Bring me a rock

Why the customer comes last, most of the time

“The audience comes last.” The white-bearded creativity- and music-guru Rick Rubin could not have been clearer in expressing the sentiment to Anderson Cooper in a recent 60 Minutes interview. After decades of hit-making with artists like Adele, Johnny Cash, the Beastie Boys, and other mega-stars, he was putting his ideas on the record.

Rubin continued. “The audience doesn’t know what they want. The audience only knows what’s come before.”

Cooper seemed confused for a moment, then asked, “Isn’t the whole music business built around trying to figure out what somebody likes?”

Rubin responded instantly, “Maybe for someone else it is, but not for me.”

***

Now, if I’m being honest, this sentence triggered then transported me back a dozen-plus years to my earlier life as a military staff officer.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I walked back through the maze of cubes, sunk low in my seat, exhaled like a boxer who just took a gut-shot. My cube-mate, older and scarred from similar battles, whirled around his office chair and said, “He wants you to bring him a rock, doesn’t he?”

The “rock” in question was a one-page policy argument gone wrong. I thought I had done my homework and written a solid proposal. But when I’d gone in to discuss the draft, I figured he would want a reasonable adjustment—a “little this way” or “a little that way” on a point or two. Instead, his criticisms cut away each point in turn until there was nothing left at all on the page. I had to start over.

When I went back in for Round Two, the same result.

Round Three, same result.

I don’t think I ever finished.

Some business types prefer to bin this leader-who’s-never-satisfied problem in the “management” section. I see it somewhat differently.