Why Failure Is Sometimes The Best Thing To Happen To Your Band

YYou’ve got a great band, a solid tour and good album sales. Everyone in the band is getting along. You’re talking to that label, and you’re on the verge of signing a great deal.

The Old Guitarist didn’t plan for failure

Everything is perfect – or is it?

One report claims that this scenario is almost too perfect, arguing that a lack of failure can prelude overconfidence and an inability to anticipate problems.

The study, by Professor Ashraf Labib and Dr Martin Read, of the University of Portsmouth Business School, is published in the journal of Safety Science.

The message here is clear: don’t get caught up in your success. You’re only as good as your next move. And if your next move is to drink too much and smash your tour van into an electricity pylon, your promoter and the next venue aren’t going to let it slide.

With good advice increasingly hard to come by, it’s important to take a look at the report’s list of ten ‘tools’ designed to help organisations and managers understand reasons for disasters – before they happen. Dotted Music has chosen the tools most relevant to bands and artists out there.

Tool 1: Too much belief in previous successes

Here, for a change, you don’t want to take NASA’s example. NASA’s confidence in its space shuttle programme led them to ignore warning signals related to both the o-rings damage prior to the Challenger disaster in 1996 due to cold weather before launch, and again on the fuel tank foam losses prior to the Columbia disaster in 2005. According to the investigation report NASA’s safety culture had become reactive, complacent and dominated by unjustified optimism. Don’t ignore the warning signals. Fix the gear, change old guitar strings, keep back-up equipment near you at all times. don’t let your band’s culture become “reactive, complacent and dominated by unjustified optimism”.

Tool 2: Coping with growth

The report warns that inability to cope with a high rate of growth may be another factor that can contribute to disastrous failures. You’re close to signing that record deal. Don’t blow all of the recording deal cash on hard drugs and alcohol – you need to make sure you can capitalise on your past successes.

Tool 5: The “I operate, you fix” attitude

This one is vital. Don’t wait for the roadie or the technician to notice your PA is bust, ’cause guess what. The venue won’t be happy when you turn up on the promise of bringing your own PA, only to discover that the PA is broken and the venue hasn’t got its own. The audience will be lost. The venue won’t do business with you again. And your promoter will soon be your ex-promoter. This is a profession. Don’t forget it. You’re just as responsible for maintenance as the maintenance people.

Tool 7: Bad news, bad person

Let’s cut to the chase. Most bands have a ringleader, the one everybody else looks up to, the founder. You’ve just landed the gig as the band’s new drummer. Fresh from agreeing to learn the band’s repertoire in time for the next gig, you break your wrist. Don’t be stupid, report the bad news.

Tool 8: Everyone’s own machine is the highest priority to him

This one’s easy. A lack of a systematic and consistent approach to setting priorities tends to be an important feature when dealing with a disaster. Setting priorities should attract the highest priority among different approaches to dealing with any potential disasters. Questions such as who sets priorities, what criteria are considered, and how to allocate resources based on prioritisation, urgently need to be addressed. Knowing who’s responsible for what is vital to making it in this business.

Tool 9: Solving a crisis is a forgotten experience

It’s easy enough to remember our past successes – the time we sold 1,000 copies of an EP after a gig or being included in an esteemed magazine’s list of new artists to look out for – but we seldom remember our mistakes. Forgetting our mistakes – and the way we solved them – is just one more way to encourage disaster. Record and document your mistakes. After spending your recording deal money on hard drugs, you might need help in remembering to use it on studio time the next time you land a great deal.

As the report suggests, failure is sometimes a great way to avoid worse failures along the road. Take advantage of these tips from the academic world. You’ll need them.