I just wrote and recorded an unusual song about economics entitled "FISCAL CLIFF" which just hit 5000 in all songs on Amazon. Fiscal Cliff tells the bittersweet story of a broker who reflects upon his life of gambling and decides to end it all by jumping the Fiscal Cliff! After a consultation with an HR consultant, he pulls back from the brink and transforms himself into a green activist! The story of how we engaged a motley crew of people into this voluntary project is itself instructive as an unusual HR case study.
I knew I would need great people to make this song and the accompanying film, so I concentrated on the hiring process rather than anything else in the HR cycle. The engagement process resembled that in the famous film "The Blues Brothers" and, like the film, it turned out to be very effective. I needed a banker, a class A rock star and some great musicians, so I set about building the team.
I first called my friend Bernie Tormé, ace rock guitarist, who has played with Ozzy Osbourne, Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, Atomic Rooster and Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider. I asked if he wanted to get involved with a Spinal Tapesque song about macro-economics. He sounded unmoved down the phone. I pointed out that I would have to hire his studio and he may have to personally set light to a guitar in the video and he replied "I'm in".
HR Selection Lesson : Find out what motivates people and give it to them where possible
I needed a city banker who could sing. I have a Swiss banker as a friend so I gave him a call. Trouble was that he had never sung in a band, but he was immediately keen to take up the challenge. It turned out that he also thought of a great melody for the song. More importantly he brought attitude and a pair of red braces for the video. We had less than two weeks between our first conversation and the recording session, so I imagine he must have stood in front of a mirror with a broom most evenings practicing. In any case, he turned up ready to rock from a standing start, some 10 days later.
HR Selection Lesson : Attitude often outweighs skill
Motivation and engagement was much easier than it should have been. The 'band' came together for a single one hour practice, 10 days before the recording session. Andee the bass player did not know any of us. The singer and drummer only knew me. None of them knew Bernie Tormé. The rehearsal took place in the entrance hall of Andee's house, with the drummer jammed into a music room and the rest of us standing around in the porch. That was all the preparation we needed. On the day, it went like a dream. It's really all down to selecting people with attitude and talent and letting them do the rest. I could not have wished for a better result from the team. The whole experience was an object lesson in teamwork.
HR Engagement Lesson : Select the right people and engage them with the task and let the teamwork take care of itself
We had to fit the recording of the song and the making of the video into one short day, starting at 10 am and finishing at 4.45pm. This was some going and points to the transferable HR lesson:
HR Engagement Lesson : Set a compelling and stretching goal that seems faintly achievable and then get out of the way of the people doing it
And finally, we finish with an HR Communications Lesson. I have been fortunate to receive unsolicited help from some exceptionally generous people, in particular, Dr Andrew Sentence CBE. Andrew is a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. I was astonished when he played the song at his recent garden party. Here's a picture of Andrew and I rocking out to some other well known hits about money and HR:
He commented:
"Fiscal Cliff follows in the tradition of other rock songs inspired by the economy, like "Money" by Pink Floyd and "Selling England by the Pound" by Genesis. But it's the first rock song I've heard mentioning Quantitative Easing and John Maynard Keynes!"
Check FISCAL CLIFF – the MOVIE out to see the impact of our HR engagement strategy:
