Peter Guber
In high-consequence moments, decks and dashboards do not move people. Conviction does. The leaders who carry the room turn information into a story their audience has reason to act on, and most senior teams have never been formally taught how.
Peter Guber teaches senior leaders the discipline of purposeful storytelling, drawing on his career as Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Mandalay Entertainment, and as co-owner of the three-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Peter Guber
- He has built and led organizations across film, music, professional sports, and esports. The storytelling framework that runs through his work has been pressure-tested in each, and senior audiences hear it from someone who has actually used it to move boards, talent, partners, and capital.
- He authored the only mainstream business book on storytelling to hit #1 on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists simultaneously. Tell to Win and his HBR cover article The Four Truths of the Storyteller give audiences a portable framework they can take into their own communications work, not a collection of war stories.
- He speaks from current operating experience as Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, co-executive chairman of the Golden State Warriors, and owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The material reflects problems he still has to solve every week.
- The same discipline has been honed across more than forty consecutive years of teaching at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, recognized in 2017 with the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor.
Biography highlights
- Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group; former Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment; former Chairman and CEO of Polygram Entertainment; former President of Columbia Pictures; co-founder of Casablanca Record & Filmworks.
- Films he produced or executive produced have grossed over $3 billion worldwide and received 50 Academy Award nominations, including five Best Picture nominations and the Best Picture win for Rain Man. Other titles include Batman, The Color Purple, Midnight Express, Flashdance, Gorillas in the Mist, The Witches of Eastwick, and The Kids Are All Right.
- Co-Executive Chairman and co-owner of the Golden State Warriors (NBA Champions 2015, 2017, 2018); owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers (World Series winners 2020 and 2024); Owner and Executive Chairman of Los Angeles Football Club (MLS); Co-Executive Chairman of aXiomatic Gaming, owner of esports franchise Team Liquid.
- Author of Tell to Win (Crown Business, 2011), instant #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller; named by Fortune one of “5 Business Books You Can Really Use.” Earlier books include Shootout: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, which became a seven-year AMC television series he hosted.
- Author of the Harvard Business Review cover article “The Four Truths of the Storyteller” (December 2007).
- Professor for more than forty years at UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. UCLA Medal recipient (2017). Appointed to the University of California Board of Regents by Governor Jerry Brown (2017).
Biography
Sony Pictures Entertainment led the industry in domestic box office market share for four straight years after Peter Guber became Chairman and CEO in 1989. Over the same period, the studio earned 120 Academy Award nominations, the most ever recorded by any company in any four-year stretch.
What ran through that work, and through the decades before it at Columbia Pictures, Polygram, and Casablanca Records, was a discipline Guber later codified. He could take a strategic intent and translate it into a story the audience he needed to move had reason to act on. He named it purposeful storytelling. The Harvard Business Review cover article The Four Truths of the Storyteller laid out the four conditions a story has to meet to do real work in a room: true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission.
Tell to Win, his expansion of the same thesis, hit number one simultaneously on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists in 2011. Fortune named it one of “5 Business Books You Can Really Use.” In Guber’s argument, data is the cost of entry; persuasion is the work that closes the deal.
Guber still runs Mandalay Entertainment Group, co-owns the three-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors and the World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers, and chairs the esports investment vehicle aXiomatic. He has taught the same craft at UCLA Anderson and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television for more than forty consecutive years, by the Chancellor’s account never missing a year. In 2017, UCLA awarded him the UCLA Medal, its highest honor, the same year Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to the University of California Board of Regents.
Key speaking topics
- Purposeful storytelling in business
- Leadership communication and persuasion
- Leading through uncertainty and disruption
- Innovation and organizational culture
- High-performance team building across industries
- Storytelling for marketing and brand strategy
Ideal for
- CEOs and executive leadership teams preparing to communicate strategic change to internal and external audiences.
- Chief commercial, marketing, and sales leaders rebuilding the persuasion infrastructure of their organizations.
- Founders and senior operators raising capital, recruiting talent, or pitching boards.
- Executive education clients, leadership development programs, and partner or customer summits where the centerpiece is communication craft.
Audience outcomes
- A working test for their own communications: whether the story is true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission.
- A sharper distinction between informing an audience and persuading them, with a clearer view of where most leadership communication breaks down.
- Specific examples from film, sports, and the boardroom that they can map onto their own decisions and pitches.
- A method for finding and shaping the right story for a specific audience and a specific moment.
- Shared vocabulary they can take back to their teams and demand of communications, marketing, and IR functions.
Talks
A working method for shaping data, intent, and decisions into stories that audiences actually act on, drawn directly from the thesis of Guber’s #1 New York Times bestseller.
Key takeaways:
- Where to find stories worth telling, and what type of story works for which audience
- The four truths of the storyteller, and how to use them to pressure-test communications
- How to turn passive listeners into active participants and viral advocates for the message
How leaders use purposeful storytelling to mobilize organizations through uncertainty and change when data alone is no longer enough.
Key takeaways:
- How to use story to build unity across disparate groups inside an organization
- How to maintain resilience and momentum when results are negative and confidence is shaken
- How to translate effort into inspiration the workforce can carry without the leader in the room
Why leaders who play it safe in volatile markets get displaced, and how to build a tolerance for informed risk into the organization.
Key takeaways:
- Why incremental thinking is now a defensive failure, and where to look for exponential opportunities
- How to operate productively outside the comfort zone, and what informed risk looks like in practice
- How to build a culture that seizes change before competitors do
How leading organizations generate ideas, unleash creative talent, and accelerate innovative thinking through the business faster than competitors.
Key takeaways:
- Why originality has become the litmus test of strategy
- How to overcome internal resistance to new ideas and accelerate time-to-market
- Lessons from working with creatives, partners, and audiences across film, sports, and digital media