Have you ever heard of the Traveling Wilburys?
You’ve almost certainly heard their hit song “Handle With Care” – especially if your musical taste includes the Easy Listening for the Over Thirties genre.
But you may not know the story of how this group formed, and it’s quite remarkable.
In 1988, George Harrison was preparing to launch the first single of his post-Beatles solo album. However, there was one problem: he had no B-side track. (A B-side – for those who never lived in a pre-streaming era – was a bonus track that didn’t appear on an album itself. These were designed to boost sales of the single.)
Living in LA at the time, Harrison had been hanging out with some high profile friends: Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne.
Gathering together over a weekend, these five musical legends jammed together, writing and recording Handle With Care.
When Harrison played the track for his executives at Warner Brothers Music, they were stunned at the quality of the composition. They insisted that it was far too good for a mere B-side! And they asked Harrison if his new team might produce enough material for an album.
And so the Traveling Wilburys were born: these five distinctive musicians spent the next two weeks writing the tracks for their self-titled album. They had only two weeks as Dylan was preparing to leave for a long tour.
The Traveling Wilburys ended up selling 5 million copies and earning a place in Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The Magic – and Science – of Being Together
Creative magic happens when people come together. The collaboration above would never have materialised if the five musicians hadn’t been hanging out together in the first place.
Proximity has a significant impact on collaboration. The Allen Curve, created by Thomas J Allen of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shows graphically the way communication decreases as the distance between people increases.
And the threshold is lower than you might think – the drop in communication becomes exponential at just 50 metres of distance. (For reference, that’s about as far as yours truly can accurately kick a football.)
Where the workplace is concerned, the last five years have shown that knowledge workers can work from any location, including home. When the need for the work is clear and the desired outcome is known, we can easily identify the people we need to work with to get our work done. Get that report, with these contents, to that recipient, by this deadline.
But most knowledge workers also need to resolve complex problems. And it isn’t easy to coordinate or measure the creative work required to generate new ideas and produce solutions to these complex problems.
Mo Mandates, Mo Problems
The debate lingers around the return to office, with the NSW Government announcing their office-first policy just last week.
Personally I’m not a fan of mandates – although they are a great way to lose top talent.
While mandates might be set with the best intentions – i.e. to foster collaboration and team building – they are usually perceived as a lack of trust in employees to get their work done. As such, they breed resentment among employees.
Because it’s not about an arbitrary number of days in the office versus days at home. It’s about being together – often enough – to build relationships and learn the skills of indirect colleagues.
This generally happens through unplanned in-person conversations throughout our day.
It means we can reach out to our broader colleagues when we’re faced with complex problems that fall outside our day-to-day busywork. You know, the stuff that makes work interesting!
Most people already see building relationships and connections at work as a top benefit of their time spent in the office. But most also feel more productive at home, as they can control their environments and eliminate distractions such as noise and interruptions.
Instead of mandates, leaders would do much better to improve their workplaces to support all work modes. I mean providing environments where employees can connect, collaborate, recharge and focus. (Incidentally, I know someone who can help you with this.)
While it may not result in a platinum album, it should go some way to attracting people back more often.
