Are you building a cult or a band?
I’ve worked at a number of places over the years, and created some of those myself. I’ve also talked with numerous colleagues and friends about their own work experiences. It seems that, when you are creating a start-up or a new business, leaders and founders typically follow one of two cultural models: they either build cults or they build bands.
Cults, being extreme leader driven, demand assimilation and acquiescence — you need to devoutly follow and repeat the gospel. Those who question, typically labeled heretics or “non-team players”, quickly find themselves on the outside. Business and start-up cults are extremely good at posting their bible and proverbs in advertising, in brand guides, and as golden rules printed and hung on the walls of their temples, i.e. their offices.
Cults need priests and hierarchy. They need evangelists. In businesses designed as cults, meetings tend to be an exercise in consensus and reinforcement, not finding the best solutions. The leader takes on a prophetic aura and when they leave to go on to the next business, cults typically struggle, sometimes imploding or sometimes shrinking to a shadow of their former selves.
Business and startups that are built like bands are something completely different. A band might have a lead singer, but bands typically have many different people who are good at different things who have to learn how to play together by building on each other’s strengths. Good bands take turns at soloing — everyone gets their special place in the spotlight. Bands get better by practicing and playing together — and finding new ways of doing both new and old things.
Bands give people room to both play in the band and even have solo careers on the side. Bands, like cults, can gain rabid fans, but bands build their fans on the individual’s experience of them while cults focus on believing the gospel.
David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan (of HubSpot fame) wrote a book way back in 2010“Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.”
The Dead are a good example of this business model. Jerry Garcia might have been the most visible member of the band, but he, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh all toured with their own solo group (Jerry Garcia Band, Bobby and the Midnights, Phil Lesh and friends). They earned a devoted following based on people’s experiences at their many and long concerts. They encouraged bootlegging which was typically illegal. In other words, they ran a bottom up business for their band. And it made them ridiculously successful — even after they no longer are together.
A band is typically only as good as the collected efforts of its members. A cult is only as good as the writings of its leaders. Anyone in a band can write a song and make it into a hit. Not so with a cult.
For some work I did a while back, I interviewed Phish drummer Mike Gordon. He talked about how while Phish was good; he thought they only achieved ultimate greatness at a few specific times. He compared it with these frequency experiments with sand — every once in a while the band members were on the same mental frequency and they played beyond themselves. His theory was that the Beatles were so great because they found this frequency more often than any other band.
I think this is a good metaphor for business as a band — sometimes you are off and sometimes you are in sync and you find greatness. The band recognizes this and plays with it.
Cults have one frequency. They do everything to remove other frequencies.
Bands listen to and obsess about other bands, letting other music inspire and encourage them to do better. Cults turn their noses up at other cults, they tell how much better they are than everyone else.
When you are trying to build your own business or start up culture, build a band. It is both more and less individual dependent, but much more people dependent. It means you, as a leader, have to work and jam with your team rather than ordering them around. It means that people will help make you, and your brand, better rather than you making all of the decisions.
I’m reminded of a scene in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. Freddie Mercury, played by Rami Malek, rejoins Queen after trying to make a go of a solo career and failing. What went wrong, someone asks. They did everything I told them to do, replies Mercury. Whereas here, you guys argue with me and make it better.
Build a band. And rock on.
