Getting in Touch with Your Inner Superstar

Do You Manage like a Conductor or like a Composer?

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing some sort of improvised back yard version of baseball?  Before the game started, everyone had to have a discussion of what was in bounds was out of bounds.  The apple tree was first base, an old shoe was second base, and on it went.  Once all of those basic guidelines were established, the game could begin in earnest.

We often think of athletic team coaches or symphony conductors as the epitome of management, but to me, that is a lesser level of management.  The real managers of any situation are the people who, like those kids in the back yard, determine the basic rules for everyone to play by. 

To give an example of this level of management in the realm of professional sports, in the NFL, they have what is known as the “Rules Committee.”  These folks get together once a year and decide what the rules of the game shall be.  "You must do this on each play, you cannot do this on any play, this is out of bounds," and so on.  They change various rules every year, for the purposes of making the game more exciting, safer for the players, etc.  

There are, of course, other levels of managers in the sports world, ones that are much more visible.

You have coaches, who come up with strategies to make best use of resources within the framework of the game; that’s one kind of manager.

You have quarterbacks, who have to implement those strategies and occasionally improvise on the spot; that is another kind of manager.

Then you have the referees, who keep precise track of the clock and tell you when you’re doing things wrong; that’s yet another kind of manager.

And then you have cheerleaders, who generally just exhort excitement and maximum effort, that is yet another kind of manager.

In the symphonic world, conductors are seen as the epitome of management in action, but again, they aren’t the real managers.  The real manager in a symphony concert is . . . the composer.

Like the NFL rules committee, composers lay out every single thing that the musicians are to do.  It’s very precise, and playing anything else is clearly seen as being out of bounds.  Even then, there is huge leeway in terms of how the players, as coaches, quarterbacks and defensive ends, can “play” within that very precise framework.  And the better the job the composer did of laying out the framework, the more fun everyone has.  

Conductors, alas, are really in the realm of head coach, referee, and cheerleader.  Important roles, certainly, but nowhere near what the composer does.  If you don’t believe me, go to a symphony concert and take note of how often any of the players take their eyes off the sheet music to look at the conductor.  It happens, but only occasionally– mostly to know when to start and when to stop. 

So my question to you, dear reader, is, what level of manager are you?  Do you lay down very clear rules that everyone can understand, do you clearly define the object of the game, do you define the boundaries, and then do you step back and let everyone play to the best of their abilities?

Or are you skipping that step, and instead just sending in all the plays yourself, cheering from the sidelines, and constantly changing the rules ? 

If the rules are not clear, or if they are constantly violated by you, well, it’s fun for a while.  But eventually there are cries of foul and no fair, everyone takes their spirit of play and goes home. Structure equals safety and freedom.  Without it, it’s just not fun anymore. 

The same things that make backyard baseball fun– which include specific, collectively agreed-to rules, and the fair enforcement of same– are what make any work situation fun as well. 

As I look back on it, three of the most successful and fun conductors I played for – Leonard Bernstein, John Williams, and Henry Mancini– were all composers.  Why am I not surprised. 

In your managing, I urge you to be a composer.  Make clear rules and step back and let everyone else play.  The real control is in the rules committee, not on each individual play.  Anything else is out of bounds, and no fair. 

© Justin Locke 

Bread, Circuses, and . . . "Stupidity"

So let me quite clear from the outset, I have not read this book, “Idiot America,” but, having written a book about the positive uses of stupidity, of course any book that addresses stupidity has become of great interest to me.  So I read the Amazon page and I think I got the gist of the idea.  Basically, the author addresses the dangers of scientific ignorance, as illustrated by a visit to a “creationism museum,” where a dinosaur is depicted with a saddle. 

Yes, it is deplorable that such scientifically inaccurate dioramas are being shown to impressionable young children.  Yes, I suppose it is idiotic.

But as I have tried to show in my book, “Principles of Applied Stupidity,” anytime anyone calls someone else a stupid idiot, what that really means is, “What you are doing runs so counter to my own frame of reference, that the only explanation I can come up with for your behavior is that your brain is defective.” 

So one’s inability to comprehend another’s actions immediately translates into thinking there is something wrong with the other person’s thought processes.   Rarely do people think there is something wrong with their own brain when it fails to comprehend someone else’s actions.  Isn’t that interesting. 

The trouble with saying anyone is an idiot is, idiocy is in the eye of the beholder.  Yes, saddled dinosaurs seem pretty odd to me, but just to give one example, I could just as easily say that spending $200,000 on an education in certain academic areas that don't have many high-paying jobs waiting is also, from a certain perspective, just as idiotic.  It makes just as little sense (to some folks anyway) as the dinosaur with the saddle. 

But instead of trying to condemn one idea over another, let’s try and be more open-minded about it.

What both of these ideas really represent is a culmination of a series of thoughts that ultimately have the same goal.  That goal is: to try to make sense of the world while not questioning certain dogmas, such as the pure unimpeachable goodness of Genesis, or the pure unimpeachable goodness of institutions of higher education. 

But sadly, there is precious little open mindedness here.  The eagerness to condemn takes over. 

We all love to feel superior, and to achieve that, it is of course necessary to focus on the way in which someone else is inferior.  When we find them, it is delicious, it is addicting, but it has a hidden cost.  For the moment you start to participate in this finger pointing, you are no longer free.  You are dependent upon some outside entity to endlessly discover new idiots for you to feel superior to.  Like the Romans, you risk giving up your freedom in exchange for bread, circuses, and stupidity. 

The real danger here is not the dinosaur with the saddle, or even the economic stress of student loans.  The real problem is someone creating us-vs.-them factional strife while claiming to have a greater good in mind.  If they really wanted to attain greater good, they wouldn’t be creating factional strife, now would they? 

I have never succeeded in winning someone over to my way of thinking by calling them an idiot.  There is precious little actual good that ever comes from such condemnations, except to the publishers, who are successfully exploiting your need to feel superior to (and your fear of) people who are different from yourself. 

Instead of condemning these people who see the world differently from you, why not see what you have in common with them?  Believe me, there is stuff you are doing right now that is just as offensive to another person as someone saddling a dinosaur is to your belief in scientific method.  And better yet, how about expecting yourself to be less perfect and more human?  

And another semantic/logic note:  anything that anyone disapproves of can be labeled as being stupid or idiotic.  So the use of the word itself is not very scientific, now is it? 

I don’t mean to be all over this one author.  On the surface, I agree with him completely.  It is just that such a book is an excellent example of a genre of political opinion book that comes out at a rate of 16 an hour condemning the other side’s approach.  They achieve little real progress, no consensus will ever come of it, but for just 24.95, you too can temporarily feel superior to the [insert other political party’s name here]. 

Be mindful of the sad fact that people are constantly trying to get you into their camp by pointing out how awful the people in the other camp are.  This is usually a dodge to distract you from all the nasty things they are pulling themselves, or the fact that we are all avoiding the really tough questions and hard choices.  If you get too eager to feel superior to the “enemy,” your perception of the truth about your own side will be severely hindered. 

For a compete scientific analysis of the use of stupidity in human interactions, I invite you to read my book, “Principles of Applied Stupidity.” 

-jl

Remembering Arthur Fiedler

Well for those of you who care to keep track of such things, this July 4th is the 80th anniversary of pops concerts on Boston’s Esplanade. 

You notice I say Pops concerts, not Boston Pops concerts.  This is because, while the first Pops concert on the Esplanade, with Arthur Fiedler conducting, took place on July 4, 1929, that was not a Boston Pops event.  It was Arthur Fiedler cooking the whole thing up on his own, and hiring a freelance band. 

The reason I mention this is, and I always feel that it’s important to emphasize this, innovation comes from individuals.  It does not come from committees, processes, or structures.  Committees, processes, and structures can be designed to help or hinder, but for the most part, the most amazing advances in any field you care to name tend to come from individuals. 

By the way, Arthur Fiedler became the conductor of the Boston Pops in 1930, due in no small part to the fact that he was staging these very successful independent events, as well as making numerous recordings. 

Lots of people have great ideas.  Acting on those ideas despite the resistance, i.e. fear of infinitely imaginable bad consequences, likelihood of failure, etc . . . are really what make the difference between innovators and imitators.  There are literally thousands and thousands of conductors out there, yet even tho Arthur has been dead for 30 years, no one has come close to him in terms of sales. 

