Let's pretend we're married ... "Prince" attempts to forge a strange relationship with Miss Haversham and Scrooge
Employee engagement – what does it mean really? Do more engaged employees do more and better work for longer? Is engagement some kind of secret code for ‘in company dating’ or a causal relationship between casual workers and casual sex? And so on… I attended an academic meeting on the vexed questions of employee engagement at the University of Kent the other day. I took the opportunity to extract the gems from all the World Class speakers who presented. But not before we take an insight from one of Rock’s Honorary Professors, none other than Prince:
Starting with Professor Paul Sparrow, Director of the Centre for Performance Led HR. I’ve summarised Paul’s most compelling insight from his opening keynote:
Engagement is needed in the current age for three reasons: When the world outside changes incrementally or radically; When you want to change the rules of the game for disruptive innovation or; When you want to become more fluid / adaptive
The last reason reminded me of Chris Argyris’ and Peter Senge’s work on learning companies – see the post on Britney Spears for more on this.
Dr Amanda Shantz from York University, Canada offered us some great insights into what to do with disengaged employees. Dysfunctional relationships are at the heart of such problems and therefore part of any potential antidotes. Once again Prince offers us a gem of wisdom via his piece “what’s this strange relationship, ship, ship, ship, ship” :
Amanda went for some good old-fashioned job design ideas courtesy of Hackman and Oldham. I confess I found myself enjoying these since they align well with ideas I presented in Punk Rock People Management. Just because Hackman and Oldham are a bit untrendy, does not mean that they should be displaced by a “7-dimensional model from a trendy HR consultancy firm”. Click on the PUNK ROCK HR link to get a free copy of the book and some wholesome common sense on job design and engagement.
A no-nonsense guide to people management for busy people
On to Professor Rob Briner from University of Bath, who posed the ‘Morrissey question’: How bad an idea is employee engagement? A jolly good question in my view ! He provoked the audience in a very skilled way to question the notion that engagement is actually a good thing, supported by a good deal of well researched data. Rob demonstrated eloquently the problem of HR gurus such as Gary Hamel, who seem to mouth the word ‘engagement’ at HR conferences more times per minute than Robert Plant used to sing ‘baby’ in the average Led Zeppelin song. Rob’s wonderful talk ‘forces’ me to play Morrissey’s great hit on person-job fit and the HR ‘happiness’ agenda:
Dr Brad Shuck from the University of Louisville looked at the ever-present dilemma of measurement. We are able to measure almost everything these days and many businesses do just that. Just because you can measure everything doesn’t mean you should. One quote from Kahn stood out “The fragility of engagement is a function of how vulnerable we feel, and are, when we risk being fully present in a situation”. Feels more like a poem or a lyric than a management consultancy concept I later found out that Brad is an avid jazz and country musician which explained a lot for me. A great treatment on a troublesome topic.
Professor John Purcell posed the thorny question “Is embedded employee voice an essential pre-requisite for engagement”. But what did it mean? John eruditely rehearsed the vital, if not Rock’n’Roll, concept of reciprocity. In Punk Rock HR terms this translates to “What do I get?” i.e. If I give you something, I will expect something in return. I think that is a handy definition of engagement although I don’t think it is well understood in the business world.
Finally, David McLeod and Nita Clarke outlined the steps to be taken in partnership with HR practitioners and academics to make high performance a part of ‘business as usual’. For more details on the University of Kent’s work in the field of high performance working, contact Katie Truss. Professor Adrian Furnham’s work on this area is incisive – see the post on Adrian Furnham for more. Or come along to our next event Riffs and Myths of Leadershipfor some high voltage lessons on employee engagement. We have a few tickets available, although they are going fast now due to our incorporation of an honorary Professor of Rock,Bernie Torme, guitar player to the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne and Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan.
