Two Beats Ahead with Panos A. Panay and R. Michael Hendrix
Graham Allcott 0:07
So it's one of the rare occasions where we have two guests on Beyond Busy this week, and they are Panos Panay and Michael Hendricks. They're the co authors of two beats ahead. What great musical minds teach us about creativity and innovation. They're both leading figures at the legendary Berklee College of Music. They're both entrepreneurs. They're both musicians and designers. And as a huge music geek myself, it's safe to say I really enjoyed this one. In this episode, we take inspiration from furrow Williams, Bjork, David Bowie, Justin Timberlake, and many more. And behind all these inspiration stories are little nuggets that I think will help you unlock creativity and innovation. wherever you happen to work on. This is Panos Panay and Michael Hendrix. So I'm here with Michael and painters, and we're with we're struggling three countries in three locations right now. So I'm in Brighton as ever, Panay here is in Cyprus.
Panos Panay 1:49
I'm in Nicosia, Cyprus, my home city and home country.
Graham Allcott 1:52
Nice. And Michael, you're just you're you're on the other side of the times, I was just waking up in Boston in the US. That's right. Cool. And we're going to talk about your your book, which is to beat the heads up my copy. And I didn't realise that I'm actually have the honour of talking to you guys. On the day it comes out here in the UK, which I do. So that's that's really cool. So we're going to talk about to be to hear, but let's just get to know, both of you, first of all, so, Michael, you're a partner and you're the global design director at IDEO. Do you want to talk about what that involves? What is what is your day to day work with idea involved? Yeah, so
Michael Hendrix 2:34
idea was a design and innovation consultancy, and we work mainly with publicly traded companies or large businesses, to help them bring new products and services into the world. You know, we've actually worked with Berklee College of Music, and that's upon us and I have worked together many times over the last couple of years. But we, it could be with governments with retailers, etc. Helping them invent something new. My job at IDEO is, has been different throughout the years, as I've grown through the company, today, it's about getting the best out of our creative leaders and helping them unlock their teams, whether that's through learning new methodologies, creating the right conditions for success, or successful ideation, etc. so relevant to the book, we have a chapter about producing. And I think of myself as a producer at IDEO now. And fortunately, we get to talk to some great, great inspiration, and inspirational people during the interviews like Hank, Sean t bone Burnett. So yeah, it's a cool parallel for me to look at.
Graham Allcott 3:42
Yeah, so we'll go on to that. And then when when I first got pitched your book, and actually it was at the same moment, when the book then arrived through the post for me, he was like, this is this for me as a massive music fan is just like a dream. And I'm kind of kind of annoyed, you went one step further and was and became the people who are writing this book, because then it just opens those doors right into all those amazing being able to sit down with those amazing people. So and then panels, you say your career, what I was interested in was you you started as a talent agent and worked with chip courier and Pat Metheny, and many other people and then went on to become the founder of Sonic bids. So do you want to just talk about that background in terms of your career?
Panos Panay 4:28
Yes, I left Cyprus when I was 19 went to Berklee College of Music thinking I would be the next Pat Metheny or Eddie Van Halen allows that was one of the cards but I did music business and through that, I was able to get an internship that gave me both a job and a life in America. Because otherwise I would have felt myself back back here in Cyprus, which, you know, at 48 is not so bad at 19 It felt like the worst thing that could possibly happen to be stuck on an island but I became a talent agent through I guess I'll say my a good old fashioned apprenticeship model with with the founder of the agency was in charge of all the local tours of big artists that I grew up with bar and like Pat and chick you mentioned Nina Simone Leonard Cohen. I've been one of those few fortunate people in life where every job I've ever had loved. And it always felt like being a kid in a in a candy store. Through my experience, as an agent, I got the idea in the late 90s, to start a platform that connected artists with music promoters, effectively taking the agency model and putting it online. And that was the foundation of Sonic bits, which grew to be at the time that the facto platform for hundreds of 1000s of artists to connect with 1000s of promoters around the world. So I sold the company in 2013. At the time that I sold that we had over half a million members on the band artists side to over 36 37,000 music promoters, including big festivals, like we were just talking about the great The Great Escape in Brighton but also South by Southwest in the US 1000s of promoters, from big festivals to small bars, were using the platform to book bands, very proud of the fact that over a million gigs took place on the site. In those 13 years around the business, the company is still around, adjust me whether or not a company that started in 2000, an online business would be around 21 years later, I would have never believed it, but it's still around. And a lot of artists got their start on Sonic bids. And I'm really proud of that. Artists like Arcade Fire and magic dragons and American authors Passion Pit many, many artists from all over the world use that as sort of their first step, frankly, into connecting with a lot of these events. And now I'm in charge of global strategy and innovation. at Berklee College of Music. My official title is Senior Vice President. I'm in charge of the institution's overarching strategic plan. I oversee our expansion globally, and also directly oversee our various campuses outside of Boston, which is the main campus but we have a campus in Valencia, Spain, where we do our master's programmes. We opened a campus in Abu Dhabi a year ago, we have a campus in New York City that took over a legendary recording studio called the power station where being an 80s kid, the band power station actually got together and recorded what I think is still one of the best albums of the of the 80s. With a great
Graham Allcott 7:48
record, there was Titan recordings here. And they're like, what should we call this? So I
Panos Panay 7:53
guess you'll need to talk to john Taylor and Andy Taylor about that. But I believe the inspiration was the name of the studio, which was an old power station, but a lot of iconic albums from Madonna's Like a Virgin Avalon, by Roxy, music, brothers in arms, Dire Straits, the Hamilton soundtrack have been recorded. They're still a commercial recording studio that we plan to keep and yeah, and then,
I have a fun job. And also in terms of looking at new technologies and the way that they're incorporated into into the curriculum. Yeah, it's one of those jobs that you kind of is both given to you. And you also get to design which is maybe the definition of happiness, or at least professional.
Graham Allcott 8:39
Yeah. And then I read a thing that you've been doing together called the open music initiative, which I thought sounded really interesting. Do you want to just tell us about that?
Panos Panay 8:46
Yes, Michael. And I have a habit of undertaking projects that we know nothing about. And we just kind of figure our way through them. So open music was launched about five years ago in collaboration with our good friends at MIT connection science, which is, I would say, one of the top data science labs at MIT and MIT Media Lab. But we have brought together over 200 stakeholders from the music industry. And the objective is to create a shared open way of identifying rights owners across the digital supply chain of music. Without going into a heck of a lot of detail. Right now, there is not a simple unified way of identifying who owns what, across all the different services and platforms through which people like you and me and every other listener, a streams of music, and that creates not only a lack of remuneration of by rights owners but Also a lot of money that is collected never even gets distributed. So we ultimately believe that through the initiative, we not only want to bring transparency, as well as attribution to the rightful owners and remuneration, but really create a system where the owner all of the creative identity, if you will, is the creator and not any number of different intermediaries,
Michael Hendrix 10:30
if you will, when we when we started talking about it was actually, you might remember when blockchain before in FTK, before the internet craze today, five years ago, we were looking at blockchain as a way to do the kinds of things upon us is talking about, you know, whether it's allowing shared ownership of, you know, fans and artists together in the songs or creating new assets on top of the recorded albums, etc. So, as we were looking at those opportunities, we just recognised there was even lower hanging fruit at the moment, which was, you have all these you have managers, labels, streaming, service, etc, that don't have this simple ways to communicate and share data. And that's what drove us to begin open music. And today, actually, Berkeley's prototype that we've got it working on campus, they have a really cool system so that students can all get fair attribution for their work. So it's great to see it coming to that,
Panos Panay 11:23
yeah, this student journey is transformational, and we're launching in the next month or so. But students will be able to create a digital wallet using their Berklee credentials. Any collaboration that they are doing within the Berkeley ecosystem is attributed to them as well as their co creator, they will be able to push their music out to what we call DSPs. or streaming services like Amazon Prime, Spotify, Deezer, and so forth. And they'll be able to track both any where their music is being licenced, or ultimately how they're getting paid. It's a prototype that we plan to keep closed within the university environment. But gradually, we are using our neutrality as academia to explore these new models, not just for compensation, but eventually we believe will affect the, the very nature of creative expression. So we're quite excited about it. Like everything else. It's an iterative process. It's an it's an experimentation process, which is all the stuff that we we talked about it two beats ahead.
Graham Allcott 12:40
So just before we get into the book, so the other thing that obviously comes up when you do the reading about your careers, and it comes up in the book is just Berklee College of Music as a as a kind of venue as a vessel for for so much creativity. As as a Brit, it's one of those places that I've heard the name every now and again, but it's not kind of etched in the psyche as a particular sort of place, wherever. So, do you want to just explain what happens at Berklee College of Music, like why is it special? And you know, and why does it have such a strong sort of place in in sort of musical creativity?
Panos Panay 13:17
Berkeley is the biggest then, I would say most preeminent institution of contemporary music, Dance Theatre, and sound or a sonic art pedagogy. It has over six and a half 1000 students over 10,000 students online. It's a 75 year old institution missionary founded by an MIT graduate after World War Two, and it has over 70,000 alumni who have collectively won well over 300 Grammys and numerous Oscars and Golden Globes at Emmys. If you listen to any piece of music, either on a streaming service or the radio or the good old fashioned CD player, or a film or a video game, I am nearly certain that a part of that experience has been either sun written, designed engineer produced arranged by Berkeley graduate.
Graham Allcott 14:23
Wow.
Panos Panay 14:24
Very famous alumni like Quincy Jones, like Branford Marsalis St. Vincent, Charlie puth. Melissa Etheridge, john mayer, some of the folks from Aerosmith, a lot of famous composers of TV, including the folks who have written the music for everything from the Game of Thrones to to a number of superhero movies. To get our toe Brock, a Turkish female composer who wrote the music for fortnight, and for a number of big Hollywood movies and on and on so it's it's a beautiful institution to be a part of I'm if I'm an alumnus. And my long journey led me back to Berkeley, I joked with a president the other day that Berkeley is sort of like the bob in The Godfather, just when you think you escaped it, they dragged you back in. But it's also the first music school music university to teach the electric guitar, as an instrument in the 60s, then pioneered the teaching of sound engineering, songwriting, film scoring, and then eventually turntable ism. And now electronic digital instruments as a proper means of creative expression. Yeah, so change and innovation has been part of Berkeley's DNA since its founding, because it's been all about giving students the tools to create new things that express themselves in new avenues, rather than simply interpreting something that somebody who died a long time ago, right. Now, there's anything wrong with that? Yeah. But we, we develop creators and innovators. And I believe we do that better than any other music institution on the planet.
Graham Allcott 16:35
And I suppose that is quite a nice segue into talking about some of the chapters of the book and various things in the book, because it's, it feels like there's, you know, I feel like this, this book, for me felt like a really natural coming together of things that I'm interested in. You know, so I'm a writer, I'm constantly kind of thinking about how to, you know, change my writing, how to evolve my ideas, and evolve what I'm thinking about. And I'm also just fascinated and curious fan of music of all kinds of I love one of my favourite things on YouTube is just just watching interviews with musicians and taking inspiration from musicians that I like, and like, how do they write? You know, what were they thinking about? What was the context of that? What influenced them like that stuff is just always like, really fascinating to me anyway. But I suppose one of the things that maybe comes up in the book that struck me is, so you make the link between, like the work that you guys do in terms of creativity, innovation, and you make this link between, you know, tapping into the musical mind and thinking like a musician. And, of course, creativity and innovation is, is at the heart of business, too. But one of the things that really struck me with the book is how many examples you've got of musicians who actually became entrepreneurs and business people outside of just their own music. And, you know, and sort of applied that same creativity in that same crazy crisis into other areas. So you've got for Al Williams and Bjork and Dr. Dre and a whole host of people in there that have set up businesses and I think a couple of things in there like the Bjork thing I wanted to talk about, because I've just never heard of that before. But I do you see that as a really natural link? So do you think if you've got the mind to, to write hit songs, does that automatically mean there's something in your brain that would make you you know, an interesting candidate to be a successful entrepreneur or successful in business,
Michael Hendrix 18:33
it's a mindset that's already there, it needs to be developed. And, you know, the, the book, a lot of it was developed in courses teaching at Berkeley. So we recognise that we do believe this mindset exists, and that musicians can transfer these skills they have to things outside of their art. We wanted to help students unlock that for themselves and recognise that their virtuosity was much more expansive than they realised. Yeah. Because Because there are these great examples of professionals that have you know, it's it goes beyond as you said, it's not it's not like a celebrity endorsement of a product, you know, that just somehow has a name associated with they're literally designing, building, creating new businesses, curriculums, new service models, new designs, and we believe that can be unlocked. Really, in anybody, musicians just start just in the ideal situation to accelerate the development of those skills, but we believe it can really apply for everyone.
