Tag: jazz

Keep it on the one: From funk to management

I sometimes close my newsletters with the expression: “keep it on the one.”

Some of you have asked what it means. Others have asked how a phrase rooted in music applies to the craft of management.

So here’s a short reflection on both.

The musical foundation

“The one” refers to the first beat of a 4/4 time signature. Think of it simply as the one, two, three, four count that underlies much of Western music. James Brown would tell his band to “hit it on the one,” emphasizing that first beat hard, anchoring the groove so everything else could lock in around it.

What I grew up with was mostly jazz, where the groove works a little differently. The bass lays down the one and the three; my guitar came in on the two and the four. That gave us a pulse—boom, clap, boom, clap—a conversation between instruments. Once that back-and-forth is in place, everything else can layer in. The horn section, the keys, the percussion, each doing their own thing, but all staying grounded.

It’s not uncommon in a tune to have the bass lay out the foundation on the one and three for a while before the rest of the rhythm comes in.

You can drift in and out of solos, experiment with voicings, stretch the phrasing. But if you ever get lost, you just listen for the one.

That’s where you rejoin the groove.

The management connection

The same holds true in management.

Just as musicians need a shared pulse to stay in the pocket, teams need a clear, dependable reference point, something that centers them.

In practice, keeping it on the one means establishing and sustaining the fundamental rhythms that hold a team together. The values you live by. The priorities you return to. The cadences you maintain. What that looks like will differ from one team to the next.

When projects get complex or improvisation runs wild, or when a new player joins the ensemble, it’s those fundamentals that help everyone find their way back into sync.

It’s not about rigid structure. It’s about shared rhythm.

It’s what allows people to play differently without falling apart.

That’s why I say “keep it on the one.”

It’s a reminder, for myself and for you, to stay grounded. To stay in time with what matters. To keep the rhythm that makes both structure and creativity possible.

Because great performance, whether in music or management, is never just about the solo. It’s about staying connected to the groove we build together.

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Keep it steady. Keep it human. Keep it on the one.

 

 

Introducing: Behind the Scenes

I spend a fair amount of time rereading what I’ve written—to understand how my thinking holds together and where it might be heading next. How do ideas I explored months ago connect to what I’m circling now? What threads have I been following without realizing it? Where did a particular angle actually come from?

It’s a way of making sense of my own thinking. But I’ve started to wonder if others might find that process interesting, too.

So I’m starting a monthly-ish Behind the Scenes series where I share some of that reflection. The first one looks at how my recent essay, What You Lose When You Lead, fits within the larger conversation I’ve been building about management and leadership. How ideas about craft, exemplarity, and human motivation have been circling each other in my work, converging around one of the most misunderstood transitions in professional life.

The weekly newsletter stays just as it is: free and open to everyone. This is simply the thinking I’d be doing anyway, made available for the cost of a coffee if you’re curious to come along. Most Behind the Scenes entries will be for paid subscribers, though I’ll share one with everyone from time to time when it feels right.

If that’s not your thing, no worries. Nothing changes. The main conversation continues every week, just as it always has.

I’ll send the first one tomorrow.

The Craft of Management: Beyond Metrics and Methods

In an age of data and algorithms, we face a surprising truth: the fundamental act of managing people remains more craft than science. Consider a scene that plays out in organizations daily: A manager notices subtle shifts in team dynamics during a meeting, reads growing tension in body language and tone, and must decide—in the moment—whether to address it directly, have private conversations later, or let the team work it out. No algorithm can make this decision. No dashboard can tell you the right moment to intervene.

This reality challenges our contemporary desire to reduce management to metrics and best practices. While tools and frameworks multiply, the essential challenge remains unchanged: understanding people and helping them collaborate effectively. It’s not that data and methods don’t matter—they do—but they serve the craft rather than define it.

The Nature of Craft Management

At its core, craft involves working with materials that have their own nature—wood, metal, clay, or in management’s case, human nature. The craftsperson must understand this nature deeply, work with it rather than against it, and respond to how it presents itself in each unique situation.

