Dan Marbes

Maybe it’s the wisdom of age or possibly just my mid-life crisis grabbing me by the lapels but I’m really starting to notice amazing parallels among seemingly unrelated areas of my life.  My life journey has taken me through three distinctly different professions (public school teacher, touring musician and currently IT systems engineer) and it’s fascinating how the lessons of the past continue to be not only relevant but extremely poignant in the present.

As I reflect on this today, I am going to assume that you the reader have seen a symphony orchestra at some point in your life.  Maybe it was live or maybe it was televised, but at least the term ‘symphony orchestra’ means something to you.  If in fact it is totally foreign, take five minutes to find and watch an online clip of an orchestra playing something.  Anything will do.  You needn’t be a classical music afficianado to appreciate the discussion but the points below will make more sense if you’ve seen an orchestra in action.

As you watch a symphony, you’ll see instruments of all sizes and shapes being played (hopefully well….maybe I should have given a recommendation in the above paragraph….sorry if you were scarred).  You’ll also see a conductor, the individual standing in front of the musicians frantically waving a small stick.

What’s fascinating about the orchestra performers is that within this team, they are all subject matter experts.  The bassist knows how to manipulate his instrument in such a way that the music in front of him is realized with accuracy.  The cellist does the same, though her instrument is slightly different.  The flutist uses a completely different set of techniques to get the correct sound to emanate from his instrument.  The percussionist has an even different set of challenges, sometimes playing upwards of ten different instruments in a single piece.  Some of these performers may be skilled performers on other instruments, but aside from percussionists it’s relatively uncommon that you will see them changing instruments frequently in a single performance and when they do the additional roles make sense (you may see a flutist that also plays piccolo but you’re not ever likely to see that same flutist grab a tuba).

Standing at the helm is the conductor.  This individual, more often than not, is also an expert performer but in the orchestra has set this aside to provide leadership.  Some of the conductor’s tasks are relatively simple, such as giving a signal to the performers indicating when they should begin.  Some are more ethereal such as conveying the emotion of a piece and guiding the players’ efforts through facial expression, body movement or manipulation of that little stick (the baton….now you know!).  While the conductor likely has a base understanding of the techniques used by all of the performers, she is almost certainly not a virtuoso on all instruments represented in the orchestra.  Again, her job is to provide leadership and combine all of the individual instruments into a team to realize the ideas of the composer who wrote the piece being performed.  Understanding that composer’s vision and intent takes dedicated study and preparation away from the orchestra and an ability to convey that knowledge both in rehearsal and during performances.

So what about the parallels that I mentioned earlier?  Think of a team in your workplace.  That team probably has a large number of different tasks and responsibilities requiring many different skills and personality traits.  Ideally, these tasks are performed by people with the specific expertise needed to do them efficiently and accurately.  These people are like the performers in the symphony.  Each has specific skills and knowledge.  While some may be able to fill multiple roles (like the percussionist), others may be a considered a virtuoso in one specific skill.  Much as it does not make sense to ask one of the violinists to play clarinet, does it really make sense to ask someone known for doing fantastic accounting work to function as a lead salesperson?  Maybe they do in fact have the moxy for it, but wouldn’t we be better off finding a resource who can really excel at the task (and is passionate about it)?  Not only do I suspect we will have better results, but when given a chance to do work they believe in, team members’ effort and dedication is likely to be much higher.

As a team leader or manager, the challenge is to set aside previous accomplishments and focus on this leadership role.  I would guess that the manager at most car dealerships was probably a pretty darn good salesperson at one time.  However, if that manager continues to try being the best salesperson at the dealership, not only is there likely to be conflict with the actual sales team, there’s probably not enough time being spent on the leadership tasks.  Much like the conductor, leaders have to understand the vision.  As a conductor studies the composer’s work to find the meaning in a piece of music, a corporate leader must analyze the company’s strategic vision and translate those objectives into relevant and meaningful direction for his team.

Armed with this knowledge, leaders must be able to evaluate the activities going on around them and offer guidance where needed.  If the trombonist is playing too loudly, the conductor must give direction to correct this or it detracts from the quality of the performance.  If a team member is devoting significant resource time to a task that falls outside of the established strategic direction, the leader needs to work to refocus that effort and help the team member understand how these choices impact the ability to execute the overall strategy.  Also, as a conductor would not ask one musician to play violin, cello, harp, and trumpet simultaneously, a corporate leader needs to realize when there simply aren’t enough “performers” to make the music happen.  Rarely will you see a professional orchestra with less than 20 violinists.  The conductor knows that to get the sound that’s needed a certain number of players are required.  And while a lot of wonderful sounds can be made by 50 violins, they alone are not enough to accurately perform Mahler’s First Symphony.  Sometimes it’s not just a matter of the number of team members, but ensuring that we have the ones with the needed skills to execute our strategic vision.

With the right people in the right place doing the right things for the right reasons, we set ourselves up for as much success as we can.  Facilitating that is one of the great challenges of leadership but with careful preparation we can deliver results that will have the audience on their feet.

I wish you many standing ovations.

DM

This entry was posted on March 20, 2011 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Leadership, Music, Roles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.