The name Prince is synonymous with innovation in music. From classy pop classics such as ‘Purple Rain’, ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ and ‘U Got The Look’ through to high class jazz, soul and funk, working with artists such as Miles Davis, Chaka Khan, and George Clinton.
Prince performs at this weekend’s Hop Farm festival in Kent and I’m delighted to have a ticket for the occasion. Check this performance of Superstition out with Stevie Wonder to see what you will be missing if you are not there.
Unlike many performers in rock’s monarchy, a Prince live performance is often different every night. This is because Prince operates from a menu of 300 songs, which the band may be called upon to play at any time, whereas many other artists prefer to perfect and then repeat their set night after night.
I was discussing how Prince achieves such amazing levels of nimbleness and ingenuity with my colleague John Howitt, a professional musician who has performed for Celine Dion, Anastasia and Shirley Bassey to name but a few. We came to a set of conclusions, with parallel lessons for businesses that are interested in being fast, nimble and continuously innovative. Here are a couple:
To reach mastery in improvisation paradoxically requires intensive detailed preparation. What looks like a seamless performance is the result of many hours of preparation and Prince is meticulous in this respect. In business this has been referred to ‘the 10,000 hours effect’ by Tom Peters and, more recently, Malcolm Gladwell. The idea of prepared spontaneity contradicts what some so-called creativity and innovation gurus say on the subject, yet we constantly see parallels across many industries. Sloppy creativity produces sloppy results in many businesses.
Prince is also a master of fusing musical genres and influences outside his core style to innovate. This enables him to still exert a major influence on artists of the 21st Century, such as Lady Gaga, Beyonce and many others. In business, the ability to cross mental boundaries is the parallel skill set, as exemplified by companies such as 3M and Google.
I explored more of Prince’s personal qualities and the relationship with becoming an agile, ingenious and innovative company within the book “Sex, Leadership and Rock‘n’Roll”. John Howitt also draws a distinction between Prince’s level of risk taking on stage versus his experience of working with artists such as Celine Dion, who aims for a perfect, polished performance which can be reproduced night after night.
Both approaches are valid and rest on thorough preparation if you want to reach out for excellence. An object lesson for all – if you want to be a star, know that perspiration is much more important than inspiration. Let’s just see a little more of that prepared spontaneity from Prince via a structured jam called ‘The Everlasting Now’:
We will be exploring aspects of Prince’s approach to improvisation and innovation at the 7th International HR summit event in Athens, Greece on October 20th following on from Dave Ulrich.
Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock, delivering exceptional conferences and events that blend academic ideas on business with the power of music.
In the words of Rogers, Hammerstein and Captain Sensible, “Happy talk”.
Yes, it’s nice to be happy at work, but that’s only half the story. The Smiths’ classic indie anthem “Heaven knows I’m miserable now” is the modern blues mantra for people stuck in jobs that don’t fit their skills, attitudes, inner or outer desires:
“I was looking for a job, and then I found a job
And heaven knows I’m miserable now”
It may not make you popular as a manager to say
“I’ve got the business blues, cos’ the server is down, my 360 degree appraisal has come out with a mean rating of 3.3 out of 4 and quarterly sales forecasts are down.”
Nor will these lines scan into a 12 bar blues musical format! Nevertheless, part of the leader’s skillset is to find out what gets in the way of high performance and do something about it.
So, this light-hearted blog focuses on some frivolous (and, later on, some not so frivolous) lessons that you can learn from the artform that is the blues.
Most blues begin: “Woke up this morning …” “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.” You can’t have a blues that begins: “I got a good manager, who sets meaningful performance goals and critical success factors.” It’s a cathartic artform.
The blues ain’t about systematic creative problem solving, blue ocean strategy brainstorming sessions, option formulation or scenario planning: You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch – ain’t no way out. Sometimes you gotta deal with people at work who believe there ain’t no way out…
Blues can take place in New York City, but not in Rochester or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Canterbury is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the blues, not York, Bath or Slough. You cannot have the blues in any place that don’t get rain, nor in a high tech R&D centre.
If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another blues way to die. So are the electric chair and substance abuse. You can’t have a blues death if you expire during a strategy meeting, a team building day, on an overnight stay at the Holiday Inn, or while receiving liposuction.
People with names like Michelle, Amber, Jade, Les and Heather can’t sing the blues no matter how many men they shoot in the ‘twin blues towns’ of Memphis, Milton Keynes or Milan.
As far as corporate life is concerned, it’s easy to find examples of customer service that give you the blues. Just try establishing human contact with the average ISP or mobile phone company and you will see what I mean. Yet, some other companies stand out in terms of the excellence of their service. In the banking sector, my favourite is First Direct, who, hire people that are fond of talking and doing things about other people’s problems. A refreshing change and especially so, when one considers that the words banking and service rarely fit into the same sentence.
And finally, the blues need not a negative musical genre as some people may think. It can be a cathartic release for the performers and the audience alike. Here’s “The Credit Crunch Blues”, written and performed by a Housing company as part of their annual conference on high performance. They certainly gave their heart and soul to this performance, even though all the staff were amateurs and none had given a performance on a stage in their lives:
Peter Cook is The Rock’n’Roll Business Guru and leads The Academy of Rock, delivering exceptional corporate events that blend business and music. He appears at the Customer Service Training Network Awards on July 8th, delivering a cameo performance and keynote entitled “The Customer Service Blues”.
A Contractor Company, also known as an umbrella company, can help your business by allowing you to effectively work as an employee rather than having to set up as a limited company. This is especially important following the government’s implementation of the IR35 legislation, which makes it more difficult to operate as a limited company when carrying out contracting work.
