You could attend a 3 week executive masterclass to learn the principles of project management. To learn about the practical stuff could take you a lifetime and involve learning from expensive mistakes as well as successes. So, is there a way to learn about Project Management quickly and without risk by examining the spoof rockumentary ‘This is Spinal Tap’. Of course there is! Let’s examine the classic ‘Stonehenge’ sequence to get us started:
It’s obvious to me as a Taphead and sad business consultant with an MBA that the Spinal Tap sequence is a sorry tale of poor project management… Just before the sequence starts a drawing of Stonehenge is drawn on a napkin by Nigel Tuffnell, the group’s guitarist and handed to the scenery designer. This is unwittingly taken by the designer as a definitive project specification. All the project resources are committed to the ‘model’ based on the dimensions (in inches). The band is then forced to execute their strategy using a micro Stonehenge model, due to lack of budget to correct the mistake. They attempt to accommodate the mistake in size by using dwarfs and bringing the Stonehenge model down from the heavens, but it is clear that they have failed. You may rightly say “Well, this is a Hollywood comedy movie and nothing like real life”. Au contraire, as a I break into French, as if to make the point seem more important – if I had a dollar for every company that has told me they have wasted millions on poorly specified projects that resulted in delivery of the wrong thing, I would have retired and you would not be reading this blog. The comparison of the ‘project management gospel according to Business and Spinal Tap’ summarises this:
The Project Management Gospel according to Spinal Tap vs Business
Spinal Tap Business Lesson # 1. If you are experiencing problems in executing a project, look back several stages to the project definition or proposal. Fuzzy goals produce fuzzy action.
I had my own ‘Spinal Tap’ moment when I made a large investment of money and time in ‘cult punk rocker and two hit wonder’ John Otway’s World Tour, having done corporate gigs with John at Pfizer and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). This was a wonderful idea to live the Rock’n’Roll dream on a record breaking world tour, calling at the greatest venues on the planet with a birth, death and car crash all in two weeks, but not necessarily in that order. The idea was great, so what went wrong? Poor execution of the strategy killed the project dead. Watch the trailer video to see the essence of the project idea:
Read more about the comedy of errors that was John Otway’s world tour at The Real Spinal Tap Tour. What was the project management lesson?
Spinal Tap Business Lesson # 2. Inspiration is essential for innovation, but perspiration is even more important to turn your ideas into profit! Bright ideas are plentiful but people who are prepared to sweat it out are rarer.
Check out our seminar offerings based on project management lessons from the John Otway World Tour at The F Word. A recent article about the self-proclaimed ‘Patron Saint of Failure’ can be seen in The Independent. Check out our posts on real heavy rock bands – Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Prince and our evening out with Bernie Torme.
My new book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’ is available for FREE as a pdf. Please contact me directly here or via the Punk Rock People Management webpage for your copy. A beautiful full colour print version and a KINDLE version are is also available.
We’ll finish with another classic Spinal Tap song, Big Bottom, a metaphorical tale about the bottom line…
Postscript – I was just sent this additional video by my Web guru Nick Power of ‘The Folksmen’ – faces seem familiar?
Introducing Chris Glennie, publisher and marketer, who stumbled over Take That (unwillingly ! ) at a concert at Wembley Stadium and found himself contemplating the business issues associated with what the HR profession call ‘teamwork and talent management’ – I’ll let Chris take up the story, but not before we have seen the group in action:
Is the whole greater than the sum of the parts, or does individual talent trump the creativity and productivity of a team? That is the question. It is also the nub of a debate that recently raged on the Harvard Business Review blog.
In the blue corner is William Taylor, cofounder of Fast Company magazine, taking issue with a comment of Mark Zuckerberg’s that ‘Someone who is exceptional in their role is not just a little better than someone who is pretty good … they are a hundred times better.’
In the red corner is Jeff Stibel, chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., putting the opposite case. His argument rests on the assertion that ‘great individuals are not only more valuable than legions of mediocrity, they are often more valuable than groups that include great individuals.’
Chris tells me that he is instinctively in the blue corner, through prejudice, education and experience. But his life was changed when he went to see Take That at Wembley Stadium. As the evening progressed, he was struck by how this particular event perfectly encapsulated both sides of the HBR argument:
“Take That’s performance opened with the four members of the original five who re- formed a few years back: Gary, Jason, Donald and Mark. They’re good, really good. They don’t exactly dance anymore, not like they used to, but they move together well, interact, play off each other. And I thought: Well, that’s about as good as it gets, isn’t it?”
“But then, the four disappeared and the manic, charismatic and frankly already too-sweaty figure of Robbie Williams appeared on stage. The crowd went wild. It’s what they all came for, and Williams did not disappoint. Let him entertain us – yes, we did and I couldn’t help thinking that it had a level of energy, excitement, engagement that made it much better than what came before. It was worth the money on its own. I was left thinking that what was inevitably coming – all five back on stage – would be a disappointment.”
“But it wasn’t. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, at times Robbie Williams threatened to break ranks, and when he did the cohesion nearly broke down, but by and large he worked as one of the team, and the whole event just soared beyond my expectations as an agnostic Take That consumer.”
I too as the editor of this blog would probably not go willingly to see Take That due to misplaced predjudices about boy bands but I can appreciate their talent and Chris’s story. It reminds me of a quote from Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore, who said that when you play with good people, it raises your own performance. This concurs with Chris’ experience, Check back to the post on Deep Purple to see great people making each other greater. The same is true of Led Zeppelin and Prince, who is renowned as a great musical mentor who improves other people’s performances when they work with him. I’m in the camp that says if you want to get better, work with great people AND have the humility and suss to play in the team rather than a soloist when required.
So, what are the ‘Takeways’ from Take That?
Take That on teamwork
Individual star talents are as valuable as a cohesive team. When it works, the result can far exceed the separate component parts working alone.
Take That on professionalism
A true professional knows how to play in a team and be an individual solo performer. True professionals are emotionally literate. They know when to push forward and when to hold back and so on.
Take That on talent management
The job of a manager is to harness precocious talents so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There’s no doubt that a star talent can be a challenge to integrate into a team, and others have to work hard on teamwork with such people around. The manager’s job is to bring these elements into harmony.
For more like this read ‘Punk Rock People Management’ and ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’ – We have a special offer at the moment of ‘buy one, get one dearer’ – Contact me at peter@humdyn.co.uk for this. The new book available as print version, e-book and Kindle, where is was recently rated #1. book in HR / management, surpassing evergreen books such as John Whitmore’s acclaimed ‘Coaching for Performance’ and international HR Guru Dave Ulrich. One reviewer summed it up thus:
POGO POWER: Peter Cook distils HR into 13 concise chapters. I read it on the train this morning and immediately used my ‘instant wisdom’ in a meeting with a client. Most problems are human problems, so safety pin this gem to your leather jacket (OK, carry on your smartphone, if you must) for easy reference.
It takes two ...
About the guest on this blog: After a 20 year career in educational publishing working for blue chip companies and SMEs, Chris Glennie now thinks and writes about the leadership lessons he has learnt along the way. He can be contacted on twitter via @chrisglennie, or via his blog.
Compared with all the ‘one hit wonders’ in music, David Bowie has reinvented himself several times AND taken his audience with him. The parallel lesson in business is that of changing what you do, keeping your customers AND gaining new ones. What can we learn about business from David Bowie? Read on. Before we start, let’s look at a Bowie classic – Life on Mars:
Bowie Business Lesson # 1. Find your focus
David Bowie began performing music when he was 13 years old, learning the saxophone while he was at High School and began playing in a number of mod bands. All these bands released singles, which were generally ignored, yet he continued performing. The following year, he released the music-hall styled ‘Laughing Gnome.’ Upon completing the record, he spent several weeks in a Buddhist monastery. Bloody good idea in my opinion, although I should be so lucky to have written this song in spite of its cheesiness!! Once he left the monastery, he formed a mime company – a non-obvious career move. This was short-lived, and he formed an experimental art group in 1969.
Bowie Business Lesson # 2. Get the right people
As necessity is the mother of invention, Bowie needed to finance the art group, so he signed a record deal. His first album featured ‘Space Oddity,’ which became a major hit single in the Britain. He began miming at T.REX concerts, eventually touring with Marc Bolan’s, bassist / producer Tony Visconti and guitarist Mick Ronson. The band quickly fell apart, yet Bowie and Ronson continued to work together. The next album, ‘The Man who Sold the World’ did not gain much attention. Following the release of ‘Hunky Dory,’ featuring Ronson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman, Bowie developed his most famous incarnation, ‘Ziggy Stardust’. Bowie quickly followed Ziggy with ‘Aladdin Sane’. Not only did he record a new album that year, but he also produced Lou Reed’s ‘Transformer,’ the Stooge’s ‘Raw Power’ and Mott the Hoople’s ‘All the Young Dudes,’ for which he also wrote the title track. Lest we forget this great song:
Bowie Business Lesson # 3. Re-engineer the Business
Bowie unexpectedly announced his retirement from live performances during his final show in 1973. He retreated from the spotlight to work on a musical adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, transforming the work into ‘Diamond Dogs.’ The album was released to generally poor reviews, yet it generated the hit single ‘Rebel Rebel.’ Bowie supported the album with an American tour. As the tour progressed, Bowie became fascinated with soul music. He subsequently refashioned his group into a Philly soul band and revamped his image in sophisticated, stylish fashions. The change took fans by surprise. ‘Young Americans,’ released in 1975, was the culmination of Bowie’s soul obsession, and it became his first major crossover hit, peaking in the American Top Ten and generating his first U.S. number one hit in ‘Fame,’ a song he co-wrote with John Lennon and guitarist Carlos Alomar.
Bowie Business Lesson # 4. Challenge industry sacred cows
Once in Berlin, Bowie began painting, as well as studying art. He also developed a fascination with German electronic music, which Brian Eno helped him fulfil on their first album together, ‘Low.’ Released early in 1977, Low was a startling mixture of electronics, pop and avant-garde technique. It received mixed reviews, but was one of the most influential albums of the late ’70s, as was its follow-up, ‘Heroes’:
We’ll continue this blog at ‘Beyond Heroes‘ through several other ch, ch, ch, changes in Bowie’s career.
p.s. My new book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’ is available for FREE. Please contact me via the Punk Rock People Management webpage for a free pdf copy. A beautifully illustrated full colour print copy is available at PUNK PM. If you are a Kindle book reader, a Kindle version is at KINDLEPUNK - currently ranking at No 1 in the Kindle chart for HR / Business Management books. Woohoo!
I kissed an HR girl and I liked it ... Click to get one
What's new pussycat? Click on the picture for the book
This is a preview for the new book ‘Punk Rock People Management’, available as a high quality print version at Punk HR and shortly as a Kindle book. I’ve included an extract from the book on the theme of innovation to whet your appetite. Our title suggests that we ought to have some music from Tom Jones – hardly punk rock! But a sideways shuffle takes us to one of Tom’s classics performed by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band – the wonderful tortured tale of Delilah:
Here’s the extract:
INNOVATION – What’s new pussycat?
I once read a book entitled “Innovation in HR”, published by an HR institute. I was moderately excited to receive the book, which was a gift for perceived services of acting as an ‘agent provocateur’ to the profession – by the way that’s ‘irritant’ in English. You can be sure that, once an HR professional starts speaking in French to you, they are about to be inauthentic. Imagine my disappointment when I opened the book to find it empty – ha, ha! ‘Caveat emptor’ I should have replied to keep the foreign language HR intercourse going….
Yet, perhaps that is a little unfair, and I feel I deserve to have my bare bottom thrashed with hawthorn twigs for even having such thoughts! Nonetheless, I must be brutally truthful, in that this rather long book had very little to say other than ‘be positive’. This in itself is often only half the story in terms of innovation. It may be nice to surround yourself with ‘shiny happy people’, but they don’t always succeed in the innovation game. If Isambard Kingdom Brunel had decided to hold a series of ‘iron horse focus groups’, 360 degree appraisal forums and ‘drop in customer transportation strategy listening sessions’, he would probably have never built the Great Western Railway and the world would have never have discovered Swindon – some good points in this then – oops! If James Dyson had written a pleasant letter to Hoover explaining his minor concerns with their vacuum cleaner rather than getting fed up and making one that sucked (in the best sense), we would NOT now have “The Dyson” as a new name for “The Hoover”
In short, innovation in new products and services requires more perspiration than inspiration. Innovation is not over when the flip chart is full in the brainstorming meeting and everyone has imagined 101 ways to use a paper clip as a labour saving device for nail care in HR. Cold sweat, blood and sometimes tears are required.
If you want to innovate, know that perspiration matters more than inspiration, and comes AFTER the brainstorming session. Too many so-called innovation social networks are only concerned with creativity. This fine as far as it goes. However, there is evidence to suggest that modern social networking websites are a new displacement activity, replacing ironing, daydreaming and focus groups at work. In the words of Andy Warhol and Lou Reed “It’s work” that counts. Toyota stands out by being excellent at execution as well as inspiration.
Punk Rock People Management offers us three lessons on innovation:
Perspire more than inspire. A walk on the wild side to discover new ideas is necessary but never sufficient for profitable innovation.
Run the numbers alongside the brainstorming and recycle your thinking until the innovations have been tested to destruction to improve the ratio of new ideas : profitability.
If your innovation is more ‘product push’ than ‘market need’, know that you need to work much harder and differently to succeed.
To finish, here is Rock’n’Roll’s greatest failure John Otway performing Delilah at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) annual conference to the amazement of 200 HR professionals! John attempted to innovate by organising his own record-breaking Rock’n’Roll World tour in the style of Spinal Tap, but failed. This is an innovation story in its own right, more of which will be told in the post on Spinal Tap.
The Beatles transformed the pop song from simple three chord tales of love lost and found into an artform that has defined and redefined much popular music for the latter part of the 20th Century. Take a listen to ‘I am the Walrus’ to hear one of The Beatles’ more complex orchestrated pieces of psychedelic pop from 1967:
This is the first post in a long and winding road which explores what we can learn from The Beatles about business. More on the Beatles and Business in the book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll. We’ll focus on what business leaders can learn about creativity from The Beatles in this post:
Beatles Business Insight # 1. Creativity rests on difference
The Beatles pulled off a clever trick of making diversity work, when it is much more common to resist working with people who are different in business. Lennon and Mc Cartney were quite different characters and this is audible in the songs that they instigated. Some of Lennon’s early songs are considered to have been influenced by the loss of his mother at an early age, for example “Help” and “Nowhere Man”. A kind of beautiful melancholy. It is considered that McCartney coped with his loss rather better and tended to write more optimistic songs such as “All My Loving” and “We can Work it Out”. Of course, both had their moments of doing the opposites of these – witness “Hey Jude” and “Another Day” by Mc Cartney much later in his career, the former was intended to be a message to Lennon’s son after the breakup of his marriage.
Business lesson: Requisite diversity is essential if you are to have an innovative business. Find ways to resolve tensions that build up by putting different people together, but resist attempts to sidestep conflict. The creative leader utilises the tension between opposites whilst maintaining a focus on the goal.
