I was at a concert tonight and, like all the dads, I was pretty happily ignoring it while waiting for my kid to come on stage. But the conductor kept intruding - and not because she was so great, or the orchestra so bad, but because I was having to observe a musical Tourettes.

We all know people who love to hear themselves talk - they sit impatiently waiting for us to shut up so they can give their observations, advice, humor (mea culpa, I’m afraid), or just talk.

And this conductor was so clearly relishing the role of being in charge of 90 or so talented musicians. Plus an audience of several hundred forced to watch her gyrations.

And I think that is what a lot of people think owning/running a small business is like.

Look, if you want to wave a wand and have people know exactly what you want and then do it you should immediately stop doing whatever it is you are doing and go get a job at GE. Or Boeing. Or NASA. Someplace with a thin veneer of ‘hip’ or ‘innovation’ spread over a nice juicy stack of REVEALED WORD OF GOD operations manuals.

You wanna be a conductor? Be the plant manager of a factory assembling jet engine fans.

If you’re more comfortable with a jam session, then small business might be alright for you. Get some talented people, agree on a goal, and then try to do your thing in a coherent way. Make a lot of mistakes. Let the drummer do the 15 minute solo sometimes.

In our company we have a blended set of tasks - some stuff is done one way and one way only (finance, planning) but most everything else, especially the technical and creative stuff is pretty ad-hoc and depends on focus and experience.

I like it that way - I’ve been a conductor. I kinda like running the sound and watching other people perform.

(Oh, and my kid was the star, from the back of the chorus. What are the odds?)