Notes on group fitness regimes and music as organisational technology

Photo license:  Flickr image by cooyutsing at http://www.flickr.com/photos/25802865@N08/6853984341/    

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to discuss literature about music in relation to organisational activities, and especially in relation to group fitness class businesses. It arose out of my interest in the Les Mills group fitness business, and a funded project on Music and Work. This article is a general introduction to the use of music in fitness. It mainly mainly discusses the cultural meaning of the group fitness 'dance'. 

Music as technology

It is often said that we now live in an ‘experience’ economy. Businesses of all kinds try and find ways to ‘add value’ to products and services through enhancing ‘experience’ factors (Ashforth & Tomiuk, 2000; Minor et al., 2004). Accompanying this interest in exploiting the profit-making potential of enhanced experience has been a raft of organizational processes that support the cultural/aesthetic properties of the organization. Several writers have attempted to critically engage with the implications of the service and cultural milieu for ordering or ‘manufacturing’ the subjectivities of workers and consumers. Music, like that in a group fitness class, can be seen as an organizational discourse or ‘text’ used in the activity of organizing people.

Music pervades organizational aesthetics and life: communication technology is musical with cell phones’ intrusive ring-tones, work-place elevator musak anaesthetizes with its deliberate blandness and non-ness (Lanza, 1994), shopping malls advertise their strangeness with odd disembodied music to encourage a sense of being lost in time and space (Kowinski, 1985), and in fashion retail outlets to help customers imagine themselves enjoying wearing a dress (De Nora & Belcher, 2000). Coffee (Starbucks CD range), and even furniture comes with its own range of mood-music now (Freedom Furniture, 2002).

Music is also used inside organizations to induct employees or subjects through organizational song (Nissley et al., 2003), or through the highly ordering 2-2 beat of the military march (Hockney, 2002), and has been used deliberately in factories to facilitate the production process by merging the body’s movements with the rhythms of the music (Korczynski & Jones, 2004).

Clearly music in say, a Les Mills group fitness class,  is being used to evoke, coordinate and entrain emotional states in service environments (e.g. Minor et al., 2004). Even further than  emotional and physical experiences, spiritual experiences are also being encouraged (Belk et al., 1989; Casey, 2002). We feel strongly about music and its ability to enhance our lives, but to companies music is an  aesthetic design element to be manipulated to enhance ambiance and experience and increase company profits (Bitner, 1992).

Agents interact with and use the musical material. Music is an aesthetic prosthetic technology according to De Nora (2000): a material that can extend what the body can do. Work involves labour — the activity of the body, intellect or emotion to add value in the business process. Music may extend the capabilities of the mind, the body and/or emotion to add value to products and services. Service, which by its nature is intangible, simultaneous, reciprocal and perishable, is a natural companion for music in the service production process. Service is facilitated by the sounds of music. 


Dancing in time to the labour process

Unlike music, dance cannot be disembodied. We may watch someone else dance, but you can only dance when you dance. Dance in group fitness is the performance of the ‘musical consumer’: dance pulls the music in, moves it through the body, and then it is turned out in a cultural display. Dance displays are historically and culturally situated; gender relations are reproduced and accentuated; conflict and emotion is expressed and controlled; young people mate through dance; gods are worshipped and cosmology expressed; rituals of power and control are produced and reproduced; and cultures are fused and intertwined (Jonas, 1992; Buonaventura, 2003). Dance can be a safety valve, a process of social control, self-generational, educational, a form of initiation, competitive, ritualized dramatic theatre, and a challenge to established power, showing alternative possible realities (Spencer, 1985). Through dance, cultures enact life, and music fuels the show.

Music and dance in the context of a group fitness class is an organising technology. Music is not value-free and musicians have always used the language of music to manipulate perceptions of time and space. The language of this creation is sophisticated and for timing involves rhythm — pulses, beats and rests (Holst, 1963). Musically proficient people (not only musicians, but producers, marketers, choreographers, designers and other symbolic analysts) can use music — for instance, its genre or place of origin — to evoke in the listener moods and experiences. In short, time and space is organized through music.

