John Lubbock finds correlations between conducting and business

I have recently had two interesting experiences, both off the stage: one involving the Orchestra of St John’s and the other associated with my work for my charity Music for Autism.

Last week at the Saïd Business School, I took part in a seminar with 20 top executives from a very large American company. The chief executive had assembled various colleagues representing different departments of his huge organisation. Many had not met each other before. We spent three hours in Balliol College Chapel with my orchestra playing for these delegates. None had ever conducted an orchestra before and they were not familiar with the music we were playing and did not recognise the pieces even when they had heard them performed.

The whole purpose of the exercise was to put the individuals into a leadership position, in this case as the conductor of an orchestra, where the impact of their actions were immediate, unlike in the business environment where the results of what they do may take six months or more to manifest themselves.

I was ably assisted by a colleague who is a singer in the OSJ Ashmolean Voices, my Oxford-based choir, and who also happens to be a professor at the Saïd Business School. My role was to help participants with their conducting technique, trying to make the musicians do what they wanted, while my colleague was able to translate what they were doing from a business perspective.

One graphic example occurred when a novice conductor was paying so much attention to one section of the orchestra that the other players lost interest. This has an analogy to the business world — as senior executives it is no good being so caught up in one particular aspect of the business that you neglect another aspect to your cost.

The second experience was taking part in a Music and Medicine event at the Academy of Medical Sciences in London — an evening of talks, performances and demonstrations exploring unexpected links between music and health, bringing together doctors, researchers and musicians. I was involved in a session including a talk by Dr John Richer, recently retired as Head of Paediatric Psychology at the Children’s Hospital in Oxford and Adam Ockelford, Professor of Music at Roehampton University, and an expert on teaching children with learning difficulties to access music making.

As the third speaker, I was able to talk about my wonderful experiences of giving interactive concerts for autistic children and others with learning difficulties. I had arranged for some children to come to London to demonstrate what we do in these concerts.

I had a small group of musicians from the Orchestra of St John’s and the children conducted as they always do with the most extraordinary appropriate gestures, demonstrating an uncanny understanding of the shape and emotion of the music. The children were very brave to do this in front of a large audience of complete strangers, but they excelled themselves and the listeners were able to see a most graphic example of the wonderful power of music to bring out the unexpected in these interesting children.

Forthcoming concerts include:
- OSJ Proms at the Ashmolean — Tuesday, April 15 (7.30 pm) at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
- Good Friday Concert — Friday, April 18 (6pm) at Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester-on-Thames. www.osj.org.uk