Leading Views: Ideas are Immortal. Inspiration is Perishable.

In ReWork—a go-to book for inspiration—authors Jason Fried and David Hansson explain why you need to get on with it. Just do it.

We all have ideas. Ideas are immortal. They last forever.

What doesn’t last forever is inspiration. Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date.

If you want to do something, you’ve got to do it now. You can’t put it on the shelf and wait two months to get around to it. You can’t just say you’ll do it later. Later, you won’t be pumped up about it anymore.

If you’re inspired on a Friday, swear of the weekend and dive into the project. When you’re high on inspiration, you can get two weeks work done in twenty-four hours. Inspiration is a time machine in that way.

Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.

Of Related Interest:
  How to Decommoditize Your Leadership
  Get to the Why by Starting at the Epicenter

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Leading Views: Resilience

Because we always make mistakes and always will, Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham, authors of Street Smarts say that the most important quality for business success is resilience—the ability to bounce back from failure, to turn around a bad situation, to profit from your mistakes.

Point One: Those who persevere win. Be resilient and welcome failure. That’s how you become a better businessperson.

Point Two: You learn by refusing to make excuses and looking inside yourself for the reason things have gone wrong.

Point Three: Focus and discipline are more important than identifying opportunities, but they have to be balanced with flexibility.

Point Four: The solutions are seldom right in front of you. You need to learn how to spot them out of the corner of your eye.

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Leading Views: James Stockdale on Leadership

In A Vietnam Experience: Ten Years of Reflection (1984) by James Stockdale, he writes:

Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers. We are tired of leaders we fear, tired of leaders we love, and most tired of leaders who let us take liberties with them. What we need for leaders are men of the heart who are so helpful that they, in effect, do away with the need of their jobs. But leaders like that are never out of a job, never out of followers. Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away.
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Leading Views: Alain de Botton on Success and Snobs

Alain de Botton, author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, shared his views at TED on success and snobs:

One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.

One of the reasons we might be suffering is that we are surrounded by snobs. A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses it to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery. And the dominant form of snobbery that exists today is job snobbery — you encounter it within minutes at a party when you get asked that famous, iconic question of the 21st century: “What do you do?” The opposite of a snob is your mother.

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Leading Views: Four Ways to Change

We know what to do to make people happy at work says Brian Tracy. The problem is that we either forget to do those things that make people happy, neglect to do them because we are distracted by other things, refuse to do them because we don’t understand their importance, or, worst of all, do things that actually make people unhappy and then justify our behavior with self-righteous excuses and rationalizations.

To make people feel really happy about themselves, you don’t have to change your entire personality or become a completely different person, you simply have to treat them exactly the way you would like to be treated, over and over again, until it becomes a series of automatic and easy behaviors for you.

There are only four ways that you can change anything about yourself, your life, your work, or your relationships with others:

1. You can do more of certain things. What should you be doing more of to build a positive, upbeat, happy work environment?
2. You could do less of other things. What should you be doing less of if you want people to feel wonderful about themselves every day?
3. You could start doing something that you are not doing today. What things should you start doing that would cause people to feel happier about themselves and their work?
4. You could stop certain behaviors altogether. What are the things that you are doing on a regular basis that you should discontinue?

If you are not sure about any of the answers to these questions, sit down with your staff, as individuals or in a group setting, and have the courage and honesty to ask them these questions:

• What would you like me to do more of in the days and weeks ahead?
• What would you like me to do less of?
• What would you like me to start doing that I am not doing today?
• What would you like me to stop doing altogether?

Adapted from Full Engagement! Inspire, Motivate, and Bring Out the Best in Your People by Brian Tracy

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Leading Views: Keep Dissenters Close to Provide Perspective

Decade of Change is a collection of articles from the Gallup Management Journal designed to provide a roadmap for moving forward into an uncertain future. In an interview with retired Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, he advises that leaders should keep dissenters close to provide perspective. This point cannot be stressed enough because although we all know it, most of us rarely encourage it. He shares the following with Senior Editor Jennifer Robison:

You’ve got three groups of people in your organization. First you’ve got the people who, when you say it, will get it done. Those are the people that want to replace you.