THE Business and HR Leadership event of 2012 - a few tickets left
We must of course return to Prince for some salutary advice on the psychological contract, reciprocity and discretionary effort. As usual Prince takes the whole subject of engagement well beyond the usual limits – you’ve gotta love him for it
"Let's pretend we're married" - Oh dear I look like Thomas Dolby At HRD 2012 with Lauren of www.growthepeople.co.uk
I’m delighted to announce a very exciting event coming up. We are putting on a ‘Monsters of Rock Business’ event. A unique blend of a leadership keynote, business to business networking, a live music performance and an opportunity to meet Bernie Tormé and John Howitt, star performers. See below for details. Limited tickets are available for the event – To buy tickets, click on the link RIFFS AND MYTHS OF LEADERSHIP or e-mail me direct peter@humdyn.co.uk.
The event is part of an offering that we can deliver to businesses in a variety of formats from 90 minutes to a full day experience wrapped around specific business issues, identified in advance or as part of a corporate leadership development programme with one of our partners e.g. Imperial College London.
I interviewed Bernie Tormé the other week alongside the rest of the band and two clients, Steve and Andy, who came to Bernie’s studio for a private masterclass, to get the inside track on music, creativity and business. Oh, yes, and joy of joy, we even had a jam session with the great man himself
Bernie : In the course of my career, I have worked with a fair mix of class A rock stars. The music business is a great teacher of life skills such as negotiating, marketing, teamwork, high performance and so on, both how to do them well and occasionally the dark side of the force. We’ll be discussing these and other topics at the event. At the same time, I’ll be playing some music, which is always a lot of fun. I’m leaving the satanic art of business to you lot!
On Improvisation and Innovation
Peter : Given that Rock’n’Roll has its own conventions and that there are only 12 intervals in an octave and so on, tell me about your approach to the guitar when you are trying to come up with something new?
Bernie: For me, it is not an intellectual process. I try to go blank and start afresh. If then I spot something that I like, then I will refine it until I have something that hangs together for the piece I’m writing.
John : The Americans call this “If you think, you stink”. It has to be fluid. Some jazz players spend so much time intellectualising how to move from one chord to another that they never produce anything of great value.
Bernie: I have applied the same general approach to lyrics. I’d play the songline over and over and just write phrases until they start to fit. I’d thought that this was fairly unique but I’ve since found that its not. It’s not exactly Bob Dylan ! but then I think even he did that from time to time.
Peter: Sam, you teach music for a living. How do you escape the tramlines of rock history when composing or teaching others to improvise?
Sam : For me, the quote of Albert Einstein is instructive. He said something like: The people who seem like the best geniuses hide their influences the best. So, at my tender age, my music is a sandwiching of my influences, although you would need to know what those were if you were to dissect a piece into its constituent influences. If you did not know this information, you may well find something novel in it. Perhaps novelty arises out of the combination of influences into something new and sublime.
Editor’s note: Sam will not be able to be at the event as he has a hobby of extreme sports and is jumping out of a plane while we play guitars. He will be replaced by Vicky Nolan of the rock band “Genital Sparrow”. Here’s a bit of Sam’s work so you can see what you will miss on this occasion:
On tools for creativity
Peter : Are you aware of any techniques or approaches that assist you in the creative process?
John : I find that listening with new ears is a very important skill. For example, I have been listening again to Glenn Miller of late, noticing things that I’d never noticed before. I think that’s an underrated skill in business.
Steve and Andy : We work in a highly regulated industry (Railways) with a long history. Nonetheless, we need to constantly look for new ideas in the search for improvement and innovation. The idea of looking again at old practices in a new way is highly transferable to our environment. One of our difficulties is the ability to get people to empty their collective minds, due to the long legacy of our industry. So, getting our people to ‘escape’ from the ‘burden’. People tend to look towards their seniors or previous solutions which is not always the best way to solve problems.
Hear my train a comin' - Heavy industry meets heavy rock!
Bernie : I can relate to that. Some bands I’ve been in have had a strong hierarchy – basically “it’s my way or the highway”. Big companies are far more complex, although it’s not as different as you would think. The core of a band is surrounded by a plethora of people involved and they don’t always act in the bands best interests, so even a band is a what Peter would call a complex adaptive system.
John : Can you (Steve and Andy) comment on the impact of the work we did for the kick off of a major IT project? Especially in regard to the value of music in that event.
Steve and Andy : Basically, in one day, we achieved as much as we would have done in 3-4 weeks of meetings in terms of developing a cohesive team that can work, learn and play together.
On whole brained musicianship
Peter : Where do you look in your personal search for inspiration re playing an instrument?
Bernie : Using pure intuition to create and a more intellectual process to judge your work. It sometimes helps to have a producer to fulfill this job as these two jobs require different sides of the brain – the right hand side for the more intuitive, playful style and the left hand side for judgement and evaluation. I also love getting my hands on another instrument to shift gears in my thinking and playing. I had a Sitar for a few years for example. It only had 4 or so songs in it for me, but I would not have had those songs without it.
Peter: What examples would you point to re an innovative approach to rock music?
Bernie : For me, Jimi Hendrix epitomizes innovation in rock music still. His willingness to explore sounds that were way beyond those being used by his contemporaries at the time still stands up to scrutiny. He had a playground approach to using equipment and effects that was totally alien at the time. If you listen carefully to Hendrix’s playing, you can hear hints of Steve Cropper, in the way in which he put in little fills and subtleties. He also fused styles in ways that others would not dream of.
"Genital Sparrow" warm up for some hard rock with Bernie Torme
On the music machine
Peter : Can you tell me about the good, the bad and the ugly of working in a rock band that is printable?
Bernie : NO, NO, NO Peter ! :-) Suffice to say that some of the stories in ‘This is Spinal Tap’ are funny because they are not so far removed from real life. I may offer some ‘Rock’n’Roll life lessons’ at the Monsters of Rock Business event coming up in June, but only if you are very nice to me indeed! :-)
Peter : OK, so what can business people learn from music?
Bernie : One of the difficulties is that once you hit a success recipe, management are interested in you repeating that for years unless you are the exception. For example it’s well known that Ozzy Osbourne is a great Beatles fan, but he has a great reputation for doing heavy metal and he knows that his fans expect that from him and he’s bloody good at it anyway!
John : On the other hand, some bands split up because they don’t evolve. In your talks Peter, you discuss Madonna, Prince and Bowie as examples of that. Is it too far a stretch to suggest that some businesses fail if they don’t evolve?
Peter : Absolutely, for some businesses, stagnation is not an option, but it’s a fine balance – Editor’s note – check out the posts on AC / DC and Learning Companies in this respect.
Bernie : I spotted an opportunity when I was in Ian Gillan’s band. We had a top 10 album although the songs were written by someone else. I found a niche in helping the band repeat and improve on that performance for the next two albums.
John : So, innovation is a brilliant thing, but it does not necessarily put food on the table. A balance between existing and new ventures is needed in any enterprise.
Peter : What can business people learn from the music business?
Bernie : The music business is something of a basket case compared with the sorts of businesses you tend to work in Peter. I understand that you have had a fairly lucky life, working in Research and Development for ‘decent’ companies and in academia, where work is play. That’s pretty much a Rock’n’Roll lifestyle. But my understanding of most businesses is that they are not about that. In that respect management in the music business is no different to what happens in the ‘grind em down’ type of businesses that cause so many people to find work a chore.
Peter : I guess I do have the luxury of working for businesses that by and large have decent leaders and managers My early years were spent at Wellcome Foundation, who gained 4 Nobel Prizes for its work in Tropical medicine etc. We worked hard all day because we could and we played hard all night as well. By modern standards, the company was poorly managed, but excellently led and I draw important parallels between this and the world of rock bands. Perhaps that time has gone, or maybe we are at the tipping point where capitalism must rightly be balanced by a proper sense of purpose if we are to solve important world problems. I have found that you get the best out of people by treating them as humane beings rather than human resources. The world’s greatest leaders in business understand that. The rest, well, perhaps they match some of the worst excesses of the music business.
