Author: HB3

In recent days, the latest anticipated album from DJ Khaled, God Did, was released.  Dropping just a year after his previous work, Khaled Khaled, I must admit that I was more curious about this one than the previous, and I most especially wanted to hear the album’s title track.

I am a PK, raised in a home where God was at the center and where attending church, Sunday school, choir rehearsal, and usher board meetings on a regular basis was the norm.  Secular music was enjoyed and welcomed at our house, but the lessons

that I picked up along the way included a healthy skepticism about the distinction between church life and club life, and between the lifestyle and focus of the prototypical gospel
artist and that of the stereotypical R&B singer or hip-hop rapper.

My work over the last decade to create a new player in the music industry has given me the opportunity to allow my perspectives on these distinctions to mature and become more nuanced. Many religious musicians have made public errors that would make a gangster rapper blush and it’s quite possible that more than a few jazz, R&B, or blues musicians have spiritual lives that are deeper than your favorite gospel performer.  And all of us have “sinned and fallen short of the glory…”

The last several years have also permitted me to pay closer attention to music industry patterns than I did earlier in my career.  One trend that has piqued my interest recently is the intersection of hip-hop and gospel. This is causing me to think more deeply about the artists I interact with and the music industry executives with whom I work – people who are serious about their business, and whose passion and dedication I admire, respect, and appreciate.

Often their upbringing, acculturation, and ways of life are different than mine; sometimes in ways that are small and sometimes large.  Yet, for me, that simply highlights the diversity of our world and the many roads that one can take towards a solid relationship with God.  Your path may be different, but that certainly doesn’t make mine any better.

I’m not talking about the continuing careers of Kirk Franklin and Lecrae, or the growing body of work of Koryn Hawthorn, or even Chance the Rapper, although they are worthy of note.  I’m really fascinated by the motivation of artists such as Kanye West and Snoop Dogg, whose vast catalogs largely represent the absolute antithesis of religious themes, and now DJ Khaled, to bring their faith front and center in their music.

Kanye West, in addition to his Jesus Walks anthem, more recently assembled a gospel choir to modify classic R&B melodies with religious lyrics.  It’s sincere, impressive, and moving.  Snoop Dogg worked with Rance Allen, Tye Tribbett, and Marvin Sapp, among others, on his Bible of Love LP.  It was met with critical acclaim.

But DJ Khaled takes a different approach entirely – his collaborators on the God Did track are Lil’ Wayne, John Legend, Fridayy, Rick Ross, and Jay Z.  And when you listen to the entire album, including features from Drake, Eminem, the City Girls, Future, Sza, Latto, and Jadakiss among quite a few others, you note that there’s not a gospel artist to be heard anywhere.

That’s OK.  It made me listen more closely.  What is going on here?  What are these guys trying to say?  Is this genuine; is it for real?  Whether it’s Chance, Kanye, Snoop, DJ Khaled or others, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.

It’s different that’s for sure. Different from how I was raised to understand interacting with the Christian faith or singing to the glory of God.
But different doesn’t necessarily mean that its inauthentic.  In fact, when Khaled revealed the cover art for his 13^th album, he commented that “the tear represents tears of joy from God’s blessings.  God, I love you so much!”

I believe him.  Why wouldn’t I?  Him and anyone else who claims to have faith in a wise and powerful God. Khaled’s expression, understanding, and relationship with the almighty may be different than mine, but it’s his relationship.  And maybe I can learn something from it. More than once I’ve exclaimed aloud to anyone in earshot “This is new.  This is a new example of Christianity.  I may understand it all, but it’s interesting.”  Maybe it’s new entirely; maybe it’s just new to me; or maybe it’s actually a new manifestation for a new generation. I postulate that this is coming to the fore because many of the most successful artists in the nation’s biggest genre aren’t in their twenties or thirties – they’re pushing fifty.  More seasoned representatives of the industry have more life experience and more mature concerns.  They have families.  They’ve had to overcome obstacles.  They’ve faced the mortality of their closest friends and their own.  And it’s likely they’ve even witnessed a miracle or two.  No matter what you do to earn a living, how fly your publicity shots look,  how many followers you have on Insta, or what access you have to the latest in luxury watches, those kinds of moments in life can cause even the hardest or wealthiest among us to fall on our knees to pray or to lift our hands and shout “thank you Jesus!”

