I heard an excellent talk at a recent conference where the speaker compared Jazz to Leadership. Here are the elements of each that he compared:

~ Listen closely
~ Find your own sound
~ Take risks...Improvise
~ Remain fresh...Innovate
~ Find and nurture great talent
~ Collaborate creatively
~ Drive the band
~ Jam
~ Dance with your audience
~ Stand for integrity
~ Affirm diversity
~ Practice

He gave wonderful examples from both jazz and leadership. It actually may have been the best keynote speech I have ever heard.

When Harry Anslinger, our first "Drug Czar," was setting the stage for our current national drug policy some 67 years ago, he told the Congress that marijuana was being smoked by musicians. "... and I don't mean good musicians, I mean jazz musicians."

Question for the keynote speaker:

........ Leaders, too?

You don't by any chance know where to get the text of that speech?

There's a lot of fun reading about the Marihuana Tax Stamp Act of 1937 [url=http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/taxact.htm]here[url].

Those who seek Mr. Anslinger's famous statement about marijuana and jazz musicians can start their search here.

I can't pass up the opportunity to post one of my favorite pieces:
Louis Armstrong's account of being busted for grass in LA back in 1931. I love the language; I love the digressions on proper colonic health; I love the story. I'm not sure if this was originally written or dictated; Armstrong always travelled with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and dictated thousands of tapes during his lifetime.

neveu... thanks for that Satchmo article..

Quote "...Armstrong always travelled with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and dictated thousands of tapes during his lifetime..."

Not in 1931 he didn't! The practical tape recoder wasn't invented then. The first wire recorders did exist but were not portable.

Maybe he used a wax-cylinder dictating machine.

Towards the foot of the page is the paragraph:

quote:

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Louis was caught with some stuff and sentenced in March 1931. He never recounted the story of this affair until shortly before his death in 1971, when he agreed to 'tell it like it wuz'. This was that story.

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Wow, neveu, that was great. I lost track of this thread along the way...funny how threads can change!

BTW, here is the Web site of John Hasse, the person who spoke to us. He himself is a musician and played some wonderful jazz pieces, periodically, on a grand piano that was on stage. At other opportune points he played clips from many famous jazz players to make his points.

To Hasse's principles of management as jazz I would add:
- The reward for learning all the rules is permission to break them.