So come along to Monsters of Rock Business and get yourself a supercharge of Rock’n’Roll Wisdom. Here’s three summary points:
1.If you want to innovate, learn to ‘clear the screen’ of industry limitations for enough time to see the future.
2. Accept that creativity is necessary for innovation but insufficient – perspiration is always more important than inspiration. Learn to sweat as well as glow.
3. Know when to intellectualise and when to behave like an animal in business.
Let’s get the real deal out – here’s Bernie Torme in action, causing some Trouble with Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan – it really does not get much better than this – see you at RIFFS AND MYTHS OF LEADERSHIP for some lessons from the School of Hard Rock.
In other cases, creativity can pour out of people, at the speed of sound and almost to order. Such was the occasion about 6 years ago, when I wrote a song and recorded a demo of the song all in less than an hour. The piece was inspired by my 8 year old son James, who seemed to demonstrate an ability to wrap my wife and I around his fingers at a level of competence well beyond his years and quite different to my older boy. One day, the idea of a song called “Cowboy James” came to me – words and music flowed and the whole thing was finished in minutes. I previously wrote about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the state of flow and this is a good example of flow in action. I recently re-recorded the piece with my friend dannylee on piano and percussion at his custom built studio-34 (mail@studio-34.co.uk) Please take a listen to this product of naïve and rapid creativity:
The business lessons?
Sometimes the first thing we do is the best thing. Resist the temptation to refine and overanalyse if your creativity feels right the first time.
Steve Jobs was known to trust his intuition as much as a spreadsheet. Balance head and heart if you want to convert creativity to innovation
As part of my MBA teaching and innovation consultancy over the years I have practiced with a suite of about 120 creativity techniques which improve the speed and effectiveness of brainstorming. Technique is only part of the equation to get an innovative climate, yet it can help produce creativity ‘on demand’ and certainly more reliably than a poorly run brainstorming session. Contact me via e-mail at peter@humdyn.co.uk to find out more.
Bill Nelson has just released a beautiful box set album covering 40 years of continuous creativity and flow. It is a testament to an intuitive approach to creativity, matched by discipline. Check it out at The Practice of Everyday Life
The Practice of Everyday Life - Picture by Martin Bostock www.martinbostock.co.uk
Rockin' all over the blogging world - Life and Business lessons from the world's top bloggers
This year I have been lucky enough to meet some fantastic people around the blogging world. They have kindly offered to send me a Christmas message, so here for your delight is part 2 of our Rock’n’Roll life and business coaching tips taken from a magical mystery tour round the world.
We left the last blog back in London with Alison Chisnell and we start there again – great minds think alike and when I asked people for suggestions for music with meaning, two people offered me the same song. Wesley Gransden agrees with Colin Millar from our previous post. Wesley goes on to say: “For me it’s got to be Queen’s ‘One Vision’…. This powerful piece of musical perfection inspired me to focus on ‘one vision’ & ‘one goal’ and was used with great effect in bringing together a team, setting targets and then achieving that goal. Will have to use it again one day.”
Over to Northern Ireland to meet bass supremo and consumer data specialist Jason Bell. Starting from a completely different musical place, Jason arrives at a similar ‘destination’. Jason offers us ”Discipline” by King Crimson. “To me this is a perfect example of team players striving towards a common goal. Every member is doing something very different but when it’s all put together the end result is astounding. Remove one of the team and the impact is not the same.”
Ellie Becker runs Ellie Becker PR, a cool inbound marketing and PR company in New York. Last time Doug Shaw mentioned Neil Peart from Rush as a great example of someone who has persisted against the odds. Ellie takes up this theme:
“The musical artist who inspires me most is my friend and client, drummer Ray LeVier. Ray has unbelievable chops. He tours around the globe with urban jazz singer/songwriter K.J. Denhert and has recorded with vibraphonist Joe Locke, guitarists John Abercrombie and Mike Stern, saxophonist Dave Binney and bassist Francois Moutin.
