DALLAS, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- What can executives, speech writers and business people learn from a pianist? Besides the lesson which immediately comes to mind -- practice, practice, practice -- a radio show from the New England Conservatory of Music offers an example of what's called production values.
The show's goal is to showcase the country's most talented young classical musicians. It draws a much broader audience, and the members of stations that air the show have steadily increased, because the show has exceptionally good production values. Anyone writing a speech or organizing a meeting can use it as a model.
Host Christopher O'Reilly is not only a talented and charismatic pianist in his own right, he could have a second career as a stand-up comedian. Some of his comments appear to be spontaneous, but there are credits for writers at the end of the show, so someone is writing something.
The hour-long program is a combination of performances of classical pieces, dialogue and conversation -- part scripted, part spontaneous and pre-taped mini news reports or skits. The writers and director research the performers and find every nugget which can be used.
One recent young pianist likes to write musical jokes. What do musicians do when they die? They decompose. One 18-year-old clarinetist from North Texas won his school's version of a male Miss America pageant. Although a classical clarinetist, he recreated his pageant talent, a karaoke version of Macho Man on the saxophone with life size inflatable figures of a construction worker and policeman attached to his sides. The audience howled.
O'Reilly has help. The show uses an 18-year-old announcer, Joanne Robinson, and a 14-year-old 'roving reporter,' Hayley Goldbach, who does the skits and other elements. One week, she ran a musical spelling bee for three performers. Obviously favoring one, she gave her words like "note" while the others got words like appoggiatura. Again, all this was to break up the performances and make the audience laugh.
How does this apply to the business world? A large global company had given one of its divisions a three year time frame to meet a number of objectives --cut costs, improve product and customer satisfaction, improve return on investment -- or be outsourced.
The top executives of the division met and formulated a plan. It involved a number of issues, projects, measurement changes and personnel changes. And looming over all this was the threat of the entire division being axed. They rolled the plan out at a two-day meeting of 600 people from around the world.
The 600 people would be critical to explaining the initiative and the reason for it to another 5000 colleagues. With the usual charts, graphs, PowerPoints and multi-year plans, plus the scary message, 'change or else,' this meeting could have been boring. If the employees reacted defensively, it could have been ineffective, even damaging. But the executives were savvy enough to understand production values.
The meeting organizers covered the practice, practice, practice portion. People who were speaking were required to seek help constructing their presentations, and everyone rehearsed. They included humor in every form in every session.
The meeting started on such a grave note that the division's chief executive had to pause when no laugh came in the first few paragraphs of his opening remarks. "That was supposed to be funny. Do I have to announce when the jokes are?" he said. The attendees had their first chuckle.
Humor included poking fun at themselves. One theme, 'we can change because we've done it before,' was illustrated with pictures of their chief executive, as a baby, a child, a teenager, and as a bare-chested, long-haired 20-something hunk.
Besides the executives, there were outside content speakers who were also required to rehearse. These were not just motivational speakers thrown in for a laugh or name value. They were expected to relate their comments to the specific challenge facing the group. One of the speakers was deemed content-rich but lacking in other elements, so the organizers helped him add production values of film clips and audience-response-system capability so he could include real-time audience reaction.
The two-day program even included a comedy team -- again, doing routines related to the specific elements the group was discussing or would face as they tried to implement the plans. Other elements included group exercises, break-out sessions, road-maps and competitions where participants could win real prizes.
Of course, not every speech or meeting needs a comedy team, road-map, film clips and announcers, but business people do need to learn a lot about production values. Why? Because they help you be more successful. They get your target audience more interested and involved. That's the message of "From the Top," and they can help a company or speaker achieve a business goal.
-- Merrie Spaeth, Director of Media Relations for President Reagan, is President of a Dallas-based consulting firm and is a regular commentator on public radio and television.
-- Outside View commentaries are written of UPI by outside writers on subjects of public interest.
