You'll have noticed that this week is twenty-five years since the Live Aid concert, "The day music changed the world".
The BBC celebrated the anniversary by broadcasting two great programmes which are, as I write, available to watch again on the BBC i-Player.
"Rocking all over the world" was the minute-by-minute story of the day itself - it was inspirational, emotional, and brought back great memories of a time when music, musicians and music fans really managed to make a difference.
Although some of the clothes and hairstyles sparked horrible, horrible memories - and that was only looking at my own photographs of the day.
The other programme, broadcast on Tuesday night, was "Against All Odds", the story of how the day was organised and pulled together in only twelve weeks from initial idea. Yes, twelve weeks.
As you can imagine, the central theme that Bob Geldof kept hearing was "it can't be done". He was told he couldn't get the acts, he couldn't get a venue, he couldn't get a broadcaster. He was told that America was impossible. He was advised that the stage wouldn't work. Experts insisted that they were right, and he was wrong.
And he refused to take no for an answer.
What impressed me then, and it still does, was his single-minded pig-headedness not to let people stamp on his vision. He knew he - and we - had to do what we could to bring relief to Ethiopia, and this was all he could do. To paraphrase Nike, his answer was "Just f**king do it".
(Incidentally, he never said "Give us your f-ing money". What he said was "F the addresses, give them the numbers". And he never said "Play it again Sam" either.)
I met Bob Geldof a couple of years ago, when he spoke at a conference I was compering.
They say you should never meet your heroes. What nonsense.
He is everything you'd expect - inspiring, warm, funny, informed, entertaining, open, witty. And no, he hadn't seen the inside of a barbers for a while, but he did have great trainers on.
One of the things he said that day has stayed with me.
He said that all that he did ("all that he did?!") was to challenge people to get things done, using their own initiative. He said "I'd get a phone call saying 'I'm a PA in an office, and want to do something to help". Bob would say "Excellent - you're now 'Secretaries for Africa' - go and raise money".
A few weeks later an envelope would arrive, stuffed with cash, and a note saying "Secretaries for Africa did a sponsored run - here's the money we raised".
He's not the first to say that if we give people responsibility, and let them find answers or solutions to problems, we'll be amazed by their strength, ingenuity and integrity. But why do we keep forgetting that lesson?
Geldof launched Live Aid with only twelve weeks to set it up. He announced the line-up when very few of the bands had even been contacted, never mind had agreed to perform.
They succeeded.
The target was to raise a million pounds. The final figure was one hundred and fifty million pounds.
In 1961, John F Kennedy announced that the United States should commit to the goal of "by the end of this decade, landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth". At the time, his experts expressly told him that it couldn't be done.
They succeeded.
Think big, and inspire others. Just because something is impossible doesn't mean it can't be done.
Friday, 16 July 2010
Getting it done - lessons from Geldof and Kennedy
Labels:
"just do it",
creative thinking,
Geldof,
innovation,
Kennedy,
Live Aid
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment