Mike Bell's Leadership Wisdom

Where business meets jazz

“Born in a different time, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and Miles Davis might have been known as the most successful corporate leaders in America instead of the most well-known jazz musicians. Why? Because of the incredible overlap between the worlds of jazz and business. The elements that make a jazz group phenomenal are similar to those that make companies great.” from CLO magazine

We think jazz is a great metaphor for jazz also - see jazzLEADERSHIP for information about our innovative leadership learning community.

16 Leadership Lessons from the Jazz Greats

Make It Groovy

JAZZ IMPROV
“You can play all the "right" notes and not sound good. Or, you can play "wrong" notes and sound great. It isn't about the notes. It is about making whatever notes you play groovy. What makes your playing groovy. I can't tell you. You have to find it for yourself because it is whatever works for you. To quote a popular cliche, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it". Experiment till you find your grooviness.“

LEADERSHIP
We all respond well to sincerity and to passion. We have amazingly powerful ‘sincerity monitors’. You can say all the right words but people know if you are being sincere or not. If you are sincere and passionate about what you are saying, it does not matter if you are ‘word perfect’. Take the risk of
making mistakes. Let people see you are human.

“As it enters the ear, does it come in like broken glass, or does it come in like honey?”
Eddie Condon

From my new FREE e-book - get it here

The Creative Edge

Here’s another great piece linking, in its way, jazz, improvisation, creativity and leadership - of the self and others.

“Truly creative people are always pushing the edge. If you see very talented musicians lost in spontaneous improvisation, they’ll often tell you that in that state something comes over them. There’s a certain place they describe out of which all authentic creativity springs—a mysterious point between the present and future, where a deeper current is flowing. This place is alive with the thrill of the unknown, full of risk and insecurity. It’s the very point where something comes from nothing.

“In order to create something new, a risk has to be taken, a leap beyond the known. And the thrill of that creative leap is a very impersonal human experience. Great artists, writers, musicians, scientists, engineers, athletes and many others all experience this same thrill. We find that we feel most alive, most liberated, when we’re expressing our own creativity, pushing the edge in the right way for the right reasons. This potential for creativity seems to be an inherent part of the human capacity. The creative process is an evolutionary process. When you experience the creative impulse awakening in your self, it’s no different than the original impulse that became the whole universe. It’s nothing less that the Big Bang itself, work ing in you and through you. That’s why it is always so thrilling.

Working as a Jazz Combo

Another thought provoking piece by John Renesch. Find out more at his website www.Renesch.com

Working as a Jazz Combo: Developing Spiritual Virtuosity in Organizations
by John Renesch
2003 © John Renesch

Organizations have traditionally been built around a military model with top-down hierarchies and command-and-control cultures. While there has been much to-do about "learning organizations" and flatter structures for corporations this past decade or two, the old pyramid-type organization model is still pretty much the norm - a directive approach.

In my own work of advocating "conscious leadership" where everyone on the team or in the organization steps up to lead when they see something that requires doing, I find the "listening" for what I'm proposing to be steeped in the traditional hierarchical-military structure. When one is immersed in the traditional system, one usually finds it impossible to hear something that goes against "the party line;" one usually only hears what supports or enables the existing system, ....