“Necessary vs. sufficient,” in music, business, and love.

In the business world, good companies come up with good corporate strategies. These are big, overarching themes supported by specific details that guide a company in doing the best at what it sets out to do. Much more than a mission statement or a vision, corporate strategy encompasses all of that, but adds a solid foundation and structure that, if used properly, helps them distinguish themselves, compete, serve its customers well, and thrive.

A key part of addressing any corporate strategy is understanding the concept of “necessary and sufficient.” There are many things that a company needs to do or be. The necessary ones are those without which the company would not be able to do business. Workers might be a good example. Clearly, companies need employees. Even in this modern world of AI and automation, somebody needs to write the programs and turn the stuff on (so far …). 

So employees are necessary. But are they sufficient? Is that ALL a company needs? Of course not. What about, for simplicity’s sake, the product? Or distribution for the product? Or promotion, marketing, advertising? Obviously, even necessary aspects of a company are useless without the other parts of the company.

 Drilling down a little more on workers as an issue, how about certain talents or skills within the workforce? It may be necessary to have employees, but not sufficient if the company’s product or service requires specific abilities to be part of that workforce.

The music analogies might be fairly obvious. An orchestra with a great brass section but no string section is not going to get very far. It’s necessary to play the right notes, but if you don’t also play the correct rhythms its going to sound a mess! 

And this leads us to priorities. If a marching band director fixates on just the marching and lets the music sound terrible, no one’s going to find the performances very entertaining. So in rehearsals, the director will try to prioritize what they practice and divide the time they use to work on each aspect of the performance, according to what needs the most work. 

Back in the business world, there are examples of companies that fixate on one thing over another. “We make great cars!” for example. Well, okay, but what if it takes you forever to make those cars, or the cost of making them that great makes them so expensive that no one can afford them? Great cars may be necessary to this manufacturer’s strategy and position in the market, but it’s not sufficient on its own as a corporate strategy. 

There is also another places where “necessary and sufficient” are a big deal. And that’s love. To borrow a few lines from some great pop standards, Love is a many splendored thing, Love lifts you up where you belong, Love is all you need. But is it? A wise friend recently taught me about relationships, and the importance of being able to separate out the love from other things that might be destructive. My little epiphany, such as it was, suddenly seems quite obvious: you can love someone completely and totally, but if there is a serious flaw in the relationship, like say, alcoholism, then love will not be sufficient to make that relationship work. In fact, depending on it alone to gloss over the painful harm done by a deficiency in another area might lead to lasting damage and loss. 

Loving relationships can overcome great challenges and obstacles, and can reach amazing and thrilling heights. In that respect, I would say that love is most definitely a necessary thing. But sufficient all on its own? Probably never. 

So in our music playing, in our work, and in our lives, let’s look for “necessary and sufficient” and see what giving them proper consideration will do.