Liquidity in time and space echoes with liquidities in gender and racial identity (Butler, 1993). The exercise-dance is a dance that expresses fluid gender identity through androgyny and camp. Camp is a common theatrical device in modern rock music (Rodger, 2004): women become men; white women become black women; white women become black men; and men become women. Participants stomp — using the body as a percussive instrument, pretend to be John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever as they disco dance down the Step box, surf to the Bee Gees, box like Mohammed Ali, or pretend to be a voodoo priest shaking his totem stick. Racial identities (stereotypes?) are also played with through doing different aspects of different dances like flamenco, cha-cha, stomp, hip hop, disco, soul and gospel. In the imagination one travels to a Latin American Mardi Gras, the ghettos of Harlem, nightclubs in 1970s America, or stomp in a West End stage production. The actions of the dance are about transience through space - walking, climbing, surfing, running, dancing, flying through space, scooting, skiing, even riding horses. The pleasures of travel and movement itself are evoked: travelling in a car, in a plane, in a bus, a train, stopping off in an airport and at all the major destination places in between. Music evokes exotic other places — tourist experiences in other words (Connell & Gibson, 2003). Some songs evoke ‘blasting off’ in a rocket, travelling between planets in outer space, and even flying like superman. In short, you can take a trip and never leave the room. Yet, these movements all take place in a very confined space.

The activity almost always takes place inside. The step exercise routine is based on walking up a hill and, as with outdoor walking (Edensor, 2000), the movements of the body symbolise process and expansion of the self. Walking can be a spiritual practice, and is used in the fitness-to-music session to help participants achieve a meditative rhythmic state (Slavin, 2003). Constantly moving feet give the impression of movement, but spatially the activity happens almost on-the-spot. This is in direct contrast to the other gym activity most participated in by men, circuit training, which has considerable mobility and spatial conquering involved (Crossley, 2004). Group fitness is mainly participated in by women.

Gyms as cultures

There has been considerable literature written about gym cultures and the aesthetic discourses around physically perfect, fit bodies that gyms convey, encourage and sustain (Sassatelli, 1999;Wacquant, 1995; Lloyd, 1996; Crossley, 2004; Monaghan, 1999; Frew & McGillivray, 2005). Gyms are social and technical environments with specific discourses around the body that encourage “an ongoing activity of enhancing bodily aesthetics” (Monaghan, 1999: 267), where participants attempt to stabilize their self-identity through attention to the body, changing its ‘plastic’ form (Thompson & Hirschman, 1999).

Generally speaking this discourse is a technical/scientific one, where the body is seen as machine. People are building cyborg bodies (Haraway, 1991) as they work on themselves to lose weight, strengthen, tone, and enhance themselves. The exercise regime is often filled with patter from instructors about the body as machine – its capabilities, its inside workings, how to make it run more efficiently through nutrition. The body is the machine being ‘fixed’. If you look good, you’ll feel good. Or alternatively, if there is no chance of that, if you feel good, then you’ll think you look good. By changing the body the intent is that the Self will be transformed. What is currently wrong - esteem, confidence, relationships, sexual fulfilment - will be set right through physical renewal.

Conclusion

Dance is an expression of culture, and so what culture is expressed in the aerobics-dance? In an organizational context the group fitness session is an organizational dance where the consumer and the instructors dance and so embody and produce the labour that has the value in the commercial exchange. There is a creation of fantasy and desire. There is the manufacturing of a ritual of 'escape' from everyday life. There is an obsession with looking and being looked at. There is an affirmation of admiring looking as a virtue.

Nothing wrong with all this. But if this is a cultural dance, and it is, what does it say about our culture?

References and Further Reading

Ashforth, B., & Tomiuk, M. (2000). Emotional labour and authenticity: Views from service agents. In S. Fineman (Ed.), Emotion in organizations (pp. 184 — 203). London: Sage.
Rodger, G. (2004). Drag, camp and gender subversion in the music and videos of Annie Lennox. Popular Music, 23(1), 17 — 29.

Belk, R. W., Wallendorf, M., & Sherry, J. F. (1989). The sacred and the profane in consumption behaviour: Theodicy on the odyssey. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(June), 1 — 38.

