Celebrate Miles Davis (pt 2)

This week, we’re a couple days ahead of the calendar in celebrating the birthday of a man who was also ahead of his time.

I’m talking about Miles Davis, legendary trumpeter, composer, and band leader.

I saw an interview on TikTok with Herbie Hancock, another music legend who played with Davis.

Here is another leadership gem that I gleaned from that interview and a little additional research:

Even as he pushed his players beyond their limits, Davis assured their safety

As Hancock said about being pushed to crash through barriers on stage, “I told him, what about the audience then?

Davis replied “Don’t worry about it. I got the audience.”

This was in the context of Davis allowing his band to experiment and improvise.

In a corporate context, according to Harvard Business Review, only one in ten experiments succeeds. Therefore, the rest fail, and these failures are seen as wasteful.

But without experiments, you get stagnation.

The experimenter, the scientist, the improviser, they… WE… have to feel safe to experiment.

It’s all about the culture.

And that’s all about the leadership.

What do you think?

More tomorrow.

#milesdavis #herbiehancock #jazz #experiment #leadership