It Takes an Orchestra to Play a Symphony

My wife and I went to see the Navy band on Friday night at a local high school. Lots of John Philip Sousa. The brass section competing with the flutes and piccolos and of course the clarinets playing their own part.

They sounded great together.  They were so in sync.

I’ve known folks in high performing bands- you probably have too.  They love it.  Universally.  They love playing their instruments together and making music.

My high school band-we tried hard too. I remember one year our first football game, in early September, we were going to be playing at halftime and the opposing team had a strong band program.

For the first game, we usually did no marching while playing. Typically for the first game we’d not have practiced much, so we would march from under the goalposts to the middle of the field, all turn toward the home crowd, play some songs, then march off.  If you’ve ever been in a marching band, you know you take 8 steps for every 5 yards.  Very basic and easy to repeat.

Well, because we wanted to impress, we practiced like crazy the first week of school and were able to do stuff it usually took us two months to accomplish.  It was a long time ago and I’d be stretching to say I remember what creative things we did, but I know we marched all around the field and played the songs the way you’d expect a high school band   And everyone in the band felt so proud.  We felt like we’d really done something.  Together.

People in choirs, or stage productions, all unite that way.  I think local or high school drama productions really bear that out.  The extras, the lighting volunteers, the folks who built the set, the moms doing make-up, the actors who got the lead roles…..they all absolutely love it!  Cannot get enough of it. (If you’ve been in a community theater, you know that everyone does a bit of everything.  The beauty of casting kids is you have a couple dads to swing hammers and several moms to help with costumes).

Bands, whether local or the Navy Band, local theater productions, church choirs, Leukemia Society Light the Night walks, bowling leagues…….what do they have in common?

You’ll be able to add to my list, but 3 loom as immensely impactful to me.

1. Everyone is doing their best. People try.
2. Everyone has a shared purpose. They all share a basic understanding of what they want to accomplish.
3. The all want to do their part. They want to contribute.

Consider how work could absolutely sing if you had a team at work where:

1. Everyone is doing their best. They try.
2. Everyone shared a purpose. They all have a basic understanding of what they want to accomplish together.
3. They all want to contribute.

Beyond a high level of performance, what you will share with your colleagues is that fantastic sensation of working with others toward a common goal.  That is the high the Navy Band gets when they play.  That is the endorphins as they take over when the curtain rises in the local production of The Sound of Music.

Now, how do you get there?  Regular readers of my blog http://motivus.org/blogcoaching/  and clients will be familiar with the two building blocks so I’ll not get into those for brevity’s sake.

Against each of the three, consider

1. For everyone to do their best, they must matter. Their work, if it does not matter, should not be done. If it does not tie to the mission, they know it better than you do.  Everyone has to matter and AS importantly everyone needs to be told they matter. Not so that they know.  So they know that YOU know.
2. Stating a purpose is easy- any boss can proclaim a goal. Assign a number.  To be shared, the team has to feel listened-to in the goal setting process.  Needs to feel a part of it.
3. Accomplish the two above and all will want to contribute..

Consider this counterintuitive adage:  The effective manager need not be present.

Toss that around the frontal lobe for a minute.  The good manager does not need to be there? Perhaps not. If the team shares a goal, feels they helped in building the goal, and what they do contributes to attaining the goal, you have yourself some motivation going on.

I love the concept of retreats to shape the goal.  Its gotta be somewhere different than where you usually meet.  Different dynamic.  Casual, and non-threatening.  Set it up professionally and people will not go squirrelly in their behavior.  They will try if you stage the retreat with respect.  And they will come up with quality goals.  Maybe not what you would have, yet better to have a team focused on a good goal than a team fragmented against a perfect goal.

I’ve stolen a bit from my past in structuring this post against an orchestra.  One of my team’s years ago decided, for a calendar year, to assign orchestra sections, to refer to each other as such for the year. It was a way to recognize a unit within the unit.

Perhaps in your office you could refer to different departments as the strings or the flutes or the brass or the percussion.  In your string section you might have your accounting folks: Zach as violin, Chas at viola, Joana on Cello, and Eva at bass.  In the brass section, representing service, you’d have Jackie at trumpet, Jasmin at trombone, and Sam on baritone. And so on.

If you decided to go the orchestra route, again you’d want the team to participate in the structure.  Maybe you are the conductor or you are the composer.

When I lead retreats, I find the organic nature of them is so important.   So you might go into it thinking your team could write a Constitution, and you might think it should have 7 articles. But beyond that the team should write it.  They should determine headings and write each Article of their Constitution.

I worked with a hotel that shaped their year around football and a 12 game season.  Each monthly P&L represented a game, and the goal was to go undefeated.  A win was a P&L where they hit budgeted Net Income. But even a loss did not wreck the season.  As with any team, you try to improve after a loss!  Go for a winning season.

Everyone in a revenue generating department was part of the offense.  Anyone in a support department was defense.  They had monthly game plans- they really got into it.  From my outsider’s perspective, it looked like the team really responded.

Could you do that 3 years running?  No. Not fresh.  But for a year it was great.

I should close.  Thematic options abound, ones which can be taken seriously by various levels of the organization.

Team Building is rarely Urgent, but it is always Important.

It Takes an Orchestra to Play a Symphony