What Can Business Learn From Music

Your innovation organization might not literally be a symphony, but you should execute like one, because you want all the same things: listening, harmony, balance, blend, synchronization, and more. Adopting the language, habits, and culture of music making gives you a healthy, collaborative advantage.

The job of a Music Conductor (vocal or instrumental) has numerous similarities to your job as a Change Leader. Both jobs require you to manage diverse activities, diverse stakeholders, and deliver a performance to your audience - often a less than perfect one. Instead of perfectionism, you must lead with a certain amount of forgiveness. You release new capabilities to customers with some problems remaining unresolved. You “do your best and forget the rest.”

You choose the portfolio for the upcoming performance - a "Customer Experience Portfolio.” You distribute each player’s sheet music so each ensemble member knows their part. The sheet music is a script for each player to have an unambiguous sense of their accountabilities. You set the tempo for the ensemble.

The ensemble learns the melody - the primary storyline in the music. The melody is what your audience remembers months and years after the performances. The melody creates Moments That Matter in all of your favorite music. Playing unison - a uniform note - is dramatic, attention-grabbing, but the audience really came to hear harmony - the diversity of pitch, tone, and volume. They came to hear tension - then resolution - of chords. Rich, tuned harmony conveys high quality and collaboration of the ensemble. The jam sessions are back at their neighbor’s garage.

The music changes volume. There are stretches of loud music as well as soft. These dynamics of the music might change suddenly or slowly. The changes can be breath-taking. They also contribute to the Moments That Matter.

Once in a while, one musician stands out. They play a solo. On another occasion, a whole section plays on their own; for example, all the flutes and only the flutes; all the basses and only the basses. But for the majority of the performance, all players blend and contribute in a balanced way.

Your ambitious ensemble aims for excellence and attention to detail but not perfection. Difficult portions of the music exist, and those require more time than average to get into shape for performance. But at some point, you must declare the difficult parts GETMO (“good enough to move on”).

Inevitably, your ensemble’s purpose arrives on the calendar: the performance. The live event joins past performances in your Audience / Customer Experience portfolio. Some mistakes are made, but resilience for your ensemble is easy and second nature. The audience barely notices or cares. They just hear beauty and grace. Your ensemble’s rehearsal discipline makes them not only able to get things right, they are unable to fail. Success is inevitable.

Teamwork is “singing from the same hymnal.” Channel your inner musician to cultivate harmony, synchronization, and forgiveness in your innovation team, one concert at a time. Embrace the language, habits, and culture of the Performing Arts.