What Nick Cave Can Teach You About Product Management
One of the best recent decisions I made was getting last minute tickets to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for their show in Vancouver on June 22nd.
I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds about three years ago in Edmonton, at which point I was pretty new to their music. I had no idea what I was getting myself into for his live show. It’s akin to a religious experience. This time, I didn’t make the same mistake. I got tickets for the lower section and got to be up close with one of my favourite musicians.
Hailing from Australia, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have built a devoted following around the world that spans over thirty years.
Always evolving and yet staying true to their roots, the band has carved themselves a niche in the music world. Sixteen albums later they are still going strong, and they still put out quality work. I have no idea which album I would say is my favourite, because there are about 5–6 albums of theirs that could make the case for being their best album, and you’ll find that is the case with fans of the band.
For this post, I wanted to talk about about things you can learn from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and how you can apply them into your product management work.
Point #1: Getting up close and personal with your audience.
Nick Cave is a unique performer in how he interacts with the audience. He springs around the stage like a bizarre mix of Mick Jagger, a cat, and Smeagol, with the grace and agility as someone a third of his age (he will turn 60 this year).
Unlike most acts who are separated from the audience by security, Nick Cave gets up close and personal with the fans. He’s constantly moving around areas of the stage, singing directly to people in the front rows, and reaching out to them. He goes out into the crowd, with no security around, to sing at points throughout the concert.
For the encore, he let people on stage. I was able to find a video of that moment from the Vancouver concert.
Takeaways for Product Managers:
Get up close and personal with your users. Don’t just hide behind emails and computer screens or phones. Get out and talk with them, and get to know them, unfiltered. Don’t rely just on your salespeople or support to hear what they want, or internet forums, but get out there and meet them. Watch them. Observe them. Remove all layers and barriers in between you and your users.
Point 2: Don’t pigeonhole yourself, and expand your horizons.
Looking at his entry on Wikipedia:
Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional film actor, best known as the frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
The Bad Seeds isn’t his only band (Grinderman is another band that he is part of). He has done film scores for films such as The Road (a great film, but one that will leave you in the fetal position afterwards) with longtime Bad Seed member and collaborator Warren Ellis.
He has written a couple of books, including The Death of Bunny Munro, which is a great read.
He has written screenplays, some that have been adapted, including Lawless and The Proposition. For the truly bizarre, read below on how Russel Crowe asked him to write a script for a sequel to Gladiator, and how bat-shit crazy it turned out to be.
Gladiator 2, the lost script: Nick Cave’s demented plan to bring Russell Crowe back from the dead
Takeaways for Product Managers:
I’m not suggesting that you spread yourself too thin, but expand your horizons and explore creative endeavours. Don’t just read articles and books on product management, and please, for all that is right in the world, do not just read non-fiction (I wrote about the value of fiction to Product Managers recently). Take up interesting hobbies. Go try improv or standup comedy. Start writing fantasy fiction. Take up a sport, or a form of exercise you haven’t tried before. Try blogging. Go play a musical instrument. Don’t just pigeonhole yourself and focus on product management. Expand your boundaries and experiences, and they will nourish and colour other areas of your life, including your time in product management.
Point #3: Constantly grow and evolve, and don’t rely on past glories (or greatest hits).
Most of Nick’s peers at his age are doing the greatest hits tours. Yes, they’ll play a new song or two, but it’s all the big hits. That’s what the audience came for. They don’t really care about the new album or the new songs. Not with the Bad Seeds.
With their recent concert, most material played came from their two most recent albums, which are now up to 16 albums since their first album in 1984 (not including The Birthday Party, Nick’s old band prior to the Bad Seeds). Yes, they did play some of their best known songs, but it’s not like going to a greatest hits show.
I was reminded of this when I saw Neil Young play a solo set in 2010. Of the 20 or so songs he played, almost half were from his yet unreleased album, and no one had any issue with it or were begging for more hits. Bob Dylan is the same way. Prince would do tours specifically for the hits, and other tours to focus on newer material and rare b-sides.
Takeaways for Product Managers:
Just because you had a success in the past, it doesn’t mean you will again in the future. You need to keep growing on not just rely on your past glories, or your greatest hits. How many companies over the years were arrogant because of past successes and lost sight of the bigger picture while other companies came about and took their market share away?
Don’t just tote out your greatest hits from your past, and because something worked in the past, it doesn’t mean it will work again. Keep growing and evolving.
I awake, I write, I eat. I write, I watch TV….
Mostly I write. tapping and scratching away, day and night sometimes. But if I ever stop for long enough to question what I’m actually doing, the why of it, well, I couldn’t really tell you. I don’t know.
It’s a world I’m creating, a world full of monsters and heroes, good guys and bad guys. It’s an absurd, crazy, violent world where people rage away and God actually exists. And the more I write, the more detailed and elaborate the world becomes and all the characters that live and die or just fade away, they’re just crooked versions of myself.
And when I come out of that world, I always feel startled by the so-called real world… and I eat and I watch TV and I play with the kids and I torment my wife and I gather up experiences and then head back on in.
In Conclusion:
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are a unique act in music that have constantly evolved while staying true to themselves, and not falling into trends, and may just be the most consistent band in the last 30 years to put out quality work. Nick Cave brings an incredible presence to the stage that is unmatched, and has dabbled in other areas beyond just the band.
I hope you found value from this post, and if you’ve never listened to them before, I hope this post inspires you to check them out!
Good starting points for the band:
- Let Love In
- Push The Sky Away
- The Good Son
- The Boatman’s Call
I’ll leave you with one of the band’s most well known songs.
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Originally published at www.pmpaul.com on July 7, 2017.