Beatles Business Insight # 2. Creativity rests on dissonance
The Beatles were pioneers at combining textures and influences from Indian music, creating a sound which was at that time dissonant to western ears. Musical note: Indian music tends to use different scales to those traditionally used in Western music e.g. major or minor scales. Take a listen to “Within and Without you” to hear what I mean aurally:
Whilst it is possible to profit from dissonance in music, dissonance in business is the silence in the meeting when someone suggests something that is ‘outside the box’ of traditional thinking patterns. Sometimes it can be heard through people talking about other people as mad, bad or evil outside the meeting in the locker rooms and so on. Dissonance in business costs millions through wasted time, missed opportunities, inadequate follow through of ideas and so on. We spend a lot of time helping people use dissonance in business in order to create strategies that set businesses apart from the crowd. It is a strategy that has helped companies such as Unilever continue to succeed. For example – Their ‘All you need is Dove’ campaign – in their use of full figured women to promote beauty products.
The Doves from above
Business lesson: Find ways to listen to ideas that seem dissonant to currently accepted views of your business strategy. Practice curiosity on a daily basis.
Beatles Business Insight # 3. Creativity rests on discipline
Contrary to conventional wisdom, creativity is not the enemy of structure and discipline. Quite the reverse. If you are going to write a song that is different, it’s important to mark out the territory in ways that leads the listener towards certain familiar aspects, i.e. a refrain, verse and so on in music. Even in some of The Beatles strangest compositions, we find such devices e.g. “Strawberry Fields Forever”:
Creativity without structure and discipline in business does not lead to innovation. Witness Pfizer’s breakthrough inhalable insulin product Exubera. The product was a brilliant idea (no more needles), but failed at the detailed execution stage due to the development of a medical device that was cumbersome and difficult to use. It seemed that nobody dared tell the CEO that the device was a turkey, since he had staked his reputation and that of his employees on it. See my point about dissonance above. Failure to package the product in a way that ‘felt familiar and comfortable’ cost Pfizer a cool $2.8 billion.
Some considered the inhaler for Exubera to be as large as a domestic fire extinguisher ... a major social embarrassment
Business lesson: If innovation is your business, make sure that there is enough of ‘the familiar’ about the new to make the innovation attractive to your customers.
If you like this mini blog do check out our seminar offerings which include sessions on The Beatles, innovation and creativity. Our next stop is at an international conference on the subject in Athens next month. You may also enjoy the posts on creativity lessons from David Brent at Creativity Lessons from The Office, Hendrix v. Clapton and Prince on innovation. Our new book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’ is also available FREE. Please contact me directly via the Punk Rock People Management webpage for your free copy or order a print version at Punk HR.
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I interviewed Dave Wakely who works for ASK Europe – a premier HR and coaching consultancy on music, business, life etc. Dave had kindly given the thumbs up to my books ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll’ and the new one – Punk Rock People Management – available for FREE by clicking on the cover below:
Punk Rock People Management - Click the pic for your FREE copy
Firstly Dave, tell me something of what you do for a living?
I manage and edit the ASK blog, providing food for thought for people in a range of HR, L&D and management/leadership roles. My role at ASK is mostly about language and organisational culture: finding and using a public voice for the company that reflects its values and style, but also exploring themes, topics and ideas and posing questions where conventional wisdom seems heavier on the first of those words than the second. (My role here also includes a whole range of other ways in which we put words in front of the wider world. As an occasional sailor, a non-musical metaphor springs to mind: I may not be steering the vessel, but I’m adjusting the cut of the jib and how closely to the wind we sail.)
The remainder of the week I work in web development, scoping and defining website projects, evolving email campaigns, advising on or helping to create content – much of which involves subtly reminding organisations that whoever operates the mouse calls the shots: the web isn’t just broadcasting. Those who don’t work in a similar role would probably be surprised how much of that role consists of asking people about different aspects of their business, including its culture, values and ethics – but I’d counter by saying that you can’t build an effective web presence for a company if you don’t understand that company in the first place. That’s the difference between ‘being present’ and ‘presenting an advert’.
Along the way, I’ve been a poetry librarian, a learning resources database manager, an information officer in many a setting, an author and editor of open learning materials, a senior university administrator, an events organiser: a very 21st century ‘portfolio worker’ CV, although ‘patchwork’ is perhaps closer to the mark than ‘portfolio’. My life is an abstract quilting concept in motion!
What do you gain from music as a metaphor for thinking about business and organisational life
Apart from solo performers (which I shall therefore just duck entirely as an issue!), music is something that requires multiple inputs and some kind of organising principle. (I see even something as general as ‘everyone improvise simultaneously’ as a principle, although I’m aware that I’m the kind of person that starts from a ‘how shall we behave’ point of view – something MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) recently reminded me.
Sometimes music starts with a closely scripted score where everyone’s part is prescribed for them to play, sometimes there’s a general theme and the arrangement at any given point is a matter of interpersonal interaction and negotiation: either way, there are many contributions and at some level an approach to deploying them. If it weren’t for the word ‘music’ at the start of that description, that could easily be a description of work.
Having played in a wide range of musical combinations (including jazz quartets, big bands, orchestras – and working as a session musician), there’s another important element that is about making music rather than about music in the abstract: the relationships between the players. Each group, band or orchestra needs the right mixture of people, just as it needs the right combination of talents; likewise, each musician has situations that either do or don’t inspire, satisfy and so on. (This is the ‘engagement’ issue: if the music, relationships or people don’t inspire, you probably won’t play your best.) Editors note – too true!
