You’ve seen it many times – and probably been part of it yourself. You, your quartet, chorus or band work for weeks on a plan that you are sure will blow your audience away – only to hit the stage for your first performance or even during practice before a smattering of observers and notice that they are just not responding to your plan.
Many years ago I worked with a producer on a Christmas show. It was back when powerpoint was new and we were combining a bunch of screen backgrounds with a narrative. He had spent weeks picking out the perfect photos to use (and actually had too many) and somehow had decided that 8 seconds was the perfect amount of time for each background to show on the screen for the audience to gain the full effect. Unfortunately, during the first rehearsal it became painfully apparent that the long display times and the short narrative assigned to each created a disconnected storyline that was impossible to follow. Being young and naive, I pulled him aside and mentioned that we really needed to cut some backgrounds or shorten the times. I was immediately cut off and told "Do you realize how long my team spent picking those backgrounds… we are going to show them all and for the full 8 seconds". Nevermind the audience or entertainment value, we’re going to do this according to the plan.
I read Tom’s latest post at Owning The Stage today. The basic story line is how Dean & Jerry had to threw out their entire plan after their debut in Atlantic City because it just was not working.
Who knows how long they worked on their original plan but they were willing to do whatever it took to entertain the audience (and keep their job). This meant ditching the entire plan and starting fresh.
Over the summer I took part in an informal quartet competition. We made it through the first round and into the top 10. Needless to say we were excited and took some time trying to come up with a fantastic plan that would wow the judges. We weren’t into the 3rd phrase of the song and the Bass and I were just not syncing up correctly. In my mind, I just gave up working so hard on the plan as I thought we had lost any chance at winning. From that point on I just relaxed and started to interact w/the other quartet members and have fun. The audience reacted immediately and we fed off their energy creating one of the best performances of the night.
We didn’t take first because it was a cumulative scoring of both rounds, but I did talk to one of the judges later and he said that our second performance was one of the strongest of the weekend.
When we have something that we’ve invested a large amount of time or resources in we tend to fall in love with it to the point of irrational behavior. We’re unable to step back and get an objective view. In fact, it’s often impossible to even tweak and perfect a flawed plan. Sometimes it’s necessary to ditch the entire process and just go with something fresh.