Bitner, M. J. (1992). Servicescapes: The impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees. Journal of Marketing, 56(2), 57 — 76.
Buonaventura, W. (2003). Something in the way she moves. Cambridge: Da Capo Press.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (1999 ed.). New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. New York: Routledge.
Casey, C. (2002). Critical analysis of organizations: Theory, practice, revitalization. London: Sage.
Cohen, S., & Taylor, L. (1992). Escape attempts: The theory and practice of resistance to everyday life. London: Routledge.
Connell, J., & Gibson, C. (2003). Sound tracks: Popular music, identity and place. London: Routledge.
Crossley, N. (2004). The circuit trainer's habitus: Reflexive body techniques and the sociality of the workout. Body and Society, 10(1), 37 — 69.
De Nora, T. (2000). Music in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Nora, T., & Belcher, S. (2000). When you're trying something on you picture yourself in a place where they are playing this kind of music: Musically sponsored agency in the British clothing retail sector. Sociological Review, 48(1), 80 — 101.

Edensor, T. (2000). Walking in the British countryside: Reflexivity, embodied practices and ways to escape. Body and Society, 6(3), 81 —106.
Fitzsimmons, J., & Fitzsimmons, M. (2006). Service management: Operations, strategy, information technology (5th ed.). Sydney: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Frew, M., & McGillivray, D. (2005). Health clubs and body politics: Aesthetics and the quest for physical capital. Leisure Studies, 24(2), 161 — 175.
Gluck, P. (1993). The use of music in sports performance. Contemporary Thought, 2, 22 — 53.

Haraway, D. (1991). A cyborg manifesto. In Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature (pp. 149—181). New York: Routledge.
Hockney, J. (2002). 'Head down, Bergen on, mind in neutral': The infantry body. Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 30(1), 148 — 171.
Holst, I. (1963). An ABC of music. London: Oxford University Press.

Jonas, G. (1992). Dancing: The pleasure, power and art of movement. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc.
Korczynski, M., & Jones, K. (2004, 1 — 3 September). Instrumental music: The social origins and meaning of tannoyed music in factories. Paper presented at the Work, Employment and Society, Manchester, United Kingdom.
Kowinski, W. S. (1985). The malling of America: An inside look at the great consumer paradise: William Morrow.
Lanza, J. (1994). Elevator music: A surreal history of musak, easy-listening, and other moodsong. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Monaghan, L. (1999). Creating 'the perfect body': A variable project. Body and Society, 5(2), 267 — 290.
Minor, M., Wagner, T., Brewerton, F. J., & Hausman, A. (2004). Rock on! An elementary model of customer satisfaction with musical performances. Journal of Services Marketing, 118(1), 7 —18.

Nissley, N., Taylor, S., & Butler, O. (2003). The power of organizational song: An organizational discourse and aesthetic expression of organizational culture. In A. Carr & P. Hancock (Eds.), Art and aesthetics at work (pp. 93 — 114). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sassatelli, R. (1999). Interaction order and beyond: A field analysis of body culture within fitness gyms. Body and Society, 5(2), 227-248.
Seitz, P. (2005). Starbucks perking in music business as it expands its CD-burning outlets. Financial News, Investor's Business Daily Retrieved 16 March, 2005, from http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/050216/tech01_1.html
Slavin, S. (2003). Walking as spiritual practice: The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Body & Society, 9(3), 1 — 18.
Spencer, P. (Ed.). (1985). Society and dance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, C., & Hirschman, E. (1999). An existential analysis of the embodied self in postmodern culture. Consumption, Markets and Culture, 2(4), 337 — 464.
Wacquant, L. (1995). Review article: Why men desire muscles. Body and Society, 1(1), 163 —179.
Wasserman, V., Rafaeli, A., & Kluger, A. (2000). Aesthetic symbols as emotional cues. In S. Fineman (Ed.), Emotion in organizations (pp. 140 — 165). London: Sage.

Les Mills International - Service Case Study Part 2

Continued from Part 1  - Les Mills International - Service Case Study Part 1

The Les Mills System: the Nuts and Bolts

There are several parts to Les Mills fitness, including Les Mills Gyms, Les Mills NZ and Les Mills International. The Les Mills International system is complex and dynamic and this article merely provides some features of their system in order to help a student understand service systems generally, and especially aspects of service systems that are common to all. It is an educational resource, and may not be completely accurate as businesses are in constant flux. This article focuses on Les Mills International, but aspects of their systems are in all branches of their business. 

