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
