Teaming up with family.

When my son was a little boy, Barry Gibb was one of his hero's. He knew every word, every action that Barry ( his favourite Bee Gee) performed on stage in a music DVD that he could watch everyday.

So I was naturally drawn to the Saturday morning article about his solo album at the age of 70 a few weeks ago. The article made me reflect on many aspects of teamwork, Leadership, and fulfilling one's destiny that I would like to share. But first read the article :

It's all in the present...

Neil McCormick, Oct 23, 2016, The Telegraph

Retro talk

At the age of 70, Barry Gibb is finally striking out on his own. “The truth is that my brothers really didn’t ever want me to make a solo album,” admits Gibb, the last Bee Gee standing.

“And I probably felt the same about them. We wanted to be close and we wanted to be individually recognised and we all felt threatened by each other’s success. That’s how it was, deep down inside — a mixture of feelings all the time.”

Gibb was the eldest of four brothers, all gone now. The youngest, Andy, died at 30 in 1988, struggling with drug addiction after a pop career in which Barry wrote and produced his biggest hits. Barry’s other two brothers shared the stage with him for most of his life as the Bee Gees, one of the most successful groups of all time.

Maurice died aged 53 in 2003, and Robin died aged 62 in 2012. “Your world turns upside down,” says Gibb. “But somehow you get through.”

Gibb has a very warm, genial, relaxed presence, exuding a humility you might not expect from an undisputed superstar. â€œYou’ve made my day, man,” he says, when I praise his new album, ‘Into the Now’, a luxurious collection of rich melodies, stirring grooves and meaningful lyrics. Drawing on rock, pop, folk, disco and country, peppered with sparkling Bee Gee harmonies and focused on Gibb’s distinctive vibrato vocals, it is an absolute joy from start to finish, a masterclass from one of the world’s greatest songwriters. “Every song had to count, because I knew I might not do this again,” he says.

His mother died in August this year, aged 92, and Gibb has dedicated the album to her memory, and the closing track, End of the Rainbow, to his brothers.He explains, “You can say things in music; things you can’t say in real life. It’s like an emptying out.” Gibb wrote End of the Rainbow while Robin was nearing the end. “He was on his deathbed, and that song just came up. It’s about the dream coming true; whatever you were searching for. I sang it to him in hospital.” After Robin’s death, Barry thought his career might be over. 

“There was a period where I just didn’t want to do anything. I began to really just watch television. I thought, well, maybe that’s it. I gave up for a long time.” Slowly, however, the songwriting impulse was rekindled. “I was restless. It was something I was particularly good at.”

Born in Manchester, raised in Australia, the Bee Gees formed as a family group in 1958, going on to sell more than 220 million records worldwide, with nine number one hits in the US (five in the UK, where they notched up 26 top 20 singles between 1966 and 2001).

He admits, “I was aggressive about making records. There was a time when I would spend 18 hours a day in the studio, with my brothers or not.” Barry wrote and produced massive hits for brother Andy, Frankie Valli (Grease), Dionne Warwick (Heartbreaker), Barbra Streisand (Woman In Love), Diana Ross (Chain Reaction) and Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (Islands in the Stream).

“There was a time when it wasn’t cool to even be seen with the Bee Gees,” he notes, pointing out how their status as “poster boys for disco” left them stranded when fashion changed. “At the Grammys (in 1981), Barbra and I won Best Duet. We were standing in the wings and they didn’t present it to us. She was so pissed off. We never got the award. “And at the party afterwards, she’s still a bit pissed off and Meat Loaf is standing nearby. He was at his peak then, and the photographer says, ‘Can I take a picture of you together?’ and Meat Loaf goes, ‘Oh, no way, man.’ It was like we were tainted.”

These days, Gibb is viewed with a little more respect. Coldplay invited him to perform To Love Somebody and Stayin’ Alive at Glastonbury. “I was a nervous wreck... but it was nice that people knew the songs.” He seems genuinely touched by recognition from new generations.

“Noel Gallagher told me he always listened to my music. That to me is staggering. Because in the period when Oasis became big, we were gone. That was not our time.” He has arranged to meet Noel again. “We’re going to go for a curry. We can talk about what it’s like to be in a band with brothers.”

Like the Gallaghers, Gibb doesn’t hide the fact that there were always tensions in the Bee Gees. “I remember lots of intense arguments, not speaking to each other for weeks and then coming back together again... it doesn’t stop you being brothers. We broke up in 1969 and yet my brothers came to my wedding (in 1970) and we started talking again — and suddenly we were back in the studio.”

Although they worked closely, Barry was perceived as leader. “I was the eldest, but everything had to be unanimous. If one of us was unhappy about anything, we wouldn’t do it.”

He ponders whether he misses that conflict and compromise in the studio. “It is easier to be selfish and have your own way. It was never easy back then.”

OK, now that you have read the interview, let me briefly put forward some thoughts on working with family.

1. The level of understanding between members is very high : No one understands you as well as those you have grown up with, or spend the maximum of your time with. This level of understanding and acceptance creates opportunities for highly collaborative work.
2. Each member of the team may grow and mature at a different rate and time : As we grow and mature as professionals, we sometimes change our behaviour, and even our values and motives may get modified. When change happens at different times, and at different intensity among the partners, its becomes difficult if not impossible for all to be at the same wavelength. It also becomes very unpredictable. At the outset, it may be fine to differ to your elder brother and let him be the natural leader. But as you mature and become an adult, a part of you may feel the need to become a leader in your own right. Unless the leadership can pass from the original leader to such an individual, the need to express oneself creatively and emotionally can cause the break up of the team.
3. Your'e in this together, whether you like it or not : In a way, working with family is a bit like being joined at the hip. You can disagree, but you can't walk away. This realisation, once it dawns on the members of the family enterprise; begins to create a kind of system to deal with conflict within the group. Barry talks of a sort of vito power that each brother had. Something very similar to what I observed among an entrepreneur and the pioneering team of a company I was associated with. While such systems do work, they are more about avoiding conflict than about raising issues and resolving them.
4. Social interaction among family members creates opportunities to come back together : Barry talks about the brothers breaking up in 1969 and not even being on speaking terms with each other. Yet, a year later when his brothers came for his wedding it created opportunities to rebuild bridges and mend fences. Warring ex-partners in types of partnerships do not get such stimulus to get back together.
5. Entry barrier to outsiders: In such family businesses, who you are matters more than the talent you have. While one may argue than each of the brothers needed to be sufficiently talented for the group to succeed for long, yet there is no opportunity for a highly talented individual who does not come from the same family to partner with them. This may have less ramifications in a business set up than a music band, because in the former it is possible to bring in such people as a part of the senior management even if leadership is outside the scope.
6. Raw Talent cannot be suppressed for long, it will always find ways to express itself : Barry talks about how after his brothers died he felt that his career was over. Yet the artist in him : the songwriter had to do what he did best. And so at the ripe age of 70 Barry Gibb finds a way to reinvent himself as a solo performer. Pause for a while and think about all the 70 year old's that you know. Can you imagine any of them making such a fundamental change at this age ?