Performers Or Conductors

There’s a line I keep coming back to from Elfried Samba.

The future of work is “less Michael Jacksons, more Quincy Joneses.”

Fewer virtuosos doing the thing. More people conducting the people (and now the machines) that do the thing.

And I think this is the shift most coaches are sleeping through.

For years the whole game was to be the best performer. Know the most. Write the best programme. Be the smartest person in your niche. The technical skill WAS the business.

But execution is getting cheap.

The AI can write the programme. Draft the email. Build the funnel. Cut the reel.

What it can’t do is know which one is right.

Rick Rubin can’t play an instrument. Never touched a mixing board. His entire contribution is taste and direction. He walks in, listens, and says “that’s not it yet” or “that’s the one.”

That has been enough to make some of the greatest records of the last 40 years.

That’s the job now.

Not doing the part. Conducting the orchestra. Pointing things at the work and having the taste to judge what comes back.

Which means the thing you might have been slightly embarrassed about - that you’re more of a director than a doer - is about to become the whole edge.

Now, I’ll be honest, because I don’t think the “just become the conductor” story is fully clean.

Not everyone gets to be Quincy Jones. If execution becomes free, the world needs a lot of conductors and almost no performers - and most people are trained to be performers.

So this isn’t a comfortable “you’ll be fine.”

It’s a warning about where to put your reps.

Stop competing on how much you can do.

Start building the one thing that doesn’t commoditise: the taste to know what’s worth doing, and the judgment to call it.

The performers are about to get very cheap.

The conductors won’t.

It’s worth asking yourself which you’re becoming.