Graham Allcott 19:44
Yeah. Let's tell the Bjork story because this is something I was not aware of. And even as a as a fan of her work as well. So the 2008 financial crash, and basically built comes to the rescue. Joanna, tell us the story.
Michael Hendrix 20:02
Well, she recognised I mean, you, you you will know it in the UK better than we do it in the US because a lot of the controversy was not those banks investing in Iceland but what she recognises that there was an opportunity to for Icelanders to reclaim their own economy. And she wanted to do it in an artistic way. So an all women, all women founded a Capital Group, a bank, created a new phone called the New York fund, and I can't remember what that stands for, but it's actually an acronym. It's probably an Icelandic, so I wouldn't be able to pronounce it anyway. But she, they invested in companies that they had, they felt they had an emotional connection with, which is a very different way to think about investing. On the surface, I we actually believe intuition is how most things work. But in that they were looking at businesses they felt were sustainable, that were championing equality that were environmentally sound, as a way to help bring the economy back in good health again. And that fund actually did work. which is which is amazing that dork that vision. But you know, what's, I think exceptional about her is that she brought her artistry, her perspective about what she thinks the world should be like that she sings about that she now teaches about into the financial space, was able to unlock that in a genuine way.
Graham Allcott 21:40
And was it her that came up with the phraseology of emotional due diligence? Was that her her phrase?
Michael Hendrix 21:47
No, that was another another. capitalists in our book, actually Who? Tim Chang, and he was, he was saying, when he is interviewing founders, he's more interested in their personal journeys, the struggles they've been through the challenges they've overcome than he is and the idea that he's investing in, because because he acknowledges it is that, you know, investing in startups, is really a bet on the people whom you believe will embrace an iterative process to get to the right idea. You know, both Pontus and I are founders, we both had our own startups. And, you know, we both tell you that the day that it is we started with, we're not the ideas we finished with. Yeah, we had, I had a really painful pivot in my in my startup where it took over two years to get us from one business model to the next. So an investor's emotional diligence is looking at those people and asking, do they really believe in these in the purpose of what they're doing? Do they really believe? Do I believe in them that they have the resilience to make it to the changes they'll have to go through to get to the the product or the service that actually matches the market?
Graham Allcott 23:05
And there's that bit in the book where you talk about that sort of vision that Bjork has, where she's kind of looking at the world and then looking at her own view things. I remember the exact phrase, but something like the resonance between the reality and her reality are something that is that right. Mutual coordinates. Mutual coordinates, yeah.
Michael Hendrix 23:24
Which is actually a lyric of hers. Yeah. I mean, York is certainly one of the more poetic artists that you run into. And I mean, I love that phrase mutual coordinate, she is asking about the synergy that we find in the natural world and the in the business role in the artistic world, and how they all align. I think she's done amongst exceptionally amongst the many artists that we talked here.
Graham Allcott 23:52
And that's one of those things, isn't it, that when it comes to the first germs of an idea of a startup through to a growth period, in a startup, and then beyond, and even if you're working in businesses, a lot of what you're doing is what bill does in songwriting, which is kind of joining the dots, taking the pieces, you know, and sort of curating and putting things together, right, that's like a big part of a big part of the process of building anything.
Panos Panay 24:19
One of the things we want to debunk with with two beats ahead that I feel we're all taught that the way you go about developing a business is just sort of begin with the end in mind and then you sort of reverse engineer engineered at some perfect way and then you ruthlessly execute against that plan. And today you have a business and you're successful. And the truth is anybody who's ever started or done a business, knows that paraphrase a very famous military general one Clausewitz the first casualty of war. The battle plan? Well, the first casualty of business is usually the middle of the business plan. And what we can learn from musicians is that inspiration comes from everywhere. And creation is not a linear process. But it's an iterative process, that the magic is often in the mistakes that one makes, rather than the intentions that you set out with. And if you are paying attention to those mistakes, they're not mistakes at all, they're actually little points of inspiration that you can use, that eventually leads you to the very thing that you're probably meant to create, you just had no idea and that the process in itself is the reward of any creative expression. And anybody who's starting a business knows that you very often end up with a very different business than the one that you had in mind. And even very well known management thinkers like Peter Drucker will say, look for unexpected success. And it's very easy to edit out unexpected success as an accident that you ignore it, that you focus on all the things that you were intending to do that went wrong, and how do you make the right. But it may very well be that the profit margin of your business, or the intention that you have as an artist that is meant to be born, is in fact, in that unexpected success in that happy accident that occurred, but you're worried about looking forward to begin with,
Graham Allcott 26:53
which is already about listening as well, right. And that bed at the start of the book where you talk about the spaces between the notes, and just about Pharrell Williams. And you say at the beginning of the book that he, he kind of embodies, you know, this idea of a musician that's, that's really attuned to creativity in all its different forms. What's so special about for Well, for Al Williams, why did you decide to highlight him,
Michael Hendrix 27:19
planets, you know, you want to talk about your interview with him.
Panos Panay 27:22
I've been fascinated with forelle. And his career, and he has a person in the way that he thinks of what he does as seamlessly blending together that rather than well. Here's my music. This is my collaboration with Adidas. Here's a chair of designing. But all of these are avenues through which his creativity is flowing out. And when I had interviewed him for an event that we did at Berkeley called career jam A few years ago, he literally opened his speech by saying, music is a skeleton key that opens every door. And I like that, because in many ways, exemplifies so much of what we're talking about in two beats ahead that the way that a musician thinks often unlocks imagination and creativity in a way that can be expressed not just in a musical performance or song, but also in a shoe or in a piece of furniture. And this is why so many companies are seeking for L or other creators. And at its best, this collaboration at their best, they're not giving, it's not marketing, marketing gimmicks. And frankly, we can all read through those. But the ones were the identity of the artist of the Creator, and the brand of the product, and the product itself. The ones where this merger happens seamlessly are the most successful ones and I would say extremely powerful. And I being a fan of both Morel and Adidas, I will say that some of those collaborations really capture the essence of that
Graham Allcott 29:24
collaboration and of both at the same time, right, like, it's like a seamless merging, you guys must have seen the thing. This is one of my favourite videos on YouTube is for Al Williams and Maggie Rogers you know that video. So, no, oh, wow. So Maggie Rogers, and she is that this point like a young I think she's like 19 and she's a student at some music school. It may be maybe Berkeley. She basically tells her story Worry about how she grew up in a very rural environment. And she's come and she's kind of heard dance music. And really Finally, like, she got it. And her music is merging these two things. She's like a singer songwriter. And and it's really electronic. And it's like a 10 minute clip. And it's basically, she tells for all this story is part of, you know, for ELLs visit there. And then she says, I've got this one song, do you want to hear it and they put this song on and for our faces just like, Wow, this is amazing. And it kind of went it went viral because it kind of launched Maggie Rogers his career off the back of it. But the thing that was really interesting was like, one of the first questions for L says to her Afterwards, he says, Well, I've got nothing I can say about that. And also, by I'm really keen to see your visuals, because I bet it's a bet you have really good visuals for that song already. You know? And she's like, she said, kind of says something like, Oh, yeah, there's all these colours. And he's like, yeah, I can see the colours already. And I just thought it's really interesting how his brain is like, not just evaluating that, for what it is a piece of music, but he's also evaluating everything that could go with it and the style. And you know, it was I just found that really fat and fascinating, just kind of watching his mind like and seeing the cogs wearing can.
Panos Panay 31:17
I actually was a student at NYU. That's a clip you're referring to. But another example of forelle and I can't help but mention this because I'm a football fan. He partnered with Adidas to reimagine some iconic kids of clubs like Arsenal event is Manchester United, round Madrid and Bayern Munich. Yeah, and I hope you don't hate me since you're down in Brighton, but I'm an arsenal fan.
Graham Allcott 31:51
And I'm an Aston Villa fan, which has nothing to do with Brighton. That's just where I'm from.
Panos Panay 31:55
You're from Birmingham, okay. But he reimagined Arsenal's iconic Bruce banana kit. And I know you've seen them. But they are so much fun. And in the book, we talked about the ability of musicians to take something old, and infuse it with something new, remix it and create something totally different, which is ultimately, both with music or what hip hop is about. So if for me, those kids are, if you were to take football, and athletic apparel, and this idea of hip hop, and putting it together, what would you come up with? And I think that collaboration captures the spirit of all this. Yeah. And he's done it for a number of iconic kids. And I just love the way that it is sort of this tangible presentation, in many ways of what we're talking about in the book, this idea to see something reimagined into something totally different. mash it up, spit it up, turn it around and create something cool and different. Yeah, not just for the sake of something called a different but because it is an avenue through which you express your creativity. And if it's authentic, people want it.
Graham Allcott 33:12
Yeah, that's just think he said, He's such a visionary guy. I love it. Let's talk about a couple of the other lessons from the book. And one that really stuck with me was Justin Timberlake 's sort of match, I guess, mantra, you'd call it a little quote, where he says, I'm going to dare to suck here. But let me try this. So he has this idea of daring to succeed. What does that mean daring to suck?
Panos Panay 33:38
It means to dare to try. It means that often, as I mentioned a bit earlier, it's the mistake that leads you to the cool hook. And when Justin came to Berkeley, a couple of years ago, to be our graduation speaker, which by the way, this year for Al Williams is our graduation, right, one of our honorees and a graduation speaker. But when I was talking with Justin at that interview, I asked him about his method of songwriting. And he says to me, Look, I learned a lot working with Max Martin, who has written the most number one hits than any other songwriter other than Lennon, McCartney. He was telling me the story of how he asked Max, how do you write ahead? And his answer was just keep writing. Keep doing it. And he says, that's my mantra at the studio. I mean, here's something that inspires me. And rather than editing myself, I'm just going to go for it. And I'm going to dare to suck. Yeah. And I feel that as people we're conditioned to just add it ruthlessly. We are careful about what we say. We're very intentional in everything that we tried to do. We also talk ourselves out of ideas before they even have any chance of going anywhere. Because we think they're not going to be good. We're afraid of criticism, we're afraid of being wrong, of failing. But something that we learned from musicians is that it is that bravery in failing. That makes them who they are. And I think that we in to intuitively, we, we see that as people, we see the bravery in getting something wrong, because that's what makes us human. But that that's the inspiration. I always love this part of we talked about Brothers in Arms earlier and being recorded at the power station. And I love this part of money for nothing by Dire Straits where Mark Knopfler is this finger picking being tro, and he just misses this note. And there's there's there's this harmonic resonance that comes out and it just feels it what makes the whole song for like, if you if you play that song after this, this interview, you'll hear it and it's what makes money for nothing such a great song. So I feel it's the mistakes that are often make something perfect, rather than the other way around.