An umbrella company acts as an employer to independent contractors who carry out work, usually through an agency, under a temporary contract. The umbrella company will receive a timesheet from the contractor and issue an invoice to the agency. When the invoice is paid, the umbrella company will pay the contractor through PAYE. An added benefit is that some income can often be offset through claiming expenses for travel, accommodation or meals.
There are many benefits associated with working through an umbrella company. The most apparent benefit is that the umbrella company will deal with all of the tax and national insurance payments that the contractor is required to make. This means that the contractor does not need to worry about the IR35 legislation, as it does not affect contractors who work through an umbrella company.
IR35 was introduced in response to a problem where employees were switching to contractor status but still working for only one employer, in the same way as when they were only employees. They are known as “disguised employees”, as the only difference was that they were working for the company through an agency rather than directly.
The former employee could then set up a limited company and they gained advantages when it came to paying tax and national insurance. IR35 set out a number of tests that must be met to determine employment status and it has led to many problems for contractors who operate under a limited company status.
Another benefit is that a contractor working through an umbrella company does not need to worry about any of HM Revenue & Customs latest tax clampdowns, as they can be sure all the appropriate taxes have been paid. The contractor company will also deal with any legal and contractual obligations and will usually offer professional indemnity and employers/public liability insurance.
The contractor has the benefit of continuing to work independently with the earnings potential that this style of working provides, but at the same time does not have the administrative responsibility that goes alongside. The earnings figure after deductions is likely to be accurate and there is no big tax bill at the end of the year.
An umbrella company can be used by any type of contractor in any industry. Contractors are often used by firms as it is easier to manage changing staffing requirements and they do not have to worry about all of the same legal requirements that they do with permanent employees.
The umbrella company will charge a fee and this fee will vary between different umbrella companies. They might also provide differing levels of service to the contractors they employ.
Before setting up to work in this way, you should make sure you have the skills needed to be able to consistently find work as a contractor in your field and also that work is available.
UK Finance Minister George Osborne is set to make a speech today in the House of Commons outlining the UK coalition governments’ recommendation to ring-fence banks’ retail divisions.
Though this is the main business news today, this idea was first muted back in April when the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB), which was set up in 2010 to examine ways to reform the banking sector after the credit crisis.
The ICB recommendation was not to entirely separate banking groups’ altogether, but suggested retail banking should distance itself from investment banking, effectively working as different business units under one parent holding company.
The ICB also recommended that top retail banks should hold a minimum core Tier 1 capital ratio of 10 percent. This equates to 3% higher than the 7% recommended by the Basel committee of global banking supervisors.
Furthermore, the Commission suggested Lloyds may have to sell more branches on top of an order by European regulators for it to divest some 600 branches following its bailout by the UK government during the credit crisis.
There was a fall in shares in this morning’s market trading, as word spread of George Osborne’s speech and the UK Government backing for the ring-fencing recommendations today.
UK banks believe the recommendations to ring-fence retail banking from riskier trading operations needs further debate. But the Conservative -Liberal coalition government may use this in an attempt to gain public support by showing they are reforimng the banking industry without damaging the UK’s competiveness in world finance.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today Programme, Angela Knight British Bankers’ Association chief executive said:
“There are a lot of issues and a lot of details that need to be thought through and need to be discussed.”
The four main banks – Lloyds, HSBC, RBS and Barclays have differing views on the ring-fencing proposal. Lloyds favour a broad ring-fence including far more assets than a set-up supported by Barclays and RBS. While HSBC has previously stated that all banking book assets should go into the ring-fence, which would include mortgages, corporate loans and all long-term assets it holds being protected by a government guarantee.
HSBC and Lloyds are equally concerned that a narrow model would create a funding mismatch, whereby the ring-fence would be “overfunded” and not able to use extra deposits to fund its portfolio outside, which would have to be funded in wholesale markets.
Small business owners are still suffering from the significant worry caused by underhand practices used by so-called business directories and the European Union needs to take action to ensure legislation is in place to close them down and prosecute. Strong words spoken today by Struan Stevenson MEP, Conservative MEP for Scotland.
He was calling for action in a debate in the European Parliament initiated by the European Parliament’s petitions committee which has received more than 400 complaints, and the internal market and consumer protection committee chaired by Conservative MEP Malcolm Harbour. MEPs from across the chamber said that the commission was not doing enough to clamp down on companies that offer small companies a free listing in their directory yet the small print of the contract subsequently enables the directory to present them with extortionate charges.
The European Commission has already said that the practice is illegal but there are questions over whether there is a need for tighter implementation of the EU’s misleading advertising directive, or even a rethink.
Speaking in the chamber today, Struan Stevenson said:
“It is often elderly people who run B&Bs or let holiday cottages who fall foul of this criminal activity. They enter their address into a supposedly free directory and then receive a bill for a thousand Euros. Elderly people are terrified when they receive letters supposedly from legal representatives of these companies.
“This is cross-border criminal activity. These companies give their addresses so we need to track them down, prosecute them and ensure people are protected from them. Whenever victims contact me I tell them to ask the directory to refer all future correspondence to me. They never hear from them again.
“The people need to be in prison.”
Malcolm Harbour MEP said:
“I have recently received what looked like a perfectly innocuous free opportunity to advertise my business, which upon reading the small print turned out to be a scam. Fortunately I have dealt with this scandal for long enough to be aware of it but many other businesses have not been so fortunate. This activity is illegal and we need to make sure that national governments are taking action to close it down. In the meantime, anybody who falls foul of this scam should refuse to pay and get in touch with their MEP.”
