If David Lee Roth can figure this out, so can you!

I was reading an article in Fast Company last week by David and Chip Heath about warning signs for potential problems in your business. I must say it was a fascinating article and most specifically, what they wrote about David Lee Roth of Van Halen.

Often I speak with employees and even clients about the importance of attention to detail. When the details are missed, sales are on the line. After all, nothing is worse than NOT delivering on a minor portion of a project just because you weren’t paying attention to detail. Look…we all do it. It takes time and experience to know what to look for and MAKE SURE you are paying attention. Anyway, I thought David Lee Roth’s story was worth sharing. See what Chip and David wrote below:

Consider Van Halen. (We have been waiting years for a chance to write that sentence.) In its heyday, the band became notorious for a clause in its touring contract that demanded a bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with all the brown ones removed. The story is true—confirmed by former lead singer David Lee Roth himself—and it became the perfect, appalling symbol of rock-star-diva behavior.

Get ready to reverse your perception. Van Halen did dozens of shows every year, and at each venue, the band would show up with nine 18-wheelers full of gear. Because of the technical complexity, the band’s standard contract with venues was thick and convoluted—Roth, in his inimitable way, said in his autobiography that it read “like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages.” A typical “article” in the contract might say, “There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes.”

Van Halen buried a special clause in the middle of the contract. It was called Article 126. It read, “There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.” So when Roth would arrive at a new venue, he’d walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he’d demand a line check of the entire production. “Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error,” he wrote. “They didn’t read the contract…. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show.”

In other words, Roth was no diva. He was an operations expert. He couldn’t spend hours every night checking the amperage of each socket. He needed a way to assess quickly whether the stagehands at each venue were paying attention—whether they had read every word of the contract and taken it seriously. In Roth’s world, a brown M&M was the canary in the coal mine.

Like Roth, none of us has the time and energy to dig into every aspect of our businesses. But, if we’re smart, we won’t need to. What if we could rig up a system where problems would announce themselves before they arrived? That may sound like wishful thinking, but notice that it’s exactly what Roth achieved. Surely, you won’t be outwitted by the guy who sang “Hot for Teacher.”

Where’s the brown M&M in your business?

Sphere: Related Content

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.