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  • BENJAMIN ZANDER: There are a lot of stories about

  • conductors, mostly told by orchestra players.

  • And one of my favorites is the one about Toscanini, who was a

  • very great conductor, who had the ability to galvanize

  • people to great passion and intensity and expression, and

  • he also had a temper, famous temper.

  • Apparently, when he did one of these temper tantrums, he took

  • his watch and smashed it on the floor.

  • I heard recently he bought them wholesale.

  • Anyway, the story goes that in the middle of the rehearsal he

  • saw that one of the players in the double bass section wasn't

  • playing very well, and he shouted at him, "You're

  • fired!" This was in the days before the union.

  • We can't do that now.

  • But in those days, you could fire a musician without any

  • explanation or recourse.

  • That would be the end of his career.

  • So this poor man had to go home, tell his wife he didn't

  • have a job.

  • As he left the room for the last time, he turned around

  • and shouted at Toscanini, "You're a no good son of a

  • bitch." And Toscanini shouted back, "It's too late to

  • apologize."

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • That's the old style of leadership.

  • It's top-down, hierarchical, right-thinking, and male.

  • And it served humanity for about 75,000 years.

  • Now, I used to be that kind of a leader.

  • Not quite as extreme, but I was successful as a conductor.

  • But I paid a high price in terms of the energy,

  • well-being, and self-expression of the

  • people around me.

  • And then I had a quite extraordinary event that

  • happened in my life.

  • It was almost like a road to Damascus event for me.

  • I was 45 years old, and I'd be conducting for 20 years or

  • more, and suddenly I had a realization, for the first

  • time, that the conductor of an orchestra

  • doesn't make a sound.

  • Now, my picture appears on the front of the CD.

  • But the conductor doesn't actually make a sound.

  • He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other

  • people powerful.

  • And when that occurred to me, it was so profound, had such

  • an effect, that people in my orchestra said, Ben, what

  • happened to you?

  • And that's what happened.

  • I realized that my job was to awaken

  • possibility in other people.

  • Now, it became from there a real question whether I was

  • doing that.

  • And the way you find out whether you're doing that is

  • to look at their eyes.

  • If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it.

  • And if the eyes are not shining, you

  • get to ask a question.

  • And this is the question: who am I being that my players'

  • eyes are not shining?

  • We can do that with our children.

  • Who am I being that my childrens'

  • eyes are not shining.

  • Now, from this moment and from this discovery, Roz and I

  • started exploring together a new kind of leadership.

  • Now, we distinguished two worlds--

  • two worlds.

  • One world we called the downward spiral.

  • The world of the downward spiral, in which Toscanini was

  • conducting his orchestra.

  • The world of the downward spiral is the world of

  • competition, competition in which you might be energized,

  • but you might also be demoralized.

  • The world of fear and pressure, in which you might

  • be galvanized to great things, and at the same time, you

  • might be paralyzed.

  • So the lines come down and they also go up.

  • It is the world in which we live normal life.

  • Most conversations take place in the downward spiral.

  • Gossip and all the magazines that depend on it take place

  • in the downward spiral.

  • TV shows that we're used to.

  • The Apprentice, a perfect example of

  • the downward spiral.

  • How To Be A Survivor.

  • We have another program, How To Be A Millionaire.

  • And I learned about another one today called

  • Million Pound Drop.

  • Those are all downward spiral conversations and games.

  • The stock market is a perfect image for the downward spiral.

  • Sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down.

  • And we have to constantly observe to see whether it's up

  • or whether it's down, which gives us much excitement and

  • also much dis-ease as it goes down.

  • That's the world.

  • Sports, of course, full of downward spiral, but in sports

  • it doesn't matter because we all go out for a beer

  • afterwards.

  • But our educational system is based on a downward spiral,

  • because there's nowhere to go from an A but down.

  • And so we shouldn't be surprised if our

  • children look anxious.

  • Right now, many of you have young children who are worried

  • about whether they're going to get into college and accepted

  • or rejected.

  • We have a 4-year-old who's worried that he may not get

  • into preschool.

  • So this is a world of measurement and a world of

  • comparisons.

