Miles Davis- The Leadership Challenge of Successful Innovation*.pdf

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Managing for Innovation Readings

Miles Davis: The Leadership

Challenge of Successful

Innovation*

Alfonso Montuori

When it comes to managing innovation, the late jazz

legend Miles Davis ranks as one of the best. Although the

specific context he worked in may be different from the

average work setting, his leadership skills can certainly be

generalized to the worlds of business and research.Beginning in the early ’50s, Davis was at the forefront of

musical innovation. He literally created several styles of

jazz, including jazz-rock. Unlike some musical innovators,

he was — and remains — a commercial success.

Although Davis’s was a mysterious and often inscrutable

figure, Barnes and Conti’s model of Setting, Strategy,

Systems, and Skills can give us some insights into his

leadership, vision, and success in managing innovation.

The entire value system of the Miles Davis bands over 40

years was centered squarely on commercially viable inno-

vation and experimentation. Interviews with Davis’s

former band members make it clear that experimentation

was not just encouraged, but expected. The well-known

keyboard player Herbie Hancock reported that Davis

wanted his band to perform together only on stage,

literally practicing in front of an audience, a scary but

enormously challenging proposition.

One of the fundamental values driving Miles Davis and

his bands was self-renewal . Davis was not happy cruising

along on the wave of his reputation, recycling old material

*From Managing for Innovation: Setting, Strategy, Systems, and Skills ; a copyrighted program of Barnes and Conti Associates, Inc.

Setting





and old ideas. He strove to renew himself at regular

intervals, whenever he felt he was too comfortable in a

certain setting or style. In renewing himself, Davis re-

newed jazz itself, not just musically but also in terms of

presentation, e.g. the clothes he wore, the venues where

he performed, and the circles in which he moved. Self-

renewal is therefore a whole system process. Innovation re-

quires a shifting context , in his view; an immersion in differ-

ent kinds of music, and a different lifestyle.

The driving vision is learning for the purpose of innovation,

remaining open and always using experience — even

mistakes — to foster self-renewal. Musicians did not

know what to expect when they joined the Davis band.

They knew that they would embark on a collaborative

journey of creation which tested their skills as individualsand as team players. The rewards were not just fame and

fortune, but the excitement of the journey itself.

Davis’s strategy for innovation was forward-looking. He

was always aware of the limitations of his work, assessing

its impact in the market place and on the musical com-

munity in general. But he also had his finger firmly

placed on the pulse of change. In the early ’60s, for

example, the sound of jazz was Davis’s sound. Then,suddenly, a new kind of jazz emerged, later to be known

as “free-jazz,” and it looked for a moment as if Davis had

become part of the establishment. He made scathingly

critical remarks about his competitors, never mincing his

words. Yet, it later turned out that he had carefully ob-

served the new “free-jazzers,” and on some occasions even

played with them in jam sessions. In the meantime, critics

were referring to free jazz as “the new thing,” which

meant Davis was “the old thing.”Profoundly dissatisfied with the turn jazz was taking,

Davis surrounded himself with the best and brightest

young jazz musicians he could find. He involved others in

matching market needs and readiness to organizational

capabilities by seeking out appropriate personnel for a

collaborative journey of creation.

Strategy





Initially, their repertoire was the standard Davis material

— the “old thing.” In the space of a year or so, the old

material was beginning to sound very different, fresh and

unusual. Some classic recordings were made, but Davis

kept looking for the right combination of players, using

different sax players, for instance, until he found the right

one. It was not that the ones he left behind were bad

players — all the players he tried out ranked in the top

— but with hindsight we can see that he had the long

haul in mind, and was trying to put together a team.

Then, slowly but surely, once he got his team together, he

encouraged the new players to compose new material. He

set the example with some innovative compositions which

remain jazz classics to this day. The new sound emerged

organically from the new band. It grew over a period of time, as the players became familiar with each other, and

with Davis’s older material. This served as a starting point

for innovation. By the time an album was released with

only new compositions on it, Davis was again at the

forefront of jazz, spearheading it into the ’70s. And free

jazz turned out to be an artistic and commercial dead

end.