Education and organisational learning systems

Instruction and teaching are central to what Les Mills does. For each new release, they have about 3 months trialing and then teaching fitness classes in order to produce 'world-class’ fitness classes. The create video classes and distribute them through their system and release them in mass events such as those you can see on Youtube, and shown in Part 1 of this article of a BODYSTEP® release. The training includes producing modules to train teachers, instructor training and management training in GFM (Group Fitness Management). For extension, reading see an article about training and group fitness instructors here. 

Relationship with Owner of the Club and Marketing

Like all successful franchise service operations, Les Mills has tight control over its image and processes. They "write the rules on studio design, recruitment of staff, measurement of performance, marketing, and staff training" according to Phillip Mills (Go Global talk, 2005). By doing so they instill their brand through the behavior and conduct of their staff, including the vision and values that underpin their organisational culture. They produce a wide range of promotional material, and are constantly developing and thinking about ways to build 'community' for their customers, as a community, as Phillip explains in the video above, is a strong motivating factor to join and stay involved in fitness and health initiatives. For managers and instructors resources, they need to promote, manage and run classes are all available online. They can access adverts, guerrilla marketing material, as well as order popular décor items, decorative posters, clothing and so on. "Our branding is in people’s faces" said Phillip Millsin his Go Global talk.

Music as technology

Licensed music is what gives LM its competitive edge according to Phillip Mills, “With the cooperation of the NZ music industry” (although I have to say NZ music didn't feature much in the sessions I attended). In 2005 LM was the only company worldwide to have rights to distribute the top forty music tracks. "We can distribute just about anything”, and they "pay millions of dollars in royalties". Along with the music is the choreography which is centrally important to the ways that people interact with the music. Tia De Nora has written a scholarly book that includes research with group fitness participants on the ways they use music in fitness sessions (De Nora, 2000). 

Going Global

Les Mills keep calling themselves a small NZ company, although it is hard to understand how they can still call themselves that, except it is part of their origin story and culture. They were limited by capital constraints and so opted initially for an independent owner-distributor model. They considered growth through other models as there are bigger margins to be made in owning the whole business, but they couldn't afford it. In their first growth spurt internationally they did 'take over' a couple of organisations.

Their business model uses licenses. Clubs pay LM agents a monthly fee per programme, and agents are paid on a sliding scale. Percentages are also divided up according to sales of training, music merchandising, and equipment and other tangibles. One lesson learned by LM is not to undercharge for their service. They offer high-end programmes and need to charge a premium for them.

For LM agents are crucial to success. Initially LM recruited the 'best' agents in each country they expanded into and “Networked, networked, networked”. According to Phillip Mills, most agents in this initial growth phase were great but there were a few were "dodgy" ones. LM made mistakes but they learnt from those mistakes. One issue was that they learnt existing retailers did not make great agents as they could be protective and competitive. Best local agents had the commitment and local knowledge.

However, sometimes local agents did not have had the same commitment to quality or buy-in that is expected of a LM agent, and so it was sometimes necessary to remove agents. An agreement process was essential - service contracts needed to be developed and adhered to.

So, for instance, commercial contracts needed to include:

1. performance minimums (fees that they charge; the number of clubs covered); 
2. exclusivity in a product category (to eradicate copy-cat problems; enforceable restraints of trade; engage expert international legal advice);
3. obligation to sell to all reputable companies (minimum number of dedicated sales staff; dedicated sales manager);
4. Standard procedures around quality;
5. Reporting requirements (benchmarking; monitoring compliance)

In general, according to Phillip Mills, “He who drafts wins” (the agreements that is). It was essential to politely enforce all agreements, and if waivers were given they had to be in writing. 

Living the Brand

As inferred earlier, LM requires a strong adherence to Brand values, an adherence that people that work for LM seem to fully comply with. The LM package is 'world-class', and so LM invested in the top creative agencies in NZ for sales and pitch documents. All LM representatives, affiliates and employees must represent this world-class brand. As Phillip Mills puts it, it is required that you put your “skin in the game”. Commitment comes from the investment, both in terms of dollars, but also in physical and emotional commitment.

Fitness instructors, for example, represent the brand, but they also deliver the experience. They are the most visible customer service representative for participants. It is the instructor that participants 'look up to' both literally (they are almost always on an elevated stage) and figuratively (as a model of a fit person to aspire to in looks and fitness). Instructors co-produce (see Note 1 below about what this means) with participants the group fitness experience - everyone in the class is enlisted into the same enterprise. 