Or is this “new manifestation” simply blasphemy?   (part 2 to follow)

Today I had lunch with one of my colleagues at NMAAM.  As we finished our barbecue at  Jack’s, I asked her if she ever thought that we’d complete and open the National Museum of African American Music.  Before she answered she asked me if I ever thought it wouldn’t get done.  I paused before I responded that I never thought it wouldn’t get done, I just didn’t know it would take so long or be so hard…  I just knew that I had to stay in the fight to make it happen.

She then responded to my questions, saying that she
always thought it would get done, but confessed that there were times that she
wasn’t sure how.  Then she added a coda;
“I just decided to stay.”

Those words would turn out to be prescient.

As we returned to the office, I was scheduled to meet with another teammate for a 1 on 1 update conversation.  I knew this was the meeting I’d been dreading when she came into my office with a yellow folder, in addition the more common notebook she carried.  We discussed several curatorial, marketing, and operational updates before I asked how her family was doing.

At that point, the letter she protected was relieved from its folder.  I was invited to read a letter of resignation.  A key member of our team had deduced that it was time to move on… time to get closer to family.

I probed to see if there was something that could be done or said to reverse the decision.  I suspected not, because I understood that, in this case, the pull of home and family was strong.  But in addition to those matters, I wanted to understand if there were cultural or operational issues that were chronic, egregious, or would otherwise cause someone to rush to leave  our team.  In that vein, what I heard was a series of challenges that might be expected of a complex start-up like ours, or that otherwise pointed to the inescapable fact that we are an imperfect place to work.  Altogether these disagreements and complaints, along with our unfortunate geography, added up to
a reason to leave.

I could relate, maybe more than my departing colleague would realize.  In fact, this might well be a good summary of the first half of my career.  “I like this place.  I like these people.  But I also have a list of complaints that’s pretty long. Those issues are “their” problem.
I don’t have to put up with this.
I’ll go find somewhere else to make use of my underappreciated talents!”

Right or wrong, that approach took my family on a journey up and down the east coast, and along the way I made an interesting discovery.  Those new places had problems, challenges, and issues too.  It didn’t take more than a couple of years before I had a list of complaints about those places too.  Along the way I also discovered that more and more of those problems were mine – either personal growth, skill gap, or professional development challenges that I needed to face, or business challenges that I was now responsible for fixing.  “Their” problem was increasingly becoming
“my” problem.  And, as a result, there
was no place else left to go.  I wasn’t
very good at running from myself and, if I wanted to be a leader, I had to face
and fix the very challenges that I had once been able to leave to others.  This was important for my own professional
satisfaction and development, and for the benefit of the business.

All of this played in my mind as I held on to that
resignation letter.  I wanted to share
with her my own leadership journey, ask her to shorten her own path, and compel
her to stay, take more responsibility for the business and cultural challenges
that our organization faced and make us better, while she also became a better
executive.  But the letter was neatly
typed, signed in blue ink, she’d shared her decision with several others before
coming to me, and there was the call of getting closer to parents and
family.  I accepted her resignation with
thanks.

Every day we trade our time and expertise for
compensation.  Sometimes we lend our
heart to the task as well, in exchange for personal gratification and,
hopefully, a dose of loyalty.  Along the
way there are challenges, problems, and opportunities – big and small.  Some can be overcome easily, others take
time, strategy, and effort to work through.

But ultimately, we make a decision:  “I just decided to stay.”  Or “It’s time for me to go.”  And no circumstance is ever permanent – the
“cheese” always moves.

There is no right answer.
Every situation is a little different.
What I have come to appreciate though, is that the first place to look
when seeking to solve a series of problems is in the mirror.  What is more problematic, the issue or my
response to it?  What is better for the business,
my effort to work through an issue or my leaving it to someone else?  What will better satisfy my professional
aims, working to improve where I am or moving on?  What better suits my spirit or addresses my
calling, fighting on this battlefield or moving on to another?

Disappointed though I was, I understand why my colleague
decided to leave.  I’m also glad that my
lunch partner decided to stay.

