October | 2014 | Business lessons from rock

Answering the call

October 29, 2014 / 11 Comments

Phone When my home phone rang yesterday, I had already decided I was too busy to answer, but I glanced at the Caller ID anyway (as we all do). To my surprise it showed the call was coming from ME, listing my telephone number.

I’ve heard that techno-savvy telemarketers can make it appear that their calls are originating from the number they’re calling into, but I was caught off guard for the moment and I had an odd notion: this call might actually be coming from me—from my higher self (or the voice of my conscience)! Perhaps it had a message I needed to hear, a message I had been ignoring too long.

In nanoseconds my mind raced through the possibilities. Perhaps I was going to admonish myself for being too insensitive in this blog—for my choleric blasts against toothless, unimaginative, pop music pablum (as I did here for instance) and my defense of all-things-Beatles. Or for never passing up a cheap laugh at the expense of beleaguered financial institutions (as I did here when I referred to every big Wall Street investment bank as a “special snowflake” that needed affirmation and support). Or for savaging the benign patriarchy and "Father-Knows-Best" autocracy that masquerades as "servant leadership" in too much of the business world.

The open office

October 22, 2014 / 8 Comments

The “open office environment” is everywhere these days.

No private space, no closed doors, everyone working side by side in a collaborative utopia. Coworkers can see/hear what each other is doing and spontaneously contribute insights. New ideas, models, and projects are hatched on the spot. It’s amazing how this approach has caught fire. (70% of offices use it now!)

It’s amazing because it’s a dopey idea.

Wait! I know what you’re thinking: you can’t overlook the benefits of people constantly peering over your shoulder, loudly interrupting your work, and offering unsolicited judgments. Besides, what are stairwells good for, if not for holding private discussions?

As it turns out, evidence abounds that productivity suffers when people can’t find private space. A New Yorker article convincingly makes the case here that open office layouts destroy job performance. The predictable results are: reduced creativity, concentration, sense of control, motivation, and job satisfaction; damage to interpersonal relationships; and increased stress and sick time from noise, commotion, and interruption. (Other than that, it’s a nifty idea.) Articles in Fast Company here and The Huffington Post here confirm this.

Not so happy together: business lessons from turtles

October 15, 2014 / 7 Comments

You think you’ve had problems with managers? Check out the clip below, which hilariously illustrates the problems that rock bands have had with their management.

In this short video, Flo & Eddie (Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan) of the Turtles lament the fact that their battles with seven managers kept the band from being financially successful—despite many chart hits, including “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Happy Together,” “You Baby,” and “She’d Rather Be With Me.”

John Lennon, American immigrant

October 8, 2014 / 5 Comments

[Given that October 9 is the 74th anniversary of Lennon’s birth I thought I would reprise this post from 2010. It's worth emphasizing here that innovators attract innovators. Lennon chose the US for his home—and notably NYC—so he could get close to the most creative hearts and minds in his field. Not limited to the US of course, the innovation cauldrons of our great cities beckon to us all.]

This week marks another anniversary of the birth of John Lennon, arguably the most influential rock musician of the last century (a proposition I'm happy to discuss in the comments page).

Lennon of course was the founder of The Beatles and, in its early days, its leader and most prolific songwriter. The Beatles, as you may have heard, were the most successful pop music entity in history—a daringly imaginative British rock band that hit artistic and commercial peaks that have never been matched, in part because of Lennon's disruptive creativity.

Lennon was also an international peace activist who generated headlines of his own with his anti-war protests and performances, before and after the Beatles' dissolution.

But Lennon, like so many larger-than-life pop personalities, was a bundle of contradictions. This peace advocate was a brawler in his youth and, at times, an abuser of friends and lovers alike. (He was not a pleasant drunk.)

He could write the most sublime acclamations of the human spirit (“Across the Universe,” “Imagine”) and the most sentimental of love songs (“This Boy,” “If I Fell”), yet also the harshest put-downs (“Sexy Sadie,” “How Do You Sleep?”).

But his biggest contradiction has been overlooked by critics and fans.

Who works for whom?

October 1, 2014 / 12 Comments

[I was starting to write about a topic that’s been on my mind a lot, when I discovered that I had already written about this in detail six years ago!]

I've been reminded of late what I dislike about traditional business: the antediluvian notion that the team or group works for management, rather than the other way around.

I suppose that's come to be accepted because in most companies managers actually do the hiring. But it doesn't need to be that way.

In fact, in my first dozen years of business I was exposed to a different model. Every organization or business team that I worked for hired—and fired—its management. (The team usually did the recruiting as well.) The team made the decision about who was going to manage it, and it was cloudlessly clear who worked for whom. The business team in this case was a rock & roll band.

Here's how it works in the world of R&R…