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
This year I have been blessed to meet some fantastic people around the blogging universe. They have kindly offered to send me a Christmas message, so here for your delight are some Rock’n’Roll life and business coaching tips taken from a magical mystery tour round the world:
Doug also offered us the example of Neil Ellwood Peart from the supergroup Rush – for his ability to recover from personal tragedy and his endless thirst for improvement. A class act. Lest we forget:
We must rush on … to platform 9 and ¾ at Kings Cross to join The Flying Scotsman. We are met in Edinburgh by Colin Millar, aka The Ranting Scotsman. Colin cranks it up with a leadership lesson from classic rock: Queen’s ‘One Vision, One Mission’.
Colin rants “The title and lyrics say it all and I think it’s a great message for business people – ‘One Vision’ is first and foremost about the ‘vision’ and extrapolating what that vision is and the unity vision creates, bringing people and cause together. I also like the concept of ‘consensus in eden’ that runs through the song”.
From a big country we then take a passage to India, to hear from Sonia Jaspal, who focuses on the power of music to create and maintain emotions. She says “I think without music, the world would lose the most beautiful power of expressive emotions. It touches the depth of our soul. I am still a person that when I listen to some of the softer numbers I have tears in my eyes. Yeah, I need a box of tissues while watching some movies. Also, without music, one would lose most of the inspirations in life. When one listens to beautiful music it somewhere resonates deep within. It has the capacity to change emotions and thinking.
Sonia’s favorite song is from an Hindi movie titled Safar (Journey). The song is ‘Zindagi Ka Safar’ (Life’s journey) sung in Kishore Kumar. It is portrayed via an actor suffering cancer. He is singing the song:
Moving on to Canada, home of Bryan Adams, Celine Dion and Francois Guay, who leads the Attack Defend Disrupt blog. His choice of music that offers us a lesson in life or business is ‘More than a Feeling’ by Boston:
Francois takes up the story “This song contains my favourite guitar riff ever.“ Editor’s note – I can sign up to that! “Although most people see it as a man disappointed in a having lost someone he loved, the song to me is all about reaching your goal, i.e. When you achieve one of your key goals that is “more than a feeling” it’s sublime and must be reproduced again and again.” Seems like a lot of people agree that music inspires us to focus on and reach our goals.
Back to Blightly to meet Alison Chisnell, HR Director of Informa and author of The HR Juggler. Alison’s song with a message is Billy Joel’s ‘All About Soul’. She takes up the story: “The context is that as an idealistic 18 year old, I had just begun a six month stint working in a children’s home in Zimbabwe as part of my gap year and in the early days I felt isolated, homesick and terrified that I had made the wrong decision. This song resonated as a reminder to commit fully to the adventure I was experiencing, to bring my values and passion to the task at hand, to ‘man-up’ and become more resilient and to accept that standing up and being counted was and is a good thing. Bland is rarely, if ever, good….so don’t be afraid to be you and get stuck in! Just because it isn’t easy doesn’t mean that it won’t be hugely rewarding.”
Staying on the theme of soul, we finish with Sharon Howard, who offers us lessons in life and business from Bill Withers about the importance of delegation, support and asking for help. We all need the help of others in order to succeed and they need us too, we all need somebody to lean on A truly inspirational piece:
Coming up, we have more stories from bloggers and cool people all round the world.
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.
Have a great Punk Rock Christmas - Click on the picture for the free book - Picture by Lindsay Wakelin Photography http://lindsaywakelinphotography.com/
I had the good fortune to meet The Rt. Hon. Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills the other week, where we discussed economics (but no sex or Rock’n’Roll ) The recent public sector strikes and the general mood of the nation reminded me of Jimmy Sommerville’s 1980’s classic “Breadline Britain”, hence the title of this blog:
During the meeting I discussed the thoughts of Evan Davis on the economy with Mr Cable. I had met Evan a few weeks before, where he pointed out that the UK needs to create some new engines of growth in areas that other countries would (a) find hard to copy and (b) would give the UK export potential. Vince broadly agreed with my suggestion that we don’t need a ‘nation of more tanning rooms and burger bars’, which largely consume wealth and have no export potential. Of course, a shrinkage in the low value service sector and / or the public sector is deeply unpopular, but it does rather seem an inevitable consequence of some sound economic analysis. We’ll see what happens now that we live in a rock’n’roll economy …
Cable but no Wireless - Vince Cable Rocks the Institute of Directors
We also discussed the slimming down of red tape in business. I was delighted to present Vince with a copy of ‘Punk Rock People Management’, which I described as “perhaps the shortest white paper on simplifying business ever written”. Being known for his unusually straightforward views, Vince was amused by the idea of being able to read a chapter in less time that it would take to pogo to a Sex Pistols song on Strictly Come Dancing.
So, it was a great meeting in the wonderful setting of Leeds Castle. What an absolute coup for the Institute of Directors, who hosted the event. All kudos to them for doing this.
What to finish this post with? Well since a friend mixed Vince Cable up with Vince Clarke of Erasure, I guess we should go with one of their fine Essex based economical synth pop pieces – perhaps a call to some politicians who have lost Mr Cable’s connection with ordinary people – “A Little Respect”:
To get your FREE copy of Punk Rock People Management or book a masterclass – either give Vince Cable a call or get in touch via the Punk Rock People Management webpage
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:
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:
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:
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 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 1st. 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.
A truly inspirational piece:
