Face The Music: A Growth Transition Analogy For CEO's

By Art McNeil, TEC US chair and speaker

Like an expert jazz group, successful small companies create sweet music when a limited number of players are motivated by the founder’s vision. They know the team’s strengths and limitations, cover for each other, become experts at shooting from the hip, changing direction on the fly and multi-tasking—in short, they are prepared and capable of doing whatever it takes to win audience approval.

Jazz bands, like small companies, are capable of gaining huge audience appeal—provided they remain small. When the band adds people, the freewheeling style that propelled them to success starts creating performance problems. Similarly, as a small company begins to grow, “transition failure” typically shows up when: (1) the CEO stops making decisions and a management team takes over; and (2) the company has a poor induction process.

Larger companies are more like an orchestra than a jazz band. Musicians in orchestras follow a prearranged score. Growth can shift the CEO’s activity from job-centred control (playing with the band) to creating and managing a strong team of direct reports, setting strategy and monitoring results (conducting the orchestra).

In most small companies, the group’s vision, values and operating method exists only in the heads of the leader and the original team. Unlike free-wheeling jazz players, orchestra musicians must submit to absolute compliance with the written music. The conductor can’t allow members to blow, bow, or drum out spontaneous licks whenever the spirit moves them.

In an orchestra, collaboration fosters passion and pride, even though individual assignments may not always be challenging or exciting. The composer, conductor, and each musician has a specific role to play—and they each trust their colleagues to play their assigned parts. Many talented jazz musicians would never succeed in an orchestra because they are either unwilling or incapable of adhering to the “score.”

Transitioning from a small company to a large company requires an orchestra mentality, and a CEO who can:

• Create new systems and processes for workflow—the “music of business”
• Communicate through a common language
• Foster audience delight—while meeting the needs of musicians, suppliers, and the orchestra’s funding partners
• Hire sight readers—firing people who play by ear
• Correct and/or let go of employees who play out of compliance with the written music
• Keep love of the music alive—in spite of autocratic process management
• Not change the tune in mid performance
• Do what it takes to prosper—within the boundaries of the orchestra’s cultural values and ethics platform
• Remember that a conductor’s (or CEO’s) job is to assess opportunities, decide what and where to perform, assure funding, adapt to change, select performers, conduct, and improve performance quality—and not playing with the orchestra.

Growth-seeking CEOs and managers must learn to read and write the “music of business.” The music of larger companies lies in its systems and processes. Employees must be taught to follow the score, play their assigned parts well. After a growth transition, a CEO’s primary responsibility is to ensure that audiences remain delighted with what is being played and that the needs of all partners—internal, external, and investors—will be met now and in the future.

 

 

Art McNeil was founder and CEO of The Achieve Group, whose namesake Achieve Global went on to become one of the world’s largest leadership development and skills training companies. He is author of the best-selling book, The “I” of the Hurricane: Creating Corporate Energy (Stoddart, 1985). Art is currently a TEC Chair in Tampa Bay, US.

Copyright 2008 © TEC International. All rights reserved.

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