LM has a strong, perhaps even alarming, brand commitment - "they would die for the cause" said Phillip at the Go Global event. Nevertheless, people buy into LM and they have an almost evangelical fervor about them. Becoming a LM licensee requires one to undergo a life-changing event. In terms of achieving this commitment to the brand LM has employed a variety of techniques: e.g. 'Life-changing staff training' using tools like theater, motivational psychology,  personal development, team building, and cultural rituals in order to create passion, enthusiasm and the commitment of staff. “We became a virus” says Phillip and took over hearts and minds of staff. "We took their attention". Its not all hard work: they also focus on having fun, delivering great conferences, and creating great teams. They also use celebrity endorsements and have a very strong NZ flavour in their brand. See the video below of their own haka performed in Stockholm in 2010 'gifted' to their participants. This is also an example of using a cultural ritual to enhance the community, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technique. More information on this is available here. 

Best Practice

How does a top fitness business stay at the top? By comparing itself to the best and learning from industries that are perceived to be the best in the world, even if they have ostensibly nothing to do with the fitness industry itself. In the video below Philip describes what he was learning during a recent study tour in the U.S.

Other Issues

LM continuously offers its licensees techniques to help them grow their businesses. For instance, the recent announcement of the Clubcount system. This announcement says: "CLUBCOUNT™ is new web-based software that will keep track of your numbers for you. This means you will have numerous ways to report on, and evaluate, your success in Group Fitness. All you need to do is take a quick headcount for each class, grab a few moments to enter the class attendance into the software and CLUBCOUNT™ will take care of the rest..." CLUBCOUNT™ enables clubs to understand Group Fitness attendance trends over time, create timetables based on proper information, and identify top instructor performers (instructors become minor celebrities).  

Another recent innovation has been their 'Globesity' initiative, which has been launched with the publication of a book and is LM's sustainability initiative. The following video explains how this works: 

 

Other Links of Interest about Les Mills

Les Mills was recently nominated for a NZ International Business Award.

Les Mills on Facebook

Notes

Note 1: Service work production processes are different from those in manufacturing, and so the labour process itself is different. In service work, the consumer and the producer are involved in a reciprocal and instantaneous exchange of production at the same time as consumption occurs. Labour is produced with the customer – they are co-producers of its meaning or, in another way of putting it, the customer is a partial employee (Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004). The value of the labor is in its synchronicity. 

Other References


De Nora, T. (2000). Music in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Halbesleben, J., & Buckley, R. M. (2004). Managing customers as employees of the firm: New challenges for human resource management. Personnel Review, 33(3), 351-372.

Personal notes from Phillip Mills talk on Thrive TV (http://www.thrivetv.com, now no longer operating). The presentation was given as part of the Go Global Conference held in Auckland in 2005.

Strategic Human Resource Management - Breakers Basketball

Sports are classic service organizations, delivering an intangible experience-product. I recently published, with a colleague, a research article in the New Zealand Journal of Human Resource Management which investigated the Breakers basketball organisation's HRM strategy. The article uses concepts like co-creation, strategic co-creation of values and story-telling methodology to unpick how the Breakers use stories to help manage their values-based culture. You can find the full paper here.

Abstract: Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) is often described as the alignment of internal human resources to external threats and opportunities. Values-driven goals have been increasingly interwoven into SHRM practices. If there is a disconnect between values-driven SHRM and staff enactment of values then strategic goal achievement is less likely. Research is underdeveloped as to how values-based SHRM is implemented at the micro-process level; the level at which people within the organisation engage with SHRM. Research examining the successful implementation of values-based approaches assists understanding of best-practice. The research question is, ‘How has a successful values-based SHRM approach been enacted? We investigated values-driven SHRM in the New Zealand SKYCITY Breakers’ basketball franchise, using a narrative methodology. The preliminary stage of the study involved content analysis of secondary sources and interviews, which highlighted the Breakers are a 'storytelling' organisation. The second main stage involved narrative analysis of 250 shared stories identified from 16 in-depth interviews with organisational members. Findings are that the Breakers use a monomyth story-sharing process to embed value-driven behaviour. The key contribution is to show how values-based SHRM is embedded by the organisation’s monomyth story-telling process. Practice-based implications are discussed. 

