Let’s pretend we’re married – Getting engaged

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:

Let’s pretend we’re married

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 Leadership for 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

The Rainbow Children – Prince, Diversity and Creativity

I just got sent this superb 28 minute film of Prince by Hollywood World Studio.  It is especially good at showcasing the diversity of Prince’s talent, exemplified by his album ‘The Rainbow Children”.  Oh damn, it got taken off my YouTube.  You will just have to put up with a substitute

Some interesting observations about the original film:

1. The film covers several quite distinct musical genres:  funk, soulful love songs, acoustic beatbox music plus Prince’s classic anthem Purple Rain.
2. The band is a genuine meritocracy, irrespective of gender, race and so on e.g. women taking on less traditional roles of bass and sax.
3. The show is meticulously rehearsed and this leaves room for a little bit of on the fly improvisation, mostly conducted by Prince himself, who gives signals to the rest of the band to extend passages, put solo segues in and so on.

How many artists could you say this about?

The potential downside of Prince’s desire to play so many different styles is that this may have lost him some of his audience along the way.  Some people prefer a repeat performance rather than something different?

Turning to business, feel free to make a contribution on the blog around these questions:

• If you decide to change your product or service, how do you keep your customers whilst acquiring new ones?
• How do you genuinely make diversity and meritocracy work to your advantage?
• How do you combine structure / discipline / preparation with creativity / improvisation / spontaneity to keep the customer experience fresh?
• What can we learn from Prince about resilience, excellence and becoming a learning company?

A book extract about Prince from my last book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’ is available for FREE.  Simply e-mail me with Prince in the title (peter@humdyn.co.uk) for your copy. Contact us to book your next conference keynote based on our heady mixture of business leadership and music.  To read a previous post on the genius of Prince, check out the Hop Farm.

Sex, Leadership and Rock'n'Roll - contains a U-LOG-EYE to Prince

The Flow – Personal Mastery in business and all that jazz

Mastery, unconscious competence, effortless genius.  These are all ways to describe what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called the state of ‘flow’.  What can we learn about ‘flow’ from music that we can transfer to the world of business and personal development?

Let’s begin, not by talking about the state of flow but by experiencing it through looking at masters of their craft operating at a state of effortless genius.  Let’s start with jazz master Joe Pass:

What then is flow?  Are there any ways to learn how to be in this state and what can we learn from professional musicians?

John Howitt is a professional session musician, who has performed with Celine Dion, Anastasia and Shirley Bassey.  He also works with us in our business and music masterclasses.  As a session musician, John must be at peak performance with every engagement.  I asked him to reveal some of his tips for staying in the flow:

Flow master - John Howitt with Peter - Picture by Jason Dodd - master photographer www.jasondoddphotography.com

Peter :  Can you tell us something about your career and the role of practice as a spur to personal mastery?

John : “Mastery comes out of preparation.  In business circles, people talk of the need for 10 000 hours disciplined practice to master an art or discipline.   Contrary to what amateur musicians might think, to do what I do, it’s all about practice and preparation.  I have probably exceeded the 10 000 hours in my career as a session musician and still spend 5 hours a day playing an instrument if I am not actually engaged in a piece of client work”

Peter :  Many so-called ‘creatives’ say that they feel they would lose their creativity / mojo if they overprepared. What do you say to that?

John : “Practice gives you ease AND versatility.  Playing routine pieces of music almost goes on auto pilot allowing you to concentrate on what is needed to add that extra piece of sparkle.  I feel this is just as applicable to business and personal excellence as it is to performing music”

Peter : As well as your stage and session work, I know you also record soundtrack music for films.  In your experience, how do you move from a performance role to one that is perhaps more introverted?

John :  In one way, there is no difference.  When performing, you still need to keep your focus both internally on the mastery of what you are doing, whilst keeping your antennae open to hear those around you.  It’s what the business gurus called ‘emotional intelligence’ – living inside your own head AND paying attention to your co-performers.  Good musicians and leader do both.  Bad musicians and leaders just listen to themselves.

That said, when I’m recording soundtracks, I can focus completely in on the point of detail that I’m working with, PLUS keep in mind the overall piece.  The big picture AND the small detail are essential if you are to achieve what Peter Senge calls personal mastery.  As a musician or leader, I find it essential to be both gregarious AND solitary.

Peter : On innovation excellence, can you share one important insight for us?

