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Leading Entrepreneurial Teams: Insights from Jazz
Professor Deniz Ucbasaran, Nottingham University
Professor Andy Lockett, Nottingham University
Professor Michael Humphreys, Nottingham University
Objectives: We are seeing a growing body of literature entrepreneurial teams. Yet, despite being perhaps the most critical factor in the success of any team (Zaccaro et al., 2001), we have seen very limited empirical examination into the leadership of these teams. We seek to address this gap by examining the practices of jazz leaders and their groups. Jazz musicians have been described as: "diverse specialists living in a chaotic turbulent environment; making fast, irreversible decisions; highly interdependent on one another to interpret equivocal information; dedicated to innovations and the creation of novelty" (Barrett, 1998: 605). Following the tradition of examining the relationship between jazz and management, we propose that an empirical examination of the practices of jazz groups and their leaders may reveal valuable theoretical and practical insights into how best to lead entrepreneurial teams in dynamic environments.
Approach: Our research design is an inductive study based on multiple case studies. We adopt a novel approach by utilizing social networking sites to gain access to contemporary jazz musicians. Based on our interviews with twenty musicians, we selected and constructed three in-depth case studies on exemplar jazz group leaders(Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Art Blakey) using both in-depth archival and field data.
Results: We find that all three leaders sought to maximize diversity as a means of fuelling creativity. A natural consequence of this, however, was dysfunctional conflict. While the leaders acknowledged that conflict was the price to be paid for having access to a diverse collection of talented musicians and “just got on with it”, they also took steps to provide a degree of task coordination. These included providing a vision or framework within which musicians could operate; trying to educate musicians about jazz and how to operate in a group; giving musicians ample opportunity to express their individuality; and sharing leadership in a variety of ways.In addition to team formation and team coordination activities, we identified a third area where leadership had a significant role; managing team turnover. Team member departures are often an inevitable consequence of having highly diverse teams with strong personalities and individuals wanting to become leaders themselves. The departure of team members is, however, not only accepted by the leaders in our study but in many cases is embraced as it is seen as an opportunity to inject new knowledge into the team by introducing new team members. We present alternative models of leadership and their consequences.
Implications: We provide theoretical insights into the micro-processes of leading teams for creativity and innovation. We contribute to academic debates on diversity, conflict, coordination, leadership and team turnover. For practice, we highlight the consequences of particular leadership styles. For example, by providing more direction to team members, creativity and innovation may be compromised.
Value: We contribute to knowledge and theory on (creative) teams in dynamic environments and highlight practical lessons for entrepreneurial leaders and their teams.
Key Words: Entrepreneurial teams; leadership; jazz groups
2010, London
