Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the Grateful Dead

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Everything I Know About Business I Learned from
the Grateful Dead

• The Ten Most Innovative Lessons from a Long
  Strange Trip

NSU Speakers ForumFebruary 3, 2012
F. Barry Barnes, Ph. D. Professor of
Management Huizenga School
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Todays Topics

• Why a business book about the Grateful Dead is
  relevant today
• Why I wrote this book
• What I learned about business from the Dead
  thats relevant in the 21st century

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Business in the 21st Century

• Its tough out there!
• Tremendous uncertainty and risk
• The tried and true methods arent working
• Considerable distrust of the establishment
• Corporations
• Government
• Unemployment
• Social media technology changing everything

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The Grateful Deads Business

• Successful for 30 years (1965-1995)
• Survived the Sixties
• Anti-establishment throughout their career
• Survived the turbulent music industry
• Created a unique business model
• Not the best at what they do, the ONLY ones who
  do what they do.

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Grateful Dead Concert Revenues

• 1995 33.5M 4 45/20/19
• 1994 52.5M 5 84/29/19
• 1993 45.6M 1 81/29/16
• 1992 31.2M 2 55/23/15
• 1991 34.7M 1 76/27/16
• 1990 29.0M 4 63/27/17 Europe
• 1989 28.6M 4 73/22/17

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Why Did I Write the Book?

• Businessman entrepreneur
• 20 years in Corporate America
• 3 small businesses
• MBA
• Deadhead
• 194 concerts
• ah ha in 1985
• Scholar and researcher
• PhD in business

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The Grateful Dead Paradox

• Something fresh for the 21st century
• A unique approach to risk
• Anticipated many current business trends
• Social media
• Viral marketing
• Freemium model
• Corporate Social Responsibility

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What Did I Learn from the Dead?The 10 Lessons

• Master strategic improvisation
• Live your values
• Be kind to customers
• Share your content
• Create a business tribe
• Insource

• Innovate constantly
• Transform through leadership
• Share the power leadership
• Provide authentic experiences

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1 Master Strategic Improvisation

• Planning, acting and making adjustments in real
  time is the key to running a great organization
  today.

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1 Master Strategic Improvisation

• Strategic improvisation planning and doing
  simultaneously as presented by Barnes and
  illustrated by the Grateful Dead is what all
  successful entrepreneurs do...and is what all
  businesses must do to survive in todays
  turbulent times. (H. Wayne Huizenga)

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Benefits of Improvisation

• Speed
• Responsiveness to crises
• Enhances innovation novelty
• Collective improvisation increases voice
• Provides action when planning cycle too long
• Survival

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Criteria for Improvisation(Barrett, F. J., 1998,
Organization Science)

• 1. Interrupt habits
• 2. Embrace errors as source of learning
• 3. Minimize structures/maximize flexibility
• 4. Continually negotiate toward dynamic
  synchronicity
• 5. Retrospectively make sense
• 6. Hanging out Membership in communities of
  practice
• 7. Alternate between soloing and supporting

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2 Live Your Values

• Embrace strong corporate values and socially
  conscious business practices because its the
  right thing to do and because its more
  profitable.

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2 Live Your Values

• In a culture that has come to regard humanity as
  a customer base and nothing else, we who followed
  and did business with the Grateful Dead have done
  our best to behave as a community, with
  friendship and mutual comfort as default
  objectives and values. (David Gans, musician,
  radio producer,
• music producer, author, Deadhead)

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The Deads Values

• Emerged from the Sixties counterculture
• Peace
• Love
• Harmony
• Focused on doing the right thing, not the
  botttom line
• Attracted like minds
• Employees
• Fans

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Values Today in Business

• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Gen Ys want to make a difference
• Examples
• Zappos
• The Body Shop
• Patagonia
• The Deads Rex Foundation

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3 Be Kind to Your Customers

• Pay attention to their concerns and theyll
  become lifelong customers.

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Be Kind to Customers

• Provide superior customer value
• Remove barriers
• Listen and respond
• Treat them like family
• An end in themselvesnot a means to an end

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4 Share Your Content

• Familiarity rather than scarcity creates
  value. Share your intellectual property.

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The Dead Shared Content

• Allowed fans to tape concerts
• Allowed fans to reproduce band logos
• Today the freemium model

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Tapers at Work
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A Fan-made T-Shirt
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5 Create a Business Tribe

• Collaborate with your customers, improve
  performance and boost profits.

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Create a Business Tribe
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The Deads Tribe

• Created a lifestyle for fans
• Wardrobe
• Ethics
• Rituals
• Put the tribe to work
• Grateful Dead Records
• If you dont have tickets, dont come

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Ventura Tribe
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6 Insource

• Bring as many functions in-house as possible to
  improve control, insure shared values, increase
  trust, and provide employment.

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The Deads Insourcing

• Grateful Dead Ticket Sales
• Grateful Dead Records
• Grateful Dead Merchandising
• Ice Nine Publishing

• Carousel Ballroom
• Alembic Studios
• Club Front
• Out of Town Tours
• Fly by Night Travel

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Grateful Dead Ticket Sales
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7 Innovate Constantly

• Be willing to risk it all to stay
• ahead of the curve.

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The Wall of Sound - 1974

• 24,000 Watts
• 11 separate channels
• 641 speakers
• 48 amplifiers
• Stereo and quadraphonic
• No on-stage monitors needed

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The Wall of Sound
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Innovate Constantly

• Wall of Sound
• Alembic Studios
• Digital sound system
• Cassette truck at concerts

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8 Transform Through Leadership

• Inspire greatness through charismatic leaders to
  build a culture of trust and transformation.

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Transformational Leaders Do Their Work Through

• Charisma (acting as strong role models)
• Inspiration (motivating others to emulate their
  high standards)
• Stimulation (encouraging creativity)
• Individualized coaching (teasing out top
  performances from each member of the team)

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When we get onstage, we really want to be
transformed from ordinary players to
extraordinary ones, like forces of a larger
consciousness. So maybe its that
seat-of-the-pants shamanism that keeps the
audience coming back and that keeps it
fascinating for us too. --Jerry Garcia
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9 Share the Power Leadership

• Horizontal structure leads to better decisions
  and loyalty.

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The Deads Sharing of Leadership Power

• Choose employees carefully
• Pay generously
• Build consensus
• Share power and responsibility

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10 Provide Authentic Experiences

• Keep it real with a continuing passion for your
  product or service, stick to your roots, be
  transparent, and dont try to hard.

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Be Authentic

• Although we had to be a 'business' in order to
  survive and continue to make music together, we
  were not buying into the traditional pop music
  culture of fame and fortune.
• --- Phil Lesh (2005)

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Id really like to see what can be created from
joy.

• ---Jerry Garcia

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Thank you!

• Questions?