Van Halen - Making Process Improvement the New Rock n' Roll

I'm currently reading "Diamond" Dave Lee Roth's authobiography "Crazy from the Heat", and would you believe it, Van Halen have just become my new process improvement icons.

When Van Halen started out they did covers. They played at little school parties in people's back gardens. They rented a little PA system. They practised, they got better, they played more and more. They made a little money. Now they could have spent that money on beer or whatever, but they invested it in their process - the process of creating music, of creating a show. They bought a bigger PA, they bought some fireworks, they bought LOTS of fireworks. They continually tweaked their output, continually improved their show day by day, week by week.

After some time they looked at themselves and realised that they had to take the next step up. They moved onto playing clubs, tweaked their act some more and continued their rise onward and upward. They started to play their own music - they grew, evolved, changed - but they always realised that to stop would be to stagnate - they had to keep investing in what they did to keep improving their product. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what can we learn from Van Halen?

• Invest in improvement
• Invest in innovation
• Make it continuous

See, I told you process was the new Rock n' Roll...

- TPN

Comments

[Van Perez]

And i think we can all agree that Eddie Van Halen, practiced and practiced until he developed the famous tapping method so widely used today...

Now that is process improvement.