Graham Allcott 36:29
Yeah, there's so one of the other things that I really liked about the book is kind of at the end of the chapter, there's like little playlists of stuff. And I actually, while I was reading it, I was putting on, you know, wanderlust by Bjork, and various, you know, read just really cool records. But one of the playlists is, like, here are all the demo versions, and a lot of these are available now, as part of, you know, the cd boxsets. And they end up on Spotify and all that sort of thing. And one of them was Michael Jackson is it beats it, or Billie Jean, one of those. Yeah, but there's a couple of those isn't there online of listening to listening to Michael Jackson, just he's got the beat, and he's got a baseline underneath him. And then he's just kind of, it's quite remarkable, how he's just kind of making stuff up and just just riffing over the top in a studio. And I was so grew up in, in bands where you know, someone else had write a song and bring it to us or write write something that it's a bit more fully formed, but just this idea of being in the studio, and being that loose, and, and throwing stuff out there. And I think that's another thing that has, it just has a very close analogy for me with creativity and with business, right, it's like, sometimes you just have to have to kind of put something out there and see which bits are sticking and which bits aren't and follow, you just follow hunches
Michael Hendrix 37:43
and, and that kind of thing. In the design world. We have regular methods we use to help encourage that, you know, and the same ideas. This is where I think, by Pontus and I have so much fun writing this book. It's the crossovers between the practices. Yeah, are significant. So we will talk about, you know, embracing failure as a strategy. Because the sooner you fail, the faster you progress. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's like Pontus was saying, and within organisations, it's difficult to embrace the idea because it feels countercultural to your personal performance, you know, the time to look good for the boss, I'm wanting to be the smartest person in the room, those kinds of things that typically can happen in a business. Yeah, but the most successful people and organisations are the ones that understand that sharing ideas more quickly, lead to better ideas more quickly. You know, and in an A band, you know, that, right? You know, if you don't have the band members holding back his, his or her new hook, you know, because they're afraid to play it because they don't think we're gonna like it, the song doesn't get written. So it just doesn't happen, right? You just you give and you give and you give the you try and you try. That's how great innovation happens. And but it is a complete mindset, shift mind, mind shift, to embrace the idea that screwing up is okay. sucking is okay.
Graham Allcott 39:09
And Michael, you mentioned there about just in in innovation and creativity, you've got some techniques that help put people into that mindset of kind of failing faster and throwing the ideas out there. What what what kind of techniques do you use to really get get people into that mindset?
Michael Hendrix 39:25
Well, we firstly have some shared agreements. So we say, you know, we encourage wild ideas, we defer judgement on any of those ideas. If you hear an idea and you think it can be better, you just, you literally take it like a building block and add another building block to it to help move it to the new direction. So those are really practical things you could do to help people have conversations about better ideas. But then when it moves into the taking action, that's that's the prototyping or the demoing you talked about. We talked about Michael Jackson's demo, or there's a great one David Byrne and talking his readers mumbles the entire song, you know, and he's just trying to figure out the syllables that will fit into the music. He and Brian a, you know, did that for the record they did together. And so prototyping is that it's making an idea as tangible with as little effort as possible. so other people can understand your intention. And then once they understand your intention, they can build upon it and take it to the next level. And they'll have different skills to add to it. Whether that, you know, in music, that would be the production skill, the arrangement, other instruments in the business world, that can be the financial model, it could be the design, the, you know, the different facets design and services. So your motive, your main motivation is to get an idea as tangible as quick as possible so people can interact with it. And that were tangible is important, because, you know, just having ideas and just stating ideas isn't enough, because we all hear things differently. Like if I say, Alright, think of a car, what car Did you just think of? Audi? Alright, I just thought of a Volkswagen. So we're different. Right? And, and, but that's what happens. You'll hear someone in a brainstorm, say, yeah, a car delivers the pizza, you know, and you're thinking the Audi delivers? I don't know, some kind of, you know, pepperoni pizza. And I'm thinking, yeah, it's a white van. You know, and there's like, significant differences in the idea from the very beginning. So what you want to do is get people to draw them more quickly, or describe them in more detail, so that you can move faster.
Graham Allcott 41:39
And ultimately, just find a way to get the ideas tangible of people experiencing them. Once people experience things, then you can start to make sense of That's right, what that means what it looks like.
Panos Panay 41:49
And that's the whole way behind how you create music anyway. Often it's about the songwriter, or let's not even use an official term, the person that's writing the song saying, it's kind of what I have in mind. And they'll do what we call a scratchable goal or a sprach demo. Or sometimes they're just humming, as Michael was just saying. And you often think in business, how many times do we want to get something perfect before we take it to our colleagues, because we're afraid of judgement, because we often work in environments where you are judged. And either implicitly, implicitly or explicitly, and mistake can be detrimental to your advancement, or to the way that you're perceived by your colleagues, or to even your ability to express more ideas. But what if, what if we approach the differently? What if we again thought of it as a process as iteration rather than as the end? I like want to talk with Michael. And he says, look, the only way to come up with a good idea is to come up with a lot of bad ideas. Just like Justin says, the only way to come up with a head is just to keep writing. Yeah. And often, we're so fixated on the masterpiece, which is only the product that the creator chose you to see. But when we don't ever get to see if the process that led to it, which is why I like all of these tapes that emerge after an artist passes away that you're getting to get a glimpse into that creative process. Yeah, and how they wove through a number of different paths before they came to something that they said, Okay, now it's ready. Now I'm going to put it out there. But even once they put it out there, it keeps evolving. I like to use the example of Bruce Springsteen's born in the USA, that over the years that's taken all kinds of different meanings. If you listen to him playing that song. In on his Broadway solo show, you actually hear a very different song that the one that you heard in the 1980s working took it as an anthem, to celebrate American exceptionalism, whereas you hear it in the 2000 10s. And you see this element in many ways. Yeah, for for an America that had lost or has lost its way. And that's what's brilliant about artists. That's what does was brilliant about brilliant business people. They know that whatever they're putting out there doesn't ever doesn't have that man. It's fluid. It evolves, it changes. And that's the magic.
