What Managers Can Learn From Prince
Like most Minnesotans, I was struck hard by the death of Prince, a hometown artist. But in reflecting on his myriad accomplishments, I saw a parallel with some creative environments I've experienced. Namely, the fear of managers that a super-productive employee will "burn out"— that, even though the employee is happy and has no complaints, somehow he or she doesn't see any the danger in such prolific work.
While any good manager is deeply in tune with each employee's work habits, and on the lookout for potential problems, too many managers are relying on a standard of "warning signs" that may not be appropriate when dealing with truly genius talent. Follow me, here, and tell me if you see the same lesson I do.
When Prince was in the midst of his disputes with Warner Bros. Records, the main issue was the tempo of his music releases. It peaked when he wanted to release a triple album opus called, “Sign O’ the Times,” at which Warner balked. It was too much music to release at one time, the company thought. Based on what? Good question. There were no consumer surveys to show that any album could have too many songs. If anything, most consumers thought the more music included on an album, the better. So what drove Warner to try to restrict Prince’s output?
In a word, fear.
Fear that such a prolific artist would burn out quickly, writing so much music in such a short period of time that he’d exhaust his proverbial creative juices. Fear that he'd leave the label with a has-been churning out mediocre music they couldn’t sell, if he could still write music at all.
As history has shown, that wasn’t the case. Prince fought and outlasted Warner, earning back the rights to distribute his music as he wished. And what happened afterwards?
Even more creativity and music. Prince continued to write music (a lot of it going to his storied “vault”) and release albums as he felt was appropriate — under his own distribution, much to the chagrin of Warner executives. (Oh, and that album that Warner Bros. wanted to restrict? Rolling Stone ranked it as the #93 album of all time.)
So what’s the lesson for creative managers? If you have an employee who seems to be operating at a high “burn rate,” don’t default to the standard management practice of asking the employee to slow down. You just may be looking at your organization’s next prodigy, someone who will unlock multiple markets and won’t think it a significant sacrifice of time. Talk to that person, learn what motivates him or her, ensure there are opportunities to disengage, and then? Trust that person. Super-high productivity may not be something to fear. Just because you have a rock star on your hands doesn’t mean you're going to watch him or her “live fast and die young,” as it were.
Many employees treat vacation time the way long-distance runners treat water: drink to thirst. If an employee doesn’t need it, shoving time off down his/her throat is likely to produce more problems than it sets out to solve. Conversely, if you’ve forced an employee to use up time off to suit your schedule, when that employee really, truly needs a break, that time may not be available. Then you'll have an employee facing every day as drudgery, counting the hours until it's time to leave. Is that what you want?
It’s time for an updated perspective of employee time off, one that isn’t necessarily easy or immediately classifiable. But if you want true “ex-nihilo” creativity and innovation, you need to give your “artists” freedom to produce their best work at their own pace.