  • Sometimes it seems as though it's the only world, which is

  • not the case, which is why I asked for another flip chart.

  • This world is called the world of radiating possibility, and

  • it has a completely different shape, going out like this.

  • This is a world of shared commitments, shared

  • involvements, of open-heartedness, of

  • open-mindedness, of

  • contribution, of love, of health--

  • both personal and

  • international and for the world--

  • collaboration, curiosity, and grandchildren.

  • Those of you when you get to my age will have this

  • experience of having grandchildren.

  • One of mine, who's six, doesn't walk, she skips

  • everywhere she goes, like this.

  • Now, you don't see this much on Wall Street.

  • They don't do that on Wall Street.

  • If somebody did that on Wall Street, they'd come along in a

  • white van and take them away.

  • But all my grandchild is saying is I'm happy to be here

  • and I'm happy you are here, too.

  • And there's a piece of music which goes with that, which is

  • the Beethoven's "7th Symphony," which some of you

  • know it goes like [SINGING RHYTHM].

  • That's actually a very hard rhythm to keep.

  • That rhythm tends to fall into [SINGING RHYTHM].

  • If you're a little lazy, [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

  • [SINGING RHYTHM],

  • which is a march.

  • You can do that for hours.

  • This rhythm is [SINGING RHYTHM].

  • That's the rhythm of skipping.

  • When I did the recording of it-- which, incidentally, you

  • can get at amazon.com--

  • the orchestra, which was a wonderful orchestra, the

  • Philharmonia Orchestra, played, [SINGING RHYTHM].

  • After a while, they got a bit tired and played,

  • [SINGING RHYTHM].

  • I said no, no, the rhythm is [SINGING RHYTHM].

  • Oh yes, [SINGING RHYTHM].

  • It kept on falling back.

  • My job is to remind the players what the rhythm of

  • transformation is, because transformation lives here, and

  • the rhythm of transformation is lighter and brighter and

  • faster and more buoyant than the rhythm of

  • exhortation and blame.

  • You should, you would, you must, you need.

  • So what we know about this world over there is that life

  • unfolds in the story we tell.

  • It's, in other words, an invented world.

  • Now, you probably know the story of the two show salesmen

  • who were sent to Africa in the 1900s from Manchester in order

  • to find out if they could sell shoes in Africa.

  • And they wrote telegrams back to base in Manchester.

  • And one of them wrote, "Situation hopeless.

  • Stop.

  • They don't wear shoes." The other one wrote, "Glorious

  • opportunity, they don't have any shoes yet."

  • Now those two stories are told about

  • circumstances that are identical.

  • The circumstances hadn't changed, only what changes is

  • what we say about it.

  • And you notice that even the music of that statement,

  • "Situation hopeless, they don't wear shoes," and

  • "Glorious opportunity, they don't have any shoes yet,"

  • along with the hand motion, is a totally different world and

  • we get to choose at every moment of every single day

  • which place we're standing in.

  • Now, it may seem to some of you that this sounds like

  • positive thinking.

  • It is not positive thinking.

  • Positive thinking is saying something is great when you

  • know it's shitty.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • And it's stupid, and it belongs in

  • the downward spiral.

  • Possibility is something quite different, and I'm going to

  • tell you a story.

  • My father who, as he told you, he was quite a remarkable man.

  • He had an amazing ability to turn things upside-down.

  • He used to say, there's no such thing as bad weather,

  • only inappropriate clothing.

  • That was his way.

  • And he was a survivor from the Holocaust. He lost his mother

  • in Auschwitz, and he lost eight brothers--

  • members of his family.

  • And he lost everything.

  • He lost his home, his belongings, his money, his

  • profession.

  • And he came to England with four children to

  • support and a wife.

  • And then he was interned.

  • They had internment camps in those days for Germans, and

  • they put them all in these camps.

  • There were 2,000 men living in tents.

  • And the state of fear and anxiety under which these

  • people lived must have been virtually unbearable.

  • Some of them were so stressed that they sat, my father told

  • me, against the barbed wire fence for the

  • entire time of the day.

