The World Tour – Leadership Lessons from the School of Hard Rocks!
How do you plan and organise the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Tour on the Planet when you have a quarter of a million pound hole in your budget, a ‘reliable track record of failure’ only two hits to your name in 25 years and a cult following that barely stretches beyond the UK? Well it all comes down to the same things that you need to do in business, i.e.:
This is exactly what English Eccentric Cult Punk Rocker John Otway attempted to do...
You’ve probably seen or heard of Dragons Den? This is the live and
dangerous story of how the greatest Rock'n'Roll tour in the world failed
with transferable lessons for businesses, entrepreneurs and people trying
to make new things happen.
The Author with John Otway, busking and performing at
Corporate Leadership events at Pfizer and Brands Hatch
We chartered an A340 Airbus, tried to fill it with 300 people, to play the greatest rock venues on the planet, taking in Liverpool’s Cavern, New York Central Park and The Carnegie Hall, Las Vegas, Tahiti, Sydney Opera House, Shanghai, Dubai and London on a record breaking tour that would see a birth, death, marriage and a car crash, although not necessarily in that order…. This was a massive undertaking which eventually failed in a comedy of errors on the same scale as classic spoof rockumentaries 'This is Spinal Tap' and 'The Blues Brothers'. However this monumental cock up contains valuable lessons that are directly transferable to most company’s experience of leading and managing projects. Indeed, sometimes failure teaches us more potent lessons about success than best practice! Some of the remarkable things that happened on the tour include:
Listen to a Mini Audio Overview of this extraordinary project.
We offer an engaging seminar that explores the front of house and backstage lessons of this tour with transferable lessons in Business Strategy, Marketing, Human Relations and Teamwork, Psychology, Finance, PR, Project Management, Creativity and Innovation and so on. Just consider what your company could gain from this:
Practical lessons about project execution from the greatest Rock’n’Roll failure on the planet
How you can lead your projects successfully as a result of this
We’ll show you how we did this and relate the lessons to your people in ways that will engage, inspire and call them to action. We have delivered this seminar to several Business Schools, Pfizer, The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Chartered Management Institute and Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Read what Pfizer thought of this.
View the Pfizer Aftershow - A cameo performance delivered after the keynote inputs - Not quite the same as one of Prince's aftershows perhaps but it was very well received.
Read a series of articles on the World Tour - hear how John Otway refused to partner with Sir Bob Geldof, how the travel agent lost 30% of existing seat sales and other astonishing events that led to project meltdown: Article 1 Article 2 Article 3
See the moment when John Otway became successful, due to falling on to an amplifier injuring vital parts on the Old Grey Whistle Test
