Growth, great teams and exceptional outcomes
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” ~ Leonard Bernstein
When I was 7 years old I was inspired by a cellist who visited my primary school to put myself forward as someone interested in finding out a bit more about how to play.
Fast forward 11 years and thousands of hours of practice later I had passed my grade 8 exam and was lucky enough to perform at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Bromley Youth Symphony Orchestra. It was without a doubt the highlight of my playing years.
Working at Xero the past 3 or so years I noticed some striking similarities between my orchestra days and how things operate at a business continuing to scale globally at a really impressive rate.
These are my 4 key learnings for anyone wanting to create and deliver something inspiring as a team.
Collaboration
Origin
mid 19th century: from Latin collaboratio(n- ), from collaborare ‘work together’
To co-labour with others towards the same goal. Musically speaking if we’re going to come together to perform as an orchestra we’d better make sure we’re all practicing the same piece of music, right, (I hope that’s pretty obvious).
How do you do this in business when people are so full or ideas? It’s actually pretty simple. Have a ‘Plan on a page’ for each function aligned to your strategic goals. Then work together across functions to deliver the best performance possible. In fact is it so stupidly simple that most businesses don’t have this and then struggle to align well.
Expertise
Having sales experts sell, marketing experts market, coding experts code, design experts design, consulting experts consult etc etc is key to success
Hire, train and develop experts - and don’t let your cellists loose on the timpani!
Diversity
The beauty, richness and wonder of an orchestra in full flow cannot be achieved with just one or two instruments, no matter how many players you have. You’ll need a diverse group to make it really come alive.
The Wall Street Journal published its findings last year on the competitive edge diverse and inclusive cultures are providing companies with over their peers. [Summarised nicely in this Forbes article]
Our team do a fantastic job on this making sure everyone here at Xero is aware that this is a really important topic and way of contributing to our success. I’m really looking forward doing more as part of our D&I initiatives this year.
Leadership
Every great orchestra needs not only a great conductor but great leadership in each section. This is because the players take their cues from their section leader not just the person at the front waving the baton.
Similarly, every great business knows that leadership is required throughout the organisation ensure the culture stays protected and the wider teams on point and performing. Invest in your leaders and trust and empower them to get the job done.
Leadership is nothing to do with rank by the way — which you’ll know if you’ve read this cracker from Simon Sinek.
Back to Leonard Bernstein, the American composer and conductor I quoted at the top of this piece, making sure there is a plan is key to not playing off key. After that you’ll know that the more you practice together the more you’ll know what you’re aiming for.
Even so, as far as I can recall, every single time we performed as an orchestra it felt like we hadn’t quite had enough time to practice everything we needed to. This is perhaps just a reality of life.
So, when there is not quite enough time, just get out there with collaboration, expertise, diversity and leadership, and achieve great things anyway.
