When the Playbook Sounds Like Bad Karaoke
Last year, I watched Alison Moyet perform live at QPAC in Brisbane as she wrapped up the touring phase of her career.* For the Gen Xers here, she needs no introduction, and most people will always know her for hits like ‘Don’t Go’ with Yazoo or ‘Is This Love?’ in the eighties.
With a career spanning at least 40 years, she reflected on how her music has changed and evolved over time. Her intent was clear for the evening.
“If I roll out the songs as they were known in their era, it will sound like a bad, disjointed karaoke set.”
Instead, she talked us through how her performance was carefully curated to ensure a seamless and joyous celebration of her music that flowed and made sense as a performance. She certainly achieved that; it was a brilliant, masterful night of musical entertainment.
I share this story because I think it is a great metaphor for leading in context, too. As an expert in your field, it can be tempting to roll out your ‘known playbook’ that has led to your success. However, as you shift into senior leadership roles, the playbook that made you successful may, in fact, suddenly not get you the traction it used to.
Ask yourself, is the playbook you once saw as best practice, now in this context, landing like a bad karaoke set?
Too often, the comfort that comes with perceived control through expertise becomes a roadblock to being influential and making an impact enterprise-wide.
One of the greatest challenges I see in my work is an executive’s struggle to elevate in their role because they are stuck in their playbook. The 50-page PowerPoint deck that was the ‘norm’ of high performance in their functional area of expertise, or in another organisation, just isn’t cutting through where they are now. Instead of reading the context they are in, listening to what isn’t being said, or acknowledging the frustration and resistance they face, they respond with a lack of curiosity, a siloed mindset and a doubling down on “but this is best practice”.
This is just one of many examples where the subtle inability to adapt to context gets in the way of success.
Rick Rubin in his book, The Creative Act quotes “It’s helpful to remember that when you throw away an old playbook, you still get to keep the skills you learned along the way…Imagine what can arise when you overlay an entirely new set of materials and instructions over your accumulated experience.”
This challenge is why I am writing again, and it is the work I want to explore with you: leading in context. Readiness requires it.
There are so many forces pushing and pulling leaders right now. The acceleration is disorienting. Whatever your context, my writing ambition is to liberate people (including me!) from the mental models, ways of working, and ways of leading that keep us small, spinning, or stuck.
Disrupting our way of thinking and operating, learning and unlearning, is no easy feat, which is why collectively breaking down barriers is our greatest chance to become the kind of leaders I call ‘steadfast’: those with an inner steadiness in the chaos that creates the outer agility to navigate uncertain terrain.
I’m looking forward to connecting with you all every three weeks or so, and welcome the gnarly challenges you want covered. You never know, I may run into you sometime at a dodgy karaoke bar, the one safe remaining place in the world to double down on that comfortable playlist that you KNOW the world needs to hear.
‘The Gambler’ anyone?
*ps. If Alison Moyet decides to return for a “final final” tour as many artists do, then I highly recommend you go!