His Bicentennial concert (which I played, btw), is still in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest audience at a classical music concert.  And it was a real classical concert too– we played the entire Tchaikovsky B Flat Piano Concerto that night. 

By the way, concerts on the 4th in Boston have not been rained out for 40 years, so despite the awful cold rainy weather we’ve been having, most likely it will be clear and dry for the concert.  The musicians, who would love to get a rainout and get paid without working, refer to this as “Arthur’s Curse.” 

–jl

My latest video promo

Well as of late I have been producing fun little 60-second promos for Real Men Don't Rehearse . . .   I have done three so far.  Preview audience reaction has by far liked this one the best:

My goal and hope is that this will go "viral" and be just as good as press in any major magazine.  If you would like to share this with anyone, you can use this link:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUIBnMv0dls

Note the other two videos, also fun I think:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g2b9__aIE8

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO7IsksEuaQ

thanks for promoting this!  - jl 

Are You Connected or Are You Disconnected?

I have this friend, Dr. Robert Lee, he’s a bigtime gestalt therapist.  He writes, edits, and publishes a lot of stuff for other therapists.  I was asking him about his work one day, and he said to me, “Justin, it all pretty much boils down to one thing: are you connected or are you disconnected?” 

It’s a simple statement, but when I started to think about it, it sure made a lot of sense to me.

In the realm of conductors and management, here is a story of how this approach applies:

When I was a teenager, I had grand ambitions of conductorial glamour and grandeur.  Of course, orchestras to actually conduct are hard to come by at any age, so in lieu of actually conducting an orchestra, I read lots of books on the subject, I would practice waving a baton at my stereo system, and when I met up with other wannabe conductors, we spent hours and hours discussing the theory of conducting.  One of the favorites was how to begin Beethoven’s Fifth with the least amount of motion, and all sorts of very high-minded discussions about how to shape a phrase and so on and so forth etc. etc. etc.

Unfortunately, there was one small thing lacking from all these many hours spent studying conducting, and that was the lack of doing any actual conducting.  All of this theorizing and philosophizing was, sad to say, sorely lacking in practical experience.  To be honest, I’m not sure the opinions or the possible point of view of, say, a 5th chair violist, ever came up as a topic for discussion.  We just assumed they would find us to be wonderful, and that was that. 

Well, my conducting goals got sidetracked because of the exceptional circumstance of my actually getting a gig playing the bass in a major orchestra.   And while I of course played for some truly fab conductors, there were a lot that truly weren’t so fab.  The difference was not talent or training or ability, though.  The great ones . . . were connected.  And the also rans . . . were disconnected. 

Great conductors all have this way of making you feel like they are right next to and rooting for you and loving every subtle nuance of what you are doing.  The also- rans make you feel like you are a nameless cog, that you could get booted out at any minute for making a mistake, and their instructions and interaction with you is all one way– they often created a sense that they were not listening to us at all, and were instead demanding that we listen to (read: obey) them, period. 

The lack of perception is a key symptom of disconnection.  And the more you try to fix the resulting problems with one-sided top-down error reduction systems, the worse it gets. 

Of course, connection to people can be fraught with difficulty– being connected creates sense of risk of losing that connection, and to some that feels like a loss of power and control.  Of course, if you lack connection, power and control is all you have in place of it, so one can be loath to give that up. 

So anyway, back to real life application: for the players in an orchestra, when a conductor fails to create a sense of connection, and instead indulges themselves in enjoying the massive power that being a conductor confers, oh, brother.  Not good.  We would be tremendously annoyed and offended, and of course we would lose all interest, and sometimes even sabotage them.  In those moments I am not even sure it was a conscious act, it was more like an irrepressible urge.  Felt like justice.  

Musicians in particular spend a lot of time practicing specifically to obtain greater connection.  And when a person in authority does not take the time to hear them, professionalism does not save the day.  We would just shut down and do the minimum to keep the check flowing.

And of course the same thing happens in any organization. 

For all of the hoopla about management theories and social media, the core dynamics of human interaction have not changed.  You can have 6,000 friends on facebook and still feel isolated and alone.  You can have a massive website and have no one care about you. 

