on some of the
most fantastic gruesome disturbing and
thrilling comics of all time and a
barely profitable 10-cent comedy comic –
that’s number one right there but soon
the creepy meatballs struck back and one
party-pooper in particular a shrink
named dr. Frederic wertham told
Americans that comics were responsible
for destroying our nation’s youth in his
infamous scare screed the seduction of
the innocent he deserves it now as hard
as this might be to believe the US
Senate took dr. wertham seriously and
yeah I know that’s as nuts as if
Congress people today blamed video games
for teenage violence you know something
insane bill Gaines
I’m sorry Congress left Gaines in front
of the Subcommittee on juvenile
delinquency he brought his snarkiness
along with him explaining to the
legislators why he thought this cover
was within the bounds of good taste bill
told the Senators a cover and bad taste
for example might be defined as holding
her head a little higher so the blood
could be seen dripping from it Congress
was not amused and neither was the rest
of the comics industry who got the
government off their backs by creating
the comics code Authority a
self-censoring seal of approval that
promised that comics would never again
see adult themes or wild flights of
creativity this imposed conformity make
made gains lose all interest in comics
fortunately for the history of a
and culture though he didn’t give up but
brainstormed a new direction what if
instead of publishing comics he made fun
of them in a magazine that could run
around the comics code what if he at
least the Krrish the crazies that made
his sci-fi and horror books so
subversive and let him loose to parody
the meatball world around them gains
collective of geniuses became mad
magazines bullpen brain trust and the
world was never the same
other 1950s business leaders police
their employees with community
destroying soul-crushing time management
techniques but gains inked where they
zagged as long as the magazine goes out
on time and it’s funny I let the staff
do whatever they want and if that
included spiking the office water cooler
with booze every once in a while as a
gag so be it gains team was diverse by a
1950 standards there were a lot of
Jewish New Yorkers several of whom were
first-generation Americans mad also
picked up an exile from Castro’s Cuba a
Spanish immigrant via Mexico a refugee
from a Madison Avenue ad agency a
portrait painter from the Ladies Home
Journal a photographer who blew flew
bomber missions during World War two a
Georgia boy who thought it’d be fun to
hop in a car and give New York City a
try and many many other oddballs and
misfits these strong personalities led
to strong disagreements Mad staff was an
equal-opportunity in Soul parade where
everyone shared of the mockery as mad
writer dick DeBartolo explained no
matter how good anything or anybody is
you dump on them and their work mutual
admiration led to mutual trashing and
the battle scars resulted in a better
mad advertisers fought with gains about
Mad satires of their ads gains and the
team doubled down on the gags and
dropped all outside advertising creating
mad unique independence and this is
decades before HBO Netflix hopped on the
No
bandwagon instead of boring staff
meetings gains would load up on mads
madmen and take them on crazy group
vacation one mad rider compared them to
an unrehearsed Marx Brothers movie on
vacation on location or he’d invite all
the madman over to his apartment to put
on a musical revue in which all the
songs made fun of the boss no idea was
deemed too stupid or unbusinesslike to
try editor al Feldstein dubbed them all
the usual gang of idiots and the
fractious family were the Humboldt that
insult as a badge of honor and that
humble brag insult is still on the
magazine’s masthead in fact it’s in the
current rebooted number one issue that
you can find at your friendly
neighborhood comic shop now I don’t mean
to suggest that the only route to
innovation is to collect a bunch of
weirdos encourage them to prank each
other
mock the boss and all authority figures
and fight like a dysfunctional family
but I will say that I’ve tried it myself
working in the wild days of cable
television in the 1980s and kicked me
signs prank phone calls making faces
behind the boss when he talked and many
more matter stunts helped us to create
of revolution and television at least
that’s true for TNT TBS TCM and all the
other projects for which I’m proud to
have been one of the usual gang of
idiots and here’s the thing the Harvard
eggheads weren’t wrong diverse teams
healthy disagreements and agile
improvisation really are the keys to
innovation but the management gurus
forgot the most important part of the
puzzle making sure to encourage the
madness of the collective the best
leaders learn to cultivate their groups
weirdness collecting a variety pack of
crazies odd balls and misfits to dream
up futures that only weirdos can really
imagine you can channel Bill Gaines
create a sandbox for your mad team to
play in and stand back and lots of
results or better yet you can find your
own
in our weirdo and proudly go a little
mad yourself after all what’s the worst
that can happen you’ve got nothing to
worry about
thanks [Applause]
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