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What M&Ms can teach us about teamwork ….
During their hay days, Van Halen was infamous for being divas. While their fans loved them, concert organizers hated them as the band would go ballistic over something as insignificant as finding a single brown M&M backstage.
As part of their contracts, Van Halen had a “M&M clause” called Article 126. The clause read that “there will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.” Article 126 was buried in the middle of countless technical specifications.
If you think that Van Halen were behaving badly like divas, then you are only seeing one side of the story. This is because Van Halen actually had a very legitimate reason for going ballistic when the found a single brown M&M. backstage.
Because Van Halen shows involved a lot of pyrotechnics, the safety of the band members required the organizers to follow the technical specification to the letter. Hence, Article 126 was introduced as a test. If the organizer could not get something as simple as ensuring that there are no brown M&Ms backstage, then it was probably unsafe for the band to perform.
