Inefficiencies and performance

Last night, I went to my first BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall – the first classical music event I’ve attended with ‘no gimmicks’. Virtually no singing, no laser light displays or fireworks, and 1812 overture with muskets and canons firing in the background. So, I could just let the music take my thoughts on a wander as I observed the orchestra fiercely.

Coming from a day at work, I had efficiencies at the top of my mind, and started wondering what the music would sound like if the composer had made better use of all the resources currently on stage.

Because half the instruments were under-occupied.? One of the percussionists joined in a few times on the first and I don’t remember seeing her for the rest of the evening. The horn players had enough down time during a piece to drop their instruments at their feet. The two harps were unattended for the first half of the performance. And there didn’t seem to be much call for the organ, one of the biggest sunk costs for the Royal Albert Hall, so the organist packed it in and locked up shop for the night halfway through.

Instruments were also not being used to their full capacity – the timpani drummer and the cymbals player dampened down the noise of their instruments at time, instead of maxing them out.

There were some encouraging signs of someone having had a go at increasing productivity. Musicians were sharing music sheet stands and the job of turning pages. But if they all had access to written instructions on the notes to play, in what order and how to play them, why did they also need the visual cues of a conductor?

The xylophone player, who was swinging his feet doing nothing during the first piece of music and came on maybe three times during the next piece, might have had second thoughts about that and took advantage of the interval to replace it with a glockenspiel which saw a bit more action during the second half of the performance.

He also shared the job of banging the gong with the cymbal player when the latter had a conflict of interest owing to overlapping musical commitments. Which got me thinking that maybe there should be more people playing more than one instrument, and composers should write music that allows people with more than one job to play their parts sequentially. At least the human resources would be used more effectively.

At some point, the lighting or the music made my thoughts wander to the Olympics and set me wondering about transferable skills – would all that jabbing and thrusting with the bow make violinists, cellists and their like naturals at fencing?

But, despite all that untapped potential for efficiency gains, the music was sublime. It transported me to much more meaningful thoughts and feelings and created some very special memories. I should add that this was not just to my untutored ear - the conductor and the orchestra took four bows and it felt like the audience allowed them to depart with quite some reluctance.

The evening served to illustrate and reinforce a few lessons for me:

• A fresh pair of eyes that knows little about a business can often bring some interesting perspectives. But it is just one perspective and, like mine above, may well be off piste by a smidge or more.
• Opportunities for efficiencies are not always evident, but evident opportunities for efficiencies pursued may well have unintended consequences.
• The best teams may not appear to be optimally efficient, but actually they are pretty well attuned for their purposes and circumstances.
• But if your team doesn't make sense to outsiders, it's good preparation to have a clear and full explanation of the effective role played by each person.

Because an orchestra may look bananas on paper to someone with a financial hat on. But oh, what joy they brought to so many people last night, and on so many other occasions.?