I was pretty excited to see Beck taking on a pretty interesting project. Beck’s basically collaborating with different artists to cover songs he loves, and then he’s giving it away on his website. This is one of those little moments where you go, ‘yeah, ok, so…” and if you let it sink in a little, you see the genius.

Putting out an album is a huge ordeal. There’s lots of investments of time, money, and sanity. Releasing an album lets you connect with your fans and make some money touring. But how could Beck stay relevant when he doesn’t have a new album out? And in today’s market, months between albums can feel like years. People are bombarded with a million times more content than before, it’s easy to fade into the noise. By no fault of your own, time could passes and you just become irrelevant. I’d even argue the lower you are on the celebrity musician chain the more dire this situation is. A flash in the pan burns brighter and quicker than ever before.

So what’s Beck’s way around the problem? Stop playing everyone else’s game. Invite some people over you’d like to work with, cover old songs in one take, and post them to your site. Now, with just a little coordination you have artist exposure, fresh content for your fans, collaboration and inspiration for yourself, and you can elevate older artists you enjoy and share them with the world. I don’t think you’d get to the place Beck seems to have found if you didn’t care more about the craft than anything else.

I like that concept because it reminds me how managers use the constraints they have to effect change. They look for underlying meaning and momentum in the work and then expose it to make things happen. The best manager, just like the best designer, becomes invisible as the work gets better. In my view, they both should be very ego-less jobs. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. Oddly, When I think about great managers, I usually think about Charles Mingus.

Mingus was a brilliant jazz musician, but at heart he was a manager. Not quite a people manager (he was know to be a difficult person), rather he was a manager because he had a vision for his music. He knew what his collaborators could offer and he coaxed the group into creating amazing things.

Mingus was different from most of his contemporaries, he was a band leaders first and a soloist second. The likes of Miles Davis and John Coletrane loom large in jazz history for they’re amazing instrumental abilities. Mingus made his mark by getting everyone to make music together. You’ll notice the difference if you listen. Miles Davis will have a backing band with pieces that set the stage for elaborate solos. Contrastingly, many times Mingus orchestrated everything to happen at once, this way he could create a mood and make a statement. That is the mark of an amazing manager. (And that’s no slight to Miles.)

Mingus could slowly bring together a mood, whip it into a frenzy, then help it find it’s place again as he moved the listener through many emotions…

Or he could playfully lumber along creating infectious melodies…

Mingus also wasn’t above setting collaborators up to trade phrases like good friends catching up over a bottle of wine.

Whatever he did, he brought others talent to bear. That’s the thing, he was focused on the entire experience – just like a good designer, just like a good manager.

Mingus wasn’t the only great orchestrator, but few had his range. He’s often compared to Duke Ellington. Ellington usually played pretty safe with his arrangements, Mingus usually goes further afield (which is harder to do with a group). The important thing was that the music was never one soloist going it alone. He not only had a vision of where he should go, he knew how to make space for four or five others along the way. He made them part of the experience and that made the experience better.

For me, that’s inspiring. That is how it should be done.