Making Music vs. Playing the Notes

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I enjoy playing the piano. People may not enjoy listening to me play the piano, but I still enjoy it. This morning I was playing through a jazz version of the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever. I started working on it this past weekend, and I’m pretty close to having it under my fingers now. In a couple of days, I should have the notes down. But it will still be far from “audience ready.” See, there’s a difference between “playing ...

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Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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A Tale of Two Apples

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Last week I read an article on Forbes.com about the early days of the Apple computer company. It turns out that when Steve Jobs, Apple’s visionary co-founder who embodies and personifies the company’s slogan of “Think Different,” was asked in 1983 by the team working on the Mac for a standard they should shoot for, Jobs’ answer was simple: the Beatles.

The Beatles.

Not another computer company. Not another tech company. Not even another manufacturing company. A rock group. Steve Jobs wanted ...

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Change, Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles

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The Power of Ideas

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I’ve been talking a lot about ideas lately. I love ideas. I love coming up with them, I love watching others come up with them, I love seeing them brought to fruition. It’s been said that, in business, nothing happens until somebody sells something. That may be true, but you know what? In virtually everything—business included—nothing happens until somebody has the idea for it. Look around you. Everything you see (at least everything human-made), from the shoes on your feet ...

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Change, Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles

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Are You a Crank or a Visionary?

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So I was reading through a book of Mark Twain quotes last night (did the guy ever say anything that wasn’t pure gold?), and I came upon one that was particularly relevant to my last post:

“The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”

Bill Gates was an idiot whose idea of “a computer on every desk” was patently absurd. Those wacky Wright kids, Orville and Wilbur, with their crazy “flying machine” idea—what were they thinking? And ...

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Change, Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles

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Have You Missed the Boat?

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Do you ever feel like you missed the boat? Do you ever feel like opportunity has, once again, passed you by? Do you ever find yourself saying, “If only I had…

…invented the Pet Rock;
…bought into Microsoft when it first went public;
…come up with the idea for Facebook?”

Somehow the innovations always seem to go to the other guy. It’s not that you’re not smart; it’s just that your timing is off, right?

Bull crap.

Charles Duell, the Commissioner of ...

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Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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John Lennon and Overcoming the Naysayers

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John Lennon was raised by his Aunt Mimi, who is usually described with words like “strict but loving.” And while there is some debate among Beatle people over exactly how “loving” she really was, nobody questions the “strict” part. As you can imagine, then, she was not a big fan of young John’s obsession with rock and roll, or his non-stop guitar practice.

“The guitar’s all well and good, John,” she would say, “but you’ll never make a living at it.”

Years ...

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Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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Ringo, Innovation, and Challenging Times

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So I was out to dinner last night, and two guys at a nearby table were discussing Sunday’s Grammy awards—specifically Paul McCartney’s performance of I Saw Her Standing There with Foo Fighter (and former Nirvana drummer) Dave Grohl on drums. This led one of the two to say “Well, Ringo never really was much of a drummer. But I guess he was an okay timekeeper, and that’s really all the Beatles needed.” The other one agreed. At that point, I’m ...

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Change, Creativity, Leadership, Producing Results, The Beatles

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The Ed Sullivan Impact and Your Business

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Tomorrow—February 9, 2009—will mark the 45th anniversary of the Beatles’ historic first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. An estimated 73 million people—roughly half of the U.S. population at the time—watched as the Beatles performed five songs that night (All My Loving, Till There Was You, She Loves You, I Saw Her Standing There, and I Want To Hold Your Hand). Although just a little kid at the time, I was one of those 73 million. For that I have ...

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Change, Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles

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The Beatles and Great Teams

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If you’re trying to create a great team, you may want to keep in mind some of the traits that made the Beatles one of the greatest teams in recent history:

  1. Diverse, yet complementary, skill sets. Guitars were a crucial element of the Beatles success, yet Ringo Starr was a terrible guitar player. Guitar playing wasn’t a skill set that Ringo brought to the game. Instead, he was the perfect drummer for the band. John Lennon may have been a musical ...
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Communication, Creativity, Producing Results, Teams, The Beatles

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Details, Details, Details

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I just listened to Strawberry Fields Forever again, for what must be the thousandth time, and I heard a harmony I had never noticed before. That’s one of the things I love about the Beatles’ music: there are so many layers, so many little details, that you can listen to it over and over again and still hear something new. That’s one of the reasons so many of their songs sound as fresh and exciting today as they did forty ...

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Creativity, Customer Service, Producing Results, The Beatles

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