Lessons from a 78 year-old Leader & Innovator – happy birthday Bob Dylan!

(ici pour la version francaise)

Dylan is a singer and poet who has defied categorization, won the Nobel Prize and has stuck to his own vision. His long career has been characterized by drive, innovation and success (with esoteric diversions) yet underpinned by a knowledge of where he was coming from and what he wanted to achieve. What can leaders and innovators learn from this visionary on his birthday?

Know where you are coming from to move forward…

Dylan’s music draws upon perennial problems and challenges faced by humankind – love, family, friends, peace, safety, etc. By recognizing these basic drivers we can identify the soul, a purpose and a role of his music – this sense of purpose is essential for modern managers and organisations.

He also recognizes what we can learn from earlier innovators and leaders. Dylan’s success undoubtedly comes from an incredible talent as a wordsmith, combined with his music writing skills, but also knowing his craft, his origins and himself. His emergence in the 1960s drew upon American folk music history and legends such as Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and Robert Johnson. This foundation is evident in his renditions of folk classics such as ‘House of the Rising Sun’ on his first very album -- a version which also captured an emotion and depth in the lyrics not replicated since, even in iconic covers by other artists such as The Animals.

 Courage & Vision…

Innovation is not for the faint of heart. There are pressures in organisations and society to maintain the status quo, an easiness of the familiar is powerful. Sometimes the public, organisations or employees do not know what they need or recognize the need for change. Dylan has never been afraid to change, make a break with the past and what has worked before.

His first breakthrough albums were characterized by a solo artist with an acoustic guitar and harmonica. Then his fifth studio album, “Bringing It All Back Home” (1965) – with one acoustic side and one electric side (it was vinyl!) -- embraced the creative opportunities of electric. At the time few fans agreed but this change subsequently led classic albums such as “Highway 61 Revisited” later the same year.

Did we know we were missing the now indispensable smart phone before it came along? When Dylan came on stage with an electric guitar for the second part of his concert at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966 his audience was openly hostile but without that moment we may never have had one of the greatest rock songs ever, “All Along the Watchtower” (1967).

 Incremental Innovations or ruptures…

Innovation is not only about major leaps forward. Incremental improvements are at the heart of the success of Kaizan manufacturing or Team Sky in cycling. Dylan has been on a “Never Ending Tour” since 1988 yet anyone attending a concert will know that the songs rarely sound like the album versions they know and love. Dylan and his band insist on reworking, revising and reshaping old songs often far from their original formulation.

Even within a single song he has the capacity to portray normal events in subtle, surprising ways. The song “Tangled up in Blue” (1977) -- a love affair told in the past, present and future tenses -- mixes the pain and joy of love spanning years. Critics have compared this song to a cubist painting where you are unsure what is up, down, left or right but you know that you are absorbed in a passionate story and feel the emotions of the artist.

 Reworking the Established Model…

Innovation also requires seeing the problem from new angles or looking at things through a fresh pair of eyes. Much of Dylan’s art has taken a new approach to what is expected from a rock song. He has not shied away from tackling tough subjects like class divisions, racism, religion, globalization, and social exclusion as well as more mainstream themes – a great example being the classic song “Hurricane” (1976) about the perversion of justice that led to the imprisonment of Rubin Hurricane Carter.

In 2015 Dylan’s interpretations of Sinatra songs in “Shadows in the Night” captured a range of emotion and depth to his music that critics observed had not been seen before. To paraphrase Dylan’s words, he lifted them into the light after they had been buried by years of cover versions. 

 The Right to Fail and Renew.

Even great innovators have times when they are not firing on all cylinders, the trick is not to give up and go back to basics. Steve Jobs revival of Apple drew upon the spirit of the early Macintosh. Similarly Dylan has time and again demonstrated a capacity to reinvent himself drawing upon the past and timeless ideas of great poets and musicians.

An apparent loss of direction for Dylan in the 1980s was followed by a resurgence of his creativity when he drew again on his early folk American origins and produced his first entirely acoustic album for almost thirty years that led to two Grammy Award-winning albums: “World Gone Wrong” (1993) and the celebrated “Time Out of Mind” (1997). 

 Add a bit of talent and luck…

We also have to accept that some performances and innovations are simply beyond the capacity of all but a few. There is a magical mix of talent, inspiration and perhaps luck that is not bestowed upon everyone. These works are also timeless and, even when the original design has been bypassed by subsequent developments, great creations stand the test of time: a benchmark against which others are judged. Take the Mini Cooper (1961), Jonathan Ive’s iPod (2001) or Philippe Starck’s Louis Ghost Chair (2002).

One of Dylan’s genius contribution may be the 1962 “Blowin in The Wind”, a song that captures the existential questions that humankind will always face and the ephemeral answers life offers – the answers are either obvious or they are in front of us, in the wind, yet impossible to grasp.

At 78 Dylan still has an unstoppable drive to continuing doing his thing, touring and not swayed by the other people’s rules. One thing is for sure, he will go on driving his art forward and following his own particular vision. An inspiration for leaders, mangers and dreamers everywhere.