Then you’ve got the people who are on the team but aren’t necessarily motivated to get the task done. Those are the people in the middle. You can’t run the organization without them, so you take them as they are.

And then you have the third group. They’re very effective, but they don’t seem motivated. They argue with you. What you must decide is, is it OK to have a person from the third group on the team, or should you get rid of him? Members of that third group can be very competent, and many leaders let them go because they aren’t jumping up and down every time the boss walks in.

So an art of leadership is to sort those three groups out. You don’t have to worry about the ones that want your job. They’re clapping every time the boss says something, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to be on the team and be solid key players. Then you’ve got those who don’t cheer, but they get it done. But the third group could be the most productive, because sometimes the least conformist member of the group can say, “Yeah, this is what the boss says, but this is what the organization needs.” Some of your best innovations come from the mavericks.

Group one is good for accomplishing a mission, but if you don’t have people bringing up the negatives, you won’t have any perspective.

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Leading Views: Getting Another Perspective

In The Velocity Manifesto author Scott Klososky reminds us of the importance of getting another perspective:

When I was CEO out building my technology companies, I never realized how limited my thinking was until I became a consultant and speaker. When you go to the same office and are surrounded by the same people every day, and you are thinking about solving the same problems over and over again, you invariably become a bit myopic. Only by getting away from your usual world and observing other, very different environments can you build the skill of assimilating ideas from other industries into your own. Perspective is a powerful thing, and looking at the world through the eyes of another industry is a great move.

Of Related Interest:
  5 Leadership Lessons: The Velocity Manifesto

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Leading Views: Focus on the Questions, Not the Answers

America’s first-ever Olympic champion in the sport of aerial skiing Nikki Stone, believes that the key to success can be summed up in the Turtle Effect. That is to be soft on the inside, have a hard shell and be willing to stick your neck out.

The Turtle Effect has seven key lessons. As she puts it: “To have a soft inside, I would need a passion for my pursuits. To build a hard shell, I’d have to focus on the task at hand, completely commit to my goals, and develop the ability to overcome any adversity that was thrown my way. And in order to stick my neck out, I’d have to have confidence, take substantial risks, and be a team player in order to succeed.”

In her book When Turtles Fly, Stone shows how these lessons play a part in the lives of 40 extraordinary successful individuals. In one chapter she urges us to focus on the questions, not the answers. She writes:

We are often so focused on finding answers that we forget to keep asking questions. We need to explore the unknown in order to further our learning. People are sometimes afraid of questions that don’t have concrete answers, or answers that may be hard to discover. Kids have it right, constantly asking “why?”

Think up questions that you don’t have an answer to. Become a kid again this week and ask people “why?” rather than just accepting their statements. You may find out more on the subject or you may even find out that there really is no sound reasoning to their response.

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Leading Views: Being an Insider and an Outsider

“The power of being simultaneously an insider and an outsider.” ~Dov Frohman

Think about it.
Flexibility. Freedom. Insight.

Dove Frohman wrote in Leadership the Hard Way:

“Unless you are prepared to see things differently and go against the current, you are unlikely to accomplish anything truly important. And to go against the current, you have to be something of an outsider, living on the edge, a member of a small but vibrant counterculture.” He adds, “You must free yourself from habitual ways of looking at things, cultivate an independent and questioning perspective, and be ready to embrace alternative and counterintuitive points of view.”

What is your standard deviation?

Related Interest:
Learning Leadership the Hard Way

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Leading Views: Five Essential Leadership Questions

In The Mirror Test author Jeffrey Hayzlett reminds us that “having the mindset of a leader is more important than learning tactics of leadership that fill thousands of books and seminars nationwide. After all, tactics can change and vary depending on where your business is and they type of business it is. The need for strong leadership does not. Success and growth depend on it. Your employees depend on it. The mood of your company depends on it."

