Eoin Russell

Everything you need to know about running a great business you can learn from Thelonius Monk.  Really?  Sure.  Making great spontaneous music requires teamwork on an incredibly highly developed level.  Running a great business requires a similar set of chops.

The sax player Steve Lacy played with Monk in 1960 and took these notes.  Behind the jazz metaphor we find the same principles that govern effective professional assertion. Just for fun, let’s analyze them one by one.

Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.

What is the primary task at hand?  What’s our goal here?  In jazz it is to swing.  In business it is (something like); increase revenue, cut costs or build a new piece of software. Are you in sync with that primary goal or are you throwing the whole thing off?  Another way to look at this could be to ask “what is my role here?”  You might not be directly responsible for a particular activity but as a part of the team/group/company/band you are still accountable for the outcomes.

Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.

Here Monk is talking about musicians taking a solo, and the importance of not losing touch with the foundation of the song (the melody) while you are improvising.  It is like saying “don’t forget to make your point”.  You can solo with all the fervor and brilliance you posses but if it is out of context you have missed it.  In business, context is everything.  The right thing from the wrong person can be the wrong thing.  Stay focused on what really matters, to your client and your business.

Stop playing all those weird notes (that bullshit), play the melody!

Don’t let your ego get in the way.  Or even: give people what they want and need not what you think is special.  That is a tough one to follow.  There is a fine line between a great insight or a rigorously developed interpretation and something your client just isn’t interested in hearing.  As consultants out clients are paying us for our advice (and should fire us if they stop taking it) but that doesn’t mean we have to stretch the limits of what our clients can handle at every opportunity.  Color inside the lines unless you have a profound reason not to.

Make the drummer sound good.

In jazz, and most live music, the drummer controls the intensity.  If the drummer is playing bombastically it is exciting, if there is barely a whisper coming form the drums it feels more intimate.  What can you do to support the driving force of your group and control the intensity?

Discrimination is important.

Have an opinion and make decisions.  Avoid the infinite loop of evaluation.

You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

If you are only in it for the money go to Wall Street.  You have to love, to dig, what you are doing and who you are doing it with.  You have to feel alive when you are working on your clients’ problems or else you are wasting your time and their money.

ALL REET!

Be enthusiastic, positive and encouraging!

Always know….(MONK)

Know your stuff.  Know your clients’ stuff. Be so prepared that the nay sayers have nothing on you.

It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn’t need the lights.

Try to understand where you are.  Determine the context, the roadmap, and most importantly the systems you are immersed in.  Not computer systems; the societal constructs that govern human interaction.

Let’s lift the band stand!!

Be fantastic.  Not just some of the time.  Be fantastic right now, at this event, today.  Make it impossible for people to not pay attention.

I want to avoid the hecklers.

Who doesn’t?  Don’t get distracted by the people who are threatened by your success or have nothing better to do than shoot things down.  There are typically good reasons to not do almost anything but that thinking should be avoided.

Don’t play the piano part, I’m playing that. Don’t listen to me. I’m supposed to be accompanying you!

Monk is talking about musicians soloing while he plays piano behind them, accompanying them.  Trust the people you have in your group to be responsible for their roles.  Hold each other accountable.  Don’t let people interfere with your responsibilities, play your part and own it.  Sometimes you aren’t the star, even in your own band.

The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.

Contrast is one of the basic building blocks of aesthetics.  This text on your screen needs to contrast with the background color in order to be read.  In song form, the bridge almost always contrasts the verse and the chorus, it creates a sense of departure that makes the return of the verse or chorus more compelling.  Monk is pointing out the power of contrast to make the entire tune sound better. Without contrast is is impossible to make an informed decision.  Seek out contrasting views and alternative approaches.  Embrace what is valuable and reject what is not.

Don’t play everything (or every time); let some things go by. Some music just imagined. What you don’t play can be more important that what you do.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”  Think of Apple’s best product designs or Google’s homepage.  It is what has been left out that is extraordinary.  Even more interesting than the “less is more” cliché is the idea of “some music just imagined.”  Monk is talking about communicating so clearly that your ideas manifest in someone else’s mind.  We have all had the experience where we connect so closely with someone that you can complete each other’s sentences.  Nothing is more important to a professional than communicating your ideas and making them stick.

A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.

Preconceived notions and personal bias are important.  Perception is everything.

Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig, and when it comes, he’s out of shape and can’t make it.

Monk is not talking about just showing up.  He is saying you have to be prepared to deliver, especially during your down time.  In client services where billable time is king, what you do with your non-billable time is equally important.  It is where you keep in shape for whatever is coming.

When you’re swinging, swing some more.

When things are going great find away for to make them even better.  Capitalize on success and learn from failure.

(What should we wear tonight? Sharp as possible!)