When Ray was 12 years old and had just started playing drums, he suffered severe burns over much of his body in a camping accident. His fingers were reduced to small nubs and he pretty much lost his thumbs. His face was left with scars that would not get most folks thinking in the direction of the performance stage.
What did Ray do? He followed his dream to become a professional, performing drummer, and challenged himself to play jazz – arguably the most nuanced and difficult style to play. He underwent risky surgery to fashion a thumb on one hand and devises whatever creative ways he needs to hold and work with sticks. According to Joe Locke and the other musicians and teachers he’s worked with, Ray has never exhibited one moment of self-pity. I’ve never seen any either.
Ray’s website is HERE Click the ‘Video’ tab to view two videos – Ray laying down a mad groove with K.J. Denhert’s group and giving a drum clinic to some aspiring young drummers. Listen and watch. You’ll find it tough to ever again complain about anything in life!
Onwards to Canada now to meet Tibor Shanto – a sales guru, author and agent provocateur – Find him at Renbor. Tibor chooses the awesome Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull as his inspiration:
“Half way through Thick As A Brick, at the start of side two when these things had sides, Ian Anderson offers us the following: ‘We will be geared to the average rather than the exceptional’ – this has always driven me to look for and be the exceptional.” I can testify that Tibor has lived up to this particular maxim!
Leaving on a jet plane, headed down under to Australia to meet Dr Timothy Pascoe, a leadership guru and author of the Leadership Potshots blog. Timothy chooses Beethoven’s 9th symphony as his inspiring piece of music. “Beethoven’s 9th is about the brotherhood of man. Interestingly, the theme of the last movement is the anthem of the European Union. I hope its leaders live up to his expectations.”
He goes on to offer us a leadership lesson from one of his favourite artists: The Greek Soprano “Maria Callas didn’t just sing the notes of her operatic roles. She changed her voice style and tone to convey what an aria was meant to be conveying. We all need to think about the intended (and hidden) messages sent via our body language and voice tone.” here we see a slightly different take on Maria’s genius, nonetheless with the same skill of body language from Mr Bean:
Back home to Blighty.
Back home to Blighty to meet Chris Glennie. “So, I was driving to fetch my daughter from school yesterday and thinking what to write back to you when Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow’ came on the radio. As a believer in things happening for a reason, I’ll pick that song.
The song expresses a great lesson. It says:
Focus on the future (‘Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow’)
Don’t waste time (‘It’ll soon be here’)
Keep a positive outlook (‘better than before’)
Learn relevant lessons from but don’t dwell on the past, you can’t change it (‘Yesterday’s gone’)
It may now have become slightly over-used and cliched, but things do become cliches for a reason…”
Editor’s note: Somehow, I had failed to notice just how sensible the lyrics of this song are for businesses. Perhaps that’s because I’m nota huge Mac fan. However, it’s simply true that companies like Apple, Unilever and First Direct have succeeded by following principles like this. Business strategy is indeed writ large into rock songs!
We’ve spent much of 2011 wondering about the state of the economy and it’s becoming clearly that we need more of different rather than more of the same. Lucy Brazier, owner of Executive Secretary magazine turns our attention to the need to be different rather than the same with the exquisite Stephen Sondheim song ‘Everybody says don’t', performed here by Barbara Streisand.
Lucy also responded powerfully to my question “what would the world be like without music?” She put it plain and simple:
“I learned to read music before I learned to read. I have an ipod full of music that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. There is something that enhances or supports every emotion. I would rather lose my sight than my hearing – I couldn’t bear to lose music from my life. My son is 19 and equally passionate about music. We quite often have evenings where he’ll say ‘Let me play you this one.’ and then I do the same to him. The excitement at hearing new music we haven’t heard before is palpable and I can’t think of a more perfect way to spend an evening than to play and listen to music with someone as excited by it as you are.