So the first question you need to ask, says Hayzlett, is not “How do you lead?” but “Can you lead?” If yes, then ask the following:

1. Am I acting like myself or trying to be someone else?
2. Can I read the signs in my business and be decisive and do the things every leader must do to succeed?
3. Am I the right fit for what I am doing in my business? Am I doing what I do best?
4. Am I dealing honestly with my employees and making them part of my business?
5. Can I eliminate the external (employee) and internal (ego) obstacles that hold my business and me back?

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Leading Views: Are You Relevant?

Joe Calloway, Chuck Feltz and Kris Young believe that leadership and success will always be intentional and never by chance. In a time when we are required to do more with less, we need to be able to draw the value out of existing resources. One crucial way of doing that is to be relevant. In Never by Chance they write that businesses lose their relevance every day. If you don’t have a clear definition of what relevance means to your business you’ll never see it coming. Joe Calloway writes:

As a leader, relevance is one of lenses through which you should use to make every decision, every single day. Does this decision advance the vision and fit our culture? Does this decision make us more relevant to our customers? The question of relevance is especially vital from a competitive standpoint. You compete to the extent that you are relevant to your customers, and you differentiate to the extent that you are more relevant than your competition.

So how do you find out how to be relevant to your customers? It’s simple: You ask them. Your methods can range from formal market research, to having conversations, to simply paying attention. If you own a coffee shop, are you asking your customers what newspaper they would prefer? If you own an industrial supply business, are you asking your customers what they need in terms of material and delivery? Every employee—not just management—should be asking questions, having conversations, and looking for clues with every customer interaction they have. Part of your culture should be your constant attempt to be more relevant to customers.

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Leading Views: Leadership Without a Pinch of Fear is Like Cooking Without Salt

On July 1, Nitin Nohria will become the tenth dean of Harvard Business School. He brings with him a new perspective that is much needed at this time. Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter told Stefan Stern of the Financial Times, “This is about leaders who take responsibility. I could characterize it as the start of a shift to moral capitalism. And not just as a corrective. This is something new.”

Nohria is by all reports a collaborative leader and a reflective one as well. In the 2000 book, The Arc of Ambition that he co-authored with James Champy, they write about the need for positive anxiety in leadership and the need to share power:

Fear chills minds, numbs souls, kills initiative and businesses. And yet, our arsenal can’t be entirely devoid of fear. A certain amount of fear is necessary to improve performance—assuming that by fear one means positive anxiety, the edgy urge to do a great job and not let down the team.

Those incapable of instilling that feeling throughout a company may well invite disrespect for the common enterprise. They flirt with apathy and mediocrity. Leadership without a pinch of fear is like cooking without salt.

But the ambitious don’t take advice easily…Once they are in charge, they may feel their position threatened by other opinions, particularly those that differ from their own.

More likely, ambitious people just believe that they are right. In their minds, they suffer no fools. Time is too short for that.

Sometimes, they also select men and women for their boards who reflect their own opinions. That’s a dangerous practice, especially if somewhere in the exercise of your ambition, you are wrong (it happens, you know). Someone needs to be present who dares to disagree with you.

Coming to grips with our own ambitions is ultimately a forewarning about the myth of omnipotence. No solo ruler of a complex can ever have enough creativity, knowledge, and time to make the right decisions single-handedly. His or her survival depends on sowing and reaping the brilliant work of others. By sacrificing the appearance of power, we achieve the substance—the real reward—of power.

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Leading Views: Donald Powell on the Qualities of a Leader

In Thriving In the New Economy by Lori Ann LaRocco, former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Donald Powell shares his view of what a leader should be:

Leadership is vital; it provides hope and stability. We usually know it when we see it. Leaders don’t panic. Leaders have ice in their veins. Leaders are disciplined and have a plan—and they execute. If the facts change, they change their course. Leaders set the tone, and more importantly, they lead through example … they walk the talk!

Leaders must be able to stand the heat. They sometimes have to look people in the eye and say, we thought about doing that and decided not to participate, because we think a product/action has abnormal risk and would not be long-term beneficial to our shareholders. That is hard to do, especially when there is much pressure to perform with peers, but leaders don’t follow the crowd; and sometimes these decisions can have consequences.

