Tuesday, August 11, 2009
You may think this is a strange title for a business leadership piece, but at the Barbican last week David Byrne gave the performance of a lifetime – and strangely, for me, it drew a number of parallels with how some of our clients are asking us to inject new levels of impetus and success into their businesses.
An acclaimed performer, Byrne is, at the age of 57, a maturing star. Nevertheless he has perpetually reinvented himself, either in partnership or individually by demonstrating innovation and remarkable leadership. And this is where the parallels with both the corporate and commercial development of many of our clients can be seen.
Our clients are some of the leading content, application and infrastructure providers within the global wholesale financial markets. The demands upon them to constantly increase their value and service propositions while always searching for new market segments are inexorable. The successful ones are much like David Byrne.
First of all, like choosing a resilient new market segment, he chose the Barbican as a venue. The Barbican is robust, associated with strong values and exposed his skills and expertise to the maximum. Secondly his ‘back-line’ (percussion and bass), rather like the operations, product and support groups within a corporation, provided a strong and trusted platform for the event. Thirdly the ‘front-line’ singers and dancers injected the enthusiasm and dynamism that took the product directly to the audience, just as a talented sales and marketing team can bring a new market segment to life. And finally, the well-practiced combination of these skills had a clear mission to entertain – the commercial equivalent of launching a product and achieving terrific new sales.
Now, whether you like Byrne, Bach or Billy Idol, my point is that established businesses can only deploy successful growth strategies when they put in place a solid platform to facilitate this. Byrne’s CV for the last decade includes a successful number one for The Simpsons, work on a ‘disco opera’ with DJ Fat Boy Slim, a Balearic dance epic, his own monthly radio show, a New York installation of fantasy bike racks and most recently the conversion of London’s Roundhouse into a giant ‘Victorian steam punk’ instrument. An eclectic range of successful solo and partnership products indeed. Although our clients may not seek this level of variety, they certainly crave the ability to diversify and prosper from the generation of new ideas.
At Greentarget we consult with our clients to establish a platform for growth. From that point we add a level of active ideas generation, creating vibrant and motivating internal and external communications campaigns. Rather like David Byrne, a dynamic ‘front-line’ can breathe life into existing products and services, and can make a world of difference to the launch of products into new business segments.
It’s only rock and roll... but I like it!
Tudor Morgan
tudor.morgan@greentarget.net