Sticking to popular music, most bands have a culture, a defining spirit, which has arisen from the combination of individuals and their shared values. Although most organisations are perhaps more like backing bands: an entrepreneur (read songwriter/singer/front-person) who develops a repertoire and a style, and builds their outfit around them. How much of their total potential contribution their band members get the opportunity to make might make a good metaphorical question to ask of organisational managers? (In other words, are you giving your staff the opportunity to show what they can really do or add, or are you just directing them? Being a supplier feels rather different to being a colleague, even if – in the context of the relationship – your role is pretty much just to supply. I’d brave a rash conjecture that most people want to give more at work rather than less, as being able to give more makes them feel they have a voice and a contribution to offer.)
How do you use these ideas in your professional life? Any favourite examples?
An interesting question – especially having recently completed a series of psychometric questionnaires, which confirmed or underlined my impression of myself as someone who’s more interested in the potential of collaboration than competition. Amusingly, when I interviewed you in 2009, I referred to Brian Eno’s published diaries and the band James. Another idea I remember from the same book is James’ realisation that “an arrangement is when some of the band stop playing some of the time”. Editor’s note – only the tiniest prompt needed to play some of Eno’s music:
To me, in any given working situation, there’s probably one approach that will be more appropriate than others: to me, that’s not so different to the idea of identifying which instruments, arranging in which way, would make the most effective soundtrack to the moment. It’s a matter of understanding the particular contribution that different individuals can make and deploying your combined human resources to maximum effect. It also goes back to the point about ‘making music’ rather than music in the abstract: the masterful conductor knows how to work not just with music but with the musicians. If you want a great example of how someone helped (you could even say ‘lead’) a group of people to realise and actualise their potential, I think George Martin’s work with The Beatles is a classic case. ‘Produced’ is a very broad adjective, that doesn’t convey the other roles – adviser, arranger, and motivator are just some. He could have simply adopted a managerial line, but he chose to adopt more of a coach’s role. Some of the methods may have stretched a few envelopes, but not as far as they were stretched by the money that subsequently rolled in: there can’t have been too much arguing about the bottom line. If he had been more interested in efficiency and control, Sir George could, of course, just have typed up some sheet music and ordered them to play it …
Kant said that music is the language of the emotions. How does music affect our emotional lives and what implications does that have for people in business and organisational life?
I had to pause and read around on Kant before replying, but found a reference to him classifying instrumental music as “more pleasure than culture” – without words, it can appeal to our senses but not to reason. My understanding is that he was awed by its ability to convey or evoke emotion, but had no role as a conduit for ideas. (Kant lived, of course, many years before Late Junction on Radio 3 or the John Peel Show, so perhaps we can forgive him?)
Within minutes of arriving home in the evening, two things will happen: I will put on the kettle, and I will put on music. There are a few thousand CDs in the house, but I’ll spend a few minutes while my tea brews to select something that gives voice to a feeling that has been suppressed throughout the day, or that has been invoked by the day, or to a feeling the day has generated that needs something to counter-act it. My partner has little interest in music, but gets an instant emotional update as he crosses the threshold from whatever is coming out of the speakers in the kitchen. I think of it as akin to hydration: you have water when you’re thirsty, you play fado when you’re rueful or wistful, and you play kora music when you’re optimistic and thoughtful (or you aren’t but you’d like to be). It’s a restoration of emotional balance, or a purging of an imbalance of one emotion.
My musical choices are overwhelmingly instrumental, which might either offend Kant or lead him to dismiss me as tasteless or shallow. That’s fine: he could still stay for a cup of tea, but we’d have to agree to differ. I have nothing against vocal music per se, but I’m too interested in language to accept perfunctory twaddle: I demand a decent lyric.
As individuals, identifying something that we can use to help us to maintain our personal emotional poise has obvious value; this is harder to think through in an organisational context – one person’s ideal background music is another’s fingernails down the blackboard moment. (I’ve promised not to play that John Surman CD in the office again: the finance team are still recovering.) I cringe a little at the idea of the utility of music, but I can’t deny that I do it.
In terms of implications for organisational life, anything that can encourage us to recognise our impact on others – and help us to deal with their impact on us – has merit in itself. (A couple of organisations I’ve worked with have had no problem with people who rarely have to answer phones working with headphones, choosing their own soundtrack. Others would sternly ban this as inappropriate, but if it helps personal productivity and improves people’s mood I’m not sure I can see the harm.)
More broadly, the example of the impact and importance of something as hard-to-define and non-verbal as ‘atmosphere’ is probably a neglected aspect of working life: it was interesting to note that The Work Foundation highlighted a sense of team atmosphere as a common attribute of those leaders most admired by those who work for them.
Music is one of those things that remind us that human beings cannot be boiled down to process manuals, spreadsheets, job definitions and bottom lines: there are ineffable aspects to us that we should not ignore. Even at the broadest level, if the existence of music can remind us that our moods and emotional tone affect others, then that’s a valuable lesson. And very few valuable lessons come with the bonus of a beautiful tune.
What can we learn from the music business about business in general? More importantly, what should we NOT learn from the music business about business in general?
A hard question, having kept my distance from the music business for many years, although I can’t help but feel that mainstream business could probably draw more and better lessons from the art form than from the industry that has evolved around it. I think we can safely learn that management and creativity are distinct skills, and that the music business requires a balance of both. I’d like to think we can learn that authentic branding trounces manufactured branding every day of the week, but I very much doubt that we can. And the more shameless examples of amateurism or lack of skill – and ethics – in the music business are something we’d do well to avoid importing into other sectors.
It’s very difficult to generalise about a business that embraces everything from The Saturdays to Radiohead, Leonard Cohen to Justin Bieber, indie-labels to global corporations and many other dichotomies. But I’m not too sure it generally provides a healthy model in its treatment of its ‘talent’: “build ‘em up, milk ‘em, drop ‘em” and an urgent sense of churn aren’t characteristics that bode well. Each golden goose is expected to lay all its eggs as quickly as possible and then surrender to the stockpot, to be replaced by the next goose: any development on the goose’s part seems to be coincidental, accidental or self-motivated – at least in the mainstream.
Beware laying all your eggs in one session ...
The cricketer Ed Smith has said some very interesting things about striking a balance between the passionate amateur and the schooled, consistent but less inspiring professional, and about the dangers of putting academies on some kind of pedestal. I’m more concerned by the business people within the music industry than the performers, too many of whom seem to be treated shoddily. As an industry, it’s parasitic: the business depends on the performers, without whom there’s no product.
The story of the music business in response to the rise of the net and the iPod is also a powerful lesson in the importance of keeping an eye on the longer-term and being as interested in that as in maintaining an urgent sense of churn in the present. (I was going to say something about the potency of adolescent dreams of glory, but even if it’s harsh it’s fair to say that those are just as prevalent in many other sectors.) It’ll be interesting to see how musicians use the net and structure their careers in future – I think there’s an unexplored parallel there with knowledge workers and their relationship with employing organisations.
It is thought that attention spans have shortened in a world bombarded by media of all sorts. Perhaps that plays itself out in a nation of people that prefer to consume ‘The X-Factor’ over progressive rock that requires longer and more detailed attention. What do you think to this? What might be the implications for people working in the field of human development?
I think you have a good point, and I think we see its effects in many ways – the familiar death by PowerPoint syndrome, the number of times any writer/editor is encouraged to use bullet lists (‘people won’t read this stuff …’), the tickertape nature of rolling news. Lots of pans with lots of flashes in them, and a comparative lack of metaphorical hearty slow-cooked stews. I do see a contemporary world more fascinated by – and expectant of – the ‘instant’ than 20 years ago: I suspect a lot of this is down to technology and the abundance (of ‘information’, to flatter some of it) that it’s enabled us to generate. Waiting more than a few minutes for something now feels not just like an eternity, but an affront. (One of the many points made in Michael Bywater’s excellent and very funny Big Babies, and a point explored more fully in Michael Foley’s The Age of Absurdity.)
As someone primarily concerned with communication, I can understand the pressures that have produced a culture that’s more heavily slanted to the soundbite, the headline, the nugget, although it’s hard not to be concerned that all this haste might be coming at the price of not just more in-depth understanding, but more especially of nuance and of perspective. We seem more interested in the idea of having news 24 hours a day than in the content of that continuous news (often the same handful of 3 minute clips circulating on a playlist that shifts slowly as the day goes by). While I wonder if I’m turning into a Grumpy Old Man, the questioning approach of such tech-literate commentators as Sherry Turkle and Jaron Lanier makes me feel less alone. And I haven’t forgotten a very ahead-of-the- curve book by Marshall McLuhan’s son Eric, Electric Language, that was first published back in 1998 – and mentioned in an earlier blog – that now feels like a topic in need of a significant update.
(The two things that have struck me most about ‘The X-Factor’ have been the umbrage taken at that cover version of ‘Hallelujah’ – and seeing a performance as fine as Jeff Buckley’s version in the singles chart was an uplifting communal response – but also the lack of longevity of most of the winners. The programme has always struck me as a firework display: buckets of wow, whizz and bang, but precious little left the following morning beyond a lingering bad smell. There’s an immense urgency and drama about something that really doesn’t matter that much, except to the contestants and the programme owners, which seems emblematic of rather too much of our times. )
From the work we do at ASK, in terms of implications for human development, we’re conscious that it’s the transfer of learning that ultimately delivers value and improved performance – both for the individual and the organisation – but that this (and the techniques used to enhance it) takes time. Organisational impatience for instant results means that outcomes are measured at the earliest opportunity (Kirkpatrick’s Level 1 – the proverbial ‘happy sheet’), and therefore don’t measure appropriately. What organisations want is the long-term impact of the learning event, but what they measure is the degree of satisfaction with the event itself. Misleading data feeds back into the process, and allowing time for transfer – or factoring in its importance – take a backseat. I’m not sure how we can counter this tendency – which impacts on more than our approach to learning and training: perhaps the answer is a new series of motivational posters. (“There is no F in magic bullet” springs to mind.) Suggesting an organisational equivalent to the Slow Food movement sounds both fatuous and pretentious – and implies there’s a merit in taking your time for its own sake – but I think most of us would benefit from more frequent reminders that there are multiple timescales in life and that something we might give more attention to is the signal to noise ratio in the ‘messages’ we receive.