Hope you have a Rock’n’Roll Christmas! – if you have not yet treated yourself to a free copy of my new micro book Punk Rock People Management, get an electronic copy by mailing me at peter@humdyn.co.uk. I look forward to hearing your comments on this blog, suggesting other songs that have meaning for you.
A manifesto for straightforward, simple and authentic people management - Click on the picture to get your free copy of Punk Rock People Management
I’d previously commented on the role of planned luck in making business networking work, following my recent visit to Greece. Yet another few pieces of planned spontaneity came together the other day.
I’d been asked to make a film for the Open University Business School as an advocate of their MBA programme. To make the most of their time and film crew, I devised a “3 for 1 offer”, by bringing along some great fellow MBA colleagues: Phil Hawthorn and Kim Tasso, a strategy/business development consultant and writer on management/marketing in the professions. Here’s the film The Open University made, shot outside Dingwalls, the famous London Rock venue:
p.s. Video made by Louise Hill-Hottinger of Chalk Square Media– superb work with no fuss.
This led to an invite to the inaugural professorial lecture by Evan Davis, Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today, The Bottom Line and BBC One’s Dragons Den. I had been keen to give Evan copies of ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’ and ‘Punk Rock People Management’ and had wondered how to do that in an evening where there were more than 200 people present and there would be no time for detailed conversation.
The answer arrived quite by chance. I got off the train at Milton Keynes to find Mr Davis on the platform, looking for the stairs. “Are you going to the Open University Evan?” I asked. His 1st impression was that he was being approached by a busker (I had a Sex Pistols T-Shirt and a guitar about my person, so it was not an unreasonable assumption! Once he realised I was an MBA tutor and not a stalker, he invited me to share a taxi to the University, giving me a unique opportunity to help him prepare for the audience he faced that evening and also to share the books. He kindly agreed to have a read in between everything else he does and I was delighted to have met him on a 1:1 basis rather than in the hustle and bustle of a busy event. To hear Evan Davis’ inaugural lecture click on the links – LECTURE and Q&A. Here’s a picture of us at the lecture later on.
Rock'n'Roll Economics - at the Professorial Lecture
If you would also like to read Punk Rock People Management please contact me via the link for a FREE copy. The book recently overtook Dave Ulrich, Gary Hamel and the usual HR Gurus, having hit No 1 on Amazon Kindle in management and HR books.
Speaking of Dragons Den – I leave you with this mashup by the BBC on Steve Jobs:
Whilst my life as a keynote speaker, mixing music with business concepts, is considered to be more exciting than the usual speaker fare by some of my colleagues, I often forget to mention that I spend about 50% of my time doing quite ordinary business consultancy without rock music. Such was the occasion a few weeks ago, when Slough Community Leisure called upon my services to help them rethink their 5-year strategy in the wake of changes in their market, customer and stakeholder base.
If you run a leisure centre, never mind all the HR boll …cks about “People are our greatest asset”. It really IS all about your people – there’s nothing else to separate you from the rest. Customer service separates the sheep from the goats in terms of whether you get customers, keep them, or get them to become fans of your product / service and become active referrers. This requires an emotionally literate workforce. We only have to look at the comic emotional bankruptcy of Alan Partridge to see the polar opposite of the way Slough Community Leisure operates:
So, what do I like about Slough Community Leisure. Well, the clue is in the title of this post, otherwise known as Emotional Intelligence. Thick books have been written about EI by Daniel Goleman and many others, but it comes down to the issue of internal and external mastery, or as Abba put it ‘Knowing me, Knowing you’:
Emotional Intelligence unplugged
In Slough Community Leisure’s case, they think carefully about the customer experience – this includes offering services specifically targeted to particular groups e.g. late night go karting. It is also modelled down to the last detail in everything they do both face to face and online. It’s the same critical competence that first direct use to rise above other players in the banking industry.
