The music mogul and talent sommelier L.A. Reid describes business and entrepreneurship as ‘management of people’ and being good at it, has given him much success. Understanding that a business is not just about plans, products, designs or money, that indeed it is about people, is the focus of L.A. Reid’s episode on NPR’s “How I Built This“ and also the motive behind Human-Centered Design methods that we have been studying in our Entrepreneurship class.
Human-Centered Design is based on using empathy to design solutions for problems based on how the solution is best fitted for the specific people involved. Empathy is not just a word to describe how other people feel, but also includes understanding the strengths and weaknesses of others, and to delegate responsibility according to those traits. L.A. Reid understood that talent management was the essence of the music business - that success is based not just developing a person, but developing the ‘right’ person. You could write the ‘hit single’ and pour millions into promoting it, but if the talent that performs the song is not ‘world-class’ then success will be limited.
This topic also reminds me of sports teams, specifically the San Antonio Spurs led by Gregg Popovich. Popovich and the Spurs are known for having a ‘system’ - based basketball philosophy in which technically, any new player could come in and be included in the system. To a certain extent, the Spurs are about a system, but if it weren't for the individual persons that built the system, Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich for example - I am not so sure that the system would have worked. The individual players or people, are ultimately the focus of their basketball design.
One example that I revert back to in regards to human-centered design and management of people is when I was given the task of producing a young artist by the name of Sebastien De La Cruz for the TV show “America’s Got Talent.” My original role was music producer, but eventually was expanded to include management and development of the group of musicians backing up Sebastien during the tapings of the show. The group was composed of college students from Texas State University. I soon realized that convincing a group of college students to adhere to hectic television show schedules was a giant task. I eventually found that I had to rely on certain individuals to lead the rest of the group - I had to develop a system of delegation. Hectic shooting and rehearsal schedules coupled with the responsibilities these students had at Texas State was my juggling act. I quickly discovered that after replacing certain students we could get the right fit of people which would make the task at hand easier and would eventually lead to a fruitful showing on primetime television. As Reid and Popovich, I focused on the individual people in the ‘group’ or ‘team’ and realized that the right mix of talent was essential for success.