So I was reading an article by Daniel Tenner called “Starting up with a Friend” today which had some great insights on the dos and don’ts of starting up a business with a friend. Reading through the comments I came across a post where the user indicated that whilst the article was relevant to starting a business, it could be relevant to starting a band for example.

The Good Old Days

This cast my mind back to the good old days, circa 2002 when I was playing a lot of music. I was a pretty capable guitarist looking for a band to play in, looking to play shows and generally have some fun. So I hooked up with 3 guys who needed someone and I instantly became a fulltime member of the band. Everything gelled, we hit it off, and started to create some pretty good music.

Pretty soon we were getting to the point of wanting to play shows, build a website, record music, manufacture CDs and T-Shirts – that kinda jib, so I took it upon myself to step in to get the ball rolling. Here was my first mistake, but more on that later.

I soon had a website up and running, organised us to go into a studio I had used before, and started booking some small shows. Pretty soon we started to get noticed, and a CD was needed. Admittedly one of my band mates put us in contact with a guy who could do it all for us, we just needed to give him the assets (music, artwork etc). So I did just that, got the audio masters together, worked with the artist and developed the artwork layout myself. You can see where I’m going with this…

Anyway, cut a long story short, this pretty much continued for the next 3 years until I got to the point where I didn’t want to deal with it anymore – simply because people were not pulling their weight. I’ve seen this so many times in my life where people take the flame and run with it because someone needs to do it, and others stand by and watch – happy to let the person run out of steam. By 2005, I had ran out of steam…

Burn out

Instantly I stopped organising anything, and pretty much from that point onwards – the band spiralled out of control into nothing within 6 months. I did try though, I tried to get the rest of the band to contribute in the same way I was, but it was too late – they just couldn’t get their head around it. Although everyone in the band liked to think they were the “leader” of the band because they started it, they actually were just another sheep, very happy and ignorant.

Apparently, my stepping forward should be applauded, because I took the initiative to make things happen, however whilst that is a great thing to do, it’s actually pointless if you don’t manage the rest of the group into action. What I should have done is stepped forward, and distributed the tasks amongst the guys, let them take a piece of the pie, and take the pressure off of me, but instead I ran with it for years until I could take it no more.

Balance it up

Everyone wants leadership though. I know I want someone above me to give me guidance, support me through the tough times and pick me up when I make a big mistake. The trouble is, people start to sit back and relax too much when that happens… The leader turns into the fallback guy, old reliable who’ll “sort it out in the end”. The leader takes away any pressure for the followers to actually achieve. It’s a really tight balance.

Small teams do need leadership. Startups, a band, any kind of group needs guidance – so someone has to step up. That person though needs to realise that they’ve got to distribute the power early on, don’t set yourself up to be “the one” who gets it all done. Lead your followers into doing, rather than leading them into watching what you’re actually doing.

Go as far as specifying roles – Clarke looks after the money, Sarah is the Developer, and Jim-Bob is the ideas man, and make them work for it. If they can’t fulfil those roles, then they can’t do them, end of story. Don’t let it be you that does a bit of all these things, because you’ll soon be the one doing all of these things. Burn out ensues…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 and is filed under Effectiveness, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.