Demographic Change and the Customer-Centric View - Squash

Stephen Hodges, who was the Development Manager at Squash Auckland,  gave this presentation in class. The presentation focused on how Auckland Squash is trying to get more women and girls involved in the game of squash. The presentation covers the challenges for squash, the rationale for the programs, the programs that they have introduced, and some statistics showing how successful the program has been. In essence, this initiative shows a customer-centric change initiative. The process involved incremental innovation. The culture of traditional club squash is centered around competition - women and girls might want to get involved and stay in the game of squash for fun, social reasons, and enjoyment, as well as fitness, and then maybe competition. Taking a customer-centric view of groups that don't even use your organization yet (or as much as they could) enables innovative thinking and the development of new programmes.

Les Mills International - Service Case Study Part 1

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to basic service management terminology through using the example of Les Mills International, a New Zealand-based international group-fitness company. This article features links to Wikipedia and other knowledge and information bases as further reference to  key service management terms, and also provides key readings.This article also links to publicly available videos of Les Mills activities and other web sites of interest. The source of these videos is mainly Les Mills International Youtube Channel. I also draw on interviews I conducted in 2005 with group fitness workers, notes on a presentation given by Phillip Mills at the Go Global Conference in 2005 (now no longer available on the web) and a paper prepared for a conference.

This article focuses on explaining general terminology to serve as an introduction to service management 'jargon'.

Introduction to Les Mills International 

You can see a brief video introducing Les Mills history and programmes here on the Les Mills main site.

Facts about Les Mills:

• Les Mills is a famous NZ Olympian and founded  Les Mills World of Fitness chain of gyms in Auckland, New Zealand and also Les Mills International. 
• At present Les Mills (LM) operates in about 14,000 gyms and health clubs in 75 countries. 
• There are an estimated 70, 000 Les Mills Instructors worldwide.
• About 5 million participants participate in a LM class every week.

Les Mill's son Phillip Mills was largely responsible for developing a series of exercise-to-music programmes, including BODYATTACK®, BODYFLOW® , BODYCOMBAT®, BODYJAM®, BODYPUMP®, BODYSTEP®, BODYVIVE®, CXWORX® and SH'BAM® (all fiercely protected registered trademarks).

Les Mills International Wikipedia page says "In 2004, Phillip Mills was Ernst & Young's New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year, and the following year he competed in Monaco as a finalist for Ernst & Young's World Entrepreneur of the Year award. In 2005, Les Mills International was named New Zealand Services Exporter of the Year by NZ Trade and Enterprise and, in 2007, he and wife Jackie Mills co-authored the book 'Fighting Globesity - A Practical Guide to Personal Health and Global Sustainability'" (see Part 2 for more on this). If you are unfamilar with Les MIlls then have a look at a few of the videos featured in this article, or go here to see their webpage and an introductory video.

Outside-In Perspective

Within service management it is now common to argue that all service industries, in fact, all businesses, should take an outside-in perspective. That is, service managers should learn to look at all aspects of their processes from a customer's viewpoint (see Note 1 below).

One useful way to do this is to conduct a walk-through or an emotional audit from a customer's perspective. The following provides an example of a narrative of a customer attending a group fitness session. It illustrates both the feelings and processes that a customer engages with as she participates in a group fitness routine.  The video below shows the 'release' of a new BODYSTEP® routine (release number 84) to help you visualize the narrative.

Outside-In Perspective 

Getting to the session is the first challenge. I am tired and grumpy and don’t really feel like going, but experience has taught me that if I at least get to the session then the music will carry me through the session. ‘Classes’ are timetabled. 9.00 am in the morning is a good time for me. I have dropped the kids off at school and make my way just in time to fill up my water bottle, pay my fee, and dig my towel out of the bottom of my bag. I collect my Step, place my card in the instructor’s receptacle and take up my place behind the Step.

The music begins with the first of 12 tracks that make up the session. The first track is ‘Venus’, by Bananarama. People quickly move to their chosen area. They have placed before the stage already what they need to conduct their ritual: water bottle, towel, and Step. The arrangement of the room is all face-forward towards the stage. The session is to last fifty-five minutes as other activities are scheduled before and after.

The instructors remind us of safety – this is usually on their minds at the beginning of the session. Today there are two instructors, slim and toned, with coordinated clothing, tanned and with wide smiles.