Think of jazz musicians; they know music theory, understand harmony and rhythm, but what creates excellence isn’t their theoretical knowledge—it’s their ability to listen, respond, and work together in real time. Theory provides structure, but the music happens in the moment, in the interplay between musicians.

So too with management. Frameworks and theories provide valuable structure, but effective management happens in the spaces between—in reading situations, sensing moments, and responding to what emerges. Like jazz, it requires both deep knowledge and the ability to act based on dynamic circumstances.

Debra Hurd

The Journey from Novice to Master

The path to management mastery follows patterns familiar to all crafts. It begins with apprenticeship—learning through observation, starting with basic techniques, and making mistakes in a supported environment. The novice manager seeks certainty, clear guidelines, and “best practices.”

The first crucial transition comes when we realize that rules alone aren’t enough. This often emerges as a crisis—when our carefully learned approaches fall short in a complex situation. Some retreat from this challenge, clinging more tightly to formulas. But those who grow learn to embrace the uncertainty and understand that management happens in the gaps between the rules.

With experience comes pattern recognition—not just seeing situations clearly, but understanding their dynamics. The developing manager learns to sense what’s brewing beneath the surface of interactions and to feel the currents of organizational life.

Finding Your Voice

The ultimate paradox of management craft is that mastery leads not to standardization but to individuation. Just as Miles Davis didn’t sound like John Coltrane, effective managers develop distinct voices while working within the same fundamental principles. Your effectiveness comes not from imitating others but from finding your own way of embodying the craft.

This journey often begins with imitation—learning from mentors and trying approaches we’ve seen work for others. But true development means moving beyond imitation. An introvert won’t manage like an extrovert and a natural analyst won’t lead like an intuitive. The key is not to fight these differences but to work with them, just as we work with human nature itself.

The Living Practice

Management craft survives and evolves through practice and transmission. While books and theories have their place, the deepest learning happens through direct experience and reflection. Modern organizations often overlook this essential truth in favor of standardized training programs. But true craft learning requires something more organic: the kind of apprenticeship where a developing manager can observe masters at work, seeing not just what they do but how they think, how they read situations, and how they make decisions in real time.

Like a master craftsperson’s tools, frameworks and models amplify capability but don’t create it. The art lies in knowing when and how to use them—and when to set them aside entirely.

I’ll be writing more about the craft of management in the coming weeks.

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Go HERE for more Essays.

A lesson from jazz legend Miles Davis

Loose improvisation is integral to jazz, but we all know Miles Davis as a very exacting character. He could be mean, demanding, abrasive, cranky, hypercritical, and we might conclude, given these personal qualities, and the consistent excellence of his playing, that he was a perfectionist who couldn’t tolerate screw ups. [Herbie] Hancock gives us a very different impression, telling the tale of a “hot night” in Stuttgart, when the music was “tight, it was powerful, it was innovative, and fun.”

Making what anyone would reasonably call a mistake in the middle of one of Davis’ solos—hitting a noticeably wrong chord—Hancock reacted as most of us would, with dismay. “Miles paused for a second,” he says, “and then he played some notes that made my chord right… Miles was able to turn something that was wrong into something that was right.” Still, Hancock was so upset, he couldn’t play for about a minute, paralyzed by his own ideas about “right” and “wrong” notes.

[Says Hancock:] What I realize now is that Miles didn’t hear it as a mistake. He heard it as something that happened. As an event. And so that was part of the reality of what was happening at that moment. And he dealt with it…. Since he didn’t hear it as a mistake, he thought it was his responsibility to find something that fit.

Hancock drew a musical lesson from the moment, yes, and he also drew a larger life lesson about growth, which requires, he says, “a mind that’s open enough… to be able to experience situations as they are and turn them into medicine… take whatever situation you have and make something constructive happen with it.”

(…)

What matters, Davis is quoted as saying, is how we respond to what’s happening around us: “When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” Or, as he put it more simply and non-dualistically, “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”

Source: Open Culture