Every great performance starts with listening.
When I was sixteen years old I stood behind the stage doors of Carnegie Hall holding my violin. In about ten seconds I would walk on stage, a concertmaster’s privilege, bow, and tune the orchestra. This moment was the culmination of years of practice and dedication and I was terrified. The doors opened. I did it anyway.
As a violinist I played solos, but was never a soloist. I have always been an orchestral musician. As a soloist, your job is to dazzle, stand out, be center stage. But as an orchestral musician –that is, a member of the orchestra – your job is to listen, adapt, respond. As a leader, I am a concertmaster. I am not the person playing center stage nor the one waving a baton that everyone watches. I am the one on the ground who leads by doing. The hardest worker, the most studied, the least afraid of practice. I inspire those around me to strive for something more by constantly striving for more myself.
I know that creating one cohesive sound actually requires individual players to step up and step back when necessary – to make room for one another when it’s time to be heard. To feel together, to question and sense-make together. To simultaneously embody creative freedom while adhering to a script and vision together. I know that moments of harmony and discord are necessary for beauty. And – despite knowing all of this – I also know that I know very little, and that when the time for the performance comes something new and unexpected might happen that we didn’t anticipate that makes us change, and my isn’t that exciting!
Leading strategic innovation within an organization requires the same orchestral dynamics.
Each collaborator must play their part while listening to others. My role as concertmaster is to help diverse people and functions create one cohesive symphony, translating research into learning that scales and lasts.
This is my vision for innovation leadership. I believe that an innovative, agile, learner-focused, and future-facing team requires a different kind of leadership, one that invites questioning and conflict and empowers people to sense-make together. It requires inspiring my teammates to do the hard work of sitting in ambiguity, testing ideas, developing multiple iterations, failing, and learning from that failure to iterate again. It requires believing that we will succeed, even when we don’t know what that success looks like yet. Like playing in an orchestra, it requires listening and constant adaptation.
Just as a concertmaster helps individual musicians become something greater together, I design learning experiences and build systems that help diverse teams create what no individual could achieve alone. The goal is never one brilliant prototype; it is sustainable capacity that outlasts any single project or engagement.
So let’s make music together.
