Steve was supposed to be in bright colored lights on stages across the U.S. along with Liz Phair and Alanis Morrisette. Instead, he was on Zoom with me, trying to find a camera angle that didn’t make him look like he was in a witness protection video. A founding member of the alt-rock band, Garbage, Steve Marker had generously agreed to an interview on one condition: that he could read an advance copy of my book, Two Beats Ahead, before we talked. This made me sweat, not because he was a rock star — my co-author and I had spoken to many of them while writing — but because he was the first rock star reading the book about the inventive mindsets of musicians. It was like waiting on Julia Child for feedback about the omelet you just served her.

“I’m enjoying your book so far,” Steve said. My shoulders relaxed.

I first heard Garbage on college radio in the mid ’90s. They had an unmistakable, unique sound — a combination of shoegaze, hiphop, and electronic dance, with the pouty attitude of the Cure reinvented by a feminist fatale. It was an unexpected direction for the band given that Butch Vig, another founding member, had rocketed to fame as the producer of Nirvana’s major-label debut, Nevermind. Grunge — as that Seattle sound was called — was nowhere to be found on Garbage’s debut. And it turns out, that was by design, or as Steve implied, maybe an un-design.

“You know, it was interesting reading about the intention that so many artists have had in making their music,” Steve told me. “It wasn’t like that for us. We didn’t have a written-out plan or even something we really talked about that much. It was just a combination of everything that we loved.” He shared a story of Butch seeing My Bloody Valentine in New York and being blown away by their white noise and pop melodies. He mentioned Public Enemy and their gritty noise loop samples. He talked about ’60s rock.

“Garbage could have turned into a totally pop thing. Or it could have turned into a noise experiment that would have been an interesting album to listen to once or twice. Luckily, we found a combination that worked for us. A lot of that had to do with Shirley (Manson), as she brought this whole other thing into the mix that we couldn’t have planned. The combination of all our different influences is what the band became — but it was never planned out.”

Well, maybe there wasn’t a plan, but there was definitely a principle of designing the conditions and letting the outcome emerge from that. Steve and the band had figured out how to bring all the things they loved together, and at the same time, reject all the things that were popular in the mainstream. They could have caught the tail end of the grunge wave, but instead, chose a new path, which amazingly became their own path to mainstream success. Their debut, developed over two years in Steve’s basement, sold 4 million copies in its first 12 months.

As I reflected upon this I thought about the numerous client teams that I’ve worked with under rapid deadlines and inflated expectations. “We want to be the next iPod of banking!” they say. The bygone days of Bell Labs open briefs feel like business mythology today. And yet, that was exactly the situation Garbage had. “We were lucky enough to have somebody say, ‘Okay, go make a record,’ mainly because Butch had a great reputation. We had the luxury to take as much time as we wanted to figure out what it was we were going to be.”

In Two Beats Ahead, Panos Panay and I interviewed Imogen Heap and Steve Vai about breakthroughs they had in their own careers. We also spoke with folks at Amazon’s PillPack about launching their startup idea. What ties these folks together are mindsets of curiosity and learning. Experimentation wasn’t confined to any single part of a workflow or to particular roles. It was more like a cultural attribute, the water they swam in. For Garbage, that culture looked like persistent play. Steve illustrated this with a story about making their first record.

“Nobody really expected to create a song that would become a ‘hit’, so there wasn’t pressure to do so. That came later. We would just try and get something going that we all responded to, and see where it went.” Steve said at the time they were often just sampling other people’s songs to find elements they liked. During one session he grabbed a handful of CDs looking for a beat and happened to play “Train in Vain” by the Clash. “Right there we had a good four bar loop to use as a click track. Duke (Erikson) had been thinking about writing a song something like “Suzie Q.” I put down a bass line and that was the foundation of the song right there. It took about eight minutes. Butch came in the next morning with the lines, you stupid girl , pretend you’re high, pretend you’re bored. Shirley made those lines work in another very short afternoon and that was pretty much it. Of course it took about a year of mucking about after that to get to the final mix, as well as trying every possible way of re-creating the feel of that original Clash drum loop without paying for it — turns out you can’t.” Steve continued, “It can take minutes or months to make a song and you’ve just got to stay open to letting it make its own path.”

I can imagine someone reading this and snidely thinking to themselves, “So that’s it, huh? The secret to innovation? Just try a bunch of random stuff until it works?” But before you go there, remember, this wasn’t just any band coming up with songs. This was Garbage. And this led Steve and I to an interesting discussion about team dynamics and experience.

“I guess we were lucky that we all worked with bands for 10–15 years before Garbage. We were in dozens of bands that hated each other. You learn by doing that. Pretty rare for somebody to come right out of high school and be perfect.” He went on to talk about fluidity, respect, and vulnerability — the essential chemistry of the band. “None of us have a set rule really. You know, we don’t have what most bands have like a drummer and a bass player and guitarist or whatever.” Steve says that their roles are always shifting, and even more so now since they are all working from home on their laptops. They pass ideas back and forth to one another and build on them however they are inspired. But often, they aren’t inspired at all. “99% of the time the rest of the band could care less about an idea. Even if it’s a great idea it just doesn’t resonate or doesn’t catch their ear and then you just move on.” But then sometimes it clicks and “you get that excitement going in the (virtual) room of four people, and it feels just like it did in 1994 when we first met.” He continued, “It’s about being vulnerable. It’s just being friends for 25 years I think. But it was really hard when we first met.”

It would be misleading to suggest that musicians somehow have a more natural ability to collaborate than others. It’s not about an inherent gift. We all know the stories of a band breaking up over creative differences, sometimes with incredible public meltdowns. The reason musicians have so much to teach us is because the conditions in which they work are the ideal classroom for these mindsets.

“We’ve kind of fallen apart and gotten back a few times,” Steve said. ’ They didn’t give up on each other though. Instead they sought a resolution. Steve continued, “We said, let’s get a producer, we need a fifth person to mediate this. That was a disaster!” It turns out that isn’t what they needed at all. They just needed to rediscover what they admired about each other.

I once gave a lecture at a university about design thinking and collaboration, celebrating the value of diverse and multidisciplinary teams. During the Q&A a woman stood up and asked a simple question that has stuck with me ever since: “What if you don’t like the people on your team?” I paused, and she continued, “At IDEO you’ve built teams from people you know you can rely upon, but in my experience, I rarely have that situation and working on teams is quite difficult.” That’s truth. It really comes down to team chemistry in so many ways, and often we can’t influence how that team is assembled.

Great creative talent is in every company, but the structures and social norms of the organizations often dictate who is permitted to collaborate together. I’ve been in situations where clients have asked me not to talk to their colleagues because they didn’t trust them. I’ve seen departments make competitors of one another because they were incentivized to do so. I’ve been in buildings that have rooms dedicated to innovation rather than cultures committed to it. To get the best teams it’s often left to the creativity of the project leader to work around these organizational constructs and find the ideal contributors, no matter where they are in the organization. Some businesses try this with cross-functional teams, but even this model is still role-dependent. Garbage set themselves up without these defined roles — except for Shirley, who always sings. Otherwise, roles and contributions are left up to the person with the best ideas. I shared this reflection with Steve and he responded, “I don’t know a lot about the corporate world, but sounds like an episode of The Office or something, random people showing up together to make a project work.” I chuckled at his freshness.

He was right. Teams are often pretty random and that makes it clear why companies have such a hard time with open briefs. The deadlines are the structure to make the ragtag teams produce something. But what if the emphasis was on the teams and their outcomes instead of the timelines? “Being in a band is the most fun thing I can imagine doing. It’s been less fun now that we can’t tour, but, you know, it’s a dream come true from when you were a kid. And I’ve done it as a job, as my livelihood for a long time. It’s amazing,” Steve shared with a smile.

Those words, “I’ve done it as my job,” have stuck with me because they really are the premise of Two Beats Ahead. The mindsets that Steve and Garbage bring to work are the mindsets that we are regularly striving for in the corporate world. They aren’t unproven or even foreign. And yet we often don’t see the musician’s life as a job. We’ve categorized it as something else. However, on my best days I’m working like a rock star, just like Steve, pursuing curiosity, building on new ideas with my teammates… and trying to get the Zoom lighting just right.

Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation, is available now. Garbage’s new album, No Gods No Masters, is available June 11.