Are you part of an orchestra?

We completed our HTG3 meeting last night after two days of awesome interaction here in Buffalo. There were some fantastic business ideas and leadership thoughts but the one that struck me most was from Kathy in Florida – the idea that most businesses start out a soloist whom is very good, then surround themselves with a few others like them and create a jazz band which is made up of stars that agree to play together with some loose direction, and finally need to become an orchestra where the conductor leads the group of extremely gifted players down a single path focused on the end result of playing perfectly together. What a powerful illustration. That is so true of small businesses today. The different transitions are the hard part. That final transition to becoming part of an orchestra the biggest change as everyone has to be willing to give up their own desire to be a star in order to give their all to the sound from the entire group, which done right is always better than any one player alone. Are you a soloist, part of a jazz band, or are you building an orchestra. There can only be one conductor when you have an orchestra and all others have to focus completely on doing the best they can to follow the lead and excel at their part of the playing the score. That is how a fine tuned company needs to run. Are you doing it that way? Now is the time to make it happen.