The sweet sounds of success

By Mary Helen Gillespie, 11/21/2005

True confessions: I have this huge girlie-girlie crush on BSO Music Director James Levine. I'd be scribbling "MH LUVS JIMMY L" in my Pink Panther lipstick on the stalls at Symphony Hall if the monitors in the ladies' room weren't so nice. That could easily be me huffing "More, maestro, more!" from the stage door after each performance. My dream: a waltz through the verdant fields of Tanglewood to the sounds of Mozart: Oboe Concerto in C Major, K. 314 . The oboe, as we know, is the instrument of love, of sight and of clarity.

I love James Levine because as a manager, he brings together squawking strings and thwacks of wood and blasts of wind plus those individually satisfying Latin timpani drums into a single engaging piece of orchestral repertoire that creates with a generous genius - each and every time - what heaven must sound like.

He is a master of collective chaos. Business schools bore us to tears with analogies of teamwork by orchestras, sports collaboratives and other gangbuster events as partners and coaches who will manage conflict, build teams and resolve negotiations to the delight of all stakeholders.

And when you think about it, how hard can it be? Practice makes perfect. The more one performs a task, the quicker and easier that task should take to perform. And if it doesn't work, just fix it.

This has nothing to do with always having to win every game, even if my beloved husband refuses to play Monopoly with me for the rest of our natural lives and threatens that the game board follows me into the mahogany coffin.

No, it's worse than always having to get an "A". It's about always being prepared. About dry runs. About options. About strategic analysis of which decision optimizes the return on investment most quickly and efficiently exceeding all expectations. Think it's all a bunch of baloney? Nope, dear pals. This is how real organizations rally to respond to change, to crisis, to - as we have so sadly seen in Katrina - God's surprises.

We rehearse, literally, until we are blue in the face. Sometimes you get to a certain age in life and you realize that with just a smidge of a smile and extra bright "Nice to meet you" you can pull off an "A" performance if only with a "C" level of rehearsal. Those are the lucky days. The buy-the-scratch-ticket mornings. The get-on-the-scale evenings. But unless the materials have been reviewed, upgraded, solidified and given a good stiff smack by everyone on the team, that "A" probably ain't going to happen again for a long while.

Here's another example of a performance that should have been up to par but fell short - very short. Several friends and I met for an early after-work dinner on a recent Tuesday at a local seafood chain that we'll keep nameless for legal reasons. There were three of us at our table. And, it seemed, about 100 waitstaff working, allegedly serving tables such as our own and others. First, our host recommends and we order a crisp bottle of Italian pinot grigio that was rather lardy by the time it was finally poured after the wrong appetizers arrived and after the glasses of water that we had requested finally appeared. Next, the salad course. But as I was the only one getting the salad, poof! The Easter Rabbit must have nabbed it, and palmed it off to the Tooth Fairy. Ninety minutes after sitting down, we have cut all communication with the waitress and turn to the burly gent working a terminal behind our table to funnel our requests. My salad will be here soon, he says. Our water glasses will be filled soon, he says. Does my friend mind that her salmon is extra well done, he asks? (Well, black is the new black, after all.)

The joint is really rocking now. But we're not having a particularly good time. All we wanted to do was to have a nice, healthy supper. Instead we ate crow. Burnt crow, at that. And this is a restaurant chain that fills hundreds of meals every lunch and every dinner sitting, and has for years. So do you give them the option that this was their "off" night, and let 'em slide because there was a proctologist convention in town, all heading for some ball game that night? Or do you say, as I am wont, that this is only as good as it is going to get? Sometimes even practice does not make perfect if you've got the wrong talent behind the podium.

Next time we'll try Chinatown. I hear that's been really humming lately.