Human resources

On collective creativity and valuing people over ideas

My drawing of Lyle Lovett’s big band

Hey y’all,

In Ted Gioia’s How To Listen To Jazz, he writes about what made Duke Ellington such an innovator when it came to writing: “Almost every important piece Ellington ever composed was written to showcase the key skills he heard in his band members. Music almost became a platform for Ellington’s management of human resources.”

As a bandleader, Ellington didn’t just write music and then find the perfect players to play it — he found great players first, and then he wrote music to take advantage of their strengths. (“My band is my instrument even more than the piano,” he said.)

Ellington’s executive skills could be compared to Benny Goodman’s, and the contrast was striking. Goodman was a perfectionist who was rarely pleased with the musicians he hired, and they burnt out on his intensity, many leaving the band after only a short stint. Ellington’s orchestra thrived, in contrast, because the boss didn’t demand perfection, and instead built everything in the ensemble’s repertoire on the demonstrated strengths of his personnel. I suspect that this approach to leadership could work in any environment…

When Gioia worked for a consultancy group he was surprised to find that they recommended Duke Ellington “to clients as a source of managerial wisdom” for the leaders of Fortune 500 CEOs.¹

My drawing of The National

In a 2008 piece, “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity,” co-founder Ed Catmull² wrote about the misconception that good ideas are more valuable than good people. “The initial idea for the movie—what people in the movie business call ‘the high concept’—is merely one step in a long, arduous process that takes four to five years.”

The success of Pixar, he claimed, was due to their emphasis on community, collaboration, and making a safe space for the kind risk-taking that leads to breakthroughs in the creative process.

“If you want to be original, you have to accept the uncertainty, even when it’s uncomfortable, and have the capability to recover when your organization takes a big risk and fails. What’s the key to being able to recover? Talented people!”

But how do you keep talented people happy and creative?