  • Now, he looked around and said, there are a lot of

  • intelligent people here.

  • We should have a university.

  • And so they started a university in that camp, with

  • 40 classes running regularly.

  • No paper, no pencils, no books, no blackboard, nothing.

  • Just people talking to each other.

  • That is possibility.

  • He didn't say this situation is great and pretend that it

  • was positive.

  • He simply made up his mind to create something out of

  • circumstances that seemed to have no hope and no

  • possibility in them.

  • That is the secret of possibility.

  • The art of possibility, which is the name of a book, is the

  • art of moving from here to there.

  • And leadership is taking people with you.

  • That's simply what it is, this new view.

  • Now, central to this is the notion of vision.

  • In the middle of this circle I'm going to put the word

  • vision, because that is crucial.

  • Now, there's a great deal of misunderstanding about vision.

  • If you go to the London Business School--

  • many of you have been there-- in the hallway of the London

  • Business School there is a very large stone plaque, which

  • says, "Our vision is to be the preeminent business school in

  • the world." I went to the director and I said, you know

  • that's not really a vision.

  • She said, I know, but it's written in stone.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • Now, a vision, to be a vision, has to be for everybody.

  • There must be nobody who's left out.

  • The Boston Philharmonic has a vision.

  • Our orchestra is called-- our vision is "Passionate

  • music-making without boundaries." And that's the

  • thing that leads our organization.

  • Our orchestra's not run by a person, it's run by a vision.

  • And every conversation we have and every discussion is led by

  • that vision.

  • So we had a discussion recently about ticket prices

  • for next year.

  • They have to go up, yes, by all means, they will go up,

  • but not the cheapest ones, they've been

  • the same for 30 years.

  • Passionate music-making without boundaries.

  • See, that's how it works.

  • The Boston Symphony, which is the other great

  • orchestra in Boston--

  • the richest orchestra in the world, actually--

  • if you give your tickets back to the Boston Symphony because

  • you can't use them at the weekend, they resell them and

  • make more money.

  • If you give your tickets back to the Boston Philharmonic, we

  • give them to Rosie's Place, which is a homeless shelter,

  • because there are many people at the homeless shelter who

  • love classical music but they can't afford the tickets.

  • So there was somebody at a meeting I went to recently who

  • was standing over here firmly and said, 3% of the population

  • likes classical music.

  • If we could move it to 4%, our problem would be over.

  • I say everybody loves classical music, they just

  • haven't found out about it yet.

  • Now, the question is: how would you walk, how would you

  • talk, how would you be if you thought 3% of the population

  • likes classical music [MUMBLING]?

  • How would you walk, how would you talk, how would you be if

  • you thought everybody liked classical music, they just

  • haven't found out about it?

  • So these two words are absolutely separate.

  • The vision under which I run my life is that everybody

  • understands and loves classical music.

  • But let's experiment here and see.

  • We have a very interesting situation.

  • We have a young pianist, her name is Olga.

  • I have never met her before.

  • I've been told she's a wonderful

  • pianist. We've never met.

  • She has no idea what's going on here.

  • She just walked in.

  • And I've asked her to come and play for us.

  • And so we're going to see what happens.

  • She's going to play the first movement of the "Moonlight

  • Sonata" of Beethoven.

  • We welcome Olga.

  • Thank you for coming.

  • Please, go to the piano.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • [MOONLIGHT SONATA]

  • BENJAMIN ZANDER: Now, first of all I want everybody to clap

  • because [INAUDIBLE].

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • Now, so Olga, you're an extraordinary musician and

  • you're a beautiful pianist, and you have amazing capacity

  • to hold the concentration of the listeners.

  • I have some good news and some bad news.

  • This is a group of people divided

  • up into three sections.

  • The first section are people--

  • it's quite a small section--

  • they are people who love classical music.

  • They will listen to classical music at every moment of the

  • day or night.

  • They have their radios permanently on the FM radio

  • classical station.

  • They go to the symphony.

  • They have CDs in their car.

  • Their children are learning instruments.

  • They go to the symphony.

  • They are passionate.

