The Gary Burton Trio

It sounds right: The Jack Welches, Andrew Groves, and Bill Gates are the Toscanninis, Bernsteins, and Stokowskis of the Fortune 1000. The young Netscape is like a hep jazz band turning university software riffs into Internet hits.

After that, the metaphor took off. Large companies all need to be on the same page, following the same musical score, under the baton of a strong, focused leader. Teams need to play together like a jazz combo, listening to each other, improvising in free-form expression. Business people in companies of any size can learn the art of creativity and innovation by opening up like a jazz musician: letting the feeling flow, catching the spirit of play, finding the swing in work.

Of course, you can't manage by metaphor alone. When you actually talk to someone who knows both jazz and management, it turns out there really is a lot to bring to the world of business from the world of music. It also turns out that most of what really applies is the exact opposite of the conventional wisdom.

Fast Company found out by talking with jazz vibraphonist and educator Gary Burton. Winner of "Down Beat" magazine's "Jazzman of the Year" award, a member of the Percussion Hall of Fame, and Dean of Curriculum of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Burton is known worldwide as a musical innovator and master improviser. In a career that has spanned three decades, he's recorded with jazz legends like Stan Getz, George Shearing, and Quincy Jones, pop and rock stars like k. d. Lang and Eric Clapton, and lead the Burton Quartet. He's also given talks and demonstrations on the art of improvisation to business and technology audiences in the United States and doctors and educators in Japan.

Here's Gary Burton answering the age-old question, "What makes good jazz?" (The answer isn't, "If you have to ask.... ")

Strong Leaders Want Strong Sidemen

Conventional wisdom says that jazz combos are free and spontaneous, and symphony orchestras are dominated by autocratic conductor/CEOs. Do those images correspond to reality?

Unless you've been inside a jazz combo or an orchestra you can't know how they really work. For example, there's a very strong leader in the jazz group. For all the talk of openness and spontaneity, a jazz group can't adopt a communistic attitude: "We're all equals here. " There's a need for vision and concept, and only one person can effectively establish and define a vision. Once you have this vision, your job as leader is to bring out the best in the people who're working with you. I want my piano player to have as much input as I can stand -- as long as it doesn't bump into the vision. I need to communicate to him what my vision is, so the stuff he contributes fits it.

Just how collaborative are jazz combos really?

If it's my group my judgment is ultimate. I'll talk with my musicians about how I see the song. Each song is like a little play that we've been given. Usually it's about 30 seconds of information -- a chord sequence, a tempo, a mood, and a concept. We're going to take that and spin it into a story for the next 8 or 9 minutes.

I'll say to the group, "Here's the script. It's set in Argentina, and it's got a melancholy feel to it, and this is what I see happening. " I describe this to the group in two ways: I play it for them myself and say, "I hear it at this tempo, and I hear a crescendo in this section, and then it tapers off in this section. " So I'm showing them how I feel the tune should be played, and I'm also describing it in words as much as possible.

Within the context of that vision, individual players start to contribute their ideas. Occasionally, I have to say, "What you're doing there doesn't really work. Could you try something else?" Everybody makes suggestions, we discuss them, eventually we work it out. If we have a standoff, the leader makes the decision and everyone goes along with it.

The jazz leader I most admired was Miles Davis. That may come as a surprise, because he had a reputation as an eccentric. The way he looked was absolutely intimidating, and he was mesmerizing to watch and hear in action. But he was also the most creative and daring musician. The best jazz musicians wanted to play with Miles because they knew that he could get them to go places musically that otherwise they wouldn't be able to go. He would sign up the biggest stars to play with him, encourage them to do their best work, and be strong enough himself to bring them all together and meld them into a cohesive group. As demanding and intimidating as he was, it was worth it.

That's more like what you hear about conductors of symphony orchestras. Is a conductor more like a CEO who defines a vision and then makes sure everybody executes it appropriately?