"Bring a Brick, Not a Cathedral"

Photo by John Matychuk on Unsplash

OK, I’ll admit it. I have this problem. 

Let me explain. 

Some of you know that music, in particular playing guitar and songwriting, are passions of mine. I love the technical aspects as well as the pure musical, creative aspects of it. I enjoy the act of creation, of fun, of simply getting lost in the music. It’s been a journey I’ve been on for almost forty years and I’ve gotten to the point where, when I start on a new song, I can envision, reasonably quickly, the path I want it to take. 

Envisioning that path, of course, means that I have specific ideas about what I want in a musical context. The outcomes in my head are clear, and the end product is, then, mine and mine alone. And yes, I’ll admit that I like that control, and the pride of ownership that comes with it. 

As a result, I’ve never really collaborated with anyone to write songs. I’ve been asked many times, but I’ve never taken it forward. 

I’ve thought about why that is, and the best reason I can come up with is that I want to maintain control and I don’t know that I trust anyone to contribute a musical path that isn’t aligned with my vision, something I’ll agree with. (I said it was the best reason I could come up with, I didn’t say it was a good one.) 

But when I look at the great musical partnerships - Jagger/Richards, Strummer/Jones, Page/Plant and, of course, Lennon/McCartney - they were clearly able to get beyond what I suppose I should call my petty insecurities. (There, I said it.) 

They didn’t come to the table with predefined ideas and outcomes. They didn’t hold their initial concept or riff or lyric so close that they couldn’t bear to see it changed. 

They came with an open mind. They came with trust in the collective. They came with a focus on improvement and growth and development. They came together to create something better.

What they did, to use a rule from Comedy Improv, was that they came with a brick, and not a cathedral. Nothing fully formed, but a contribution. A contribution and a collaborative spirit - to experiment, to listen and to learn. To take the initial brick and build something - a cathedral - that could only emerge through the best that each person could offer.

That’s an important lesson, one we’d do well to remember at work as well as in our personal lives. Often, we want to develop our plans fully before we expose them to our colleagues. We want to nail down every last detail and be clear in our heads as to what we want, before we’ll even engage in a conversation about it. 

This doesn’t help. It doesn’t help us personally and it doesn’t help our colleagues. It results in a lack of ownership, a lack of collective commitment and ultimately a lack of true success.

But when we instead come to our teams with the seed of an idea and a spirit of collaboration, trust and belief that we can collectively make something better, we move forward. Sure, it might take us a bit of time to figure out how to communicate and interact and work with each other, but we move forward. We do away with individual pride of ownership and have a far better shot at creating our own “Lennon and McCartney” moments.

Bring a brick, not a cathedral. 

I’ll need to remember that the next time someone asks me to collaborate on a song...