A state of isolated perfection, like my conducting a stereo system so long ago, is very appealing in its promised efficiency.  But in reality, I wasn’t making any meaningful connections with anyone.  Connections are imperfect, they are inefficient, they are hard to predict, but that’s the real guts of the matter, and there’s no getting around it. 

So as you ponder your upcoming web 2.0 strategies and your six sigma implementation, whether you’re a conductor, a manager, or a bass player, there is always going to be this one oh-so-very important question regarding your team and your customers:

Are you connected, or are you disconnected?     

© Justin Locke

btw, one of Bob’s books: 
http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Shame-Connection-Psychotherapy-Institute/dp/0881632821

Who do you have to tell you the bad news?

I spend a fair amount of time reading books and blogs about management.  Make no mistake, I get a lot out of what I read.  But I will say, there’s an awful lot of emphasis on high-minded strategy, and not a whole lot of practical advice about the day-to-day challenges on a very personal eye to eye, gut feeling to gut feeling level.  So, since conductors and orchestras are always used as a metaphor for the manager to the managed relationship, I thought I would share my unique access to the core data and tell you what actually happens in orchestral management, as seen by one bass player.

One of the biggest problems and pitfalls that afflicted conductors more than any other I think, was their inability to perceive themselves realistically.  The reason this is such a problem is that, if you are the person in power, and you don’t perceive yourself honestly and truthfully, there is no one in your organization, and probably no one even outside either, who can tell you the truth.  Since you are so powerful, and you are the arbiter of who gets the wealth, everyone who talks to you is going to be constrained either by cultural protocol or personal economic interest to not tell you the whole truth. 

And so, a tremendous amount of weight gets put on a conductor to be highly skilled in terms of their perceptions.  But let’s face it, there are some things about ourselves that we really don’t want to always look at.  There is so much pressure on the person in charge, that they don’t always have the time or the interest of the energy to take a good long look at themselves and see what perhaps needs fixing.  And so, disaster lurks.

To illustrate, I have numerous stories like the following, but this perhaps is the best one:

I was playing a concert in Boston somewhere with a guy who had a doctorate in music performance, he was on the faculty of a major local university, and the rehearsal was going along just fine, until we came upon a section of this piece that was written in 5/8 time.   Meters of 5/8 or 7/8 are always a little dicey to count, as they are a little bit like someone trying to walk with one leg shorter than the other. But this guy treated the 5/8 like it was 6/8.  He stretched out the four and the five to make it feel right to him.   So it ended up sounding like one to three fooouuur   fiiiiive   one two three fooouur fiiiive   

YIKES

This was a choral piece, and the choir had learned it all wrong, and the conductor kept yelling at us folks in the orchestra for doing it correctly and making it fall apart.  So we all just bit the bullet, held back the screaming inner laughter, and played this piece in public for an audience in a totally incorrect manner.  There was absolutely no incentive on the part of anyone in that freelance orchestra to enlighten this guy.  Telling a person of higher status with power to hire and fire that they have screwed royally up is not very likely to gain points, and you run a major risk of becoming someone that that powerful person never wants to ever see again.  So you keep your mouth shut, as that is the best way to keep the checks coming. 

There are, of course, endless coaches and consultants out there who will come in for a fee and give you all sorts of the latest wonderful high minded advice.  But if you want to save yourself some time and trouble and expense, you might want to think about somehow creating a venue where the guy on the loading dock can tell you exactly what he thinks of your latest memo about strategic alliances and leveraging social media, without risking losing his job.  Everyone in your company knows things about your company that you need to know.  The question is, is there a way for them to impart this knowledge to you without fear of reprisal, and . . .  are you listening? 

© Justin Locke

The Future of Management by Gary Hamel

So I was reading Jamie Notter's Blog, and he talked about a book by Gary Hamel titled The Future of Management. The book cites a sturdy where 85% of workers are giving less than their full commitment, and the possible reasons were:

1. Too much management, too little freedom
2. Too much hierarchy, not enough community
3. Too much exhortation, too little purpose.

