Much has been made lately about the new two-man team running Sony’s Columbia Records label — Def Jam co-founder and maverick producer Rick Rubin and former Epic Records president Steve Barnett.
The New York Times and subsequently scores of other outlets wonder if the pair can really save Sony (and the music industry as a whole) and ask whether Rubin is still relevant, what with his firm faith in the future of digital music subscription, his haphazard plan to create word-of-mouth via a group of interns, and avowed love of Britain’s Got Talent winner Paul Potts — which, while seemingly not very, uh, maverick, may just be advanced.
What’s amazing is that, just over four months into their stint as co-leaders of Columbia, Barnett and Rubin are being scrutinized and second-guessed so aggressively by media outlets, bloggers and anyone else with an opinion and a megaphone.
This brings up an important ingredient in team efficacy, the time, relative privacy and freedom to kick around ideas without fear of reprisal — either from the company leadership or the market at large.
Rubin and Barnett are very successful individuals in the music industry and have certainly earned the right to have their ideas heard and entertained. They also have very different styles. Rubin is outspoken, aggressively contrarian and distrustful of the system. Barnett works from within the system and is more guarded with his ideas. Duos with these types of differences in approach are common among successful upper management teams.
In fact, Rubin saw much success from his sometimes contentious partnership with Russell Simmons in the early years of Def Jam. The difference is that most teams, even top management teams, are given some time and leeway to hatch these ideas, test them and revise them until they make sense. In the case of Def Jam, their overhead was low as they worked out of Rubin’s dorm room, and they weren’t beholden to the whims and financial concerns of a board or shareholders — not to mention that the press was not knocking down their door.
But today, because of Rubin’s status, his brash attitude and, well, his eagerness to use the press as a sounding board for thoughts that pop into his head, that precious space the two new Columbia bosses could use to get their ideas off the ground is now plugged up with gawkers brandishing notebooks and wagging fingers. Rubin has done little to dissuade reporters that he’s not at Sony to completely reform the industry, though Barnett is clearly more focused on controlling expectations.
Even if you aren’t an icon like Rubin or a leader of an entire record label, you can find yourself in a similar situation if you don’t establish a level of independence and early-stage detachment from the prying eyes of the management — or even the trade press. A lot of teams working on non-routine tasks flourish when working in their own space, a separate building or a remote corner of the office. They also don’t share every idea with upper management, just the ones that have been agreed upon, developed and polished for presentation.
Rubin thrives on flouting conventional wisdom, but even the most talented management teams have been replaced because the management didn’t afford them the time to fully explore their ideas. Time they might have had if they had controlled expectations from the beginning, maintained a certain level of autonomy, and polished ideas before letting them presenting them to outside stakeholders.
