Jazz-Style Management: What Music Can Teach Us About Leadership

Create the framework and let the team improvise.

Managing people is hard. Even CEOs who are amazing leaders are not always good managers. Entrepreneurs start a company with a passion for product, code or design, and if they’re successful, they end up managing others.

Management skills are intangible and subjective. Most of us aren’t trained in any of them, but getting anything done always comes down to good management.

I believe most people over manage, but companies see more success when managers act as arbitrators and facilitators– not dictators. Employees have the drive to perform well; all they need is direction and reinforcement.

Therefore, managing any group of people should be less like a polished concerto and more like improvisational jazz, where the music is guided, but the players are free to shine.

“Real-world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined and the context is always changing. A wise person is like a jazz musician — using the notes on the page, but dancing around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situation and the people at hand.” — Barry Schwartz from a 2009 TED

The magic of jazz

Jazz music is pretty magical. It’s spontaneous and emotional. Jazz acts as a framework to produce something larger than itself. There’s real beauty in its moving parts, both practiced and improvised, that come together to create effortless, meaningful moments.

When musicians improvise, a wrong note is only a mistake if the next note doesn’t adapt to it. With skillful players, there aren’t any mistakes. Instead, a wrong note prompts a scale change; the drummer drops into half time; the piano senses the opening and takes control for a while. No one needs specific permission, yet everyone does what needs to be done. The song gets better through adaptation.

So how does jazz enable spontaneous problem solving, and how does that translate to company management?

Jazz-style management

In a company, individuals and teams collaborate together in real time, combining both practiced and improvised elements in hopes of creating something big and beautiful. Different backgrounds, opinions, skill sets, and skill levels culminate into a single company output– whether that’s the product itself or a customer service interaction. A manager’s job is to guide all the moving parts.

By taking a cue from jazz and creating the frameworks and systems that allow improvisation, we create an environment where employees have the power to do good work.

I’m lucky enough to manage a team of super talented, caring and reliable people at Brolik, a digital agency I cofounded 12 years ago. What works for us is something I think of as jazz-style management. It’s about creating the framework and then trusting the team.

Frameworks

Jazz musicians can play with any combination of people, instruments and styles. They can do this because the basic frameworks– old jazz standards or specific musical scales– are pre-established and built on shared knowledge.

As managers, our job is to create the framework and put systems in place that allow team members to perform. Company values are the first step towards a framework, and a manager’s personal values are a close second. Stories of wins and losses, changing business goals over time, opinions on current trends, and even moonshot ideas that may not happen contribute to the framework. When team members know what the company values, its stance on the market, and where it’s heading, they make company decisions accordingly.

Systems

Having good systems and the proper tools to facilitate growth is equally as important as the philosophical frameworks that allow growth. Systems are tangible manifestations of frameworks. Systems help people do their jobs and empower them, and like frameworks, they should promote good work, not limit team members.

Systems work best when they’re created by the people using them. Managers need to ask questions and challenge the reasoning behind system decisions, but we should never dictate the systems to our teams. Prohibitive or overly scrutinized systems will always stifle growth.