To finish, let’s see another take on Abba’s genius – The Abba section starts at around 5 minutes 37 although the rest of the video is yet another masterclass in emotional (un) intelligence:
Please share your thoughts on innovation customer excellence here. A recent interview on the topic with Tom Peters can be found at Innovation Excellence.
I commented on the concept of a learning company in my posts on Lady Gaga and David Bowie recently. The idea of a learning company is a company which learns faster than its competitors and speed of new product / service delivery is vital in today’s business world. Many academics, such as Peter Senge, Chris Argyris and Peter Senge have commented on this idea, which Britney Spears unwittingly stumbled upon in her classic hit “Oops, I did it again”. Let’s see Ms Spears in action:
In the context of business, “oops I did it again” refers to the tendency of businesses to repeat themselves, sometimes in the face of compelling evidence telling them to change course. Organisational learning can mean several things:
Single loop learning – Where we keep existing values and introduce new behaviours – this is often dubbed ‘continuous improvement’, where we look for better ways to do existing things.
Double loop learning – A fundamental reassessment of the way we operate – often more radical and therefore even more difficult.
Companies find it intensely difficult to institute learning at an organisation wide level, be it single or double loop learning. Marks and Spencer nearly went out of business through having such a strong culture that it did not learn from its customers. Manifestations of this included a refusal to accept credit card payments for many years and their disastrous initial expansion into Europe. On the other hand, Toyota have based much of their growth in recent years on behaving as an organisation that learns, alongside other approaches such as lean thinking. This has given them an incredible edge compared with their competitors. I have just come back from giving a keynote on this very topic at the 7th International HR Leadership Conference in Athens on this topic, which is central to a turnaround in the way in which businesses operate in the new world order. I also met Evan Davis from the BBC programme Dragons’ Den last week, where we discussed the need for some new thinking if we are to create a sustainable turnaround in the economy and I shall post separately on this topic soon.
Lessons from Britney: Don’t repeat yourself. Learn and adapt.
I have scoured Britney Spears back catalogue for other songs that have a business leadership lesson in them and, frankly, I have failed. “My perogative”, “Everytime”, “Toxic” – not one transferable business lesson, unless someone can spot something I have missed. So, I have no particular reason for including the video of “Baby one more time”, except for its own value!
p.s. My new book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’ is available FREE via the Punk Rock People Management webpage. A print and e-book version are also available at PUNK PM. Britney Spears gets a mention as an honorary punk rocker in the book, even though she is not one.
HR without all the boll...cks - Photo courtesy of Lindsay Wakelin Photography
Finally, let’s hear a Louis Armstrong mashup of Britney’s masterpiece:
"Cos' I'm worth it" - A marketing executive from L'Oreal rocks out at the Marketing Directors Forum in Athens
I was reading the blog of Video Arts the other day on the issue of happiness at work. It reminded me of the words of honorary punk rockers Rogers, Hammerstein and Captain Sensible, “Happy talk”. Yes, it’s nice to be happy at work, but that’s only half the story. We looked at the blues and motivation previously. The Smiths’ classic “Heaven knows I’m miserable now” is the mantra for people stuck in jobs that don’t fit their skills, attitudes, inner or outer desires. Let’s check out the dark side of the motivational equation:
What then are the reasons to be cheerful at work? Certainly NOT because the 360 degree appraisal system has been put online in full colour, because the team has won a set of fake plastic palm trees inscribed with the company mission statement, or when the HR department places a ‘People are our greatest asset’ plaque in every toilet cubicle.
It may be slightly quaint or even old fashioned to say this, but whatever happened to good old job design, as described by Hackman and Oldham? They pointed out that people work well when they have well designed jobs. These include some good old fashioned but not out of date factors:
Skill variety – using an appropriate variety of skills.
Task identity – being able to see the whole task.
Task significance – the extent to which people identify with the task and its importance to something wider.
Autonomy – giving some discretion over the way in which work is done.
Feedback – gaining an idea of how well people convert effort into performance.