Finally, tell me about your personal music tastes. What do you gain from music, both personally and professionally?
My own musical tastes are free-ranging, as colleagues would probably agree. (I often get Amazon to deliver CDs to the ASK Office to save all those cards through the door, and most weeks 3 or 4 albums will arrive. They tend to fall into the jazz or world music categories more than pop and rock, and I have some particular loves (30s/40s jazz songs, fado, Nuevo flamenco, modern tango, gypsy jazz, ambient electronics, a good torch song) and total blindspots (reggae, ‘African desert blues’, klezmer and Celtic folk – the last of which makes me cringe on impact). This week’s stack includes Lokkhi Terra (who describe themselves as ‘Banglafrolatinjazz’), Argentine composer Guillermo Klein, Portuguese guitar maestro Carlos Paredes, Swiss guitarist Nicolas Meier who’s heavily influenced by Turkish folk music, and a Lebanese oud trio, Le Trio Joubran. I’m as obsessive about the guitar as about music, so everything has a plucked stringed instrument of some kind involved, but the styles range very broadly – musically and geographically. Two of these are performers I saw at this year’s WOMAD Festival, where I remember a conversation with an old friend – a singer – about what drew us to different musicians. For her, possibly as one who loves to dance, it’s often a rhythmic pulse, while for me it’s almost always a captivating melody or an interesting way with harmony. (I dance like an Englishman – badly and rarely – so a beat is not enough.) She wants to be moved, while I want to be captivated and entranced.
If I could put fully into words what I get personally from music, I’d have linguistic powers of such astonishing prowess I might be tempted to abandon music – but its music’s ability to go beyond words and to evoke emotions, situations or places that is so compelling. It’s almost like our sense of smell – the way fresh bread can bring back the corner baker’s shop from your childhood, or a particular flower’s scent can recall a grandmother. There are pieces of music that made such an impact the first time I heard them, I could describe exactly where I was when I first heard them – even the stranger stood in front of me in the crowd and the temperature of the room. If we could do that so powerfully with words, music might become redundant!
Professionally, I think I’ve gained at two levels. Given the chance, there will be background music where and while I work, and the soundtrack can really influence the mood: I can enhance – or undermine – my own performance depending on my choices on the day. Less superficially, I think music has taught me about team-work and collaboration, about knowing that there are times to play to the gallery and times to provide thoughtful unobtrusive accompaniment. And that not playing, or providing an unconventional counterpoint, or combining instruments in different are all available options. And, of course, that even the most exquisite harp and flute duet is a waste if your audience want Status Quo, burgers and a knees-up. (No problem, but can the harpist blag it on a Telecaster or how adept is the flautist with a pair of BarBQ tongs?) It’s that point about making music again, but it’s about using your ears as well as your instrument: musicians don’t just play together, they listen very closely to each other too. Might this be their biggest lesson to humanity?
Well, I don’t think I can follow that Dave – thanks everso for your time and we’ll finish with one of the artists you have mentioned here. In the spirit of what Dave has said re premature evaluation, let’s give this piece its proper time and space:
Finally, on the subject of the pace of business life and the need to balance this with life experiences that require more gradual and careful attention, here’s a plug for a one-off concert taking place on October 01 by the musical genius Bill Nelson. Bill produces beautiful soundscapes mixing electronica with his virtuoso guitar work. Just a few tickets left. Here is the master at work at the ‘Sensoria’ art festival in Sheffield earlier this year:
Introducing the Livin’ Lovin’ Maid Maria McCarthy, massive Led Zeppelin fan and author of strange fruits – a new book of poems which offer surprising glimpses into our 21st-century lives – the ‘strange fruits’ of our civilisation or lack of it. Shot through with meditations on the past and her heritage as ‘an Irish girl and English woman’. The book can be found on Amazon with proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer.
Strange Fruits - Maria Mc Carthy
Maria has been a long term advocate of music where I live in Kent and it turns out that she appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Home Truths, programme, the home of the legend that is John Peel. Maria told the story of her infatuation with Led Zeppelin when growing up and I’ve decided to post the story here, following the exceptional reaction to the previous post on Led Zeppelin. Let’s get the Led out before we get started on Maria’s story:
So here’s Maria’s story of her infatuation with Led Zeppelin and the personal consequences of that infatuation. I must say I made a similar mistake with T.REX albums, giving them away to a girlfriend in a moment of madness brought on by love but we’ll save that for later…
Robert was my first rock sex God. I had him plastered on my teenage bedroom wall in various stage poses; copious hair flying and shirt ripped open in mid-performance. I later wondered if perm lotion and Carmen rollers had a part to play in those curls, and if the bulge in his Levis was artificially enhanced, like the guy in Spinal Tap with the salami down his trousers. But when I was seventeen, a picture of Plant set in motion the female equivalent of my mojo rising.
In our first year of courting, my husband-to-be and I went to the legendary Knebworth concert where we experienced the glory of Plant and Page in the flesh. And when we moved in together we each had a full set of twelve inch Zepps that snuggled side by side in our newly combined collections. Robert Plant even attended the birth of our second child; he was singing Big Log, of all things, through the headphones of my cassette Walkman as I gave the final push (Editor’s note – no picture provided).
