By Ben Hughes
This article explores what business leaders can learn from musicians, highlighting resilience, improvisation, purpose-driven work, and deep listening. Drawing parallels between the stage and the boardroom, it shows how musicians’ adaptability, creativity, and connection-building offer a powerful model for modern leadership, organisational culture, and navigating uncertainty with agility and authenticity.
Welcome to the music business: the toughest industry on earth. It is a machine that devours dreams and demands resilience. Any business leader understands a daily grind, but the climb within music is unlike any other. The myth suggests only the ultra-famous have made it, but the truth is far broader: countless people in creative, technical, and management roles within the music business have built and sustained thriving careers behind the spotlight.
What strikes me most as an entrepreneur and musician is how the music business mirrors countless other industries yet with one defining difference. It has its own pressures, products, timelines, and workflows to master and overcome, but most people in it, especially artists, are willing to delay reward for the sake of long-term purpose. They will work for years on uncertain returns because the art itself is worth it.
Imagine telling your employees: Do this job, and you may or may not get paid in ten years. No one would agree, yet that is the reality for most artists. They commit to the long game. The question is why are they willing to do this, how are they capable of it, and what can companies learn from that mindset?
The traditional model of punishment and reward is familiar, but musicians are not driven by simple incentives. In a time of financial insecurity, promising a distant payoff is no longer ethical or effective for business owners. To inspire genuine commitment, companies must weave motivation and purpose into the fabric of their culture.
Any serious musician is a master of hustling, finding opportunities, negotiating pay, creating products, and building audiences. If workers in other fields displayed the same energy, many would become millionaires. But money is rarely the main goal for artists: art is! Hustling is simply how musicians keep their art alive.
That hustle involves building relationships, honing craft, mastering technology and social media, assembling teams, pitching, budgeting, and performing often all in the same week. Few professions require juggling so many moving parts.
I live this every day through my work as the artist Hughzy and as director of CherryUp Projects. Navigating the music business demands constant adaptation, resourcefulness, and communication. Every artist I manage has taught me that success lies in balancing instinct with structure. While boardrooms rely on systems and strategy, musicians rely on rhythm and improvisation. Those who can blend both keep creativity, connection, and courage alive in a world that evolves faster than any plan.
Modern musicians, whether on stage, in studios, or across digital platforms, are masters of resilience, communication, and reinvention, skills today’s leaders need most. No performance ever goes exactly to plan. A string snaps, a sound fails, an audience shifts mood. Musicians do not stop; they adapt. Improvisation is not mere flair; it is a disciplined skill built on listening and response.
In contrast, the corporate world often clings to fixed strategies and five-year plans. Structure has its place, but rigidity can be fatal in uncertain markets. A musician’s mindset offers an alternative: planning matters, but so does flow, the ability to move lightly and adapt in real time.
Take jazz musicians. They perform within frameworks yet move freely within them. The best leaders do the same, setting clear parameters while allowing flexibility. Meetings that encourage improvisation, where ideas evolve dynamically, often spark innovation that spreadsheets cannot.
Musicians spend years learning to listen to tone, timing, and tension. Great players know when to lead, when to support, and when silence carries more power than words. Through my own projects, I see how success always depends on relationships, how you listen, respond, and show up. A career in music is ultimately a career in human connection.
Taylor Swift proved this when she built a global following to billionaire status by turning connection into community. Ed Sheeran and Yungblud did the same. They are not just creating fans, they are creating families.
In business, listening is often undervalued. Too many meetings become performances of authority rather than collaboration. Yet the best music is built on mutual awareness, with each part adjusting to the others in real time. In a band, everyone contributes. In contrast, the boardroom can reward dominance over teamwork. Musicians remind us that collaboration is not weakness, it is creative strength.
Leaders can learn from great session players, those who blend seamlessly to make others sound better. In music, ego kills groove; in business, it kills culture. Most musicians do not create for money alone. They create to express, connect, and contribute something meaningful. That sense of purpose becomes their compass through uncertainty.
Businesses, too, must show purpose, not as marketing but as moral infrastructure. Employees and consumers want to know why an organisation exists beyond profit. Musicians teach that authenticity cannot be faked. Audiences know when a performance lacks heart; stakeholders sense the same. When a company’s purpose resonates like a melody, clear, consistent, and human, it inspires loyalty that no advertising can buy.
Every musician knows failure: missed gigs, poor reviews, empty rooms. Yet they continue. Resilience comes from understanding that progress is not linear and rejection is not final. In business, resilience is equally vital. Musicians treat setbacks as creative data, signals to adapt and try again. Leaders who adopt that mindset turn failure into growth.
A musician’s greatest power lies in presence, the ability to be fully engaged in the moment. When performing live, distractions disappear. There is only the song, the sound, and the shared experience. In leadership, presence is equally magnetic. Too often, executives hide behind slides or jargon, losing the human connection that makes communication memorable.
Performance, like leadership, is not about perfection, it is about honesty. A wrong note does not ruin a concert if the emotion is real. Likewise, leaders who communicate with sincerity, even imperfectly, build trust more effectively than those who deliver flawless but empty words.
The boardroom does not need to become a stage, but it could learn from one. When strategy feels stuck or teams feel disconnected, remember the lessons of music: tune in, find your rhythm, and adapt to both consonance and dissonance. When everyone listens, adapts, and performs in harmony, business, like music, becomes something far greater than the sum of its parts.
Ben Hughes (Hughzy)
