Jim Collins published Good to Great in 2001, the year I graduated high school. I was, predictably, 18; less predictably, I read it. I was not an aspiring MBA at the time; my chosen career was music. However, more than any other book I read that year, Good to Great stuck with me.

I was later to the party with another crucial cultural product of that era, Enter the Wu Tang 36 Chambers by the Wu Tang Clan, released in 1993. I first heard it 16 years later, in 2009. And as much as Good to Great, 36 Chambers deeply shaped the way I see collaboration.

This caught my attention again when a colleague and I were discussing how to give talented people enough autonomy to take big risks without endangering the enterprise that funds the work.

I keep going back to Wu’s culture and three elements that underpin that amazing balance of autonomy and security, things we can still learn from: productive competition, strong uniting vision, and creativity through constraints.

Why on Earth Am I Talking About the Wu Tang Clan?

I’ll try to keep this brief, but no promises. 

By itself, 36 Chambers is one of the landmark records of the decade, going quadruple platinum. The thing is, 36 Chambers initially sold badly. 

Just a month after Doggystyle’s smashing 1st week, 36 Chambers sold just 30,000 units. What made Wu Tang a juggernaut was startling march of solo careers that came next, each one expanding the Wu Tang universe. The independent brands of each star only made the collective more important.

A truly novel strategy made it possible. When negotiating their first record deal, the group insisted that all members remain free to negotiate deals with other labels for their solo work. This gave them hefty bargaining power, which brought broad creative freedom without losing their collective leverage. This unheard-of model has never really been repeated.

Why would any of this matter to people who don’t care abut hip hop? Let’s get into a few key factors that made them great.

Friendly Competition

Listening to “Protect Ya Neck” for the first time feels like narrowly escaping a huge bar brawl. Nine different personalities take turns trying to outdo each other’s verbal gymnastics and aggressive swagger. It moves fast and breaks things.

This is what I call productive competition, an early hallmark of the group. Each artist’s striving to outdo the others pushed boundaries beyond what was normal and fused their distinct elements into a bizarre and astonishing alloy. 

A Shared Vision

Back to that bar brawl, think of it more like a huge fight scene in a kung fu movie, with scores of extras and nine top-notch heroes, and not one wasted second. Kung fu and comic books would be integral to the creative mythology at the core of the group, hence their name, and suffused every artist’s releases again and again. 

This is what I call a strong uniting vision, something distinctive that motivates the team and their fans. More than just a sound only they instantly owned, it authentically informed their strategy and aesthetics.

Limits Force Creativity 

When MTV Cribs profiled Wu Tang, they toured a mostly unfurnished Hollywood mansion with an inexpensive bedroom studios, mattresses on floors, camp chairs around TVs, cheap couches, and no expensive artwork. The scene was a bizarre look into a group that thrived on constraints, and got much of its creative juice from its limited options: starting our broke, recording on junkyard gear, and scoring their first radio play through legally questionable tactics. 

Constraints forced creativity by sheer elimination of all other viable paths. 36 Chambers doesn’t sound professional, but it’s something better: disruptive.

From Wu-Tang to You

I’m fascinated by the stories and science of legendary teams, and the Wu Tang Clan fits the bill. Making a huge cultural footprint with tight resources, a distinctive identity, and an inimitable business model, Wu shows us some how to flip limits into creativity and commercial success.

Teams need to embrace constraints. They should unite around shared stories and values. And to get the best out of themselves, they should seek to engender productive competition between members. 

Jim Collins really missed a perfect case study hiding in plain sight. I’m glad I could correct the record.

Credit: 

Photo Credit – Bob Berg/Getty