John : I’ll offer two.   In music, the innovation challenge lies in breaking away from habits. Practice can force you into habit but it need not.  It’s what companies like Toyota, Nokia and First Direct have achieved, rather than just repeating themselves.  Furthermore, it’s like Miles Davis says “There are no mistakes”

Please share your thoughts on what gets you in the high performance zone.  A recent interview with Tom Peters on the related topic of personal excellence can be found at Innovation Excellence.  I found flow is vital when writing perhaps the shortest business book known to man or woman – Punk Rock People Management – get a FREE copy via the link.

If you enjoy this blog, you may also enjoy related blogs at Prince, Deep Purple, Hendrix and Bill Nelson.  To finish, let’s see some more masters of music immersed in the art of effortless genius.  None other than Jeff Beck giving a tribute to Les Paul, plus the original, plus a tribute to Les Paul by Bill Nelson:

10 Rock’n’Roll Business Tips

Here’s a short post in the form of 10 pieces of business wisdom, summarised through the words and music of rock music, presented in a PowerPoint show.  To get the show go to ROCK WISDOM  and click on the icon ‘Download Rock Wisdom’.

To whet your appetite, here are some of the 10 tips, without their business lessons to ensure you go look at the show – it’s worth it.

The great pretender – Queen

Puppet on a string – Sandie Shaw

The great escape – Blur

Video killed the radio star – Buggles

This town ain’t big enough for the both of us – Sparks

Purely for pleasure, let’s see one of the points on marketing made musically by the genius that is Prince, in the form of ‘U Got The Look’ from his seminal album ‘Sign O’ The Times’:

If you like the slideshow, you will love Punk Rock People Management.  This new book recently overtook Dave Ulrich, Gary Hamel and the usual HR Gurus, having hit No 1 on Amazon Kindle in management and HR books.   There are a number of options available to get your copy:

Beautiful full colour print version

Kindle version – UK

Kindle Version – Worldwide

FREE pdf version of the book by e-mail

The print version of the book makes an excellent and unique Christmas present.  Check this review out by the Open University Businsss School.  I recently presented a copy of the book to Evan Davies, BBC presenter of The Today programme and Dragons Den.

I’ll leave you with another musical version of one of the 10 Rock / Business lessons from the slide deck, from Blur, in the form of ‘The Universal’ from their ‘Great Escape’ album:

Take That – Teams vs. Individual Talent

HR Lessons from Take That

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KII1ruAfvsg

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.

Deep Purple in Rock: Improvisation and discipline in Business

Deep Purple In Rock

The hard rock band Deep Purple are responsible for millions of young boys camping out in music shops trying to play the riff to ‘Smoke on the Water‘.  At the age of 14 I used to sit at the top of the stairs at home in the darkness trying to figure out the riff with my Hofner Futurama guitar and 10 Watt Zenta amp, until my mum would shout me to come down to get my fish finger sandwiches.  Aside from these problems, Deep Purple offer us a great example of improvisation and discipline in action in the context of a rock outfit.  The Mark II incarnation of the band is generally considered to be perhaps the definitive lineup, but also the most volatile.  Much of the conflict within Deep Purple arose from Ritchie Blackmore, their phenomenal virtuoso guitarist and moody maverick.  Check out Deep Purple Mark II’s work when jamming here:

In this extract from ‘Mandrake Root’ we see the art of improvisation within a disciplined structure as Blackmore sends musical instructions (using his arms as a baton ! ) to the keyboard player Jon Lord, to repeat and develop certain lines (This is particularly obvious around 48 seconds onwards).  He also sends orders to the rhythm section of Ian Paice and Roger Glover with respect to starts and stops within the music (around 1 minute 50 seconds).  Blackmore’s signs are perhaps more aggressive than those used by Prince to change direction at short notice within the band  What then are the parallel lessons for business from Deep Purple?   Here’s three to get the discussion started – Please add your own views by commenting on the blog.

1. Innovation in business requires discipline as much as it does creativity:  Creativity to come up with novel strategies; Discipline to execute them, so that ideas turn into profitable innovations.  Companies such as Google, 3M and Innocent may seem to be all about creativity at first glance, but a deeper inspection reveals discipline and structure, even if that structure does not emanate from ‘management’ in all cases.  Giving people 20% of their time to work on speculative projects is the business equivalent of a free form jam within Space Truckin’, Lazy, Mistreated and many other pieces of Deep Purple’s repertoire.

2. It requires extremely strong leadership and a compelling shared vision to hold diverse people together.  To encourage a company that continuously learns / adapts and improvises into the future requires leadership that is precise on the destination, yet loose on the journey.  We’ve seen this point before in my blog posts on Led Zeppelin and Prince.

