updated 4mo ago
Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead
Often new businesses succeed because the most passionate employees—the owners—are still working at the ground level, enjoying face-to-face contact with customers. As these businesses expand, however, the owners become disconnected from the daily working reality, and the customer experience suffers. A Grateful Dead tour, by contrast, was the equival
... See morefrom Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
The Grateful Dead were masters of improvisation, not only in their music but also in the way they ran their business. They didn’t like the mainstream business world, and they especially didn’t like the way the music business was organized. But it’s not as if there was an alternate model they could follow, so instead they invented one.
from Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
Perhaps it’s time to give trust a chance.
from Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
Though they griped at times, they loved touring, and, most important, it kept them in touch with their fans.
from Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
Maybe it actually is becoming practical to create an environment of common purpose with one’s customers, employees, and stakeholders. Not just to talk about it, as every company does, but to do it. Our existing regulatory methods, to the extent they haven’t been gutted, no longer seem effective against unrestrained greed. Perhaps in the absence of
... See morefrom Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
Improvising may lead to mistakes, but it also opens the door to greatness.
from Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
The Dead didn’t waste time regretting their mistakes. Failure was the price of improvement.
from Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
As Weir said, “the point of everything was to make enough money so we could play for free.”
from Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
It wasn’t about buying a thing. It was about being part of a flow. It wasn’t an economy of nouns. It was an economy of verbs.
from Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes
While they were never a large organization, the Grateful Dead did have seventy full-time employees in 1994, their last full year as a band. Despite a rather complicated operation, they always found it easiest to operate without job titles or job descriptions.
from Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes