A Lesson in Cool:
What Miles Davis Taught Us About Success

Do you want to learn how to make your company successful? Here is Matt Rodela’s contribution to the Success Factors blog series.

Photo Courtesy of Peter

Miles Davis is a legend. Rising from the relative obscurity of the suburbs of Illinois he grew quickly to become one of the most influential, and controversial, musicians. With over 100 recordings, Miles was a monster musician. No denying that he was a virtuoso on his instrument, but even more impressive is that he was able to take this remarkable playing and parlay it into a nearly 50 year career. During his career Davis developed new sounds and styles of music, like cool jazz, hard bop, jazz-funk, and fusion, all of which made possible much of the music heard today (R&B, Soul, Smooth Jazz).

There is a lot that this genius of hip can teach us about being successful. Here’s a rundown of how the techniques Davis used to stay ahead of the curve are ones that you can apply to help you jump all of today’s hurdles with a liberal dose of cool.

Reinvention

What Miles Did: Miles Davis was able to stay relevant and on top of his genre by dramatically changing his style and approach every few years. He was never satisfied with where he was at any given moment. He pushed the envelope with a creative fearlessness that often saw him jumping from group to group and leaving one record label to sign on with another. The fact that Davis was able to stay fresh is what helped him define music on his own terms and change the musical landscape for decades to come.

How You Can Do It Too: Reinvention works well in business, as well as all other facets of life. As soon as you become comfortable with where you are now, you loose your competitive edge. Always look for new ways to push the envelope and strive to be in a different place now than you were a few years ago. If you’re in danger of falling off of people’s radar, change your game and make a comeback. Miles Davis understood this and proves that there are really only two choices in life: progress and grow or stay where you are and fade away.

Less is more

What Miles Did: Much of Miles’ signature sound came from the spaces in between the notes he played. Davis was known for leaving huge gaps in between the musical phrases he would play during solos. This came during a time when most other jazz musicians were trying to cram as many notes as possible into as short a time as possible. What this technique did was give each note he played more weight, value, and impact. It also set him apart from the other entertainers of his time.

How You Can Do It Too: The ideas of simplicity and space are a key factors to living a successful life. Cutting out distractions and focusing on what’s important will give your ideas and actions room to breath. By focusing and simplifying, at a time when everyone else is overworked and overstressed, you’re giving yourself a critical competitive advantage.

Trend Setting

What Miles Did: Davis started his career by imitating and following his mentors in jazz and bebop. Soon, however, he realized that he could only get so far by following in others’ footsteps and started blazing his own trail. Introducing the world to hard bop, modal jazz, and fusion, Miles Davis made a name for himself and set trends in popular music that lasted decades.

How You Can Do It Too: To be a trend setter means being bold and taking risks. Take the time to learn from those who have been successful before you and then don’t be afraid to travel off the beaten path to forge your own legacy. Miles shows us the best way to accomplish this is to be confident in your abilities and true to yourself.

Collaboration and Mentoring

What Miles Did: Arguably Davis’ most important contribution to the jazz community was his ability to bring talented musicians together and push them to do incredible things. From his early works with Charlie Parker and John Coltrane to his later recordings with the likes of Herbie Hancock and John Scofield, Miles Davis made sure to surround himself with impressive musicians. In fact, there’s hardly a musician that came of age between the 50’s and 90’s that Miles Davis did not influence in some way. The musicians that were lucky enough to be picked to join him came away with a new understanding of music and often carried the Miles Davis sound with them throughout their career. Even artists like Jimi Hendrix and James Brown site Miles as a direct influence on their music.

How You Can Do It Too: Success is never achieved alone. Even someone as individualistic as Miles Davis understood this. To be great, you need to have the ability to choose and work with great people. Once you have great people working for you, make sure you instill within them the traits that you’ve learned over the years. That way, you’ll create a small army of people who will share your vision and spread your legacy. That is how Miles Davis made a name for himself, and how you can too.

You don’t have to be a musical virtuoso to make your own mark on the world. Instead, by applying some of the tricks used by the king of cool, you can rise to the top, separate yourself from the competition, and make a name for yourself.

You can follow my attempts to start a small part-time computer consulting business and turn it into a full time success on my blog, Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy.  I’m also trying to make my own mark on the musical world.  Keep up with me as I begin recording my first full-length CD at MattRodela.com and twitter.com/mattrodela.

Tagged as: business, Charlie Parker, Herbie Hancock, Jazz, John Coltrane, John Scofield, Miles Davis, success, Success Factors