3. Conflict will occur where there is diversity / divergence.  It must be handled properly if progress is to be made.  Ultimately Blackmore’s maverick behaviour proved too much for the band, especially the singer Ian Gillan, and despite several reunions, the band proved impossible to hold together.  There have been many arguments to suggest that what Deep Purple Mark II needed was a manager who could hold the various personalities together and perhaps some time off from touring.

What else do you consider we can learn from Deep Purple about business, innovation, conflict and so on?  Share your thoughts by making a comment to this blog.

Editor’s postscript:  My thoughts go out to Jon Lord who is currently fighting cancer.  Although I am a guitar player, it was Jon Lord’s innovative organ playing that led to my fanaticism with Deep Purple.  Hoping things progress well.

To finish, here’s another piece by Deep Purple’s Mark II line up, the famous California Jam performance where Ritchie Blackmore destroys several guitars and sets fire to his amplifiers.  I can’t immediately think of a transferable corporate lesson from this sequence but it sure is fun.  Takes me back to my teenage years with the Zenta amp on all the way up and me smashing the guitar into the speaker trying to coax some feedback out of the amp!

For more Heavy Metal Business articles – check SPINAL TAP on project management and LED ZEPPELIN on strategy.  Check out our conferences and events – where we extract business lessons from the Deep Purple classic ‘Smoke on the Water’ amongst many other things.   If you like this post, you will love our books ‘Best Practice Creativity‘, Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll‘ and ‘Punk Rock People Management‘ – Punk Rock PM is available for FREE on application.  Why not come along to our ‘Monsters of Rock Business’ event in June, featuring Bernie Torme, who played guitar for Ian Gillan?  Details below:

Books on innovation and improvisation in business

Looking for Trouble? Come to "Monsters of Rock" feat Bernie Torme

Bill Nelson: Integrity and Creativity in a bottle

The genius that is Bill Nelson - Photo courtesy of Stewart Cowley

Bill Nelson performs a special one off concert and art exhibition at the Clothworkers Hall in Leeds on October 1^st.  This provides me with the perfect excuse to rave on about this man’s genius in terms of the sorts of capabilities that great business gurus such as Peter Senge, Tom Peters and Seth Godin write about.  Before we begin, let’s see the master at work, performing a song he wrote for Stuart Adamson of Big Country and the Skids as a tribute at his funeral – “For Stuart (Triumph and Lament)”.  Bill Nelson produced some of Stuart’s work and Adamson was a great admirer of Bill’s musicianship, which Bill incorporated as a series of ‘musical ornaments’ within this piece.

In case you are wondering just who Bill Nelson is, he led 70’s Art School band Be-Bop Deluxe and Red Noise.  In spite of his huge success, Nelson left considerable wealth and fame to pursue his own artistic and musical direction.   However, like so many great influencers his footprint on modern music is immense and pervasive.  Nelson is admired by a catalogue of rock’s monarchy, including Mc Cartney, Brian May, Kate Bush, Brian Eno, David Sylvian, Prince, The Foo Fighters, The Darkness, My Chemical Romance and so on.  If any of you saw MCR at the Reading Festival, you will have heard the opening lines from Bill Nelson’s song ‘Maid In Heaven’ towards the end of MCR’s emo anthem ‘Dead’:

Turning to the transferable lessons for people in business, Bill Nelson articulated his principles for personal reinvention in his online diary.  Although they are artistically expressed, they are directly transferable.  Bill kindly allowed me to do some ‘translation’ in my book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’.   We explored a couple of his reinvention principles in a previous blog.  Here’s some more:

Reinvention Principle No. 1 – Trust the muse – she knows best

In the context of business reinvention, ‘trusting the muse’ means that we should trust intuition rather than relying on research as a means of doing new things.  We live in a world that is drowning in data.  As a result we downplay intuition.  New stuff does not always come out of a detailed analysis of old stuff!

"Act when there are no alternatives to stasis" Photo courtesy of Stewart Cowley

Reinvention Principle No. 2 – Act only when there are no alternatives to stasis

‘Acting only when there are no alternatives to stasis’ reminds us to examine all alternatives before making a decision on critical issues.  This is not a recipe for not making decisions!  Examining alternatives requires us to synthesise options, to bring alternatives together that will produce better options rather than compromises.  It requires the use of analogue (and/also) thinking rather than digital (on/off) thinking.  The pressure of business life often forces us into action rather than reflection / synthesis, with the result that we get sub-optimal decisions and / or performance.  I’ve written more on this subject in previous posts on creativity.