Look the part.  Go the extra step to impress and influence perception.  This can seem shallow and ‘dress to impress’ can be, but looking appropriate for the situation is important.  In the arts you are trying to pry people out of their everyday existence and make them notice something outside of that existence.  A sharply dressed group of jazz musicians molds the perception of the audience.  They look professional, united, and full of self confidence.

Always leave them wanting more.

This is an extremely difficult axiom to practice.  It is hard to know when you have won someone over and even harder to stop once you know you have a win.  But if you can, you guarantee the next step in the relationship.

Don’t sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene.

Only sell when it is appropriate.  Context is everything.  Be in the right place at the right time to make things happen.  Trying to force it can make you look desperate.

These pieces were written so as to have something to play and get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal.

Do whatever it takes to motivate your group.  Monk is considered one of the greatest jazz composers and here he is saying he composes to keep his players interested enough to bother showing up to rehearsals.  We could all be so humble.

You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (To a drummer who didn’t want to solo)

You are accountable for your output.  Do you have the audience’s attention? The spotlight?  For those moments the drummer is the center of the universe.  When you’ve got it, use it.

Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it.

Turn off the voice inside your head that says ‘you can’t’.

A genius is the one most like himself.

Monk isn’t talking about Einstein.  He’s talking about you.

They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along and spoil it.

Thelonius Monk was a 43 year old African American in 1960.  You can only imagine the strength of character it took to say something like this.

Everyone has dreams but few people seem to have strategic plans to achieve them.  In fact, people seem to avoid being strategic about reaching their goals at all costs.  I enjoy making strategic plans and watching them unfold, evolve, fail, and every now and then, succeed wildly.  It is a natural part of planning my life and running a business but it isn’t that way for everyone.
A strategy is a unique, logical approach to solving a particular goal.  There is nothing unapproachable or complex about that definition, except for perhaps the logic part.  Let’s use losing weight as an example goal.  One good strategy for losing weight is to consume less calories than you burn.  When it is time to eat lunch a good tactic might be to eat some vegetables, for dinner another tactic aligned with the same strategy would be to have some fish instead of a cheeseburger.  Easy, right?  Another losing weight strategy might be to burn more calories than you consume.  In that case your tactic might be to run fifteen miles every day and not worry about what you eat as long as you get enough calories to avoid exhaustion from the intense exercising.
Strategy seems complicated because it is most often talked about in the context of politics, war and business by people who have much to gain by making it seem like something only they can figure out for you.  Leaders set strategy and the plebs and slaves follow it.  We have thousands of years of social conditioning telling us to let the people who really know what they are doing (politicians, CEOs, and mass media?) come up with strategies that the rest of us should just follow.  Sadly, when we follow leaders we actually lose the ‘Wisdom of Crowds‘ that normally averages out the making of bad decisions.  This happens because we discard our personal biases and our own thinking and take on those of our leaders.  If you are not setting your own goals and strategy the answer isn’t in self help books.
Another factor that complicates strategic thinking is lack of context.  Our society has developed generic paths to success for almost every activity and they sound strategic.  Dreams: “With hard work anyone can achieve their dreams.”  Middle Class Ennui: “Get a good education, get a job, get rich, retire happy.”  Education: “Reading, writing and ‘rithmetic.”  While these platitudes might have some value to contribute to a strategy they are too general to have any real meaning.  They lack the uniqueness of context required for a good strategy.   Inherently, strategy is about dealing with competition, and that is why context is so important.  If everyone is willing to work harder than you, hard work isn’t a good strategy.  Without taking into account your individual context these sorts of pithy strategic statements just add to the confusion of what a strategy actually is.  By the way, how’s that arithmetic working out for you these days?
Creating a strategy requires honesty with your yourself about what your strengths and weaknesses are and what to do with them.  That is another reflection that people avoid.  It also demands faith in the possibilities of planning for the future.  “Planning for the future might pay off at some point but procrastination always pays off right now.”  As cute as that cliché is, it isn’t a very good strategy for getting anything accomplished.  Most importantly, coming up with a strategy demands getting out of the weeds and looking at the world around you and how you can add value and create something.  This is what is meant by being a productive member of society not just a consumer.  It is far easier to watch another show or read another Blog than to sit down and figure out what you are willing to do to achieve the things you want.
Not having a strategy is like driving to an unfamiliar destination without having a map.  Or worse,  not having any idea where you are on the map to begin with.  This is simply a manifestation of insecurity.  If you don’t commit to a specific plan you can’t be wrong if it doesn’t work out the way you planned.  Thus, your identity is intact.  You are still a ‘business owner’ or a an ‘artist’ trying to make it.
Being strategic is essential to developing the skills to recognize when you are succeeding and when you are failing.  Knowing what is or isn’t working is the only way to improve.  If you keep making the same mistakes over and over again there is something wrong with your strategy or lack there of.  Change it.

Out with the old site, in with a new blog.  My hand built HTML site has been  sitting neglected for several years and while I liked the design, it was simply too difficult to maintain.