Get Back: 4 lessons in agility, velocity and creativity from The Beatles
What does a really effective multi-disciplinary team look like? Well, it probably looks a lot like The Beatles. They released 12 albums and over 200 songs in 8 years. And in those 8 years they evolved more than most artists do in a lifetime.
I believe that product development is more art than science. It is messy, collaborative, experimental, unpredictable, and fundamentally creative.
Peter Jackson’s new documentary Get Back gives us an incredible insight into The Beatles’ creative process and mindset.
Here are four lessons I took from watching the series.
Lesson #1 — Move fast and release things
The Beatles work quickly, and like to finish stuff.
When George Harrison is struggling with a new song he quotes the advice John Lennon gave him many years earlier: “Finish them straight away, as soon as you start them.”
They talk a lot about the value of pressure, deadlines, and having their “backs to the walls”. It’s striking how hard and fast they want to work. As Paul McCartney says: “Achieve something every day.”
We see this in full with the development of the song Get Back.
On the 7th January, McCartney creates the song from nothing. As he jams and experiments on his bass guitar, the melody appears and other band members begin to join in.
Two weeks later the track is fully formed, and they get the idea to “just put it out as a single next week”, “like in the old hustling days”.
As they talk there’s a great line from producer Denis O’Dell who sums up the attitude: “Never save a good idea, do it.”
The Beatles always recorded fast, that’s how they made all those albums. They liked to get stuff finished while it was fresh. They talk a few times about the risks of over-thinking and over-playing tracks to the point that they go stale. They just want to get one decent take, and release it.
This reminded me of a few ideas around the agile and iterative development of products.
Stop starting and start finishing.
The Beatles had these nailed.
Lesson #2 — Embrace creativity
It is fascinating and great fun to watch the band experiment, jam and practice. They show a surprising mix of seriousness, ambition, and playfulness.
As they work on songs they go off on tangents, do lots of ‘silly’ takes, and add and reject ideas continuously.
Their studio is a place where that brainstorming cliché is actually true: there’s no such thing as a bad idea.
When Ringo turns up with an early version of the catchy and silly Octopus’s Garden, everyone joins in to work on it. Harrison suggests a chord sequence, George Martin hums a harmony, and Lennon goes to the drum kit. They embrace the fun of it, and of course it is later released.
When they are struggling with a track McCartney says they should “play it shitty ten times so it’s in there, and then I think we can play it quite good.”
Lennon often wants to “improvise it”, and Harrison wishes that instead of talking they would just rehearse and “carry on until it gets better.” Later he puts it beautifully: “Whatever it’s going to be, it becomes.”
It would be easy to look at the band ‘playing it shitty’ and think they are just messing around, not taking their work seriously. But to me the opposite is true. This open-minded and relaxed experimentation actually allows them to move quickly, learn, adapt, and produce such good work.
In the world of digital and technology I often feel like we underestimate the need for creativity and collaborative experimentation. We tend to focus on theory, rationality, frameworks, inputs and outputs, ceremonies, and a belief that the right process will deliver success.
We have created cultures where having an idea is criticised as jumping to a solution.
Watching The Beatles at work shows what it feels like to be on a team that is really flowing. That doesn’t mean working 14-hour days and being hyper-focused on outcomes every minute. The magic is in the collaboration, the space to breathe, the batting around and testing of ideas, the ‘strong opinions, loosely held’, and enjoying the journey while having high expectations and a real focus on quality.
Or as the agile manifesto puts it, responding to change over following a plan.
Lesson #3 — Nothing is new
The Beatles were extremely creative and original, right? But at the same time, lots of their music was simple, generic, and derivative.
In the studio they mix and match constantly, blending their new songs into their old songs into other people’s songs. George Harrison arrives one day with a new song, I Me Mine, inspired by a waltz he saw on TV the night before.
They are very aware of these inspirations and references, and at the same time worried about making music that is “ordinary”.
In a wonderful exchange, Harrison says their new track, Don’t Let Me Down, “sounds like the same old shit”.
Lennon’s response: “Well I like the same old shit, if it is clear.”
The documentary brings home the truth that there is no such thing as a completely new idea. We are all building on what’s gone before. There’s no shame in being inspired by others, or putting your own twist on something you connected with. (Just ask William Shakespeare)
Maybe this is summed up best when Paul McCartney looks down at the piano and says, “the great thing about a piano is like, there it all is. There’s all the music that’s ever been written.”
Lesson #4 — This stuff is hard
Get Back provides a complete (8-hour long!) picture of the creative process.
Even while we’re watching a great band, often joyful and completely at ease, doing brilliant work; those moments are countered by the struggle.
They get bored and tired.
They lose confidence.
They grumble and bicker (and briefly break up).
They hold back tears.
They overthink things, and go down dead ends.
They struggle with tensions, group dynamics, and authority.
They have hard, emotional conversations.
“I think it is awful actually” says Harrison of one song.
“I can’t think how to do this one at all,” says McCartney, looking a bit broken.
But they push on, powered by their work ethic and a sense of purpose.
At one of their lowest moments, they go right back to basics as McCartney offers an ultimatum: “We’ve got to have some serious reason for doing this or else we won’t. What’s it for you know? It can’t be the money.”
Lennon says, “I’ve decided the whole point of it is communication. We’ve got a chance to smile at people … so that’s my incentive for doing it.”
Harrison hopes, “a lot will come out of it if we can get that enthusiasm. We need to be creative instead of in the doldrums.”
For McCartney it is simple. “I’m here because I want to do a show,” he says. “We either go home, or we do it.”
It is great to see and appreciate that even with all that talent, and all those resources, this stuff is never easy.