Efficiency Sucks
Prioritize passion over profit for long-term success.
There are places where efficiency should be a top priority… traffic patterns, airport security lines, electrical service… but optimized civic planning has nothing in common with the chaos of inspiration, so how can companies get ahead and stay there without losing their soul?
I find it unsettling that at some point in seemingly every company’s history there comes a time to decide which will reign supreme at the top of the priority pyramid… Investment in Ideas, or Return on Investment? Passion, or Profits?
While I can’t fault metropolitan transportation engineers, the TSA, or the operators of our nation’s electrical grid for desiring more efficient performance, when it comes to the possibility of sacrificing the very thing that drew people to your business in the shortsighted interest of immediate monetary gains, we should all be quite mindful of the ol’ Penny-Wise, Dollar-Foolish maxim.
Compromising the passionate heart of anything creative in the pursuit of profitable efficiency will inevitably mean losing the hearts of those who support your enterprise. And that spells long-term failure.
Is Apple losing its juice?
The news of Apple’s chief of retail strategy John Browett’s decision to reduce staffing and investment in the computing giant’s retail locations — for the sake of increasing their already near-obscene levels of profitability — struck an unfamiliar nerve among the Apple faithful. I count myself among those loyalists, having worked exclusively with Macintosh computers since their inception in 1984. It’s safe to say I was deeply disappointed to learn of Browett’s decision at the time, which felt quite unlike the Apple I once adored. And it’s just possible (ahem) that such a decision, and the subsequent backlash from the Apple faithful, led to Browett’s swift departure from the computing industry giant a mere nine months after joining the company.
As Jim Dalrymple said at the time (via The Loop) :
To take one of the most heralded retail experiences in the world and gut it, stripping it of everything that makes an Apple store what it is, just doesn’t make sense.
Oh, what damage can be done in short order by such misguided management of a brand’s soul. I’m curious if we’re going to continue to see the effects of this prioritization in the future even as the company quickly backed off on such aggressive plans to minimize their retail investment, bypassing passionate people in their ill-conceived pursuit of myopically maximizing quarterly growth to satisfy Wall Street.
I had recently gone to the local Genius Bar because my wife’s MacBook showed signs of a mysterious startup failure. Blank screen. Didn’t seem like an obvious hard drive crash. The advice provided by the “genius” on duty? “Best option is to buy a new laptop.” Not quite satisfied with this as Option Numero Uno, I spent the entire weekend at home working with Apple’s own software tool, Disk Utility, and had a fully restored hard drive giving life to a perfectly fine MacBook computer by Monday morning. I’m left to wonder what corporate efficiency guidelines were in place that meant 1) the “best option” from the “genius” was to suggest I buy a new computer and 2) there were no alternatives presented, nor additional help offered, unlike my numerous past trips to the local Apple store. This lifelong Apple enthusiast left the store thinking “where has that inspired Apple soul gone?”
Apple appears to be losing the thing that made it Apple, the inevitable outcome of focusing on profit instead of passion.
The juice that lost its Juice.
Let’s stay with the apple idea for a moment but move from personal computers to liquid refreshment.
Martinelli’s (or, more specifically, the S. Martinelli Company of Watsonville, CA) is a purveyor of the finest, purest, most delectable apple juice ever available through retail outlets. I know this firsthand, because I have searched them out in store after store, always interested in drinking the most apple-iest juice in the entire universe.
I’ve been a huge fan of Martinelli’s apple juice for years. Years. Decades, I guess. Those single-serve glass bottles in the shape of an apple with the sealed metal cap meant the very best, most crisp, delectable juice was waiting for me inside no matter where my travels had taken me. Loved it. Happily paid more for the flavor and the experience of something… more… something better… even soulful and inspired. Then, in a flash a few years ago, the glass and metal were gone. In its place instead, a plastic container, capped off with a standard zip-strip plastic screw-top. Gone, too, were the things that made Martinelli’s so special in the first place… that difference, that special something. I’ve tasted their apple juice but once since they made the switch.
WHY DID YOU ELIMINATE THE VERY THING THAT MADE YOU SPECIAL & UNIQUE, MARTINELLI’S?!?!
Oh, they told us why. In a 2006 press announcement available online we are informed that “strong consumer demand for a shatterproof bottle” was the driving force behind this change. The release talks up the difficulty of achieving their “renowned brand icon in plastic,” but I can’t escape the obvious… it doesn’t taste the same, the experience isn’t the same, the soul is gone.
The Apple has left their apple juice, the inevitable outcome of listening to focus groups instead of honoring the soul of a brand.
Keep passion paramount, don’t lose your Juice.
Now I recognize it’s often easier to see such things clearly from the viewpoint of a detached observer, but we were faced with similar decisions over the past three years as we launched our new music publishing and licensing venture, The License Lab.
Sure, we’ve minimized our traffic patterns, streamlined our security procedures, and our electrical usage is as efficient as can be. And there are modern technologies available in software today that hold the possibility of increasing our operational efficiency in the recording studio quite easily and dramatically… software-based tools that provide instant and perfect recall, making singers and instruments be heard as having performed in perfect pitch, the emulation of recording tape and consoles, virtual guitar amplifiers, simulated analogue synthesis.
But if, in the interest of operational efficiency, we lost our focus on the thing that first pulled us into this business — that inspired soul, that passionate love of creating music — we’d end up losing a lot more than we might gain through noiseless recordings, “perfect” vocal takes, and the virtual emulation of smelly, degradable, expensive, magnetic tape.
To that end, our studios recently acquired an old-school analog tape machine. A physically imposing, decidedly vintage, Studer A-80 2" 16-track (pictured in the header, above). The kind of thing that is practically insane to own and operate in 2014. The kind of thing that screams “Maximize maintenance!” way more often than “Maximize profits!” But to see the joy on the faces of players and producers that come through our Milwaukee facility as they experience, once again, the pure pleasure and soulful inspiration of hearing music through analog media, literal waveforms on non-virtual tape, is priceless.
The integrity of our creative process continues to be at the very top of our list of priorities… our passion for the inspired genesis of music production is paramount. This sustained focus has reaped significant benefits for us as we build our young company and work hard to establish our brand, a fact that is repeatedly confirmed by our clients who tell us time and again that there’s “something different” about our music. We wish we had some mindblowing trick to market or trade secret to sell, but it’s as simple as recognizing the truth… yes, efficiency sucks… but the cost is not only worth it, it’s vital in the pursuit of genuine long-term success.
All of this may mean that we’re missing out on some short-term monetary gains in the interest of not forsaking the very thing that makes us us, and it may also mean we’re not exactly the sort of Safe Bet Startup to whom venture capitalists are eager to hand over tens of millions of dollars. But we’re totally okay with that. We’re focused on never losing our Apple. We’ve still got our Juice, we guard it fervently, and we’re just getting started… in fact, we’re now releasing production music on vinyl. No, really. ☺
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Daniel Holter is a producer, composer, songwriter, mixer, longtime member of ASCAP, supporter of the PMA, and voting member of NARAS.
The License Lab was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisc.
