Monday, April 09, 2007

Disco's, DJ's, dancing, and the Start Up Company

I was at a wedding on Saturday, the ceremony was held at Linlithgow palace, (http://www.caledonia-weddings.co.uk/linlithgow.htm), It is an amazing place for a wedding, full of history and splendor, I had forgotten how beautiful the palace and surrounding grounds were. The the wedding reception was held in a near by hotel, the usual meal, speeches and then the disco, it was during the disco , that I made some mental notes, on how a disco, could be equated to the culture /rhythm of a company. I have noticed that a company had it's own rhythm or it's own work rate, even divisions of a large corporation show this difference, there are companies that are frenetic with activity, the heavy metal head banging company, there is the slow- fast-fast-slow company, the disco dance club mix company, and there is the slow waltz company, always moving forward, steadily, and you can round it out with the robotic company, moves with automated precision of an 80's style robotic mix dance.

The DJ, was not the best I had heard, but he was observant and kept the evening flowing a long, he found out early on the music that folk like and the rhythm of music that this group of revellers liked, if the music was too fast, they would sit down..to slow for long and they would sit down. Yes there were the oddities, that would hit the floor, and have a head bang to some ACDC, but they would soon fade out to sit down and rest....so where am I going with this...


The CEO of a company needs to learn what the rhythm of the company is, this will even be different for different groups of people in the company, he is the DJ and needs to manage the organisation to fit the rhythm and know when to push and when to run slow, many CEO's have burnt out there best teams, with just playing the wrong music for too long. The DJ can speed things up if he likes but he always needs to make sure that the speed comes back to the natural rhythm of the company, and if the DJ wants to keep the rhythm going faster , he may need to find a few different dancers to help speed the group up......


Well hope you all have a good Easter Monday.....





Slainte

Gordon

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