Business Leadership

I. Non-Linear, Holistic and Project-Focused

• Non-Linear, Holistic and Project-FocusedPerformance Thinking is non-linear, holistic and project-focused.

II. Practice Makes Perfect

• Practice Makes PerfectThe performance mindset begins, rather prosaically, with practice.
• 5:45AM
• HOMEWORKIn 1993, when he was 11, Lang won the Xing Hai Cup Piano Competition in Beijing.
• Practise a lotPractice makes perfect. Practice won’t guarantee that you will become a virtuoso, and people with talent can deliver great performances with less practice than a less-gifted performer would need. But the very best performers are those with great talent who practise very hard.
• Sweat the difficult bitsWhen artists practise, every detail – a note in a musical scale, a step in a dance routine – is worked on until it is perfect in itself.
• Have heroesAll artists have heroes: other artists whose work they admire and emulate.
• Practise until it’s second naturePerforming artists practise until the technical aspects of the craft have become second nature – until they can perform things ‘in their sleep’.
• Practise a lotPractice in the world of business tends to be confined to education: MBAs, skills training, leadership development courses. Once we have finished our ‘formal’ education, ongoing training tends to be sporadic and ad hoc.
• Sweat the difficult bitsModern leaders don’t have to be Renaissance men and women, skilled in every art and every branch of knowledge. But there is a lot of stuff that we have to master and that we dare not bluff.
• Have heroesYou don’t have to do this on your own; study the masters.
• Practise until it’s second natureThe point of practice is to be able to forget about it.

V. Creating Unique Solutions

• Creating Unique SolutionsThe whole point of any ensemble is to create something together that is more than the sum of the individual parts: something unique that could only have been created by this particular group of people.

VI. Getting Connected

• Getting ConnectedFred Seddon, whose research work with groups of musicians we quoted earlier, used the term ‘empathetic attunement’ to describe performers who are ‘locked in’ to each other’s performances. These players are, as he put it, ‘decentred’ and focused as much on their fellow performers as…
• First Circle: The Circle of Self and WithdrawalHere, your whole focus is inward. The energy you generate falls back into you. First Circle absorbs other people’s energy and draws all outward stimulus inward. When in First Circle, you are not very observant or perceptive about people or objects outside yourself. They interest…
• Third Circle: The Circle of Bluff and ForceIn Third Circle, all of your energy is outward-moving and non-specific, and is untargeted. It is as if you are spraying your energy out to the world with an aerosol can. Your attention is outside yourself, yet unfocused, lacking precision and detail. You get a…
• Second Circle: The Energy of ConnectingIn Second Circle, your energy is focused. It moves out toward the object of your attention, touches it and then receives energy back from it. You are living in a two-way street – you give to and are responsive with that energy, reacting and communicating…
• Carmine GalloAnother thing that gets in the way of forging good connections in any context is a lack of trust.
• Walking BlindThe group pairs off with partners. One stands behind the other with their hands resting lightly on the shoulders of their partner, who must keep their eyes closed. All of the pairs start to walk around the room; the person behind ‘steers’ their partner using…
• The Counting GameThe group sits or stands in a circle – sitting is better – and closes
• Switching PlacesThe group stands in a circle with one person standing in the middle of the circle. The people in the circle must silently signal to another member that they should swap places and they must do so before the person in the middle spots them…
• Clap, Slap, StampThe group forms a circle. They are asked to count clockwise around the circle starting with a group member chosen at random: 1,2,3,
• Build a StoryAsk the group to contribute one word at a time in sequence (staying arranged in a circle is probably easiest) to create a narrative.

VII. Directive Leadership

• Directive LeadershipEnsembles don’t have leaders, in the normal sense.

VIII. Great Performances Have Form and Purpose

• Great Performances Have Form and PurposeEvery great performance has an idea behind it: it has a ‘shape’ and a purpose; it tells a story.
• Dame Darcy BussellOur brains are hardwired to respond to stories.

IX. Tell the Story in Everything You Do

• Tell the Story in Everything You DoOnce an organization (or an individual or team) understands their purpose and what their story is, that story informs everything they do.

X. Keep Reinterpreting the Story

• Keep Reinterpreting the Story

XI. Playing, Experimenting and Taking Risks

• Playing, Experimenting and Taking RisksWe talked earlier about our ‘industrial’ ways of thinking; about how the huge success of the early Industrial Revolution has led us to approach things with a ‘mechanistic’ mindset.

XIII. Business Rehearsal

• Business RehearsalIn the same way that Johnstone’s actors ‘accept’ what their fellow actor offers and run with it, taking the idea further and throwing out new challenges, performing artists in rehearsal are careful not to ‘block’ new ideas. If a musician, a dancer or an actor…

XVI. Performance Thinking: Case Study

• Performance Thinking: Case StudyThe best way to explore the concept of performance in business is to study examples of businesses that are clearly displaying Performance Thinking.
• Delivering a Great PerformanceWe all have our favourite brands. Not many of us go so far as to have our favourite brand logos tattooed onto our skin. It’s different with Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
• The Performance FaltersThe company got a boost from the US military during the First World War. Most of the 20,000 motorcycles used by the US Army in the war were Harley-Davidsons. By the 1920s, the company was the world’s leading manufacturer of motorcycles and one of only…
• Rediscovering its PurposeIn late 1975, AMF appointed a new head for Harley-Davidson: Vaughn Beals, a former aeronautical engineer and CEO of a Seattle company that manufactured large engines and logging equipment. Beals set out to improve Harley’s quality control, with some success, but at significant cost to…
• Turning Technique into ArtHarley-Davidson was fortunate to have a designer on the team with a passion for motorcycles and a deep understanding of the Harley brand.
• Engaging the AudienceIn the tumultuous 1970s, as the company fought to survive for long enough to implement its ten-year plan, Willie G was called on to use his design skills to keep the brand alive.
• Building Connected Ensembles, Rehearsing CreativelyWhile Willie G was helping to design the next generation of iconic motorcycles, he also got the opportunity of a lifetime. In 1981, Beals led a leveraged management buyout of the company from AMF with 12 other senior Harley executives, including Willie G Davidson. “I…
• Performance Thinking in ActionThe new system slashed inventory costs and improved production times. Workers monitored and took responsibility for the quality of their own work. Sales and profits began to climb back upward.