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 Daviss was a mysterious and often inscrutable
figure, Barnes and Contis 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 innovation and experimentation. Interviews with Daviss
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.

Setting

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.
1987 by Barnes and Conti Associates, Inc., Berkeley, California, USA (9/99)

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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 renewed 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. Selfrenewal is therefore a whole system process. Innovation requires a shifting context, in his view; an immersion in different 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 individuals
and as team players. The rewards were not just fame and
fortune, but the excitement of the journey itself.
Strategy

Daviss 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 community 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 Daviss 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 observed 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.

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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 Daviss 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 both
public 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 technologies. 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.
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Systems

The norms of the most successful Davis bands have been

extremely supportive. They were clearly learning organizations. A rich and challenging collaboration is at the root
of such organizations, and Davis wrote in his autobiography 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 Daviss 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 exciting 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, and
unpredictability. 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 bands sound, and the band became essentially a selfmanaging team. Everybodys contribution and commitment was vital to maintain the bands high standards.
Davis himself said the band was so good he had to start
practicing his instrument again!
I dont tell them what to do, I just suggest something
and if they dont like it theyll suggest something else. Say,
we can do this and this. Or theyll know what I mean
and add something better. This is how Davis characterized his communication with his band members. The

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goals are clearly present: innovation, creativity, and musical 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 Daviss short comment emphasized 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, Theyll add something better.
Davis did not impose hard and fast rules on his players.
If he was dissatisfied with a players 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 did
not want. When he made suggestions, he made them in
such a way that the players were left with great operational 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 youthful) expertise on their various instruments and their awareness of new possibilities. But Davis brought his own
expertise into play, in the form of his wisdom and experience, 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 fundamentally empowering, in many different ways. In the
above comment and elsewhere, Davis showed that he was
capable of giving generous credit where it was due, and
that he welcomed contributions from his band. He constantly encouraged players to go beyond their own selfimposed 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
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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. He
commanded enormous respect and even reverence in the
jazz world, and was sometimes portrayed as a rather
sinister, scary person a media persona carefully developed to hide his shyness. Yet at the same time, he could
dote on a young player like a stereotypical, unconditionally loving, mother. His players respected him, but in turn
Davis always seemed very respectful and nurturing towards them.
This latter quality put him in a different category from
other band leaders who are respected but also feared and
even hated because of their authoritarian style and contemptuous 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 Daviss 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 compositions. It is necessary, therefore, to differentiate somewhat
between responsibility and accountability: everyone was
responsible for the bands 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

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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.

Skills

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 ballads, 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 described 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,
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but not all the praise. This reinforced his bands loyalty to
him, and supported and facilitated their creativity by
sheltering them from excessive critical interference.
One final factor of great importance was Daviss genuine
concern for his band members. This is mentioned over
and over again by them. His concern strengthened the
bonds created on their journey of discovery and innovation. He was capable of being both nurturing and assertive, hard and soft with them, but always with the confidence of someone secure enough in himself not to be
threatened by the talent of others.
Daviss 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 todays
organizations that are increasingly dependent on agile and
versatile improvisational teams.

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1987 by Barnes and Conti Associates, Inc., Berkeley, California, USA (9/99)