  • They would be willing to listen to you forever.

  • We don't have to worry about them.

  • That's the good news.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • The second group of people in this room are--

  • they don't mind classical music.

  • You know, They don't mind it.

  • They come home from a long day in the office and they take a

  • glass of beer, a little Vivaldi in the background

  • doesn't do any harm.

  • That's the second group.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • And then the third group are the people who actually never

  • listen to classical music.

  • It's just not part of their life.

  • But leave out the first group.

  • The second group, although they were absolutely riveted

  • on you at the beginning, gradually lost their

  • concentration.

  • I noticed a couple of them actually take

  • out their cell phones.

  • That's the sad news, isn't it?

  • And halfway through this movement, you had actually

  • lost all the people except the ones who were passionate about

  • classical music.

  • And there's a reason for that.

  • It's not because you're not fabulously gifted and a

  • wonderful pianist, it's because you've misunderstood

  • what Beethoven was trying to say.

  • All right.

  • So shall we look at this?

  • Let's look and see what happens, because my dream is

  • that we will find that every single person in this room

  • actually loves and understands classical music.

  • You know, one of the characteristics of a leader is

  • that the leader never doubts the capacity of the people

  • he's leading to realize whatever he's dreaming.

  • Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, I have a dream, of

  • course, I'm not sure they'll be up to it.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • OK.

  • So they are up to it.

  • So let's see what happened.

  • First of all, the melody is not here.

  • [PLAYING PIANO].

  • That's not the melody.

  • So the melody must be in the left hand.

  • So let's hear the melody in the left hand.

  • [PLAYING PIANO].

  • So what's happening is it starts on a C sharp, it goes

  • down, [PLAYING PIANO],

  • and back to the same C sharp.

  • So could you play it in such a way that they hear the first C

  • sharp and the second C sharp are connected?

  • Here it is.

  • [PLAYING PIANO AND SINGING].

  • Should we get them to sing it?

  • OLGA: Yes.

  • BENJAMIN ZANDER: Let's get them to sing it.

  • OK, here comes.

  • All right, everybody.

  • You conduct.

  • Here.

  • Everybody's singing.

  • Are you ready?

  • [SINGING NOTES].

  • Good.

  • Can you get them to really hear that the first C sharp

  • and the last C sharp are identical?

  • I'll play this time and you conduct them.

  • Are you ready?

  • Here we go.

  • Great.

  • [SINGING AND PLAYING PIANO]

  • Ah, oh is that beautiful.

  • Did you hear how beautifully they sang?

  • Wow.

  • This is the--

  • it's the Google choir.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • I heard both C sharps.

  • Now, I'm going to point something out to you that is

  • going to absolutely shock you.

  • Because if you do that again and I play the triplets, look

  • what's happened.

  • You conduct them again.

  • [SINGING AND PLAYING PIANO].

  • It's twice as fast. It's twice as fast. Isn't that amazing?

  • Now, for 180 years, which is the time that has elapsed

  • since Beethoven wrote that, the world has misunderstood

  • how this piece goes.

  • And the reason is because Beethoven didn't say anything

  • about moonlight.

  • You know that?

  • Do you know who said moonlight?

  • It was the publisher.

  • He thought it'd sell more copies if he said moonlight.

  • And he was right.

  • This piece has sold more copies than any other piece of

  • music in the history of the world.

  • And he thought, the publisher thought, that if he said

  • moonlight, and the pianists all went like this,

  • [PLAYING PIANO],

  • which is fine for the opening, because even the tone deaf

  • people would be moved by that.

  • But when you get to this, [PLAYING PIANO],

  • you've even lost the classical music lovers.

  • It sounds like somebody practicing.

  • [PLAYING PIANO].

  • It makes no sense.

  • It's clearly nonsense.

  • So should we find out really?

  • Now, what Beethoven wrote was not "Moonlight Sonata," he

  • wrote "Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia." A fantasy.

  • It's a fantasy.

  • So let's see where we can find a fantasy.

  • [MOONLIGHT SONATA]

  • [APPLAUSE]

BENJAMIN ZANDER: There are a lot of stories about

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