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Tactical Jazz
TRUST, ADAPT AND IMPROVISE
Books on leadership too often read like manufacturer’s assembly Insert Tab A into Slot B, and so on. Tactical Jazz provides a uniquely different approach. It casts ideas at the reader as pebbles are dropped into a pond.
With the narrative finesse of a storyteller and the insight of a strategist, Colonel Oliviero invites readers to reconsider the tenets of leadership through the lens of creativity. Like a jazz combo, great teams thrive when individuals master their roles and synchronize instinctively, adapting to the rhythm of uncertainty.
Whether you’re commanding troops, leading a business conglomerate, or beginning a tech start-up, Tactical Jazz presents practical wisdom to foster initiative, build trust, and create synergy. Filled with vivid anecdotes, transformative concepts, and a touch of Zen philosophy, this book furnishes leaders and managers, at every level, the tools to cultivate resilience, innovation, and unity of purpose.
In leadership, as in jazz, success is not found in following a score — success is found in creating something extraordinary together.
Books on leadership too often read like manufacturer’s assembly Insert Tab A into Slot B, and so on. Tactical Jazz provides a uniquely different approach. It casts ideas at the reader as pebbles are dropped into a pond.
With the narrative finesse of a storyteller and the insight of a strategist, Colonel Oliviero invites readers to reconsider the tenets of leadership through the lens of creativity. Like a jazz combo, great teams thrive when individuals master their roles and synchronize instinctively, adapting to the rhythm of uncertainty.
Whether you’re commanding troops, leading a business conglomerate, or beginning a tech start-up, Tactical Jazz presents practical wisdom to foster initiative, build trust, and create synergy. Filled with vivid anecdotes, transformative concepts, and a touch of Zen philosophy, this book furnishes leaders and managers, at every level, the tools to cultivate resilience, innovation, and unity of purpose.
In leadership, as in jazz, success is not found in following a score — success is found in creating something extraordinary together.
Kindle Edition
Published February 27, 2025
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September 22, 2025
Very interesting booklet on the approach to leadership that was basis of German military pre-and-during-WW1 (and during WW2) where higher command instances would define the goals but actual implementation was left to the low level command and control and troops themselves.
The author uses jazz improvisation as an example of how this should work. If you ask me, I would not take jazz (especially modern cacophony) as a base for anything, but as author puts it, once everyone is in their "zone", and synchronization takes place, what team members produce is greater than sum of the team's parts. This is truly a goal to strive for, and as the author says, this is applicable not only in military but also in other areas where coordination of many disciplines is required.
The only downside for this approach is that achieving this level of synchronization between various team members takes a very long time and requires constant education of all team members. Which in case of war means that attrition style of combat (just imagine single missile barrage striking troop concentrations) can bring the entire thing down, in some cases even beyond any possibility of recovery. High intensity warfare with big casualties will reduce any finely tuned combat unit to dust. And then, with every new reinforcement, the entire process needs to go back to basics - to (as the author mentions a lot) a simpler approach. This means more centralized control is required to (paradoxically) increase the chances of achieving goals and reducing losses. And this is something that happened to Germans in both World Wars - when elite and hardened troops were blown up in first year or two things came back to more centralized approach to combat operations, since there was just not enough time to give junior officers and troops to get acquainted with each other, and thus develop the synergy that existed in original troops that started the war.
In general this approach definitely bears fruit, but in my opinion it is more tooled toward elite, small size and tightly knit combat units (which is fetish dream of what true army should be [per military professionals and theoreticians] since like forever) than general purpose combat units. As modern wars show, numerical superiority and reasonable size of various army commands (not battalions but divisions or corps) give much more options to commanders than specialized miniaturized troops that are very sensitive to higher casualty rates. This complicates things and allows for the author's proposed approach only to top tier, elite units that have a multiplier effect. For the majority of force, though, centralized command and control will always remain the way to go - until veterans surface above regular troops and move to elite tier after months of heavy bloodbath. Surviving combat formations, bled in numerous conflicts, will develop the approach the author suggests by the very nature of combat, but this takes time. To expect somebody can produce divisions of troops that can act in sync is ridiculous (it is not for nothing that elite troops have huge attrition rates during filter and selection phase).
Interesting book, highly recommended.
The author uses jazz improvisation as an example of how this should work. If you ask me, I would not take jazz (especially modern cacophony) as a base for anything, but as author puts it, once everyone is in their "zone", and synchronization takes place, what team members produce is greater than sum of the team's parts. This is truly a goal to strive for, and as the author says, this is applicable not only in military but also in other areas where coordination of many disciplines is required.
The only downside for this approach is that achieving this level of synchronization between various team members takes a very long time and requires constant education of all team members. Which in case of war means that attrition style of combat (just imagine single missile barrage striking troop concentrations) can bring the entire thing down, in some cases even beyond any possibility of recovery. High intensity warfare with big casualties will reduce any finely tuned combat unit to dust. And then, with every new reinforcement, the entire process needs to go back to basics - to (as the author mentions a lot) a simpler approach. This means more centralized control is required to (paradoxically) increase the chances of achieving goals and reducing losses. And this is something that happened to Germans in both World Wars - when elite and hardened troops were blown up in first year or two things came back to more centralized approach to combat operations, since there was just not enough time to give junior officers and troops to get acquainted with each other, and thus develop the synergy that existed in original troops that started the war.
In general this approach definitely bears fruit, but in my opinion it is more tooled toward elite, small size and tightly knit combat units (which is fetish dream of what true army should be [per military professionals and theoreticians] since like forever) than general purpose combat units. As modern wars show, numerical superiority and reasonable size of various army commands (not battalions but divisions or corps) give much more options to commanders than specialized miniaturized troops that are very sensitive to higher casualty rates. This complicates things and allows for the author's proposed approach only to top tier, elite units that have a multiplier effect. For the majority of force, though, centralized command and control will always remain the way to go - until veterans surface above regular troops and move to elite tier after months of heavy bloodbath. Surviving combat formations, bled in numerous conflicts, will develop the approach the author suggests by the very nature of combat, but this takes time. To expect somebody can produce divisions of troops that can act in sync is ridiculous (it is not for nothing that elite troops have huge attrition rates during filter and selection phase).
Interesting book, highly recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review