[How About This Book] The Beatles Were Never a Truly Great Team Until the End

Lee Dooheon’s "Great Teams Work Like The Beatles"

The Art of "Interpersonal Dynamic" Beyond Four Geniuses: Understanding How Organizations Rise and Fall through The Beatles

The Rivalry of John and Paul, George’s Emergence, Epstein’s Absence... What Shakes a Great Team?

On January 10, 1969, George Harrison picked up his guitar and walked out. This happened at Twickenham Studios, where The Beatles were preparing a new album. "See you at the club," he said before leaving. A few months earlier, Ringo Starr had also left the band in the middle of a recording session, only to return later. John Lennon’s mind was elsewhere, while Paul McCartney was trying desperately to keep the band moving forward. Although the four most successful people in the world were gathered in one room, they did not appear to be a successful organization.

Four people who changed an era still standing together in front of the camera. This is a portrait of The Beatles taken by photographer Robert Whitaker, featured in the exhibition "The Beatles by Robert Whitaker: A Record of Youth Shining in the Shutter." Photographed by Robert Whitaker · Exhibition planned by XCI

That’s why the title "Great Teams Work Like The Beatles" comes with a hint of irony. The Beatles were not the kind of team we typically praise at corporate workshops. They were not a group that prioritized consideration, stayed together in harmony for a long time, and ran toward shared goals under a strong leader. They fought, they competed, they looked in different directions, and in the end, the band lasted less than a decade. Yet, in that brief span, they repeatedly rewrote the grammar of popular music. This changes the central question: instead of asking why good teams last, we must ask why certain conflicts result in masterpieces, while others destroy organizations.

Author Lee Dooheon is uniquely qualified to answer this question. As a musician in the band Five Fingers, known for songs like "Red Roses on Wednesday" and "Dawn Train," he also teaches management and music at the university level. Thanks to this background, the history of The Beatles is rearranged using the language of organizational theory rather than biography. Their hours of relentless performances in Hamburg nightclubs are recast as a rigorous training system. Brian Epstein becomes the manager who tailored suits for overlooked talent and connected them to distribution channels. George Martin’s role is even more critical: he translated the musicians’ eccentric requests into recording techniques and arrangements, ensuring that their genius was not left raw but transformed into something others could listen to. Even The Beatles themselves later reflected that it was in Hamburg that they truly became a band.

Here lies the first organizational paradox the book spotlights: simply gathering excellent individuals does not create an excellent team. There must be a "translator" among the talents. John Lennon and Paul McCartney each had different tastes, personalities, and songwriting styles. When one pushed ahead with brashness, the other shaped it into form; when one made things too polished, the other would add a flaw. The book explains this as coevolution and creative tension. Even real-world studies show that when leadership is shared among team members rather than concentrated in a single figure, team performance often improves. But it's important not to romanticize The Beatles. According to recent meta-analyses, even task-related conflict tends to have a negative relationship with team performance on average. The notion that conflict always leads to creativity is a half-truth. What matters is not the conflict itself, but whether there is a structure to convert that conflict into creative output.

In this regard, perhaps the most interesting figure in The Beatles was not John or Paul, but George Harrison. In an organization where two superstars dominate, what becomes of the third talent? For much of the band’s life, composition centered on Lennon-McCartney. Yet, as the end of the band approached, George Harrison’s "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun" found their way onto Abbey Road. "Something" became the first Harrison-penned song to appear on the A-side of a Beatles single. Then, immediately after the breakup, he released a triple solo album, "All Things Must Pass."

Translated into management terms, this is sobering. Organizations don't only lose talented people because of incompetence; they also lose them when those who have grown are kept in the same roles as before. The power structure that enabled early success becomes a bottleneck later on. The organizational chart that was optimal yesterday becomes the glass ceiling today. This is why The Beatles' breakup cannot be explained solely by personality clashes among the four members or issues involving their girlfriends.

Brian Epstein’s sudden death in 1967 was another crucial turning point. With the person who handled contracts, finances, and the outside world gone, the four members became a strange organization in which everyone was in charge and yet no one was ultimately responsible. Paul tried to fill the vacuum, but for the other members, his efforts sometimes came across as interference rather than leadership. Official Beatles records also remember Epstein as the key figure who paved the way to their record deal. It was only after he was gone that the organization, which had over-deposited trust in one person, realized it had no real "system" in place.

Lee Dooheon interprets this process through management concepts such as clusters, complementary assets, critical mass, transaction costs, and coevolution. He brings in examples from Nvidia, Netflix, Starbucks, Apple, and Patagonia. At times, the connections seem almost too perfect—as if one could always create a convincing theory after historic success. When everything is explained, there is a danger even The Beatles could be reduced to a consulting firm’s PowerPoint presentation. It’s easy to build "success rules" based on The Beatles’ later achievements, but management scholarship only gains depth when it also asks how many failed bands possessed the same conditions.

Nevertheless, what sets this book apart from typical self-help titles is its willingness to follow The Beatles all the way to their breakup. The story does not conclude at the height of success. In fact, the problems only began after prosperity. The organization of two young composers became a global enterprise; their music now carried the weight of business, copyright, pride, and life direction all at once. The pace at which the organization grew outstripped the pace at which relationships could be repaired.

Yet, there is one final twist. The album these four people, who had grown weary of each other, recorded last together was Abbey Road. On it are "Come Together," "Something," and "Here Comes the Sun." On one hand, the group was falling apart; on the other, they were still the best in the world. In January 1969, they even managed to climb onto a rooftop for their final performance. The organization was dying, but the art remained alive.

Perhaps The Beatles’ most uncomfortable leadership lesson is this: the goal of a great team does not have to be "lasting together forever." While each member was together, they created something none of them could have made alone. When that structure no longer worked, they dispersed to pursue their music individually. A team is not a family. It doesn't have to be eternal.

So, to work like The Beatles is not to get along at all costs. It is to avoid making John into Paul or Paul into John, to recognize when George has grown to match them, and to ensure that Ringo never misses the beat. It also means leaving the door open for outsiders like Epstein and Martin to come and go. A great team is not a collection of similar people. It is a place where the distinct talents of different individuals fully resonate together, if only for a single song.

Great Teams Work Like The Beatles | Written by Lee Dooheon | Sam & Parkers | 356 pages

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