By Varun Yadav
Introduction
The corporate world has long borrowed insights from disciplines such as military strategy, psychology and philosophy. In this trend of cross-discipline management lessons, music creation appears to be one of the most underexplored yet profoundly relevant areas. Though music itself is a deep art form; music creation is a process-oriented discipline, requiring creativity, integration, and alignment of diverse elements. All these critical components mirror effective corporate management. This piece aims to seek insights from the process of music creation and explores how business leadership can apply lessons from music creation to drive the same excellence in management processes as in musical masterpieces.
Song writing: Staying True to the Core Philosophy
The most critical aspect of creating music is song writing, which essentially encompasses melody, harmony, rhythm, and other elements. Song writing is the core that shapes lyrical messages according to the theme and emotions of the song. The song writing must be faithful to the feelings it wants to convey.
In corporate parlance, the vision and mission reflect the core of a company, wherein the leaders frame the essence of what an organisation stands for. An organisation’s vision, mission statements need to align with the company’s core philosophy. It helps effectively communicate the message to all internal and external stakeholders. Like a catchy piece of music, all stakeholders must be told in its simplest form what the organisation stands for and how it enhances its customers’ life experiences or creates economic value for its users through unparalleled services.
The more significant point here is understanding that a great song remains relevant across generations, always transcending the listeners to the intended zone. Likewise, workplaces or organisations must stay close to that intrinsic core philosophy, even when their vision and mission statements may evolve with structural changes in the industry or economies.
Despite rapid technological advancement and industry shifts, Siemens has stayed true to their core philosophy of engineering excellence, continuously adapting its business model while staying true to their core philosophy. Conversely, though Kodak pioneered the digital camera technology, it could not stay true to its vision of fostering innovation and its mission of providing high-quality imaging solutions. While competitors capitalised on new imaging technology, including digital cameras, Kodak resisted innovation and lost ground to its competitors.
Arrangements: The Role of Organizational Harmony
Arrangement is a critical step as it gives a blueprint of how the instruments and vocal sections will play out one after another in the making of an entire song. Having all the musical elements and randomly playing them out may not bring the desired result. Hence, it is crucial that the components such as intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, and bridge gel seamlessly in the composition and create a cohesive and well-structured composition.
Just like different elements of a musical piece, all business verticals – HR, Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, Quality Control, R&D, etc. – and their employees are essential to an excellent organisation. Like the hook of a song, though some business verticals may have more visibility, it is critical to recognise the importance and support each one of the verticals. The leaders should also have it inculcated through suitable budget allocations, cross-vertical collaborations, aligning goals of verticals to the broader vision and mission, rewards, recognition, and a visible and robust career growth trajectory for all business verticals. Promoting and supporting only the profit centres is the norm in mediocre organisations. However, it’s essential to recognise that songs with customary arrangements tend to fade over time, just like organisations that don’t last. Lehman Brothers, the investment banking behemoth, incentivised risk-taking behaviour, ultimately leading to its crisis. In recent years, inadequate quality control and plane crashes have caused Boeing a great deal of reputational damage.
However, on the other hand, just as a great song requires precise arrangement, Google harmonizes HR and Finance to optimize salary bands, stock options, and benefits, creating an environment that attracts top talent while championing financial sustainability.
Tracking: Recording the Composite Culture of Organizations
Tracking is recording individual instruments like drums, guitar, bass, and vocals on different tracks. Tracking allows engineers and producers to make localised changes and improvements for a better-sounding final piece. With the development of tracking technologies, artists and producers can exercise better control over balance, clarity, and song quality.
Like tracking, in a corporate setup, business practices and processes are recorded through Systems and Controls. Through systems and controls, the functions across the departments are standardised, institutionalised, and integrated into the composite culture of an organisation.
Organisations with laxing systems and controls may institutionalise inappropriate and inefficient practices, adversely affecting the interests of all concerned stakeholders. As tracking allows for isolated adjustments, corrections, and balancing; in leading organisations, recruitment, compensation, sales, marketing, and finance have distinct and independent systems and controls, yet all the components are integrated seamlessly.
While speed, flexibility and growth prospects are intuitively more favoured over structured processes, even for high-growth startups, these systems and controls work as safeguards in the long run. FTX, the crypto exchange, had no proper accounting systems, internal audits or transparency, which led to its failure in 2022. Even for mature organisations, systems and controls are equally important. In 2016, a major scandal was unearthed in Wells Fargo bank wherein, under aggressive cross-sales targets, the bank officials opened millions of unauthorised accounts without customers’ knowledge. The failure of internal detection systems institutionalised a practice of manipulation of customer information without generating alerts, demonstrating how weak systems can normalise unethical behaviour.
Editing: Using Governance as a Strategic Lever
The principles and objectives of editing in music creation and corporate governance in a business setting are similar. In music creation, editing is used to enhance the quality of recorded audio by adjusting timing, rhythm adjustment, noise reduction, harmonisation and pitch, and other elements to achieve the desired sound quality. In the same way, corporate governance needs to concentrate on developing and enhancing the organisation’s structure, stakeholder management, ethical conduct, regulatory compliance, internal controls, risk management, ESG commitments, compliance monitoring and several other parameters to improve its overall performance and effectiveness. While systems and controls ensure that correct business procedures are institutionalised in the normal course of the business, corporate governance on a higher level provides oversight and structure. It ensures that systems align with the long-term goals and regulatory obligations, working as a strategic lever to boost investor and market confidence.
Even the most minor changes in music, like removing background noise or refining a vocal track, can significantly impact the final piece. Similarly, in corporate governance, every decision, policy and control mechanism must be carefully drafted, as oversight may lead to reputational and financial losses. To elucidate and summarise the point, just as in music editing, unwanted sounds and distortions are removed for clarity; under the HR governance framework, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) initiatives remove biases in hiring, performance reviews, and promotions to reduce discrimination and reputational risks. The failure of Enron was a direct result of the failure of corporate governance on multiple levels, germinating from poor board oversight, unethical leadership, ineffective audits and misreporting. A profit-centric culture encouraged short-term goals, leading to fraudulent accounting practices, and while executives manipulated the company’s financials, the auditors failed to take an independent view.
Mixing: Strategic Planning for Impact
There are similarities between mixing and strategic planning in businesses as both inherent focus on balancing complexity and refining the priorities to create a harmonious end product. Music mixing combines vocals and instruments to achieve the desired sound. Likewise, various components such as aligning business priorities, managing risks, addressing stakeholder expectations, hiring skilled human resources and several other critical functions are combined in business strategy to produce an effective and cohesive plan.
Mixing is about making creative choices that help show the artist’s vision. Pop music emphasizes clear vocals, while rock focuses on strong instruments. Hip-hop prioritizes deep bass and beats. Similarly, organisations must use creativity in strategic planning to develop innovative strategies to help businesses achieve competitiveness and resonance with the end customers. For example, while Apple focuses on premium hardware, the Apple ecosystem, and its smartphones’ exclusivity, google prioritises open-source Android, partnerships with different OEMs and software innovation.
In mixing, a sound engineer aligns with the artist to define the song’s feel—whether it should sound raw and emotional or polished and commercial. Likewise, business leaders should decide whether their products should be positioned as premium for high-end customers or the focus should be on having deep penetration in the mass market. Similarly, for HR leadership, the talent philosophy of the organisation must be aligned with the broader market strategy in terms of whether the focus is on employee well-being, innovation, high performance, or cost advantages.
Mixing and strategizing involve being creative and focusing on important aspects, finding the right balance, and improving on available options.
Conclusion
Business success depends on having a clear vision, integrating diverse processes, having a resilient structure, refining ideas, and executing plans effectively. In this context, the entire music creation process—including songwriting, arrangements, tracking, editing, and mixing—provides a solid framework for producing work comparable to a musical masterpiece. The key lessons to drive here are:
- Staying true to the core philosophy is vital
- Inter-vertical harmony fuels success
- Strong Systems prevent chaos
- Governance acts as a strategic lever
- Strategy is the final mix
The lessons are equally applicable to both mature organisations and startups.
Mature organisations face several ongoing challenges. However, these companies can truly thrive by embracing cross-vertical harmony for greater efficiency, maintaining robust systems to avoid disruptions, enhancing governance to safeguard stakeholder interests, adapting strategies to industry changes, all while staying true to the core philosophy of the organisations.
On the other hand, start-ups operate in a competitive environment where uncertainty and resource constraints are the norms of the day. It is critical that start-ups focus on strong foundations. Having a clear vision defines purpose and differentiation in a competitive market. Harmony between business verticals result in faster execution of projects. While well-defined systems result in scalable and sustainable growth, good corporate governance boosts investor confidence. Without clear strategic priority, start-ups risk changing multiple goals and losing sight of execution.
To sum up, executives must think like great music producers—balancing structure and creativity, integrating diverse elements, and fine-tuning strategies to create lasting impact. Every day, they must introspect and reflect on whether they are composing a masterpiece or just making noise.
Acknowledgement: The Author acknowledges the use of generative AI tool such as ChatGPT for learning the nuances of music creation so that depth could be added to the arguments.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of the Reserve Bank of India.
