A melody starts to take shape; George joins in on his guitar; Ringo claps out a beat.
“Get Back” provides both the standout moment and the title of a glorious new documentary by Peter Jackson, charting the days that the band spent together in January 1969, writing and recording songs for a new album.
The question of what makes a team sing is a staple of management research, and the Beatles documentary is a rare chance to watch a truly world-class team at work.
When he is not actually playing, the band’s drummer spends most of his time either asleep or looking bewildered.
Academics at Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that the performance of groups is not correlated with their members’ average intelligence, but with characteristics such as sensitivity and how good teams are at giving everyone time to speak.
In a study from McKinsey, more than 5,000 executives were asked to describe the environment in which they had their own best experiences of being in a team.
“Get Back” shows a team of superstars embracing exactly that ethos: playing the songs of other bands, grabbing ideas like magpies and happily taking the advice and help of outsiders.
A third message of the film concerns when and how to let it be.
When they first meet up, on the second day of 1969, the band has a task that fits these criteria snugly: to write an album’s worth of new songs in just a matter of days and perform them on a TV special.
The Beatles are not always supportive of each other—George, feeling disregarded by John and Paul, briefly quits the band.
Managers who think that building esprit de corps requires a separate activity from work—here-comes-the-fun time, set aside for axe-throwing or GIF battles or something equally ghastly—are missing a fundamental point.