Graham Allcott 44:37
I want to talk about producing one of the chapters in the book and you tell this story about producer called Hank Shockley, and his work with Slick Rick and Hank Shockley. His whole kind of mindset is just really fascinating, but you want to just tell the story about how Hank Shockley met Slick Rick and how they produce the album.
Michael Hendrix 45:02
Yeah, so slick, Rick had actually been through the roster at the label with a number of producers, including Rick Rubin, I believe signed him to make a record. And for over a year, they had tried to make it make a record with other with different producers, and none of them could do it. It is said he get too strong and of opinion about what he wanted. And there was a clash of creative differences with these different producers. So when he brought Hank Shockley on and Hank is a founding member of the bombsquad, which is a production team, he was co founder of Public Enemy producing at this time. He said, You know, he, he recognised that there has been this clash of creative differences for over a year. And so he's like, I'm not gonna do that. I'm also not going to be, you know, on the list of people who failed and stay next
Graham Allcott 45:52
next in the line. Yeah,
Michael Hendrix 45:54
yeah, I'm gonna, I'm going to approach Rick as an assistant. And that was a really radical idea as a producer, but he said, my job, my job is to help him achieve the vision he wants, and then they'll come in and support that vision to bring it to the level of excellence. I know, it needs to be as a producer. And so in, Hank gave us this analogy. It's a metaphor that I that I've lived by now, actually, he said, all of the known universe is 3% matter. And it's 97%. Something else, call the ante matter. All that dark matter, call it whatever you want, because that's the part I'm interested in. When I'm producing somebody, I'm not interested in their 3% the thing they own the thing they love, I'm interested in the 97% around them, that makes them successful, that holds everything in place. And it was fascinating because Hank told us that we heard the same thing from t bone Burnett timboon. Burnett said he loves to understand the artists and create the conditions for them to be their best to tap into the authenticity of who they are. Jimmy, I have been said the same thing. He said, you know, basically, I want my college education came from recording, john lennon, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith, my first six years of professionalism. Everything I learned, I learned about working with them. And what I learned was, I was there to make them successful. Yeah, I think that's the job of a producer. And we know producers today is the beat makers, as well as the ones whose visions and they're and they're certainly people like Ferrell who are successful in doing that, but there's another kind of producer that's embodying someone like Hank, the saying, I want to create, make the creative conditions around this person. right for them, so that they can be their best.
Graham Allcott 47:42
And some of those producers remember like Kim, john lackey sort of became a bit of a sort of superstar producer with like The Stone Roses, and Radiohead and stuff like in the 80s, and 90s. But they almost have, you know, as much of a part to play in the success of those records is as the artists, right, because they're the ones who are really creating that space, to allow, you know, a band to come in and create that chemistry at the right time.
Panos Panay 48:11
Well, and you know, what's interesting, Graham, when you apply that on to management, I was asked by somebody the other day, what's my management style. And I said, When I was younger, and I ran sonicbids, I used to think that a manager was the equivalent of a conductor. You're right, the parts, you select the people to play the parts. You stand on a metaphorical or sometimes physical pedestal. And people better play those parts the way you wrote them. And by the way, you have the attitude that I know how to play those parts better than you do. Yeah, as I mature, I realise I'm not a conductor, actually, I'm more of a producer. My job is to manage conditions. My job is to create an environment through which people can individually express their talents. When you work with a famous artists producer, right? Say you're producing Paul McCartney. What the hell do you have to tell Paul McCartney about anything? Right? Like, you get to talk about songwriting and talking about how to play anything, the piano, the bass guitar, how to sing. What do you have to tell him? I mean, your job is to bring the best out of him and help him achieve whatever creative vision he has, in talking with all these producers with Hank, with Jimmy IV, and with T bone Burnett, that was a common thread that you're there. Most people don't really know what a producer does. If you ask people what's the, I mean, most preachers don't even can't read music, they don't play music. They don't even know how to operate the board. I mean, you Gathering like, what the hell? Why are you there, but what they're masters at, is managing conditions and getting the best out of the town, then I think then the role of a good CEO or a good manager is that ultimately, once you reach a certain level in your organisation, your job is not to do other people's job better than them, or teach them how to do their job. What do you do? Your job is to create the environment, the conditions for that team to accomplish something that they didn't even know was possible, because of that chemistry and those conditions that you've created for them. And that has been so revolutionary for me even it's been the metal learning through the process of writing the book and engaging with these producers. And in the book, we have a quote from t bone Burnett that says, I don't care what you're playing, I care or what somebody is playing, I care who is playing it, I don't care. If you're the guitarist or the drummer, I didn't hire you for that. I want you to bring you yourself, your heart, your soul to this and I want to get to know you as a human being. Because only then can I activate the best in who you are.
Michael Hendrix 51:17
I love I just gotta say Panos. I love that you brought up Paul McCartney, because when Nigel godrich produced Paul McCartney, one of the fascinating things about that record is, after a couple days in the studio, he's Nigel said, Send the rest of the band home, you need to play all the instruments yourself, you need to do this yourself. And that's a really good example of reading the room, understanding what's gonna make the record sound different, new, fresh, and understand what the artist is capable of. And then putting them that in this situation. And, you know, I've read interviews where he says, it's actually a very contentious moment, you know, like, here's Paul McCartney. And here's Nigel godrich, saying, nope, do it this way. Because this is going to be the best record because of that. And it is a great record. Because of that, I think, is that
Graham Allcott 52:04
the Paul McCartney one like the solo album?
Michael Hendrix 52:06
No, it's called chaos and creation is the right title.
Panos Panay 52:11
Creation, the back your writing? That's the one Yeah,
Graham Allcott 52:13
yeah. So he say he plays every instrument on the whole record.