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Leading Views: Teaching Fire a Lesson

In Linchpin, Seth Godin explains the futility in trying to get others to conform to what we think they should be doing. It’s a form of control which stems from a lack of respect for others. People are going to do what they are going to do and for what seems to them to be very good reasons. Worrying about what other people are doing only clouds our judgment and upsets us emotionally and has little if any effect on them. Accepting people for what they are frees us to be the best we can be. Here’s Godin on teaching people a lesson:

Fire is hot. That’s what it does. If you get burned by fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry at the fire doesn’t do you much good. And trying to teach the fire a lesson so it won’t be hot next time is certainly not time well spent.

Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it’s not human. But human beings are similar, in that they’re not going to change anytime soon either.

Many (most?) people in organizations handle their interactions as though they are in charge of teaching people a lesson. We make policies and are vindictive and focus on the past because we worry that if we don’t, someone will get away with it.

So when a driver cuts us off, we scream and yell. We say we’re doing it so he’ll learn and not in danger the next guy, but of course, he can’t hear you. There’s a media mogul who stole from me in 1987 and I haven’t spoken to him since. He doesn’t know I exist, I bet. So much for teaching him a lesson.

The ability to see the world as it is begins with an understanding that perhaps it’s not your job to change what can’t be changed. Particularly if the act of working on that change harms you and your goals in the process.

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Leading Views: The Leader as Communicator

Clarence B. Randall (1891-1967) was chairman of Inland Steel Co. of East Chicago, Indiana. A celebrated corporate chieftain, author, and civic leader, he held various government posts, including special consultant to President Eisenhower on foreign economic policy. In The Executive in Transition (1967), he shares his views on the need for developing communication skills:

Speech is a part of manners, and the able businessman must learn to express himself in English which is clear as well as colloquial.

There are too many talkers who have never learned to listen. They broadcast but do not receive. The only time they stop the flow of words is when they are out of breath. Their minds are choked by what they want to say and closed to what the other person wishes to offer in reply.

If I were to name the one skill most important to the young man or woman leaving college hopeful of achieving executive status in industry, I would say without a moment’s hesitation that it is the capacity to speak and write the English language with clarity and force. No idea, however brilliant, has value for society unless it can be communicated to others.

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Leading Views: Structure Formally, but Work Informally

In The Right Fight, authors Saj-nicole Joni and Damon Beyer explain that in order for a leader to receive reliable information they need to go outside the constructs of the formal organization:

Great leaders learn how to work out tensions and conflicts through the informal networks that make the formal organization hum. They acknowledge their need for access to unfiltered information and recognize the creative potential in opportunities for unfettered thinking. They leverage their personal and expertise-based relationships in the informal organization to gather information, to gauge employee morale and mood, to allow things to bubble up from the best and the brightest, to test hunches, and to champion ideas.

Beyond that, they set up systems that encourage everyone to participate in the informal knowledge sharing, creating an open culture radically unlike the “mushroom” environment of far too many companies—where the lower an employee is on the org chart, the more likely he is to be kept in the dark.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:33 PM
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Leading Views: Law of Unintended Consequences

In Thriving In the New Economy by Lori Ann LaRocco, Larry Lindsey, CEO of economic advisory firm The Lindsey Group, says that to thrive in time of crisis you need objectivity. It means that you don’t get caught up in the moment. This requires the perspective that history can give you. He writes:

One of history’s great lessons is that policy makers, in both the public and private sectors, tend to underestimate the costs involved when they contemplate the actions necessary to address some adverse change in circumstances. Although this is due in part to long periods of conditioning to the relationships and magnitudes that existed before the crisis, an equally important cause of the underestimation is the Law of Unintended Consequences. Even the most carefully designed policy responses involve unforeseen results, and in a crisis, there is not the time for as careful a consideration of the consequences of policy as might be ideal.

The way we approach this challenge is to imagine ourselves as future historians writing about the events of the present. This causes us to contemplate an outcome, which we as future historians have the advantage of knowing with 20/20 hindsight, and then work back to establish a chain of events that led to that outcome. When you do that, you have to visualize how something is going to happen and decide whether or not your vision is realistic. If it is not realistic, you reject it. Thus, only a small fraction of the speculative ‘‘future histories’’ one considers actually make it into the range of plausible scenarios.