I thought this was fabulous, because it perfectly summed up 99% of the conductors I played for when I was a professional musician.  So here is a bass player’s take on how to manage better:

1. Too much management, too little freedom

Power is delicious, but what’s the point of having it if you can’t exercise it?  People who have risen through the ranks by being endlessly obedient have, in their minds anyway, earned the right to enjoy some obedience from subordinates.  Most people think of positions of power, i.e. management, as a place where one can finally indulge in the deliciousness of having some control, not a position where one must constantly appreciate and facilitate the work of others.  But the best conductors I played for consistently delegated as much power and authority as they possibly could.  And they kept an open mind about what we did with that power and authority.  As long as the audience was happy, they were too.

2. Too much hierarchy, not enough community

Let’s be clear here, hierarchy is key to all primate societies, including ours.  The idea that you can get rid of hierarchy is kind of like thinking communism will work.  People like to know their status and rank, and earning higher rank is a very rewarding element of belonging to any social group, including one’s workplace.  The conflict between hierarchy and community comes when people become overly anxious about losing status or rank in the hierarchy.  A big part of the power of a manager is the ability to demote, or promote others who are now below you to positions above you.  For most people, if stepping outside of a very narrow prescribed path is likely to cause a loss of status within the group, then such innovative behavior is essentially prohibited.  So instead of getting rid of hierarchy, it’s really important to solidify the predictability and consistency of hierarchy, especially for those who are eager to do unusual things.  Otherwise, confusion over what behavior gets rewarded will result in caution and the least amount of effort from everyone.  This was something I always noticed an orchestra culture... if someone was promoted up in the pecking order of a given section, and everyone generally felt that this was not deserved, this not only destroyed teamwork amongst that section, it also rippled out to everyone else in the orchestra, as it suddenly became unclear as to what was approved of and what was disapproved of behavior. Caution becomes the word of the day. 

3. Too much exhortation, too little purpose.

There’s nothing like a conductor working up a big sweat, and one of those little beads of sweat flying through the air and landing on your 300-year-old Amati violin’s finish. (This inevitably begs the question:  "is this really necessary?")

When experiencing the immediate anxiety, stress, and excitement of a performance, it’s easy to lose track of the big picture.  If things are not going well, it’s easy to think that greater swinging of the arms will improve things.  But here is a classic case of a Principle of Applied Stupidity: the more work a manager does, the less work the managees will do, and vice versa.  More information from management is that much more stuff that has to be complied with and conform to.  So there’s that much less opportunity for team problem-solving.  The more management you put into a situation, the more passive the managees become. 

All too often, conductors I played for really didn’t know what they were actually trying to accomplish.  They were eagerly imitating icons of management (i.e., other conductors) that they admired, and their true purpose was to imitate and display to all loyalty to those icons.  Their focus was always pointed up to people above them, not down to the people they were supposed to be helping. 

The devotion that many musician show to long dead composers is nothing short of amazing.  It is so great, that most of them lose track of the purpose of the exercise, which is connection with, and entertainment of, their customers. 

(c) Justin Locke

Time is more than money

I’m sure you have all heard the phrase “Time is money.”  And when this phrase is stated, it has a certain air of finality to it.  There’s an implication that “money is the most important thing, so hurry up.”

But here is my problem: I’ve met a lot of rich people in my life.  Several millionaires, and may be a billionaire or two, and without exception, these people all moved slower than molasses in January.  I’ve never met a really rich person who seemed to be in any sort of a hurry, ever.  So if time is money, what gives?

The concept of time management is more than one could address in a voluminous book, much less a blog entry, but I’m just going to give my own little perspective on it in hopes that it provides some worthwhile useful information to you.

In the culture of playing music professionally, to be in a hurry is a great sin.  Total command of the pace is everything.  There is absolutely no reward for playing Beethoven’s fifth faster than some other orchestra.

One of the biggest lessons I took from that very intense era  of my life (when I decided to somehow take myself from being an ardent amateur to a professional player) was that it was all about time management.  What I discovered from many thousands of hours of practicing was, I had lost control of my internal clock somewhere along the line, and by practicing at super slow pace, I was able to get it back. 

The only real deadline in life is death itself, and most of us have no idea when that’s going to happen.  And yet, consistently, higher speed is considered to be better than lower speed.  If you look around you at any moment, you’ll see people who are in an arbitrary hurry.  If you are “late,” this is supposedly bad, but if you take a closer look, this often creates a sense of elevated social status... a classic example is showing up to the airport only an hour before your flight.  You will be allowed to pass by all the other people who showed up on time, in order to make your flight.  So I guess it has its advantages.

So there is something to be said for the imposition of arbitrary time limits and deadlines, as this  creates a sense of urgency and drama.  While I suppose this has its applications, all too often, this manufactured urgency has an insidious purpose, of distracting us from something else that we really don’t want to think about.  I have often observed people who really couldn’t cope with being calm.  It’s like taking away their cigarettes.  Their manufactured sense of being in a hurry is a sort of addiction, as it distractesthem from certain things that they don’t want to have to feel or think about.  So time isn’t just money, it’s also a drug.

I think I could go so far as to say that as a society, we are addicted to being in a hurry.  This is why virtually every advertisement you hear on television has an extremely peppy music track behind it.  This music seldom has any artistic or aesthetic quality to it.  Far more often, it has a sense of fearful urgency or intimidation.  Even so, it’s hard to hurry people who are already hurrying almost as fast as they can possibly hurry.

So if you want to get out of this imposed rut of a rat race, and break free of the crowd, I suggest this:  For all of the training and emphasis that you receive it every waking moment of moving faster, I would like to state that there is tremendous power in going slow.

If you will excuse a little name dropping here, John Williams is famous in the culture of professional musicians for his ability to run a rehearsal.  He is never rushed, he is never frantic, we never “run short of time.”  While I suppose this loses a certain manufactured sense of importance and urgency, and many people would think that such things are a terrible thing to lose, for him, being in total calm command of the pace gains him a much higher level of respect from the players.  This is because, in the ultimate analysis, being in a hurry is a waste of energy and distracts from the value of whatever actual product it is that you are creating.  This is, of course, particularly apparent in the music business, where management of time is the job itself.  So it’s not surprising that the guy who is at the top of the heap is never in a hurry. 

Yes, time is money.  Time is also emotion.  Time is also a resource.  And if you put yourself in a sort of first gear of slow and careful time management, there is no hill you cannot climb.  Faster speed is not always the answer. 

Also, you have a unique inner clock, a preferred pace for healthy existence.  While factory managers cannot see value in that, speaking as just one lone artist, that pace has a value in itself, just for the happiness and pleasant energy that emanates from it.  Your pace, your personal rhythm, is a big part of what makes you a unique entity. Of course, if you embrace your unique pace, you may be excommunicated from the rat race.  For them, money is more important.  At least, that’s what they tell themselves.  But are they headed for a well-defined finish line, or are they just running away from something?  Is the hurrying for a purpose, or is the hurrying the purpose itself?

Many people have been led to believe that going fast is what makes them special.  But in truth, the more you hurry, you the more you become generic, as you lok more and more like the other people in a hurry.   

Yes, time is money.  But hopefully, some of your time is also priceless. 

© Justin Locke 

There's Way Too Much Excellence Around Here

Since I work around various artistic organizations, I run into the word "excellence" a lot. You often hear phrases like "seeking the highest levels of artistic excellence."  Another example:  I recently heard about a music school that was "nurturing excellence." And of course, a lot of business consultants and speakers talk about inspiring, achieving, and searching for excellence. This all sounds wonderful of course, but here is my question:

What the hell does that mean?

For example, when you talk about "artistic excellence," are you referring to precision of intonation? (For non-musicians: that means playing really, really, really in tune, which, in a purely technical sense, is largely impossible.*) Does it refer to rhythmic precision? (For both musicians and non-musicians, this is also somewhat nonsensical, as variations in the core mechanical beat are what make a performance of a piece of music unique and magical.)

I don’t know, maybe it refers to everyone having their tuxedos cleaned prior to the show.

In the business realm, does this refer to the delivery trucks being really clean?  Or does excellence in business mean making more money? Or is it defined as an essential step to doing so? And if it is defined by something other than actual numbers, who defines what that standard of excellence is?

I must confess, I’m a bit of stickler when it comes to issues of semantics. It’s part of how I pursue "excellence" in my writing. So I feel compelled to dig into this.

The trouble with the word "excellence" is that it is really just a vague expression of what we subjectively like.  It is a nice lofty vague ideal, and talking about it in meetings as a goal makes everyone nod in agreement.  But here is the problem: 

If your standard is to be “excellent,” well, how many sane people do you know who think they are actually excellent?  Most of the top performers I know are exceedingly humble, as they know they are always one small step away from the abyss of screwing up royally. 

