“I want you to think different”: Why Paul Reed Smith intentionally pitches ideas that won’t initially fly with his team
Paul Reed Smith happily throws out bizarre pitches to his team at PRS Guitars knowing that they won’t initially work, but all for a good reason.
Joined by Jamie Mann (president of PRS) and Jack Higginbotham (PRS’ Chief Operating Officer) for their end of year Fireside Chat show on YouTube, the trio compare the way Smith pitches ideas to throwing a steak over a wall to a pack of dogs. But why does he do it? According to Smith, he wants his team to think differently about problems they come up against, such as manufacturing dilemmas.
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During the show, Mann takes a question from guitar YouTuber Justin Sandercoe, who asks what Paul’s wildest idea has been that ended up being a hit for the team: “This makes me think about ‘throwing the steak over the wall’, right?” he replies. “So Paul likes throwing ideas out – I’m not going to say you know they’re not going to fly, but you know as they’re pitched they’re not going to fly – but you throw the steak over the wall…”
“‘Cause I want you to think different about the problem,” interjects Smith. He later expands, “I learned to throw the steak over the wall from Tim Leuliette. He said at Ford there were a bunch of extraordinary managers when he worked there and then they would just throw an idea over the wall to see what managers would attack it to make it happen, and that’s how they were learning about who was going to be the future leadership of the company.
“For me, the great teachers have always thrown ideas out and if you let it sit there, they don’t talk to you again it’s over, right? And in my world it’s not that the idea is such a good idea, the idea is one to get us all to think about the problem differently. I very often say, ‘this isn’t going to fly, but…’ and then I’ll throw the steak over the wall,” he laughs.
To give an example, Mann shares how Smith came up with the idea to create heat sinks using marbles when dipping pickup bobbins in wax. “We’re trying to get equal penetration through the coils with the wax, and we had a thing where different parts of the wax pots were different temperatures and we were getting different penetrations. Paul looks up, he’s thinking and he says, ‘heat sink, heat sink… Marbles.’”
Though initially confused about his idea, Mann goes on to add, “Go out to the shop right now and we’ve got marbles lining our wax pots right now working as a heat sink and it’s worked wonderfully for 14 years, 15 years.”
You can watch the full Fireside Chat now:
To find out more about the company or view its full product range, head over to PRS Guitars.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