This future-history approach doesn’t guarantee that you will have picked the right future, but it does facilitate objectivity. Once present-day events occurred that differed from what you imagined, that is, once the world ended up somewhere other than where you thought it was going to end up, you would know that, objectively, you were wrong.

Of Related Interest:
  Thriving In the New Economy

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Leading Views: Toxic Emotions in the Workplace

Peter Frost explains in Toxic Emotions at Work that toxicity is a normal by-product of organizational life. According to Frost, when ignored, toxic emotions betray employees' hopes, bruise their egos, reduce their enthusiasm for work, and diminish their sense of connectedness to their company's community and goals. Compassionate responses to pain, on the other hand, encourage those who are suffering to effect constructive changes in their work lives. Despite their powerful role in employee performance, toxic emotions are rarely addressed by organizations:

It is true that good leadership by its very nature engenders pain. It pushes people out of their comfort zones—which is necessary to get things done in a world of competition and change. Even so, some managers are malicious or lack good decision-making or people-managing skills, and therefore unduly contribute to the frustration, anger and low morale of their employees.

Not just managers but organizations themselves create conditions for toxicity through policies and practices that fail to include the human factor in their execution. Their modes of production, especially the ever-changing technologies of work, squeeze out time for humanity, for civility, for people to reflect on their actions.

We need to recognize that the values we reinforce in our organizations often are a prime source of toxicity. Unbridled attention to the bottom line, regardless of what it takes to achieve a given return on investments, blinds us to the possibilities of even more long-run effectiveness, if we take into account the value and emotional health of our workforce. The toxicity that flows from managers who ignore the emotional costs of their actions (to themselves and to others) can poison the wells of innovation and goodwill in the company. Corporate lies, distortions, and manipulations that cover up mistakes and foster self-aggrandizement do little to benefit any of the stakeholders.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:00 AM
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Leading Views: How To Increase Your Value

In The Unforced Error, Jeffrey Krames is talking about taking responsibility. No Responsibility = No Value. Taking responsibility is about seeing the larger goals of the company and your part in it. It’s about learning to leader from where you are. To not take responsibility is to say “I don’t want to be part of the solution.” In fact, you become part of the problem. Kramer writes:

At Work, people often look at their jobs in terms of tasks rather than responsibilities. But if you don’t view responsibility in the broader sense, you may be committing the most subtle of unforced errors: Over time you may fall off the corporate radar screen. Your boss may feel that you are capable of completing a routine task or matter, but if the assignment is more than routine, or if the boss is looking for someone to take the initiative, she will not think of you. And when it comes time to promote someone or to draw up a list of the valuable people she needs to keep when corporate belt tightening requires a layoff, she will not think of you.

If there is nobody addressing a problem that you observe, or taking advantage of an opportunity that you see, think about whether you should be doing it yourself.

Taking responsibility is about developing a mind-set that says: “I am responsible for what happens in my unit. It’s my job to help get us to success.

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Leading Views: Parker Palmer on Leading From Within

Parker Palmer, founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal, says that we tend to ignore what is going on inside us. Inner issues can distract from the message we are trying to project, the good that we would accomplish. It’s a call to be integrated or authentic. A leader’s personal issues can work their way into the culture of those we lead. Leaders need to not only master the skills of working through and with others, but also the discipline to manage what is going on inside—character issues both good and bad. From Let Your Life Speak, he explains:

We have a long tradition of approaching leadership via the “power of positive thinking.” I want to counterbalance that approach by paying special attention to the tendency we have as leaders to project more shadow than light. Leadership is hard work for which one is regularly criticized and rarely rewarded, so it is understandable that we need to bolster ourselves with positive thoughts. But by failing to look at our shadows, we feed a dangerous delusion that leaders too often indulge: that our efforts are always well intended, our power is always benign, and the problem is always in those difficult people whom we are trying to lead.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:44 AM
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Leading Views: Winning Hearts and Minds

