Imagine what attending a concert would look like if the orchestra’s performance was managed as if it were a pin factory.
First, the stage is full of extra people. None of them playing. For each section of the orchestra there’s a supervisor, making sure each musician plays exactly the right notes, in exactly the right order.
Behind the supervisors there are managers, making sure the supervisors are doing their job, requesting regular reports on each section’s progress through the concert.
Behind the managers there are senior managers, making sure the managers are doing their job, requesting regular reports on progress through the concert as proof of that.
And behind them all is the executive team, looking at the bigger picture, thinking about how they could reconfigure the orchestra to produce a better sound, or cost less to run, or to suit different music.
And if all that orchestra management behaved as much management seems to, you probably never get through a concert at all, because someone, somewhere in the hierarchy intervenes – to request data for their report, to remove a player to a different orchestra, to get a section to start again or even to change how the orchestra is organised.
The results?
Gaps in the music, players out of sync, discordant noises, perhaps even a slow grind to a halt.
Certainly not a customer experience you’d come back for.
There is management in an orchestral performance. Of course there is.
The difference is that it doesn’t reside in managers, it lies mostly in the Score, supported by the conductor. Given this enabling framework, each individual player is trusted to produce a performance that is both in line with the composer’s Score and the conductor’s direct feedback, and in time with the rest of the orchestra.
The result is performances that move audiences, without the unnecessary oversight of managers.
So, if you run a business that aims to move audiences through performances created by human beings, maybe your model should be an orchestra, not a pin factory.
Let your people manage their own performances, with the help of a Score together with whatever direct feedback they need to keep in time.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