Check out Bill’s extensive catalogue of music at SOUND ON SOUND.  To study Bill’s 12 principles for personal and corporate reinvention in more detail, read Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll. If you fancy seeing Mr Magnetism Himself check out the Clothworkers Hall in Leeds.  I am proud to know Bill Nelson, who has integrity and creativity written into his DNA, even at the expense of fame and fortune.  Integrity is easy when it does not mean you have to make tough choices, but most people fall by the wayside when the going gets tough.

Bill Nelson has a wonderful skill of making classy pop music, a skill which he has largely left on the shelf due to his desire to pursue his own artistic vision.  Lest we forget what a great talent he has for producing catchy pop hits, I’ll leave you with a film of Be-Bop Deluxe performing one of these 2.5 minute wonders on the Old Grey Whistle Test – “Maid in Heaven”, the song whose opening guitar lines are quoted by My Chemical Romance.  To see more of Bill’s work in this area get yourself a copy of his ITV Legends Concert, which includes “For Stuart” and an entire catalogue of Be-Bop Deluxe, Red Noise and Bill’s solo material:

p.s.  For a series of 2.5 minute lessons on business and Human Relations check out my new book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’ – available FREE via the Punk Rock People Management webpage.

ITV Legends Concert DVD - AMAZON

'Revolt into Style' - The new book cover

Beyond the Fringe – The Edinburgh Festival and Leonard Cohen

Leonard himself

Very short post here to mention two performances of a special show written by Joe Blair, on the life, loves and music of Leonard Cohen at the Edinburgh Festival – Follow the link to Blue Raincoat.

The evening offered a selection of Leonard’s most special songs alongside a narrative that reviewed his life as a poet, lover and songwriter.

I met Joe a couple of years ago at a management seminar in Northern Ireland and he has been trying to infect me with his obsession with for Leonard Cohen ever since.  Speaking personally, I only travel as far as Morrissey and Lou Reed on the scale of moribund reflective music but it takes all sorts etc.  I agreed to provide much needed coaching on the musical performance aspects of the event and to provide some accompaniment using the haunting tones of the e-bow, an unusual guitar effect that makes guitars sound more like a violin, hence the name ‘energy-bow’.  I bought my e-bow around 1978 after seeing the music genius Bill Nelson play one.  Read more about Bill’s next show on October 1st at The Art School Ascended on Vapours of Roses.

Copies of our latest album “Music from the Basement of Cognition“ will be available at the Leonard Cohen show.  For now here’s one track, aptly titled “I always knew you would come back to Earth” after a week of madness on the streets of England.  I did once record a Prince styled version of Cohen’s “The Butcher” and an electro-pop version of the same song in the style of Erasure, but I am not posting them here for fear of reprisals by ardent Cohen fans!

I’ll finish with my favourite interpretation of Leonard’s ‘Hallelujah’ by John Cale:

Postscript:  The highlight of the Festival was meeting up with the Jimi Hendrix styled blues guitarist Richard Blues - Check Richard’s work out by e-mailing him at richardsgottheblues@yahoo.com and here’s a brief excerpt of his performance at the Fringe:

Also very much enjoyed meeting Will Gracie.  As one third of the outrageous group Hot Gusset, Will’s journey started at the age of 7 when he saw Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman.  We did some impromptu Queen and Prince songs on the street to the amazement of the festival goers.  Later that day I saw him appearing on BBC Newsnight.  It’s no wonder, for Will is a great talent. “Gimme fried chicken” in the words of Freddie Mercury !

Whist developing the show, I discovered to my surprise that even Leonard Cohen was sensitive to his musical environment and did change his musical style towards songs that people could almost dance to in the 1980′s when synthesisers became popular.   I guess that’s where Lady Gaga got it from !

Guitar Gods: Hendrix vs. Clapton : Innovators vs. adaptors

R U Experienced ? By Craig Swanson © www.perspicuity.com

Jimi Hendrix is still considered to be one of the greatest guitar players in the world, more than 40 years after his premature death at the same age as Amy Winehouse.  Plenty of guitarists have surpassed Hendrix in sheer technical dexterity, but most people point towards Hendrix’s ‘attitude’ towards the instrument as the source of his genius rather than his technical skill per se.  In my own case, my life was never the same after I saved up the money to buy a copy of his hit single ‘Purple Haze’, which I still own.  We even staged a re-enactment of Hendrix’s famous guitar burning stunt at a University in Cambridge with a bunch of MBA students some years back.  Here’s the record and the result of the spontaneous combustion of my Fender guitar:

Purple Haze - original Track label single

IBM burnt my guitar ....

