I was once Head of Sales for A&M, at one point the world’s largest independent record company, with artists as diverse as Sheryl Crow, Sting, Barry White, Snow Patrol, and The Black Eyed Peas.
Like all record labels under the Universal Music umbrella, they all had their own culture and way of working, but A&M had something unique that I still use today.
It was how we worked to the rhythm of the working week.
It was simple and incredibly effective. And it looked like this;
Monday & Tuesday were dedicated solely to operations. Production meetings. Sales meetings. Planning meetings. Reviewing the Top 40 with forensic scrutiny. Anything that required binary decisions involving commercial and financial metrics was done early in the week.
Wednesday was dedicated to topics that bridged the commercial world and the creative world. It was the pivot day. A school open day. A day to keep minds thinking about new ways of working, sharing, and responding to the insights from early in the week. What do we need to change or do differently? Some of us even used to go out for a run at lunchtime to mark the change.
Thursday and Friday were dedicated to creativity. Open-ended creativity. Is this the right album artwork? Is this track right for the radio? Branding, image, font, styling…you name it, it was amorphous, a moving sea of unswept creative opinion, the opposite of binary, and the bedfellow of frustrating inconclusiveness. But it worked.
The simple hypothesis was this;
When our minds are under pressure, they tend to close down. They become rigid and binary as we hunt for a yes or no, because yes or no is easy for us to compute. It’s an important skill to harness for making tough, commercial decisions or scrutinizing a P&L. But it’s hard to be creative when your mind is locked into an Excel spreadsheet and under pressure for answers. I guess that’s why Monday isn’t high-up in our favorite days of the week.
The message was this; don’t even attempt to be creative on Monday or Tuesday. It’s OK to wait because we’re all on the same page. Wait we did.
When our minds are not under pressure, we open up to possibility. We open ourselves up to play. And when we play, the child in us is released. And that child is essential for any organization to make really good decisions that shine with the spirit of potential; whether we’re in a creative business or not.
The start of the week was for handling the commercial side, it made its pivot in the middle, and then we ended in play. We were permitted to work to a rhythm.
I still follow this rhythm today. I try to keep Monday and Tuesday to operations, and where possible, never present new ideas early in the week.
I find Wednesdays and Thursdays to be great for the reflective “What Ifs?” of the world. Maybe it’s the placebo, but the world feels more hopeful midweek.
It’s why The Jolt comes out on a Wednesday or Thursday and doesn’t bother your inbox every week.
And for meetings where the outcome might be opening someone’s eyes to possibility; like a sales pitch or advocating a new idea, I find Friday morning a very receptive place to be.