After reading several posts by Judith Ellis on the ubiquitous decline of service these days, I was reminded of my ongoing complaints with my own bank in the Boston area—against which I previously railed in a post at TomPeters.com.
I decided to reprise it below because it still fits two years later!
This bank epitomizes the lack of imagination and spirit that I see in many businesses—and most banks.
A few months back I was interviewed by Produce Business magazine on the ever-popular topic of leadership. I've included an excerpt below, though I didn't mention at the time the influence of rock & roll on my thinking about leadership.
Looking back on it now, I can see that I began to identify critical leadership qualities from working with or closely observing successful musicians, talent agents, business managers, equipment managers, sound engineers, record producers, club owners, and concert promoters. (Of course some of those individuals lacked one or more of these qualities, which had a negative impact on their results—but that was equally instructive to me!)
Anyway, here's a brief excerpt from the interview…
April 10 marks the fortieth anniversary of one of the more memorable events of my life. On that Wednesday evening in 1968 my rock band opened for Eric Clapton's Cream at Yale's venerable Woolsey Hall in New Haven.
Cream, the hottest supergroup on the scene, featuring the most critically acclaimed rock guitarist on the planet, was the envy of every pop musician I knew. Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass and vocals, and Ginger Baker on drums were considered, well, the cream of the crop.
To add to their reputation, their latest single, "Sunshine of Your Love," had become a top forty hit. (It was one of those propitious moments when quality musicianship was rewarded with commercial success.)
My own band, The Morning—a local psych-folk-rock band composed of four Yale students and legendary Greenwich Village singer Randy Burns—was given the opportunity to open for these British demigods and we jumped at the chance.
A respondent to my recent post on John Lennon wondered how the former Beatle, if alive today, would weigh in on the current US presidential campaign—a momentous campaign, I might add, but vacuously covered (as usual) by an imagination-challenged electronic media.
After all, Lennon finally gained US residency a few years before his death in 1980. (The fact that Lennon was able to accomplish that was an amazing story in its own right, given the comical attempts years earlier by the Nixon administration, FBI, CIA, and INS to get him deported because of the apparently grave threat he posed to US security.)
Now in April, 2008—with the US involved in a protracted war in the Mid-east and the economy in its most worrisome shape in decades—we're approaching an election that citizens seem to care about.
Three "electable" candidates are left standing. (There are scores of candidates still running, but only three are currently conducting national campaigns.)
So whom would John Lennon support?