Is Your Startup More Like a Jazz Quartet or Marching Band?

Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash

One of these styles works up front, but the other keeps founders and growing companies in step.

Scenario #1: The Jazz Session: You’re sitting down with a group of talented players, letting the music take you where it wants to go. Any player might do a little riff, a departure from the tempo or melody you had all been following. The other players might choose to ignore it or might follow the riff and begin playing with a different tempo, rhythm and melody. The song ends when you all decide it’s time.

Scenarios #2: The Marching Band: Everybody is marching to the beat of the bass drum, which keeps the rhythm that guides both the music and the movement of your feet. Everybody knows ahead of time what their specific contribution is to the song that lasts for a precise amount of time. There are still brief solos or riffs built into the song, but even they are planned ahead.

If you had to describe the typical rhythm of your company, would it be more like a jazz session or a marching band number? I’ve played in both kinds of bands — and even played in a rock band — and loved all of them, but I also know that jazz and marches are completely different kinds of animals, with different expectations for how you work together. If you are a founder looking for a creative metaphor to model your corporate rhythm after, both musical forms can offer you something.

But not at the same time in your business’s lifecycle.

Over the last 20-something years of working with founders and their teams, I feel confident saying that much of the time younger founders think of their business more like playing jazz. In jazz, you sit down with a group of talented players and let the music take you where it wants to go. Someone might “throw a riff” out there, and the other members of the band might grab that riff or they might keep going with their own thing. Another time, a different player might throw out a riff, and the whole team might take a left turn and flow with that. This means you can start to develop a different tempo and a different rhythm and a completely different melody.

Young companies might feel comfortable improvising like this when, for example,

• they launch online and aren’t getting the kind of results they thought they would;

• their customer acquisition cost is too high, or their conversion rate on their website is too low;

• they launched in a retailer without really doing their homework, and there’s no velocity, which carries a risk the retailer might send the product back;

• they spent so much time thinking about marketing that when the revenue didn’t come in, it had a cash problem.

These business examples all call for a quick pivot or new riff. Jazz is about trying something new, such as an MVP–minimum viable product–where you might try something just to get more learning, before deciding whether to commit to that product (or tune). Jazz is about throwing an idea out there to see if it sticks. And that’s okay if you’re in the earliest stages of entrepreneurship and haven’t quite nailed your final product and attracted your first set of core, loyal customers..

It’s okay to play jazz, because you’re trying to explore your options and jazz is all about optionality. When you’re a young company, you’re still figuring out who you are, who your customer is and what market you want to play in. But once you get through this early phase, make some important strategic decisions, and acquire your first 1,000 true fans, it becomes harder to play jazz. You have more stakeholders to account for, and you’ve invested time and money in one direction at the expense of others.

If you already have a group of customers buying your product, and you’ve already established a brand, it’s really important that you keep a rhythm because if you start playing jazz, not everybody is going to like the new direction (riff) you decide to pursue, and you’re likely to lose your customer.

You’re more likely to run out of stock, for example, if you’re not disciplined and staying on top of your inventory. You’re more likely to burn out as a founder because you’re handling hand grenades (or handling riffs) as they come up rather than assessing their urgency in the clear light of your strategic purpose.

And your team or co-founder, if there are only two of you, risk falling out of alignment as you pursue your private melody running through your mind, inaccessible to your team.

The good news is there is an alternative musical metaphor from which you can draw.

Time to Strike Up the Band

Once a company has figured out their product, their pricing model, their brand strategy, and the perfect sales channels they should be in, it’s time to put away the beret and shave the soul patch and reach into the armoire for something with a falcon, wildcat, eagle, bulldog or Spartan on the front. It’s time to begin thinking like a marching band!

The truth is that jazz is an acquired taste that seems strange to many people, particularly those who have spent a fair amount of time in larger corporations. They’re used to marching to the beat of the bass drum that sets the tempo for everyone to follow. Marching bands are a blast because the camaraderie is terrific and everybody knows what their contribution is to the music. It might be three minutes or four minutes or 10 minutes, and then you change to a new song–but every musician knows what’s happening and can play and step in sync.

Let’s dig down a little more. The marching band is driven by the bass drum, which sets the tempo for everyone to follow and keeps them on schedule with regular meetings each week, month and quarter. They aren’t strangers to solos or riffs, but even these are built into the schedule. Unlike jazz, which lives in the minds of the players, the marching band music is written in the playbook, which furnishes the score everybody follows more or less to the note. The playbook makes everybody feel comfortable because it tells them where to go.

There is still some room for solos and riffs, but these are written into the music. For example, the young jazz startup might launch a new product every month just to see what sticks, then adjust based on the results. The marching band company might want to space this out to six months so the marketing team and operations folks can get ahead, and the salespeople can ensure marketplace acceptance.

Marching bands don’t spell the death of creativity or initiative, but they do plan innovation just as they would anything else. Marching band startups might even plan new product launches a year in advance around a key industry conference or meeting.

Another example of a marching band approach to company leadership would be in how you hire people and onboard them. In the jazz band, somebody shows up with a trumpet and “sits” with the group. They either fit or they don’t. Then somebody else sits. Marching bands hold tryouts for first, second, and third seats in each instrument. Auditions/interviews for marching band companies are long and detailed because you are looking for a long-term fit with many other contributors who have to harmonize. You’ve got to be okay with wearing the uniform with the little badger on it, as well. And for some, that, too, is an acquired taste.

I have worked with companies that have grown from two co-founders to several employees, and then reversed course and shrank down to the co-founders again. In this case, the need to establish a rhythm and steady drum-beat of execution are even more important. There is no leeway in which to go all Dizzy Gillespie and pursue your private interpretation of your business. You’ve got to play from the same sheet of music, with one founder taking care of the rhythm section and the other focusing on the melody.

So when you’re a young company, just starting out, jazz is fine until you get your footing. But once you get your core customers and your product out there and sales are coming in, a marching band is a better way to think about what you’re doing. And the larger you get, the more the marching band analogy comes to the fore, because if you don’t have everybody in the band on the same page, you’ll end up like the Faber College Marching Band in “Animal House,” stuck in an alley circling around and around.

Let me know how you’re keeping your change-the-world business in step and moving forward.

Sincerely,

Rob Craven, scalepassion

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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!