Ready, set… Profit!

 

I find that often in business, across of a variety of situations we need to manage, help can emerge by accessing ideas or frameworks that typically have little in common with profit, finances and resource allocation.

For example, a metaphor I often find helpful when thinking about organisational dynamics is the complex web of integrated skills required to make an orchestra, the ensemble of different tools, players and sounds, into a wonderful and coherent “instrument”.

And I reckon it is interesting also to see what we can learn from the Leader of an Orchestra, its Conductor.

The topic of leadership is clearly a complex one; it has been studied and is being studied with much more completeness than what I can hope to achieve with this short note.  To the point that some claim the entire course of studies in a Harvard MBA is actually one long path in the learning of leadership.

So I do not wish to propose a new exhaustive framework, not to innovate on the theory of leadership,  However, I would like to point out some traits – maybe lesser spoken traits of leadership, that we can learn by observing the skills of a Conductor, especially a good one.

These skills, in my opinion, can be helpful to different levels of authority within a business. They are likely to be very helpful to CEOs or CXOs in general, but I see them applicable equally to a team leader, or the manager of a consulting team.  Whomever needs to guide others.

Thanks to the fact that – many years ago – I worked at La Scala (the famous Opera theatre in Milano, Italy) to pay for my university education, I have been lucky enough to see some of the greatest conductors in the history of classical music.  These artists had a wide array of personalities and styles.  But when reflecting about what they had in common, it became apparent that some of their traits of greatness could also apply to business leaders.

More specifically, I would like to isolate three characteristics.

1. Technical competence

In the same way that Orchestra conductors need to fully understand (often be proficient) the several instruments that make up an orchestra, so business leaders need to have a great grasp of the nature of the task which they assign or delegate to their team.  They need to have an ambitious, yet realistic understand of what can actually be done and – to a certain  extent – how.   Lorin Maazel was also a superb violinist, in general a great musician.  That helped him inspire and stimulate each musician in the orchestra as he understood the potential and nuisances of each instrument.  Similarly, a business leaders cannot be oblivious about the nature of the task requested.  He or she might not be an expert, but needs to demonstrate some understanding, whether this is the running of a manufacturing plant – or the compilation of a pivot table in excel.  Obviously a business leader cannot be an expert in “everything” and that is where the importance of curiosity, of learning, of asking about the job of others, that is where these skills come in.

 

2. Sense of Timing

A great conductor is also a human metronome. In fact, the best conductors have an innate, perfect sense of timing.  Not only in the sense of duration of each note, but also in the sense of knowing when and how to activate the right crescendo, when to signal for the next group of instruments to join in unison and when to add vigour of colour to the interpretation.  There is a famous recording of Bolero of Ravel interpreted by Herbert von Karajan.  The piece itself is already engaging, but this great conductor makes it even more mesmerising thanks to a perfect sense of timing.  In business, timing is equally crucial  Timing of decisions for example: the same decision, the same exact decision (for example an acquisition) can yield a totally different outcome depending on the timing of its announcement or its execution.  Timing is also speed.  In fact, a faster organisation is often a leaner, smarter, more agile organisation.  However, at times, the organisational tempo needs to slow down.  I met a great CEO who told me once: “sometimes, before I have to make an important decision, I hesitate just a bit”.

 

3. The most important leadership quality of all

Well, this might be a bit controversial.  However in my view it is the element that makes the difference between a good, a great and a magnificent conductor.  A quality – for example – which the great Claudio Abbado possessed in abundance.  Not only he was technically proficient (he could memorise an entire opera so to perform without having to read the music score), not only had he a perfect sense of timing.  He also had the key factor for leadership: Passion.

Passion, that is what made the difference when Abbado was conducting an orchestra.

Similarly, the greatest business leaders I met in my career, whether CEOs (see the other post on my blog for reference) or team leaders of team, or a department, All shared a great passion.  Passion for their own work, for the company they are working for, for the teams they have the privilege to lead.

Passion makes the difference and is the glue of the different components of leadership, including Technical Proficiency, Sense of Timing and those not quoted in this short article.