Another in my Jazz as a Metaphor for Agile Leadership series

1. Management Lessons from Jazz
Charlie Berg
Tactical Business Partners
chb@tacticalbusinesspartners.com

2. My History
• Professional musician for 45 years
– Drummer
– Toured & Recorded (5 records, several movies…)
– Played with:
• Pop: David Byrne (Talking Heads), Eric Bazilian (The
Hooters), Lew Soloff (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
• Jazz: Don Byron, Uri Caine,
• World Music: Joe Cuba, Klezmatics, Klezmer
Conservatory Band, Les Miserables Brass Band
• And then I quit!
Management & Jazz 2

3. Why Jazz & Management
• Jazz musicians innovate & solve problems in real-time!
– Live with uncertainty every time they’re on the band-stand
– Have to make snap decisions with minimal information
– The culture has a set of design patterns, norms & meta-
knowledge that guides them through playing
• Managers (and engineers)
– Face problems that are unstructured & ambiguous
– Have to interpret vague cues (interpersonal, market, tech) &
devise a response
– Minimal or no time to “rehearse”
– Culture has a set of design patterns, norms, and meta-
knowledge
• Can one learn from the other?
Management & Jazz 3

4. Soloing & Affirmative Competence
• When a jazz musician solos, he doesn’t know where he is
going, only where he’s been.
– What was played as a basis for what to play next.
– Create retrospectively, modifying what was already played into
something new
– The backup musicians provide direction or hints as to how to
move forward
• Soloist has faith in his ability to create, as well as backup
musicians’ ability to support – faith in competence
• The process becomes building on what one played
previously, as suggested by what others are playing
– “The Groove” as a process
• Faith that the process works (and the music progresses) –
affirmative competence
Management & Jazz 4

5. Management & Affirmative
Competence
• Manager trusts her own competence, and the
competence of the people she works with
• If management has predilection to attune to
competence, then others perform at a higher
level, affirming that competence
• Affirming competence of team sets up a process /
feedback loop where all members perform at
peak because all believe in their own success
– The Groove
Management & Jazz 5

6. Playing & Constructive Failure
• “If you’re not making a mistake, you’re making a
mistake” – Miles Davis
• Jazz mistakes:
– You hands can’t play what you hear
– Missed cues on the stand
– Plain ol’ wrong notes
• Ameliorations on the bandstand
– Repeat it!
– Develop on the wrong note(s) to a new pattern
– Change the chord patterns
• Musicians cultivate an “aesthetic of imperfection”
Management & Jazz 6

7. Workplace & Constructive Failure
• Successful mistakes in workplace abound:
– Post-It Notes, Jello, penicillin, pacemakers, Apple
Newton, Windows
• Errors are learning / teaching opportunities
• Organizations as Complex-Adaptive Systems
– Adapting at the edge of chaos
– Chaordic systems
• Trust of Affirmative Competence comes without
blame of failure
– But make sure any failure isn’t too severe!
Management & Jazz 7

8. Musicians & Getting to the Groove
• For musicians, affirmative confidence provides ability to
improvise, but improvise on what?
– “You can’t improvise on nothing. You have to improvise on
something” Charles Mingus
• Song structure (chords progressions, melody, rhythm, etc.)
provides framework for what to improvise over
• Players engage in lots of interaction & communication
(musical & non-verbal) to adjust what they play, based on
what is heard.
• Players occasionally regroup on the “head” (the melody)
• Song structure provides minimal structure, and musicians are
left to play what they feel over that structure, with means of
communication to help innovate over the structure
– Minimal structure / maximal autonomy
Management & Jazz 8

9. Management & the Agile Groove
• Agile has provided a workable minimal structure
that supports innovation & development
– Minimize structure by narrowing focus (via sprint or
WIP limits)
– Provide communication on progress / success of work
(via Scrum, KPIs / OKRs)
• Let the teams order their work, decide how to
proceed
• Once in the groove, modify the process slightly
(see Provocative Competence)
Management & Jazz 9

10. Followship & Musicians
• “When I improvise I listen to what everyone
else is playing and then play what is missing.” –
Miles Davis
• Jazz musicians switch between soloing &
“comping” (from “accompany”). Leader to
follower and back.
– Comping goal – help ideas & innovation emerge
– Listen & feed back
Management & Jazz 10

11. Management & Followship
• “It takes a lot of confidence not to say everything
you know” – Jack Welch
• Synonymous with “Servant Leadership”
• Let the team “take the solos”
• Requirements for excellent followship:
– Social sensitivity: tuning into what the room feels,
thinks
– Active listening: ability to hear & feed back (with
denoted changes..again, provocative competence)
– Include women!!! Better at social sensitivity & active
listening!
Management & Jazz 11