Here we can see that Davis was aware of market needs,

the openness to free jazz being an indication that bothpublic and critics were open for a new sound. He had

broken up his old band — by then so famous that every

single player in it went on to become a star in his own

right — and taken a long-term approach to innovation,

nurturing a new band whose youngest member was only

17 years old.

He listened carefully to the state of the art, including the

free jazz he disliked, but also the new sounds coming

from rock and pop. He literally forced Herbie Hancock,his piano player, to play a (then) newfangled electric

piano, and invested in new musical and recording technolo-

gies . The inherently small, unbureaucratic, and flexible

nature of jazz groups allowed him to remain not just

open to change, but capable of creating change himself,

even to bucking a trend.





The norms of the most successful Davis bands have been

extremely supportive. They were clearly learning organiza-

tions . A rich and challenging collaboration is at the root

of such organizations, and Davis wrote in his autobiogra-

phy that music is about cooperation, not competition. In

the old “cutting sessions,” two musicians would alternate

solos in a contest to see who was better and got more

audience response. According to Davis, there was a lot of

mutual respect and affection in these sessions, despite the

apparent rivalry. He saw it as a way for players to keep

on their toes and learn from others, and from their own

mistakes, a positive form of competition.

In Davis’s bands players were encouraged to take risks. In

fact, those who did not take them ran the risk of being

fired. The band was encouraged to spend time together,explore new ideas, and alert each other to new and excit-

ing developments in music. Every player was encouraged

to contribute material — compositions, ideas — to the

group, and was allowed great freedom and responsibility.

In his classic mid-60s band, Davis was the pilot , with

vision and leadership. Bassist Ron Carter and pianist

Herbie Hancock provided the solid foundation, acting

much like specialists. The explosive young drummer, Tony

Williams, was the explorer , adding fire, brilliance, andunpredictability. The thoughtful sax player and composer

Wayne Shorter, later to achieve fame with Weather Report,

was the “ideas man,” or general coordinator .

In this way, every member was intimately responsible for

the band’s sound, and the band became essentially a self-

managing team. Everybody’s contribution and commit-

ment was vital to maintain the band’s high standards.

Davis himself said the band was so good he had to start

practicing his instrument again!

“I don’t tell them what to do, I just suggest something

and if they don’t like it they’ll suggest something else. Say,

we can do this and this. Or they’ll know what I mean

and add something better.” This is how Davis character-

ized his communication with his band members. The

Systems





goals are clearly present: innovation, creativity, and musi-

cal excellence. All band members, including Davis himself,

knew and embodied them. The operational freedom within

those goals was considerable, perhaps greater than in any

other bands. Notice how Davis’s short comment empha-

sized the positive, even when the other players may not like

his suggestions. Davis wanted to listen, and was very open

to constructive suggestions. He then added that even when

they know what he meant, “They’ll add something better .”

Davis did not impose hard and fast rules on his players.

If he was dissatisfied with a player’s performance, he

would sometimes — just with a look — suggest that the

player could do better, that he was not reaching his

potential. He hardly ever told his players what to do, but

occasionally told them in very general terms what he didnot want. When he made suggestions, he made them in

such a way that the players were left with great opera-

tional freedom, by giving them the outline but not the

details of his vision. He displayed authority, but always

coupled with respect for, and faith in, his players.

In the famous Miles Davis Quintet of the early ’60s, as in

all his other bands, Davis had all ultimate responsibility

and accountability , both to the press and to his record

company. The other members brought their (albeit youth-ful) expertise on their various instruments and their aware-

ness of new possibilities. But Davis brought his own

expertise into play, in the form of his wisdom and experi-

ence, and his ability to keep an open mind and think

outside of accepted boundaries.

It is very clear that, in The Miles Davis Band, Davis was

the unquestioned leader. But his leadership was funda-

mentally empowering , in many different ways. In the

above comment and elsewhere, Davis showed that he wascapable of giving generous credit where it was due, and

that he welcomed contributions from his band. He con-

stantly encouraged players to go beyond their own self-

imposed boundaries. He challenged them to take risks by

giving them permission to make mistakes and by creating

an environment for them in which they felt safe enough





to explore but challenged enough to keep on their toes

and within the boundaries of the larger vision.

