Clients & Quotes

Tom Peters Article

Face the Music
Music is a part of nearly every corporate event because most executives (and their creative people) believe it can help communicate their message with more power and emotion. Unfortunately, music can sometimes communicate the wrong message. Take the corporate anthem. Global consulting giant KPMG has received a great deal of flak for its anthem. The $11 billion company with more than 100,000 employees turned to music to express its mission of turning "knowledge into value for the benefit of its clients, its people and communities." The lyrics to its song, "Our Vision of Global Strategy," are set to a schmaltzy and synthesized orchestral arrangement:

KPMG
We're strong as can be
A dream of power and energy
We go for the goal
Together we hold
On to our vision of global strategy...

We actually fell victim to this desire to use music to communicate with emotion. Yes, the tompeterscompany! has a corporate anthem. Called "Catch the Sun," it promises:

I have a dream that drives me
I have a fire inside
It cries that the work really matters.
Each project's a matter of pride.
Years from now they'll still say Wow!

However, despite our failure and others empty attempts, music can absolutely provide the medium to communicate with emotion. At a corporate event last week in Chicago, our Julie Anixter and Valarie Willis witnessed a large group of hospital executives and employees Face the Music. The premise of this musical group is simple: "Most people who work in a business or organization are usually experiencing some form of the blues-a mixed bag of complaints, gripes, and grumbles that become a kind of low-grade virus on the job. The causes, of course-real or imagined-are many: everything from downsizing to restructuring to the lack of a cappuccino machine in the cafeteria. Left unaddressed, these issues distract and disengage your workforce-eventually eroding the motivation, purpose, and focus of your entire organization."

The group uses music to motivate and inspire by letting employees write and then perform their own blues. So, any company tired of dealing with acronyms might write and perform something like this from Mitch Ditkoff:

My CEO is a VIP,
He just got back from his EKG,
His IPO is DOA,
Got a heart of gold but feet of clay,
He's an MBA who wants more R&D
What he does for fun is a mystery,
He's into TQM, he's into JIT,
He's into UFO's, eats at KFC.

While the success of Face the Music is due to the great performers who facilitate these corporate events for clients like General Electric and Lucent, a big part of its secret rests in the genre.

"The Blue Highway winds past the plantation houses of the Mississippi Delta to the south-side clubs and tenements of postwar Chicago. While it's a somber trip, humbling, and even distressing, it's also enchanting and joyful-and reassuring in its success." Blues belongs at work.