The lyrics to the ‘Venus’ track say: 'Goddess on the mountain top, burning like a silver flame, the summit of beauty and love, and Venus was her name. She’s got it. Yeah, baby she’s got it. I’m your Venus. I’m your fire. At your desire’. We start to warm up, moving around the Step, walking at a clipping pace. The music provides the impetus. We move straight into the second track, ‘Get Down On it’, by Peter Andre. The song is a direct challenge to dance. The pace picks up and we start walking up onto the Step, with some squats included. The ‘butt and thighs’ start to be worked now that the muscle groups are warmed up. This is a vigorous track and most people quickly take on some water at this point. At this point the energy of the dance and movement starts to be felt. The movements start to come easy. Once the rhythm is entered into then the 1-2-3-4 time is relatively easy to keep with, and when the movements are learnt they can be reproduced without much thought. The basic movements are all learnt: the simple step, over-the-top, grape-vine, turn-step, walk-over, and the stomp are a few of them. The steps can be related to particular genres of music too: a recent favorite has been the cha-cha, which involves a skip step.

Track 3 is ‘Born to be alive’ by Voyager, and an affirmation of life. The lyrics are less important now,  but the beat is relentless and loud. I am starting to perspire. I concentrate on keeping up and getting the moves right. I am now completely focused on myself and watching the instructor. I cannot see others around me. I get out of rhythm at one point, feel embarrassed, but quickly find it again. We are reminded to keep the noise of our feet down. This is a safety reminder. 

Track 4 is ‘Absolutely Not’ by Deborah Cox. It is a stroppy track reflecting issues of self-esteem at work. ‘Should I wear my hair in a ponytail? Should I dress myself up in Chanel? Do I measure me by what you think? Absolutely not, absolutely not’. I enjoy this track. The movements are fluid and simple and involve a move at the peak of the track where the participants mime pulling a person towards them and then kneeing them . The male instructors joke in  good nature when the women enthusiastically participate in this track.  

Track 5, ‘The Wreckoning’ [sic] by Boomkat is a mixed strength track where the aim is to work on the ‘butt and thighs’ after a high aerobic work rate track. The pace is slower for squats and lunges — strenuous exercises that work the big muscle groups of the legs. The song is ostensibly about a relationship break-up; a play on the word reckoning with ‘wreckoning’ (the wreck of the relationship). The other reckoning is to face the toughness and pain of the physical lunge and squat and have a reckoning with your body about its ‘true’ state of being. The time is nigh in other words to face the truth. I always feel good about this track. By this time in the session I am feeling extremely virtuous. I feel great. 

Track 6 ‘I’m flying’ is one that I hate. I face my un-coordination in this track and always do it at the lowest options. I have fallen off my Step twice doing this track as I try and follow the instructor’s movements. We mimic a bird flying in the sky while we do an ‘Over-the-top’ move across the length of the Step box. The technique means we raise our arms, increasing blood flow around the body. This raises the heart rate, making the body work harder. I suffer it in silence and can’t wait for it to be over. I keep my arms down and focus on not falling over. The instructors seem to like it.

‘Situation’ (7) by Tom Jones and then ‘Disco Inferno’ (8) by Tina Turner are classic high peak tracks. Tom Jones’ voice has visceral power — deep and powerful — perfect for lunges. So, I think, I am a house-wife pretending to be Tom Jones. In the next track I am being a black woman — Tina Turner — even better. I always wanted to be born black — black people seem cooler, looser. They’re not so uptight. What would it feel like to be born a man, or black, or both? ‘Situation’ provides a strong pulsing rhythm to which we do squats which drives the heart rate up. This is another ironically named recovery track. ‘Disco Inferno’ is a faster song with the mood encouraged being ‘out-of-control’, with an flurry of physical movement to Disco moves. You have to be fit to have fun with this track. Other people work really hard, and I aspire to do the same. But, to be honest I never feel completely conscripted into the process or fit enough to lose myself in the moves. I am getting tired and slightly depressed with my inadequacies. I try to turn off my thoughts and push my body back into the music. 