When we outgrew our two-bedroom flat, we sold some of the records to raise a deposit on a house. It made sense, I know. I was nearly thirty, and it was time to put away childish things. There were new priorities. Two Frampton Comes Alive became one, the by then unfashionable Phil Collins was discarded, and the Zeppelins reduced to one set. We kept my husband’s copies because his signature on the sleeves was a no-no for record dealers.
We moved from London to Kent with our two girls, three cats and one record collection. 800 vinyl albums and countless seven inch singles, requiring special treatment during the move. The boxes were not to be stacked and were marked “Handle With Care.” But after eight years, I’d had enough of the collections, filling the house from loft to cellar. I had married a hoarder; an obsessive collector of not just records, but also stamps and model trains, videos and music magazines. The house that I had once found spacious became cramped. Where was my space? If I tried clearing things out, to find a haven for my treasured possessions and indeed for myself, he’d go through the boxes destined for the charity shop, and take his stuff back out. I decided it was time for division.
The girls stayed with me along with the cats and some of the records. My mother was appalled when he took the recliner chair for his new house. There was genuine anguish in her voice when she said, “How could he split the three piece suite?” For me it was the loss of half my Led Zeppelin collection. When it came to dividing the Zepps I was bequeathed Led Zeppelin Three,Four, and Presence.
I gradually removed the excess shelving from the house. I wanted a slimline life, uncluttered. My love of record collecting was also a thing of the past. For years I was unable to look at second hand records. That was his place; kneeling on the floor at boot fairs, riffling through other people’s former treasures.
Then I met a new man. Whilst wandering around the small Surrey town where he lives, I was enticed by a sign leading down an alleyway to “Vinyl Hideaway”. Before I knew it, I was asking for Zeppelin, like a child starved of sweets, and boxes were laid before me by the two vinyl anoraks who owned the store. We were soon exchanging Zepp stories. They were in awe of my Knebworth experience, shocked at the loss of half my Zeppelins, and I in turn was stunned by their knowledge and extensive collection of first pressings, imports and bootlegs.
I left £23 lighter, clutching Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti – double album gatefold, a picture of a tenement building with cut out windows on the cover, filled with the letters spelling out the title on the insert. I would have bought more, but they didn’t take credit cards. I walked down the High Street with my LP-shaped carrier bag. Chuffed, in the way that I used to be as a teenager when I carried my Harlequin Records bag before me, so everyone would know I had new records.
With my collection partially restored, my resentment over the great record collection split of 1996 is fading. My forty-sixth birthday brought me Led Zeppelin Two from my lover, and today’s acquisition leaves only Led Zeppelin One, The Song Remains the Same and Coda. Of course, after that there are Robert Plant’s solo albums.
Maria McCarthy’s book strange fruits can be found on Amazon, with proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer. You can find more about her at Cultured Llama and Medway Maria. Since Maria mentioned the great Spinal Tap, we’ll end with this piece on them, which satirises Jimmy Page’s guitar bowing technique and the use of multiple guitars. Watch out for a post on Spinal Tap and Project Management in a few weeks time. Oh yes and do check out our new FREE book PUNK ROCK PEOPLE MANAGEMENT OUT - Led Zeppelin even get a mention in it. For more Heavy Metal Business articles – check SPINAL TAP on project management, DEEP PURPLE on improvisation, LED ZEPPELIN on strategy
Introducing Argentina’s soon to be Rock’n’Roll Vice President. Amado Boudou rides a Harley-Davidson and relaxes by jamming with rock stars. He also follows in a long line of Rock’n’Roll leaders – Junichiro Koizumi, Japan’s reformist President and heavy metal addict, Tony Blair, Ted Heath, Bill Clinton, David Blunkett and so on.
Bill blowin' his business horn
So, why am I writing about Mr Boudou? It seems that his lifestyle has become the focus of debate concerning his competence to handle the country’s economic affairs. This is encapsulated in the comment “We want a minister, not a guitar player”
I find this bizarre. Some people delight in picking out minor aspects of someone’s lifestyle and generalise that it adversely affects their competence to do their chosen job. I’m wondering if a similar reaction would have occurred if the media had pointed out that Winston Churchill suffered from depression? This is not confined to politicians. Some years ago a senior HR colleague working for the Police confided in me for some career advice. In his spare time he ran a disco and his boss had told him to stop running it if he wanted to get on. Why is this stuff so threatening to those in authority?
In defence of his hobby, Amado Boudou has pointed out that “Rock helps me communicate directly with the people because rock doesn’t lie, and people are fed up with lying politicians”. Unfortunately, he is right. If I had to choose between a cold analyst and a competent economist with a soul, I know which one I would choose as a leader. The people who lead need to brilliant technicians of their chosen disciplines, plus they need to have humility and soul to engage their followers. It’s a theme I explore in the book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll’.
Leadership with Soul and Attitude
So, should we allow Amado Boudou to keep his hobby? Post your thoughts on why leaders should or should not be allowed to have a life or a hobby.
The title of the post reminds me of Madonna’s take on politics from the film Evita. Any excuse for a bit of Madge!
Let’s examine the classic ‘Stonehenge’ sequence to get us started:
