Clients & Quotes

"Face the Music is in tune with the needs of corporate America." -- CNN

A little while ago, Face the Music was featured as the cover story on CNN Financial Networks Entrepreneurs Only.

The video of the show is offered below in several formats. High speed internet connections are required to stream these clips. Otherwise, you can save the video to your computer by right-clicking on the link and selecting "save-as" or similar option. If you do not have a high speed connection, you can listen to the "audio only" and refer to the selected video snapshots and transcript that follows.

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Transcript and Video Clips from Program

Announcer:		Tonight, in tune with the needs of corporate America, the story of a group of entrepeneurs who are happy to be singing the blues...
Tony Guida:		Hello and welcome to Entrepreneurs Only. I'm Tony Guida. Well, this is Friday, the end of a tough week and you may be in a "mood indigo"... which is a great Ellington song... and a sly way to introduce our cover story about a business that cashes in on corporate complaints by taking it up an octave. Susan Lesovitch has the story of a group of entrepeneurs who are turning the love of the blues into a burgeoning business.
Mitch Ditkoff:		I don't think that everybody has the blues, I know that everybody has the blues.
Susan Lesovitch:		It's Friday at Orange and Rockland Utilities--just outside NY City-- and it's employees are singing the blues. Their corporate blues.
O&R employees		[singing] People hate to see me, they think I'm just a ...
Susan:		This isn't a paid gig, this is part of a unique program called Face the Music.
Mitch:		[speaking to participant] What kind of blues you got John?
O&R employee:		[responding] Office politics...
Mitch:		I was in a blues club with my wife one night...listening to a local blues band and about the third song it dawned on me that all my corporate clients have the blues... but they don't have a really powerful simple way to express the blues.
Paul Duffy:		First I thought, that's odd, then I thought, wow, what a cool idea.
Paul Kwiecinski:		I remember going to the first gig and everybody was a little bit like "is this going to really happen?" and I thought , no problem, this is going to work.
FTM Band:		[singing] ...Well, my Palm Pilot's buzzin', or is it my pager or my cell...
Susan:		The Face the Music Band kicks off its show by singing some of it's original tunes... like the "Busyness Communication Blues"...
FTM Band:		[singing continued] ...need to ditch the spam to get the info that I need...
Susan:		But the meat of the program is when the employees break up into small groups to write their own songs about what's bugging them at work...
O&R employees:		[singing] ...I've got the half a paycheck blues...
Mitch:		It builds team work, it enhances colloboration, it definitely sparks risk-taking behavior. And it gets people thinking about what needs fixing, what needs improvement...
Paul K:		If you don't know anything, I can get you to write a blues song.
Paul K:		[working with an O&R team] ...you need two more lines...
Paul K:		I can get three verses out of you...so, there's no one that can't do it.
Mitch:		Now it's not about bitch and moan, it's not about just complaint, and a lynch-mob. It's about expressing what's true and then figuring out how to go beyond that.
O&R employee:		[reading a line from the song being written] ...when they opened up their energy bills and found their budgets were shot...
Susan:		The groups get about 45 minutes to write and rehearse their songs...
O&R employee:		[announcing his "blues name" to his colleagues in the audience] ...Voodoo Lulu... (laughter)
Susan:		...before showtime...
Mitch:		We're trying to get people off of their day to day regular personalities... their little job identity, their position, their title... and get them into a totally different mindset in order to accomplish an extraordinary result and to do something different.
Susan:		Their singing might be a little off key...
O&R employees:		[performing their original song]...it's the late payment blues...
Susan:		But Ditkoff says the real value is just being able to verbalize these verses.
Mitch:		To vent, to cathart, to get it out, to accelerate the process of going beyond the blues so that next year they're not singing the same old blues.
Lorraine Papenburg (O&R):		I think Face the Music gives employees an opportunity to express themselves and express the frustrations that any business or corporation is going to go through.
John Ferraro (O&R):		We learn to identify what gets to us at work, what gives us the corporate blues and maybe by first identifying them will give us the step towards solving them.
Susan:		The corporate world seems to be listening. Started in 1999, Face the Music has already worked with a number of bigtime companies like GE, Panasonic and Con Edison.
Lorraine:		I think it's very important in today's corporate business world that we have fun, and we do our jobs the best we can, and we have the tools neccessary in order to do them differently, creatively, and out of the box and using Face the Music is definitely a great idea.
Mitch:		It's bottom-line focused in that we're saying that your work force the morale will be higher, the colloration will be deeper, the ability for people to team and get things done will increase and you'll get off of the junk that people have been obsessing about...
Mitch:		[performing with O&R employees] ...but sometimes things aint too cool at the O&R corrale.
Susan:		This band doesn't plan on breaking up any time soon, in fact, it's looking to play on a bigger stage.
Mitch:		Tons of applications, not just in business... but in any organization where there is some challenge, some difficulty and some friction.
Paul K:		[singing with exhuberance]
Paul K:		No matter how serious our jobs are or what's at stake, there's something funny about the whole thing. And if we bring that spirit to what we're doing, we're going to get a lot further.
O&R Employees:		[performing their song and ending big] ...And aint it working out for me!
Susan:		For Entrepreneurs Only, I'm Susan Lesovitch, CNN Financial News.