The times they are a changin’

These immortal words sung by Bob Dylan are more relevant today than ever before, writes Bill Burton of Dale Carnegie.

Imagine, as if by magic, you have been transported back to the early 1970’s and amid the sequinned flares, big hair and disco music you have been given your very own record shop (note for anyone under 30 years old – this is where we all used to go to buy music). Life is pretty  good – you have a product that everyone wants with no serious competition and people are prepared to pay top dollar for the latest Rolling Stones, Diana Ross or David Bowie album. Records literally fly off the shelves and you are making an absolute fortune. 

However, unlike everyone else, you know that there is a product growing in popularity which is going to shake the entire record industry to its very foundations; the so-called “compact cassette”. Originally released in the 1960s, the quality and popularity of this little usurper has been increasing to the point when soon the inside sleeves of albums will contain stark warnings of how “illegal” home taping will soon be the death of music (the picture was literally a skull and crossbones almost as big as the record the sleeve contained).

Why did the cassette become so popular?  Well for one reason the social-media style sharing of music exploded with ‘mix-tapes’ being passed around between friends and suddenly we could decide what we listened to and in what order.  Then with the advent of the Walkman (remember them?) and the car radio-cassette our favourite music became portable so we could now choose what we listened to on the move. They were also more durable than vinyl (although we had to put up with tape hiss), smaller and easier to store.  Suddenly our trendy, profitable record shop isn’t looking so safe anymore …

In addition to being aware of the impact the cassette would have on our livelihood how will we cope with the imminent appearance of the compact disc in the 1980s (and in particular the recordable CD)? This will bring digital music in a compact format without any of the noise problems of vinyl and in an almost indestructible shiny disc (or so we were told at the time). Again this will be another challenger to the dominance of vinyl; however at least we can sell CDs in our shop …

But what will happen when downloadable music comes on the scene in the 1990s? How will we make money then?  Suddenly the ‘shop’ model of selling music won’t work once the Internet becomes widespread and it won’t be long before the most popular way of listening to music is via streaming. No physical media, no limit on what you can listen to and completely on demand whenever the mood takes us. Many artistes now report that they make more money from concerts than from their recorded music.  Who would have predicted that back in 1973?

So where does that leave us back in the 1970s in our record shop? With the advantage of being able to see into the future what steps would we take to ensure that we continued to run a profitable business that adapted to the times and embraced the new technology?  In particular how could we have avoided the pitfalls of following trends that fizzled out but seemed like a good idea at the time (mini-discs spring to mind ... )?

At Dale Carnegie so many of our clients tell us that not only is change a constant but also that the rate of change is increasing (think of how fast we moved from downloading music to streaming it). It seems that our role as leaders in our respective businesses has become to steer and manage teams through change and that we are now judged on our ability to adapt and be flexible as circumstances change rather than organise, direct and control. 

Are we up to that challenge?