Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead

Those who know me well know that I'm a long-time follower of the Grateful Dead. While the Dead once conjured images of a roving carnival of hippies in tie-dyed t-shirts, they're now being taken a lot more seriously as our culture catches up and as people recognize that the Dead's organizational model has something to teach any organization.

A recent article in The Atlantic, "Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead," offers some valuable lessons. It's hard to argue with the Grateful Dead's business success -- in spite of their free-wheeling ethos, they were the top-grossing live touring act in the US for many years and one of the most profitable musical acts of all time. Those hippies became multi-millionaires, while never losing sight of their values. So how can you be as successful as the Dead?

To start, the article suggests, focus on your most loyal fans. Offer them perks, incentives and benefits (the Dead established a mail-order ticket sales operation that gave top fans first crack at coveted tickets).

Give away valuable content to get people to buy even more (the Dead let people tape their concerts and freely trade the tapes; this helped spread the word to more and more people until the Dead went from playing theatres to stadiums).

Form a community; communicate with them and listen to them.

Improvise; be prepared to change quickly.

There's more in the article -- it's well worth a read.