For Albini, the second principle is inclusion of others,“which means you can’t shut anybody out of your scene or of your business or of your social circle. Because you can’t always assume that there are going to be replacements that you can drum up from reserve duty or whatever to take their place.
“So if somebody comes to you and offers to help or comes to you and wants to participate, that you let them participate. If somebody offers you work, and it’s work that you can do with a clear conscience, then you do it. I’m not very selective as an engineer regarding the projects that I take. I’ve never played favorites with respect to who could pay me more. I’ve never discriminated with respect to one style of music or another.”
“Essentially, whenever the phone rings, you answer it. And if they want to work with you, you work with them.”
Albini thinks that this process works in particular because the people with whom he works have a greater sense of purpose; That they are working together for a bigger cause. People tend to gravitate towards finding this type of purpose because it feels good and is fulfilling. Research (link is external) suggests that having a sense of purpose is associated with increased health and well-being and even predicts longer life.
“All of the salaries here at Electrical Audio are modest. I don’t get paid much. Nobody who works here gets paid much,” he explained. “But we all think that we are participating in an important aspect of culture. And that is a way of being paid — the satisfaction of participating in something that is bigger than you is a kind of remuneration for what you’ve been through."
“So those two things have been the things that have allowed Electrical Audio, our studio, our business, to survive in an era where a lot of other studios have collapsed.”
Albini is describing what can be considered the ideal for of leadership — or more specifically, “transformational leadership.” Transformational leaders can often convey the goals of the group, convey passion for the work and inspire others to have similar enthusiasm. This is often contrasted to transactional leadership, whereby the primary reward is tangible compensation; e.g., salary. One study (link is external) found that among 520 staff nurses employed by a large public hospital, transformational leadership predicted organizational commitment, but that personal empowerment of employees was the mediating factor.
Albini has also seen how this empowerment results in not only feelings of satisfaction but also practical benefits for colleagues with whom he works. “There are other opportunities that come up as a result of being in this scene. One of the guys who works here is a guy named Greg Norman (link is external). And he was trained as an audio engineer. But when he started working here, we were in the construction phase of the studio. So he learned all of the construction trades. And then we had a technical engineer and an electronics engineer who left the studio, and so he taught himself electronics — taught himself electrical engineering and electronics — and has become an excellent designer of studio equipment, and he now makes and sells studio equipment and built his own studio, where he records projects independent of our studio. And he’s established himself as an independent engineer, and he’s also done consultation work for other people and other companies regarding sound reinforcement, soundproofing, audio engineering, recording, electronics,” he said.
“All of those things are an outgrowth of him being in an environment where he was allowed to pursue those interests without being expected to do other busywork as well. When it became obvious that we needed somebody to do the electronic maintenance and the electronic repair here, we just said, ‘OK, you take the time, you figure it out, learn electronics, and then you’re our guy.’ And that’s the way it worked out. We didn’t try to hire somebody, we didn’t try to headhunt somebody. We just let Greg go about his business and figure things out along the way and eventually he’s as good as any credentialed electronics engineer that I’ve ever worked with.”
”So that’s part of the culture of the studio.”
For Albini, it is clear why his approach makes sense for his work, whereas other businesses models do not. “There are kind of two perspectives on business. One of them is that a business exists to make money for the investor class that has a stake in that business. That’s one perspective. So, from a stock-market perspective, from a shareholder perspective, from an investor perspective, that from any publicly held company’s perspective, the company’s reason to exist is to make money for those people,” he explained. “And if you’re not making money, you’re a failing company. If its share price doesn’t go up, then the company’s failing, whether you’re making a profit or not. The idea is that the fundamental reason for that company to be there is to make money.”
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