Good to Great: Applying Lessons from the Hedgehog and the Fox to the Business of Independent Musicians (from One of the Greatest Business Books of All Times), Part 1 of 2

It’s risky business taking a book based on research of what makes large corporations great and applying it to the likes of a musician or band. I’m sure that Jim Collins, a rigorous researcher/author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, would say his book can’t be directly applied to such an unrelated field. Yet some of his concepts serve as a great launching point for musicians. We are faced with an increasingly saturated marketplace where the writing on the wall is that new internet applications will save us all, but there is little evidence to show the way. Here I tackle four relevant criteria of great companies according to Collins (he has nine in all).

Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)

Great organizations are really honest… brutally honest… about what is going on around them. Instead of denying tough times or bad decisions, they face them head on, so that they can address them, make course corrections, and learn from their mistakes. “It is impossible to make good decisions without infusing the entire process with an honest confrontation of the brutal facts,” writes Collins.” He says that when you’re honest this way, “the right decisions often become self-evident.”

In the case of the music business, this means truly recognizing things like:
- CD sales suck
- digital sales have not replaced CD sales
- not every musician who makes an album—no matter how much blood, sweat, and tears they have put into an album or repertoire—can have a record label, distributor, agent, or manager
- just because you have music on the main online retailers, does not mean you will sell any
- you’re probably not going to be one of those bands who really breaks through thanks to YouTube, MySpace, Pitchfork, etc.
- you might need to keep your day job a lot longer than you hoped
- you’re not going to be able to pay off that studio time debt with album sales

That might sound depressing. But more depressing is to not acknowledge these brutal facts. If you block this information, you cannot develop a strategy for addressing your economic reality as someone trying to make a living as a musician.

The flip side of this concept is Never Lose Faith. Great organizations (and musicians) are so passionate about what they do that they are committed to wading through mines and hurricanes. The balance between honesty about the brutal facts and faith in your mission is key to staying on course while developing strategies for being successful. 

The Fox and Hedgehog

The core concept of Collins’ book is articulated through the parable of the fox and the hedgehog. Every day the fox wakes up with tons of energy, ideas, and motivations for eating the hedgehog. He is always ready to try something new, always coming up with a new plan. One day he might try a full speed head-on attack. The next day he might hide out in a cave all day waiting for the right moment to attack. Another day he might plan to dive off a ledge. On and on come the ideas and attempts. Meanwhile, every day the hedgehog—which looks like a small cute porcupine—bumbles around looking for its next meal. She doesn’t have infinite tricks like the fox. But every time the fox attacks her, she has one trick that works every time: she curls into a ball making her spiky spines stick out and keeps the fox from eating her. 

Collins argues that every great organization has a hedgehog concept: one primary thing that they can count on time and time again to work. Collins cites as examples: Walgreens, “to run the best, most convenient drug stores with high profit per customer visit;” Wells Fargo, “run a bank like a business, with a focus on the western United States, and consistently increase profit per employee;” Circuit City, “‘the McDonald’s’ of big-ticket retailing, able to operate a geographically dispersed system by remote control.” As a musician or music company you may not need such a complex hedgehog concept.

In today’s era of endless Internet tools and services designed to help the independent musician, it’s hard not to think that you need to “do” them all: Twitter, Facebook, Sonic Bids, ReverbNation, iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon, MySpace, etc. Having a hedgehog concept gives focus. A simple driving concept helps you to stay focused on that one thing that will actually make a difference in your career.Furthermore, while many professional musicians continue to look towards an archetypal model of success in the music industry, what Collins’ corporate research suggests is that an entity does not need THE concept that will lead them to financial success. An entity needs THEIR concept that will lead to THEIR financial success.

He further breaks down three elements of a solid hedgehog concept. Read Part 2 of the Hedgehog article to read about these three elements (picking something you are truly passionate about, something at which you can be the best in the world; and understanding your economic engine) as well as why you should rinse your cottage cheese and the pitfalls of new technology for musicians).

DubMC.com  is the brainchild of Dmitri Vietze and is sponsored by rock paper scissors, inc., global music publicity firm.