Michael Hendrix 52:17
He does. But it's not really. He, he wouldn't put it as a McCartney, one, two, or three record. It's, it's its own thing. And because of that particular relationship,
Graham Allcott 52:28
the other story that really stood out for me was, I think this is probably a very topical time to talk about this in terms of COVID and sort of coming out of COVID with just the whole idea of reinvention. And you, you cite David Bowie and some some stories about about David Bowie, and some of the people who've been very heavily influenced by David Bowie in terms of their own reinventions. You know, Madonna and Lady Gaga. And David Bowie was someone who, you know, throughout his career, he had these different personas and different different phases of his career where he really reinvented himself. In fact, the first time I ever saw David Bowie live was in his his awful drama base, and freedom ventured into his feelings festival, but that's a whole nother story. But in terms of David Bowie's ability to do that, like, what what do you think it was about David Bowie that allowed him to do that? And what can we learn about from David Bowie in terms of how to pivot and how to think differently about, you know, moving businesses and organisations forward post COVID Rebellion, in particular, he,
Michael Hendrix 53:37
he understood himself his core as a songwriter. And by understanding that was his strength, he could change the, the players around him and the characters around him regularly, and still play to that strength. I mean, he says in an interview, he says, I didn't believe I wrote about maybe four things my entire career, you know, isolation, loneliness, search for meaning. So he knew he knew who he was, you know, he knew his his creative strength. And he also had a purpose for what he was searching for. And then the cast of characters, or the character himself that changed throughout was an exciting dynamic. But it was almost as if, you know, his core was the sun. And then everything we saw was the planet spinning around that. And to your point, I think in this moment, we're all going through that moment of asking what is our core? Because all the all the norms have been disrupted. And it's actually a great exercise. Pontus and I have talked about this a lot for ourselves. You know, we're trying to understand who we are, yeah, in a year long lockdown, and what our real creative strengths
Graham Allcott 54:48
and organizationally there's a thing that you talk about with Bowie there about. Let me try and paraphrase this as close as I can, but something along the lines of it's better to be The person that you are, and as an organisation be the organisation that you are with its distinctive voice and its distinctive customer base rather than trying to be everything right. So you're sort of competing not to be the best, but to be the best version of you or to be you.
Panos Panay 55:16
I often tell people when they're interviewing for a job, don't don't pretend you're somebody, you're not just to get the job, because the organisation that will accept this ultimate version of you is not the one that you want to be working in any way. Because then they're not hiring you, they're hiring a different version of you that you can toward him to be. And either you're going to have to make the decision that you're going to be that for the rest of your time there or you're going to be one miserable human being. We just sadly, something that we all forget. And we all do this, when we are entering relationships, whether it's with an employer, whether it's with a partner, whether it's with a business associate, and I feel at their best these artists were talking about their true to their, their true to who they are, but who they are evolves. And sometimes they're forcing this evolution by surrounding themselves. With producers, co creators, co riders. I mean, we talked about Bowie, but we could talk about anybody McCartney has evolved, God knows how many times or changed over the years assuming different personas, and changing them even how many artists decide to put out a completely different product by even changing a name. Well, we did it obviously with the start as that thing why by do but McCartney has done it by assuming the persona of the fireman. Other artists like even country music, Garth Brooks has put out albums under pseudonyms. So there's something about this chameleon like ability that they have, which you see throughout music history, whether it's Miles Davis, today, Lady Gaga, Madonna, that when these identities are captured, and there's an authentic resonance to them, we respond to them as people and we still identify them as that artists because it comes from their core, even though everything else is different. But I feel this is what we can take away, especially at this time when, if you think about it, everything around us, all the coping mechanisms that we had, has been stripped away from us during this COVID crisis. And we've all just had to learn how to adjust whether that is working remotely, whether that is us having a discussion with you maybe in a format in a way that we would not have in under other circumstances, whether it's by learning how to do our job, using different tools that we never had to do before. at Berkeley, we had to transition six and a half 1000 students of 2000 faculty remotely within a week. If you had asked the organisation to do that a week before, then that would have said, Are you insane? So I think that we're resilient, we're far more resilient, far more adaptable, and are more capable of producing a lot more, if we don't hold on to these personas and identities so strongly, that we just get trapped. And that their best This is what amazing artists, like the ones we talked about in two weeks ahead are doing. And I think that the pandemic has forced a lot of us as people to re imagine who we are. But without robbing us of that authentic self that we all we all hopefully.
Graham Allcott 59:03
Yeah, and I think both of you said it in those last few minutes there about, you know, where we're at our best when we really recognise what it is at our core, you know, what's the thing that's going to be consistent, you know, beyond all the different iterations that we might go through. So I just think that's a really perfect way to leave it. You want to just tell us where we can all get hold of two weeks ahead and happy UK publication day. Again, as well, where can people get hold of the book,
Panos Panay 59:30
you can obviously go to your favourite online bookseller or hopefully your your favourite, small bookseller and buy the book two beats ahead. And on a personal note, there are two covers of the book, one for the US edition and one for the UK edition. And it's been an amazing experience to see their reaction of people so my family which happens to be European all set up the US One no way we love the UK version. And only Americans are saying, America is like, What are you talking about? I love the American version. So there you go, there is a role for marketing people after.
Graham Allcott 1:00:12
Oh, that's really interesting. And and then did you have your? Was it your team designing that as well the doing that all in house?
Michael Hendrix 1:00:19
No publishers on both sides. Were the ones responsible.
Graham Allcott 1:00:24
So you must be like the nightmare authors because of your design backgrounds to deal with the covers.
Michael Hendrix 1:00:29
We have. Yeah, upon us. And I, we made a whole presentation.
Panos Panay 1:00:38
Yeah, Michael wrote a medium blog post on the whole journey of the, of the cover.