Patti La Belle’s gospel standard ‘Ready for a Miracle’ (9) and then Eye of the Tiger (10) are the final peak tracks. By this time we are getting near the end of the session and I really do need a miracle to get through. The instructor yells at us now, ‘Get up! Get down! Rise up! Look at me!’ She is never silent, and as she demonstrates the moves, always having to think slightly ahead of her audience (and doing everything, like Ginger Rodgers to Fred Astair, backwards), gives previews of changes in moves, demonstrating the ideal movements. The noise from feet pounding on the floor and on the step, in time, is loud, rhythmic and hypnotic. From time to time the instructor calls out to the class asking them to tell her they are OK. ‘Have you got there yet?’ ‘Is it a miracle?!!’ The pace is absolutely frenetic. At the peak of the track we all wave our hands in the air mimicking the ecstatic body movements of revelation at the height of a Pentecostal revivalist meeting. At several points during this track a few class participants yell back to the instructor, whooping to show their enjoyment of the track. The Eye of the Tiger is a novelty track and a bit of fun. The mood starts to loosen, but the beat of the track is aimed at pushing us to a final sprint towards the finish line, eking out the last spurt of energy, leaving me completely spent. 

My favorite part of the session is next – the press-up and sit-up track. I have come to love press-ups — I really don’t know why as my arms are as weak as a kittens’. I push myself really hard. I try and ignore the instructor — she is background noise. I don’t have to look at her any more and I settle into my own rhythm to the music. The song is ‘My Time’ by Dutch. The lyrics say, ‘Been a long time since I saw my own mind … I was moving in the shadows, always looking at the past … Always, always, put my faith in new days ... I dancing and I’m feeling fine … This is my time, this is my time’.

The final stretch track is ‘Cruisin’ sung by Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis. The song is melodic. It is about surrender and release. ‘Let the music take your mind’ it says, ‘Just release and you will find … , You're gonna fly (away), Yeah, I'm glad you're going my way'.... The stretches are genuinely relaxing. The instructors pose like statues on the stage, moving from one fluid position to the next. I am sometimes reluctant to leave one stretch for the next. As the last stretch is completed and the music fades, we pat ourselves on our backs. This move of self-congratulation is part of the choreography. Everyone puts their things away and some move off to the shower. I stop and talk quickly with another regular attendee. I feel pretty good and am glad I made the effort to come. Then we all hurry off to get on with our day, appointments and work. 

Understanding Service as Intangible involving a Transition, and the Service Concept

A service delivers an intangible product. A service is something that has no physical or material presence (although it can be attached to material products in a service bundle). According to Phillip Mills "Everything we do is just about invisible”. LM tangibilises experience (makes the intangible tangible) through video, training DVDs with choreography, notes, and other educational material, fashion and a vigorous branding platform. 

Les Mills International delivers group exercise experiences. During the course of a customer's experience journey with Les Mills they will go through transitions in their whole selves - emotionally (their feelings), physically (their bodies), aesthetically (how they look), and spiritually (their sense of completeness and one-ness with the world). This is not an exaggeration - see the narrative above as all these aspects of these transformations are experienced during the participant's journey and are symbolically communicated through the group fitness system (which will be explained in more detail shortly).

This transition is illustrated below:

The service concept in general is explained below:

Phillip Mills himself explains the core of what the service concept is in a Les Mills group fitness class: results and motivation, and the ways that they have built a focused understanding of the value proposition of their business. The video is aimed at potential licensees of Les Mills. As explained above, Les Mills International are using a type of franchise model to expand, which is common with service businesses. Phillip Mills is 'selling' the brand to other business, a type of Business to Business (or 2B2) communication, because other businesses are Les Mills International major customers. Despite being an 'infomercial' the following video provides some insights into how Les Mills International works, and what their priorities are. 

This article is continues in Les Mills International Part 2

Notes

Note 1: Of course the logic of the outside-in  perspective leads to a strengthening of the already powerful notion that the 'Customer is King' (or Queen). This is one reason for the need to for us to understand our obligations as consumers (I prefer to remember that consumer is a subset of the word citizen). One of my favorite sayings is "Your wish is my command" from the musical 'Annie'. This saying is a reminder of the reciprocal obligations between service organisations and citizen-consumers to provide services and products responsibly; that consumers have a mutual responsibility in other words and their desire (for things and services) does not preclude ethical behaviour.

References


Johnston, R., & Clark, G. (2008). Service operations management: Imporving service delivery. Harlow: Prentice Hall.