In the press he always praised his band members, and

acted both as a nurturing “mother” figure to them — he

has described himself as being “pregnant” with young

talent — and a fatherly, sometimes distant and cryptic

figure who pushed his “sons” into the unknown. Hecommanded enormous respect and even reverence in the

jazz world, and was sometimes portrayed as a rather

sinister, scary person — a media “persona” carefully devel-

oped to hide his shyness. Yet at the same time, he could

dote on a young player like a stereotypical, uncondition-

ally loving, mother. His players respected him, but in turn

Davis always seemed very respectful and nurturing to-

wards them.

This latter quality put him in a different category fromother band leaders who are respected but also feared and

even hated because of their authoritarian style and con-

temptuous treatment of band members. No one who has

played with Davis speaks in anything but glowing terms

of him, and it is interesting to note that Davis’s bands

have spawned more future jazz legends than just about

any other band.

In terms of the roles discussed in the “4S” model, Davis

had the ultimate responsibility for his band. He was held

accountable for the end result, by audience and critics

alike. But the sound emerged from the band as a whole,

based on the skill with which Davis selected his band

members and then gave them freedom. On some of his

most important records, Davis contributed few composi-

tions. It is necessary, therefore, to differentiate somewhat

between responsibility and accountability: everyone was

responsible for the band’s final product, but only Davis

was accountable to the outside world.

It is also very clear that Davis in no way felt intimidated

by his collaborators. Whereas lesser musicians might be

tempted to surround themselves with musicians who are

good but not exceptional, for fear of being overshadowed,

Davis always chose the best he could find, knowing that





they would ultimately make the band — his band —

sound better.

Davis was obviously a highly creative individual. But above

and beyond his own personal creativity, his internal skills of

creative, analytical, and strategic and tactical thinking , he has

been masterful at creating creative, innovative human systems .His external skills were what set him apart from most creative

individuals and make him such an interesting figure to study.

There are several ways in which he stimulates, facilitates,

and supports innovation in groups. First of all, he led by

example . Davis was clearly obsessed with the process of

musical innovation, to the point of refusing to play bal-

lads, simply because he had become such an acclaimed

master of them. This forced him into a position where he

had to find other vehicles for expression, and not simply rest on his laurels.

Innovation, for him, was indeed a necessity, and the

controlled stress he created for himself by creating a

setting in which he could not do what, by some accounts,

he did better than any living jazz player, was a way of

pushing beyond his boundaries. It also set a powerful

example for his band members.

All of his band members have found Davis an inspiration,and being around him was always a learning experience

for them. He embodied both integrity and innovation,

change and tradition. In his case, the old cliche about

walking the talk truly applied.

Another important aspect of his leadership skills was his

ability to share and be open to information, and the

feeling of ownership he created in the process and product

of innovation. The process was collaborative and reflected

the organic way in which his groups developed, as de-scribed above. The product was therefore also the result of

the interaction of band members, who were rewarded for

their contributions. They were always praised in the press

by their leader and defended when they were criticized, no

matter what the internal conflicts might have been. Davis

was accountable for the band, so he took all the criticism,

Skills





but not all the praise. This reinforced his band’s loyalty to

him, and supported and facilitated their creativity by

sheltering them from excessive critical interference.

One final factor of great importance was Davis’s genuine

concern for his band members. This is mentioned over

and over again by them. His concern strengthened thebonds created on their journey of discovery and innova-

tion. He was capable of being both nurturing and asser-

tive, hard and soft with them, but always with the confi-

dence of someone secure enough in himself not to be

threatened by the talent of others.

Davis’s journey of innovation is over, but the talent he

nurtured and inspired continues in his path. We can learn

much from his approach that can be applied to today’s

organizations that are increasingly dependent on agile andversatile “improvisational” teams.

Miles Davis- The Leadership Challenge of Successful Innovation*.pdf

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