Also, from a performance mind set perspective, it’s not a good idea to start accepting “excellence” as a standard, because if you do, when you have to actually stand up to give a presentation, you will be defeated by the overwhelming weight of this unreachably high standard you have set for yourself, and your constant sense of failing to meet this lofty standard will no doubt make your presentation even less excellent.  Ugh.  You can read from a carefully prepared statement, but lack of any errors does not mean excellence in my book. 

And while it’s nice to always be headed towards excellence, if you can never actually get there, isn’t that sort of a designed failure?  Not good for the confidence, I am afraid. 

Also, if your goal is to be “excellent,” when and where do you do the "non-excellent" stuff, like failing and experimenting and mistake-making, that is so essential to doing something truly new and innovative? (Blatant commercial insertion here: this is one reason why I wrote my book, Principles of Applied Stupidity--to free you from the belief that you have to be excellent all the time.)

I have found, more often than not, that such high ideals can hurt as much or more as they help.  You are much better off accepting your own oddities, frailties as well as the frailties and oddities of your audience.  Connection is so much more interesting than perfection. 

Well I don’t want to stop anyone from seeking the highest levels of artistic excellence.  But just fyi, I have some slightly used lowest-level excellence here that I can let you have cheap.   

© Justin Locke 

Getting in Touch with Your Inner Superstar

Well, as regular readers of this blog already know, I have been actively developing a career as a motivational speaker.

I have been going at this from a lot of different angles, but my goal that I have had from the start is still the same: I want to somehow share the experiences I had both in going from an amateur to a professional player, and what it was like to work in the environment of professional performance (major culture shock).  I also wanted to offer a little insight on the management and leadership techniques of the great conductors.

So a different approach popped into my head this morning, one that made it impossible to go back to sleep.  I realized that what really made these conductors great was not their own individual musical ability, which was often mediocre.  What made them great conductors was their ability to stand in front of an orchestra and inspire the players to be superstars, both individually and collectively.

Now I know you might say to that, well duh, the players of a major symphony orchestra are already superstars, so how hard could that be?

Well yes, that is a good point, but what I also noticed about working with these top drawer conductors was that they could take a basic freelance band, a choir of amateur singers, or even a youth orchestra, and get the exact same superstar response.  It wasn’t just a lot of cheerleading enthusiasm.  It was the creation-- in others--  of a higher state of mental focus and belief in oneself.  It was so fascinating to watch, and they did it with so little effort, that I just had to figure out what it was they were doing.

So anyway, I have analyzed this up and down and left and right, and I’ve come to a new level of consciousness.  Instead of analyzing it and discussing it, I think the best way to explain it to people is to just stand up and do it.

So I am offering a new keynote address package, and it is titled “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Superstar.”  (I’m very pleased to report that googling this phrase gets zero responses, which means I am the first.  YAY.)

Funny thing, when I was a kid I always had this vision of standing up in front of a crowd and conducting an exciting event.  I realize now, I don’t need the orchestra.  I can just go to the audience directly, and conduct their energy.

I have some great stories to share about discovering my own inner superstar... those of you who have read Real Men Don’t Rehearse have heard them already.  But I’m going to reframe them.  I’m starting to understand now how I managed to pull it off, that is, how I managed, as a largely self-taught kid from a farm in Ohio, to play in the most famous orchestra in the world.  It was not about being better.  Instead, it was about not repressing or restraining the superstar energy that every single one of us is born with.  This is what the the other members and the culture of a major Symphony Orchestra was about, and this is what those great conductors did.

There was this constant cognitive dissonance that I always faced in the basement Symphony Hall: here were all these people that, by most definitions, were superstars, and yet... all you saw in these people off stage was a deep sense of humility.  They knew they were just human beings, but they had to access something beyond the normal when the concert started at eight o’clock.  It was a truly wonderful thing to watch that transformation occur night after night.  And at last, I can finally present it in such a way that people can take that energy and make it happen in other environments.

I’m ready to be the kickoff keynote speaker for your next event.  Operators are standing by.

© Justin Locke