Check out the real deal from Hendrix’s 1967 performance of ‘Wild Thing’ at Monterey:

Jimi Hendrix is an archetype of what psychologist Professor Michael Kirton would call an innovator, someone who fused together musical ideas to come up with something totally novel.  Jimi Hendrix fused the blues with soul, funk, hard rock and psychedelia in a heady cocktail, whereas many musicians stay within a musical genre.   In doing so, it could be said that he lost some of his audience in the process, if you were to take a very critical view of his work.   See also my post on Prince in this respect.

So what about Eric Clapton then?  Let’s take a look at some of Clapton’s classic work in the form of some blues mastery with Buddy Guy:

Generally speaking, Eric Clapton has stayed within the blues genre, (with the exception of a few ballads for the ladies ) sticking closer to this genre and consequentially bringing it to a wider audience.  This is the behaviour of what Professor Kirton calls an adaptor.  In business, adaptors often have greater success than innovators, as they tend to produce ideas that are less challenging and which are recognised by consumers in the marketplace as being a logical build on existing ideas.  It’s the new saying “familiarity breeds repeat purchases”.

Often we need both innovators and adaptors to produce sustainable innovations.  The innovators to produce the hard to copy ideas and the adaptors to help bring the ideas into a practical market focus.

In business, examples of innovators include Sir Clive Sinclair, Sir Trevor Baylis and James Dyson whose innovations have not always been in tune with market desire, for example Dyson’s early attempts to redesign the wheelbarrow:

James Dyson's Ballbarrow

Archetypal adaptors would include Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and possibly Sir Richard Branson, who have succeeded by taking relatively low risks with product and service innovation.

Finally, let’s hear another musical boundary crosser / innovator talking about Hendrix, none other than Jeff Beck:

To read about others who have been greatly influenced by Jimi Hendrix, see my post on my night in a pub with Bernie Torme, lead guitarist extraordinaire for Ozzy Osbourne, Ian Gillan and Twisted Sister.  Also the music genius Bill Nelson, who has innovated continuously for 40 years in music, whilst shunning the music industry circus.

Got the business blues (again) – Motivation, HR, job design unplugged

A while back, I explored the business blues in a light-hearted fashion.  I was surprised and delighted at the reaction to this in my personal e-mails.  It seems that somehow, I struck a chord (or perhaps three - musical in-joke for the blues players out there !   ).  I was told that a number of major companies have used music in a cathartic way to ‘purge their business demons’, by ‘getting it all out in their blues’.  Take a listen to this clip from BBC Radio 4’s Flagship ‘Today’ Programme.  Even John Humphries succumbed to my post in The Financial Times on the credit crunch blues:

To be more serious for a moment, here are some causes of ‘The Business Blues’ with antidotes.  For more like this, sign up to the blog or contact me via the website and I will send you a FREE copy of the forthcoming book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’

1. Badly designed work and jobs – The antidote is simple to say but a little harder to apply.  Basically, design jobs using the wisdom of Herzberg’s work on satisfiers and dissatisfiers.  Take a look at the work of Hackman and Oldham.  This is explored in more depth in Punk Rock People Management.

2. An over-focus on measurement and objectives – What get measured gets done.  The corollary of this is that what is hard to measure may get ignored.  Everyone needs objectives to keep focus, but I would rather have open heart surgery without an anaesthetic than have 7 pages of specific objectives, critical success factors and key deliverables as I have seen on some occasions.  Appraisals and objectives are all about focus, not shopping lists that rival the length of ‘War and Peace’.

3. Poor leadership and management – It’s all too easy to then suggest that the antidote is to plug in some good leadership and management, almost like an I Phone app, yet this is a subject that requires more than a couple of lines to explore.  Plug and play may work with memory sticks but it does not in the world of business leadership and management.  For more on the thorny subject of leadership check my current book Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll out:

Sex, Leadership and Rock'n'Roll - acclaimed by Tom Peters

I’ll leave you with Jimi Hendrix and Prince playing the blues.  These versions of Red House see Hendrix and Prince in rare moments of reflectivity.  The playing is thoughtful and poignant. In my humble opinion, Prince is Hendrix plus much better lighting ! – there is an obvious musical influence but Prince has vastly improved the presentational aspects of his work across 30 or so years.  What do you think these two pieces?  Post your thoughts on the blog comments page.  To read previous posts on the genius of Prince see At The Hop (Farm) and Prince on Improvisation and Ingenuity.  Coming up soon, a post on Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck with respect to innovation style.

Contact me via the ACADEMY OF ROCK WEBSITE to reserve your FREE copy of “Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff”.