Michael Hendrix 1:00:47
If you're really if you're really desperate to know, you can go online and find the whole backstory of that cover was designed well as
Graham Allcott 1:00:54
a as a as a, as a book geek and author. I'm gonna go and check out that, that blog post, and we'll link to that in the show notes. I have such a state as a complete music geek as well, just to just the joy to read the book. So just want to say thank you for writing it. And thank you for being on beyond busy.
Michael Hendrix 1:01:12
Thank you, Graham Graham.
Graham Allcott 1:01:14
So there you go Panos and Michael. And as you could probably tell, I really enjoyed that one. And as you could probably guess, we ended up you know, chatting for another 15-20 minutes, swapping stories about music and all kinds of stuff. My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3 and yeah, just loads of stuff. Yeah, I could just I could talk music, like all day, and I often do. And I could have those guys on every week, you guys might get bored. I definitely wouldn't. But yeah, it was just such a pleasure. So go by Two Beats Ahead. Also, I would love you to go and buy a How to Fix Meetings, we are just in that very critical period right now with my new book, How to Fix Meetings, which is that sort of early launch window. So the preorder sales and in the first month of sales really plays a huge part in whether a book does well or not. So don't buy this book in two months time. Buy it now, please, please go and buy how to fix meetings, please. I'm begging please. And the thing about this is right. So I put this podcast out every week, it's a labour of love, I put my own money into it. I don't want to put loads of adverts and all that stuff into it for a couple of reasons. One, I just like it being ad free. It's really starting to bug me there are certain podcasts that I really love. And I'm getting really annoyed by the advertising. I just think advertising just kind of ruins everything. You know, I don't want to sound like an old Bill Hicks guy here or something. But yeah, come on, stop interrupting us with all this crap. And so you know, there's a you got a choice guys, like I can either start putting, you know, your Squarespace website and your you know, your DVDs and mattresses and all that I can start yelling all that stuff at you like every week. And with silly, you know, adverts or whatever, or just once every couple of years, just just going by the book that I put out, that's all I'm asking. So if you like this podcast, and you want to keep it advertising free, which I'm very happy to do, if you just buy the book, they just go by how fix meetings is that deal? What do you reckon says how to fix meetings, and it is it's on Amazon, it's on bookshop.org, if you want a way of buying it online, that doesn't give money to Uncle Jeff. And it's also in shops. And if you go to your local bookshop, and it doesn't have a copy of how to fix meetings, did you know you can just order it in that will also just alert that bookshop to her. That's an interesting new book that we should probably start stocking. And that's often how some of these books gets get stocked in shops as well. So we should be I'm told in Waterstones and WH Smith already. But if you go to one and you find is sometimes the distribution isn't like all the stores or whatever. So if you find your local store doesn't have it, go in order and get it stocked in. So I'd love you to just go and buy a copy of how to fix meetings, please tag me on your LinkedIn on your Instagram, like wherever you're buying that book, please share it with the world, tag me in I will share it back and let's just get some noise going for how to fix meetings. And that's just you know, I'm just asking for a little bit of help from you, my loyal podcast listeners to just get this book, you know, really resonate with people I feel like so here's a little background story. We were in the middle of the first wave of the pandemic, my business thing productive was really struggling for a little while there, as you can imagine. And we were in full kind of survival mode. And I got this email from my publisher, and I'm going to share this on the podcast. Yeah, I'm going to share it up. I bet they're not going to hear it. It's fine. I'm going to share it. My publisher emailed me and it's the the chief exactly the publisher I get on really well with him. He's He's a lovely guy. And sometimes he just gets a bit carried away. And he was like he just said, Could you rewrite this whole book that you've just finished and just make it all about zoom? And then we'll release it as like this opportunistic, you know, middle of the pandemic kind of here's how to do is a really well kind of book, right? Like, we had just honestly done about 18 rounds of revisions on this thing. And I was so tired just generally. And then we were in survival mode with the business. And I got this email and I, honestly, I was so angry. I just couldn't figure out like, it was just like, one of those ones where I was like, okay, Graham, don't reply, just leave it. So sleep on it, leave it to the board again. So I did, I did the thing that we talked about in our workshops, which is halt. Never make decisions never apply when you're hungry, angry, lonely or tired. Holt's really good little acronym to remember. So I took a deep breath, I slept on it. And then the next day, I said, you know, a fairly reserved and polite email back, but I think there was delay, there was still a little undertone of my absolute seething rage. Just like dude know how long we've spent on this bloody book. But what happened was out of all that the upshot was we decided, Okay, so there's no books, no book shops open. At this point, what we'll do is we'll delay the release of it. So it was originally due out in January, this book, and you know, it's actually had a couple of delays for different reasons at different times, but it feels like it's the right time, it feels like it's, you know, it's just hitting that little spot where for a lot of people, they're either sick of the zoom meetings, and this book helps with that, and cutting down on how many zoom meetings, but also, we're getting back into the saddle of physical meetings, you know, for the first time in a long time, people are going to the office, people are meeting together. And it's an art man, like, it really is. And I've seen this over the years with people that I've worked with, who are just incredible facilitators, chairs, and even participants of meetings, you know, there's there's a real art form to how we share attention generously with each other. And I think meetings is, you know, it's really the, the last bastion of undivided attention, right, and being able to share attention generously with each other. So I feel like we're coming out this a good time. And you know, the timing is right, I often say with books, you need good content, a good cover, and a good site Geist, I think maybe we have all three, maybe we do. So all of that said, it's called How to fix meetings, and I'd love you to go check it out and get a copy of the book. And over the next couple of episodes, I will tail off my talk about how to fix meetings. And that's a promise. So if you're sick of me talking about it, then just a promise it won't be like this every week. Maybe just one more, I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, if you want to go and check out the previous episodes of this podcast, it's over at getbeyondbusy.com. And we are funded and sponsored by Think Productive, which is my company. So go to think productive.com if you want to bring us in to help your team and that's it shout out also to Emilie and to Alice for your work on bringing this together and also to penguin for putting me in touch with Michael and pianos really loved that one. And we'll be back next week.
So until then, enjoy the sun. Take care. Bye for now.