Today is a Tuesday

Had breakfast with my kids

Took a walk with my bride

Put in 9 hours at the (home) office

               Solved a problem or two

               Raised some money

               Coached a colleague

Sat on my porch

Attended a birthday party in Chicago

Watch Bible study on You Tube

Looked out the window for a few minutes

Read a chapter or two of a dusty book on my nightstand

Had dinner with the family

Washed dishes

Went into a store – with a mask on

Took a stroll to the mailbox

Ate a cookie

Listened to some jazz and some trap

Laughed a few times

Called a friend in New York

Researched our next vacation

Bought something unrelated on Amazon

Watched an episode of Billions

In bed at a reasonable hour

There’s a blessing in the quarantine

Over the last year, as I’ve walked through the process of improving culture and building teamwork, setting clear expectations and holding my colleagues accountable for results have risen to the top of the list of areas where I need to improve and as critical to the success of our mission.  My colleague, LoLita Toney, our director of development, had also repeatedly asked for an updated strategic plan to guide our work (we’d achieved the milestones set forth in our previous plan).

This brought to mind a concept that my friend Anthony Barber, a PepsiCo and former Procter & Gamble exec, had introduced me to several years back – OGSM’s.  Objectives, Goals Strategies and Measures, developed in Japan and brought to America in the 1950’s, was popularized as an organizational tool by P&G and would address each of the needs that my team and I had.  The objectives, goals and strategies set out clear expectations and the measures provide a standard means of accountability.  Additionally, because the company OGSM’s cascade down through the departments, tying company strategies and measures to departmental objectives and goals, it creates a strategic plan for the organization as well.

I’d attempted to use OGSM’s previously in other leadership assignments.  While I’d found them to be good in theory, I also found them to be too dense (or detailed) to be practical.  These OGSM’s required a lot of thinking, writing and revising.  Just drafting the OGSM’s required commitment.  They also require, buy-in, participation, communication, discipline and focus for them to be effective.

But that’s the point isn’t it?  If I want results then discipline, focus and thoughtfulness shouldn’t be too much to ask.

To get started, I gathered several articles on OGSM’s to refresh myself on how they worked.  Then I shoved my management team into a conference room for a few hours to take a stab at it.  Intended as an exercise to demonstrate the mutual dependence that we have in doing our work and achieving results, for the first hour or so, the sailing was smooth.  Interest was sincere and participation was full; and within that time we had a rough draft of
company OGSM’s.

As we ended hour two, we started to explore departmental OGSM’s.  Eyes glazed over, folks were wiggling in their chairs and optimism was scarce that OGSM’s were applicable  or a beneficial tool.  Nevertheless, after a short break, I insisted that we continue.  So after the breather and with a renewed sense of determination, I’m sure, just to get the meeting over with, the team pushed through to rough departmental OGSM’s.

For me, and for them, what we’d drafted only raised more questions.  I needed to learn more about how to apply this model to our work.  So the next step was for my director of marketing, Dionne Lucas, and I to head to Chicago to meet with a guru.  My friend Reggie Moore is the SVP of sales and marketing for Land O’ Frost consumer products and uses this process routinely in his business.

Dionne and I spent a day in Reggie’s basement talking marketing strategy and OGSM’s.  (Reggie and Dionne did most of the talking.  I was focused on the snacks that Reggie’s wife, Miriam, provided.)  As I listened, I came to appreciate how, if I was going to use this tool, I was going to have to invest the time and fully buy-in to the model
myself.

So, when back in Nashville, I took time over the next few weeks to compile and revise the drafts that the team put together at the retreat a few weeks earlier.  This took more time and concentrated thought than  ever imagined that it would.  I came to understand that the Goals and Measures MUST be quantifiable.  Not only does that help with accountability, but it also enables the necessary “cascading” of the company OGSM’s to the departmental ones.  I also came to appreciate that all of the company strategies should become departmental strategies and, conversely, there should be no departmental objective that is not identical to a corporate strategy.

These are really the basics of OGSM’s, but until you focus on it you don’t realize how important it is to follow those rules closely.  This is also what contributes to clarity of expectations and enables accountability.  It is also what makes the OGSM’s a proxy for a strategic plan.  In addition, this model will enable me to communicate with my board of directors and all company employees what we are focused on and enable periodic regular updates on how we are tracking.

2019 will be the year that we put this all to the test.  I am betting that OGSM’s will be the tool that keeps us focused and guides our talented and dedicated entrepreneurial team towards NMAAM’s grand opening – just a year from now!