In practical terms, many of the tried and tested methods of improving job design at work still have value. For example: vary work where possible to encourage skill variety; assign work as a whole unit to enhance task significance; delegate tasks to their lowest possible level to create autonomy and responsibility; connect people to the impact of their work through feedback. Some of the world’s best workplaces such as Prêt à Manger use these principles intuitively as they are common sense, although they are not commonly applied. Others have made significant improvements by just following them as a conscious protocol, such as I have observed in work at The Royal College of Physicians.
My latest book Punk Rock People Management offers us three chords on motivation:
Design work according to Hackman and Oldham’s principles.
Eliminate pointless tasks from the daily grind that add no customer / stakeholder value.
Remember that reasons to be cheerful include: being listened to; doing things that count; understanding why they matter; being part of something; not having to do pointless tasks; getting meaningful feedback on what you do and so on.
‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’ is available for purchase of as a FREE download via the Punk Rock People Management webpage. If you like this extract from the book, you will also LOVE my other book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’, acclaimed by Tom Peters, the daddy of them all. Contact us to book your next conference keynote based on our heady mixture of business leadership and music. Just back from Greece, and shortly appearing in Romania, South Africa and Slough – hardly a Rock’n'Roll schedule I admit! Read a review by clicking on the picture:
Good companions
I leave not with Happy Talk by Captain Sensible, but with his rather more thoughtful anti-war / eco warrior song “Glad it’s all over” – The Captain ‘extinguished me’ with a fire hydrant at the Marquee during a Doctors of Madness gig, for which I am eternally grateful.
This article finds me in Athens, contemplating the talk I am to give at the 7th international HR Leadership Conference. My theme is to be that of reinvention which is extremely apt for the business world in Greece and more widely. 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 customers. What can we learn about business from David Bowie? This is the second article in the series – to catch up with the story so far check out ‘The Laughing Gnome to Heroes’. Before we start, let’s look at another Bowie classic – China Girl:
Bowie Business Lesson # 5. Perpetual change
In 1983, he released ‘Let’s Dance.’ Bowie recruited Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers to produce the album, giving the record a sleek, funky foundation, and hired the unknown Stevie Ray Vaughan as lead guitarist. Let’s Dance became his most successful record.
Bowie Business Lesson # 6. When change is over, change again
Bowie’s next project was less successful. He formed a guitar rock band called Tin Machine. They released an album to poor reviews and supported it with a small tour, which was only moderately successful. Tin Machine released a second album, Tin Machine II, which was ignored. Time to change again …
Bowie Business Lesson # 7. Form innovative partnerships
Bowie teamed up with Brian Eno to produce ‘Outside’ and went on tour, co-headlining with ‘Nine Inch Nails,’ to lure a younger audience, but his strategy failed. In 1996, he recorded ‘Earthling,’ an album heavily influenced by techno and drum’n’bass. Earthling received positive reviews, yet it did not attract a new audience. Many techno purists criticised Bowie for exploiting their subculture. It seemed that his attempt to cross demographic and culture divides was not going to work on this occasion. Since then, Bowie has formed partnerships with a number of artists including Placebo and reinvented himself as a brand for a US online bank
The main learnings from this dramatic series of reinventions include:
1. Make radical changes even when your current strategy is successful.
2. Hire and work with the best people you can find, especially if they are better than you.
3. Read the environment and engage with new movements when they are more than fads.
4. Learn from failure and quickly move on.
What else do you consider that David Bowie can teach us about business? Share your thoughts here.
Finally, let’s catch another Bowie classic. Under Pressure:
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.
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He provoked the audience in a very skilled way to question the notion that engagement is actually a good thing, supported by a good deal of well researched data. Rob demonstrated eloquently the problem of HR gurus such as Gary Hamel, who seem to mouth the word ‘engagement’ at HR conferences more times per minute than Robert Plant used to sing ‘baby’ in the average Led Zeppelin song. Rob’s wonderful talk ‘forces’ me 
