Striking a Chord
Striking a Chord: Why the Strategy You Internalise Is the Only Strategy You Have
Recently I attended a concert of fantastic contemporary music for choir and two pianos. There is nothing quite like watching a live concert pianist at work. For two pianists to play simultaneously and keep the harmony and rhythm in sync is very challenging, but amazing to watch when it's done well.
What you notice about professional pianists and other musicians, is that they play the music from memory. Performing great music is about more than just playing the notes. Not only have they memorised the score, but they've internalised the music, it's nuances and it's meaning, so that they can tell the composer's story with passion and energy.
When we see people perform in the business world, there's often a disconnect between what the composer has written in the score and what the player performs on the stage. Strategies and plans may be written down, but not internalised. Systems and processes may be cumbersome, overly complex and unwieldy to implement. Musicians can memorise music because music has patterns and harmonies that make sense. Music is not a random collection of disjointed notes.
Likewise, in business, your strategies and plans need to make sense. They need to be in harmony with your vision and values and clear enough for everyone to internalise. A random hotchpotch of systems and processes that don't work together or don't work towards the overall vision will never help the business progress and will inevitably be abandoned while people revert to playing the tunes they know.
If you want your business to perform at its best, you need to design your business the way a composer writes music, with an overall vision for the story to be told, with patterns and themes that fit that vision and with harmonies that make sense.
What tune are you playing?
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