Smart people with great credentials often self-destruct because they fail to connect with the people they are trying to influence. Both teachers and leaders must win the hearts and minds of those they lead. Without an emotional connection, both students and employees are just getting through the day. Leaders must learn to focus on the human side if they are to be effective. In Fierce Leadership author Susan Scott shares the difference between good teachers and bad teachers:

What makes for a bad teacher? Things like rigid control, broadcasting from the front of the room, and yes/no, right/wrong feedback. What makes for a good teacher? Things like creating a “holding space” for lively interaction, flexibility in how students become engaged in a topic, a regard for student perspective, the ability to personalize the material for each student, responding to questions and answers with sensitivity, and providing high-quality feedback “where there is a back-and-forth exchange to get a deeper understanding.”

Sounds like the behavior of a good leader.

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Leading Views: Assume the Guests Point of View

Imagineer John Hench shares in his book Designing Disney, Walt Disney's approach to people:

"To design most effectively for our guests, we learned that we had to observe them up close, waiting in lines with them, going on rides with them, eating with them. Walt insisted on this by saying, ‘You guys get down there at least twice a month. For God’s sake, don’t eat off the lot. Stay there…lunch with the guests…talk to them.’ This was new to us; as filmmakers, we were used to sitting in our sweatboxes at the studio, passing judgment on our work without knowing how the public might actually respond to it. Going out into the park taught us how guests were being treated and how they responded to sensory information, what worked and what didn’t, what their needs were and how we could meet them in entertaining ways. We paid attention to guests’ patterns of movement and the ways in which they expressed their emotions. We got an idea of what was going on in their minds. Disney Imagineers prefer such an experiential process of gathering information from our guests to focus groups or surveys. When designers see guests in their natural states of behavior, they gain a better understanding of the space and time guests need in a story environment.

Walt had the idea that guests could feel perfection.”

As Frank Gehry writes in the forward, "when you’ve got a love for people, you want them to have experiences that make them think differently when they leave."

That's management by wandering around.

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Leading Views: Leadership Isn't a Reward

Tom Peters reminds us that leadership shouldn’t be a reward or a title bestowed as a way of saying thanks. Unfortunately it isn’t confined to business and government. We see it in organizations of all types and most regrettably in schools where it reinforces the wrong concept of what it means to be a leader. Peters told an audience:

"Only in the stupid world of business and government, do we promote the best accountant to the head of the accounting department, the best salesman to the head of the sales department, the best trainer to the head of the training department. You don’t do that in sports, right?!

"The definition of most of our coaches at the professional level is that they were second rate or marginal players who were brilliant students of the game and people. That is, they were good at leading. What are leaders good at doing? Leading."

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Leading Views: PhD in Leadership, Short Course

Dee Hock is the founder and former CEO of the VISA and author of One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization. In Fast Company magazine he reduced leadership to its most basic relational (common sense) element. How often we forget this simple concept or are so unaware that we can’t get a fix on our own behavior.

"PhD in Leadership, Short Course: Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others, ever. Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always."

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Leading Views: Why We Need Leaders

Public philosopher Tom Morris expresses something in True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence that speaks to the why of leadership:

"We all need help. We need guidance for our journeys through life. Even the most successful of us need reminders and fresh, crisp articulations of the truths we may only vaguely grasp that have, in one way or another, led us to whatever we have managed to accomplish. We need to rethink. We need to refocus. How can we get where we still need to go? And how can we best convey to others what it takes to get there together?"

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Leading Views: Manager as Orchestra Conductor

In Managerial Behavior: Administration in Complex Organizations, Leonard Sayles creates a more realistic picture of the manager/leader as orchestra conductor:

"The manager is like a symphony orchestra conductor, endeavoring to maintain a melodious performance in which the contributions of the various instruments are coordinated and sequenced, patterned and paced, while the orchestra members are having various personal difficulties, stage hands are moving music stands, alternating excessive heat and cold are creating audience and instrumental problems, and the sponsor of the concert is insisting on irrational changes in the program."

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:47 AM
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