The Beatles Principles Lessons about teamwork and creativity from the most successful band in history By Andrew Sobel Reprinted from Strategy+Business, Spring 2006 comment | Culture & Change c The Beatles Principles u l t u r e Lessons about teamwork and creativity from the & most successful band in history. c h a n by Andrew Sobel g e 1 ntrepreneur Richard most successful team of our time: George Harrison, and Ringo Branson, chairman of the Beatles. Richard Branson has Starr—are relaxed and confident the Virgin Group, is fun, but his outsized personality as they kick into “All My known for building and high-stakes gambles make it Loving.” Ringo’s drum kit is ele- E creative, motivated hard to follow his example. The vated above the stage—then an teams. He insists on “fun” as a Beatles were great artists and unusual arrangement—so that key element of any new enter- entertainers, but in many respects he is as much the center of atten- prise. When I mentioned this to a they were four ordinary guys tion as the other three Beatles. It’s senior executive at a large invest- who, as a team, found a way to an ensemble of four equal play- ment bank, he shook his head achieve extraordinary artistic and ers, not a flamboyant lead singer and told me, with a mixture of financial success and have a great with his backing musicians. Lars Leetaru by Illustration remorse and bravado, that his time together while doing it. They’re all smiling. They’re hav- company had once been fun, too: “We’re a bit more like the mili- The Beatles created a whole that was far tary now, and too big for that stuff. We marshal the people and greater than the sum of its parts. grind out the deals pretty me- chanically.” He glanced at his Every business team can learn ing the time of their lives. If ever beeping BlackBerry, mumbled an from their story. there was an antidote to the apology, and shot off somewhere, If we want to understand the malaise of “grinding it out leaving behind a last remark: Beatles’ relevance to management mechanically,” it was visible on “There’s not a lot of fun left.” teams, the place to start is the stage that night. Too many people in business February 9, 1964. On that night, The Beatles are a noteworthy feel that way. And the more they the group made its American example because the whole of lose sight of the fun and cama- debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in their accomplishment was so raderie in their business, the front of what was then the largest much greater than the sum of its harder it is to deliver perform- television audience in history. parts. The reasons are evident in ance. The black-and-white clip of that the way they worked together as a issue 42 But there is an example of a performance is now a pop- team; how they collaborated to s s e n i team that learned to deliver the culture classic. Before a theater write their songs; the techniques s u b + highest level of performance full of screaming teenagers, the they used to enhance their innate y g e t while having fun on a legendary four young musicians— creativity; and the approaches a r t scale. Not coincidentally, it’s the John Lennon, Paul McCartney, they used, for most of their time s comment | together, to defuse the inevitable concept of “virtual teams,” “Getting Better” tensions that arose among them. whose members have never met Most rock groups produce The magic was far more than c one another, and never will. This essentially the same types of u l t just the music. There are, in fact, approach can work for engineer- songs, over and over again. The u r specific strategies—I call them e ing and other technical projects, Beatles’ secret to retaining and & “the Beatles Principles”—that but if you have to perform for growing their audience over time c you can use to re-create a bit of h clients and customers, forget it. was the breathtaking and contin- a n the Fab Four’s juju. If you have As the CFO of a Fortune 500 ual evolution of their music, g e to field teams of high-perform- company told me recently, “All from album to album, along ing professionals, or if you’re try- of the big banks and professional many dimensions. Their musical explorations took them into new Effective teams blend branded experts and unfamiliar themes, musical styles, arrangements, instru- 2 like George and Ringo with deep ments, and recording tech- generalists like John and Paul. niques. With songs as varied as “Yesterday” and “Revolution,” they sold more than 1 billion ing to improve your organiza- firms tell you they are ‘global.’ records in not much more than a tion’s teamwork, creativity, and But most of them cannot field a decade. capacity to connect with cus- team of people, drawn from Like many eclectic innova- tomers, here are four principles these far-flung operations, who tors, the Beatles borrowed exten- to work and play by. know and trust each other and sively from other genres and who have worked together combined these ideas into some- “Eight Days a Week” before. You really notice when thing new. Starting from a base When the young Beatles first the individuals on the team are of rock and roll, they added hit the top of the U.K. charts in relaxed, communicating, and touches of Indian music, country 1963, with “Please Please Me,” having fun together—or, as the and western, rhythm and blues, they seemed like an overnight case may be, introducing them- classical, music hall pop, acoustic sensation, but they weren’t. selves to each other for the first folk, and jazz. They turned Behind their seemingly effortless time outside your office door.” record covers into works of art playing were thousands of hours That behavior is a tip-off, (Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely logged performing together in the says the CFO: “I notice how they Hearts Club Band) and virtually clubs of Liverpool and Hamburg. are getting on with each other created the rock video. The This face time forged the individ- because this tells me what a long- Beatles did not actually invent ual Beatles into a cohesive, tightly term relationship with me and most of these musical ideas, but knit team that Rolling Stones my organization might look they reached out and dared to singer Mick Jagger called, envi- like.” combine them in new ways that ously, “the four-headed hydra.” The Beatles demonstrated vastly expanded the vocabulary of Today, we have almost for- that true esprit de corps comes rock and roll. gotten about the importance of from intense, shared experiences. No subject was too mundane face time in building familiarity Beatles Principle Number 1: or outlandish. A newspaper arti- and mutual trust—the requisites Invest in and build face time cle about the death of a Guinness for teaming seamlessly under between team members long before brewing heir spurred John pressure. Some companies have they are ever required to appear toge- Lennon to compose “A Day in gone so far as to promote the ther in front of a client. the Life.” A parking ticket be- comment | came “Lovely Rita.” Paul example, drummers always feel “I Need You” McCartney’s sheepdog inspired underappreciated in rock groups, Research shows that most c u “Martha My Dear,” and an off- and Ringo Starr was no excep- managers hire individuals who l t u hand comment from an over- tion. So Lennon and McCartney are like themselves, in effect r e worked chauffeur turned into would write a song for him to assembling homogeneous teams & c “Eight Days a Week.” The sing on almost every album (e.g., in their own image. The most h a Beatles had profound powers of “With a Little Help from My successful songwriting duo in n g observation. They absorbed the Friends” on Sgt. Pepper’s), giving history, in contrast, was com- e world around them, framed it him a special platform with the posed of two individuals—John musically, and gave it back to us. public. As George Harrison’s Lennon and Paul McCartney— Complacency—being con- compositional talents developed, who were dissimilar in almost tent to sing “I Want to Hold the other members of the group every respect. When they first 3 Your Hand” over and over again—is the enemy of sus- On almost every album, John and Paul tainable success. The way to keep clients and customers for life is to wrote a song for Ringo in order to give evolve your songs with them— him a platform with the public. to constantly expand your reper- toire. Amazon has done this by began ceding song tracks to him. met, in July 1957, Lennon was a slowly adding merchandise cate- Famous Harrison songs include cynical, angry, sarcastic young gories to its original core of “Here Comes the Sun” and man of 16 who was constantly books, Porsche through its suc- “Something” on the Abbey Road getting into trouble. Ultimately, cessful Boxster sports car and album. he came to loathe the Beatles’ Cayenne SUV lines, and Apple As the Beatles matured as a fame. McCartney, on the other Computer with its popular line- team, they worked even harder hand, was optimistic and hard- up of iPod music players and to recognize and embrace each working.