12. Provocative Competence
• Once your team is “in the groove”, time to
employ Provocative Competence
• Provocative Competence is the opposite of
conformity:
– Skillful interruption of past (comfortable) patterns
– Leader’s job to create some dissonance to trigger
people away from habitual patterns
• Encourage play & taking risks
• Create situations that demand a response
Management & Jazz 12

13. Encouraging Play & Taking Risks
• Creating openings through retreat and reflection
• Generate Challenge Skills: Look at the problem
not from an engineering perspective, but by
looking at whole systems, market, instability &
uncertainty…
• Permission for deviant & disruptive thinking
• Encourage inquiry & research
• Remember Affirmative Competence &
Constructive Failure
Management & Jazz 13

14. Electric Miles was “Provocative”
in Two Ways
• Miles sprinted record releases
to evolve his exploration of the
Rock idiom
– Evolving instrumentation to
electric
– Evolving musical idiom to rock

15. From Nefertiti to Bitches Brew
• The User Story: Miles
wanted to expand the
canvas of jazz into rock
• Wife Betty Mabry (Betty
Davis) had introduced
him to Hendrix, Sly
Stone, Clapton, Hippie
counter-culture.
Challenge – how to manage jazz musicians to move to
electric rock & roll?

16. Prototype – Nefertiti
(Jun-Jul ‘67)
• No electric instrumentation
• Early experiments with tone
centers vs. chord
progressions (title track)

17. Sprint 1 – Miles in the Sky
(May ‘68)
• Musical features
– 1st use of rock rhythm vs. jazz
• Start of use of electric
instrumentation
– Use of electric guitar (George
Benson) on one track
– Use of electric piano & electric
bass on one track (Herbie
Hancock & Ron Carter, new to
electric bass)

18. Sprint 2 – Filles des Kilimanjaro
(Sep ‘68)
• Extend use of electric
instrumentation
– Electric piano on all tracks (Chick
Corea & Herbie Hancock. Electric
new for Chick)
– Electric bass on 75% of tracks
• Musical features
– 50% tracks use rock rhythm vs.
jazz
– Tunes based around tone centers,
not chord changes

19. Beta v0.9 – In a Silent Way
(Feb ’69)
• Musical features
– 1st complete “fusion” album
for Miles
– Miles brought in slips of
papers with ideas, and
recorded entire album in 9
hours (provocative
competence)
• Tunes based around tone
centers, not chord changes

20. Beta v0.9 – In a Silent Way
(Feb ’69)
• All electric instrumentation
– Electric piano, bass, guitar,
organ on all tracks
– 1st use of instrument
“sections”(2 pianos & organ,
electric & acoustic bass)

21. Electric Miles V1.0 rc1 – Bitches
Brew
(Aug ’69)
• Musical features
– Penultimate “fusion” album for
Miles
– Expanded on In a Silent Way…
• Rhythm has central role (as in rock)
• Very little tonal centers movement
• Use of “studio as instrument” for
construction of every track

22. Electric Miles V1.0 rc1 – Bitches
Brew
(Aug ’69)
• All electric instrumentation
– 1st use of “effects” on trumpet
– Sections of instrumentation
• 2-3 pianos, 3-4 drummers, 3
basses
• Root of all fusion music

23. Electric Miles Release Velocity
Prototype
7/19/67
8/23/69
5/17/68
9/24/68
2/21/69
10 mos. 4.3 mos. 4.8 mos. 6.1 mos.
Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Beta 0.9 Rel. 1.0

24. Electric Miles
Feature Burn-down Chart

25. Minimal Management Structure
• Live quintet experience
• Architecting tunes w J.
Zawinul
• Single rehearsal (of
subset of band of subset
of tracks)
• Plan-execute-evaluate
cycle during recording
“Miles gave the minimum instructions.
He’d let you try & find something that
worked”
D. Holland

26. Provocative Competence
“I would tell musicians to
play different things I was
hearing, as the music
was growing. [BB] was a
development of a creative
process”
– MD III
“[Recording BB] was a
process, a kind of spiral,
a circular situation”
– J. DeJohnette

27. • Bibliography
– Tingen, Paul Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles
Davis Billboard Books, NY 2001
– Davis, M. & Troupe Quincy Miles: The Autobiography Simon &
Shuster, NY 1990
– Suscheck, Charles "Jazz improvisation as a metaphor for
understanding agile development organizational behavior Agile
2008, Toronto, CA
– Barrett, Frank Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and
Organizations: Implications for Organizational Learning
Organization Science, Sept./Oct. 1998, Vol. 9, No. 5
• Discography
Birth Of The Cool (Capitol T 792)
Walkin' (Prestige PRLP 7076)
Kind Of Blue (Columbia CL 1355)
Miles In Berlin (CBS (G) SBPG
62976)
Nefertiti (Columbia CS 9594)
Miles In The Sky (Columbia CS
9628)
Filles De Kilimanjaro (Columbia
CS 9750)
In A Silent Way (Columbia CS
9875)
Bitches Brew (Columbia CS 9996)