Image: TopSphere Media via Unsplash
A Question That Stopped Me Cold
In spring 2025, during an informal conversation with a colleague, he suddenly asked me:
“Why aren’t you using your musical skills to improve your leadership?”
I smiled politely, thinking it was just a light remark. But the question stayed with me. Later that day, while replaying the exchange, something clicked.
He was right.
I had been using my musical training for years—just not consciously.
The way I noticed patterns before they emerged in the data. The instinctive sense of timing in transformation initiatives. The ability to understand the “architecture” behind complex problems.
These weren’t random strengths or quirks of personality. They were cognitive habits shaped long before my executive career ever began.
That simple, offhand question opened a door I hadn’t realised was there—and ultimately set me on the path from the HEC Paris Executive MBA to doctoral research.
When Executive Education Never Really Ends
At 57, many executives are consolidating career achievements or preparing successors. I chose a different route. After more than two decades in C-level and management positions at XING, Nokia, and DERTOUR Group, I moved from the HEC Paris Executive MBA—one of the top global business schools—into doctoral research at Antwerp Management School.
This wasn’t a retreat into academia. It was the natural continuation of a journey toward understanding a capability I had used instinctively for years—without knowing its true source.
How HEC Paris Expanded My Leadership Capability
I enrolled at HEC Paris to broaden my leadership perspective beyond product and technology. The programme delivered exactly what I needed:
- A deeper grasp of finance, operations, marketing, and strategic frameworks
- The ability to speak the language of every function in the organisation
- The confidence to navigate high-stakes boardroom discussions
- A richer conceptual understanding of organisational and market dynamics
I left with a new level of executive presence and measurable performance improvements.
But something didn’t fit neatly: even with all this new knowledge, I still noticed I approached complexity differently from my peers.
Discovering I Was “Wired Differently”
As I returned to corporate roles, I used the frameworks and models from HEC Paris every day. They gave structure and credibility to my decisions.
But under pressure—where ambiguity, time constraints, and incomplete information dominate—I didn’t rely on frameworks first.
I relied on intuition formed through:
- Creative pattern recognition
- Non-linear thinking
- A sense for timing and flow
- Challenging assumptions early—sometimes before others even noticed them
Colleagues appreciated these contributions. But I struggled to articulate where this way of thinking actually came from.
The answer, I eventually realised, was hidden in the past.
The Real Source: Classical Music Training
Through discussions with academics and quiet reflection, I finally saw the truth.
My childhood and early professional life in classical music—not my business training—had shaped my most distinctive executive capabilities.
As a classical guitarist, I spent years developing:
Pattern Recognition
Reading complex scores, detecting harmonic progressions, spotting structure in chaos.
Structural Awareness
Understanding how individual sections create a coherent whole—just like departments within a strategy.
Temporal Mastery
Managing multiple rhythmic layers simultaneously, making real-time pacing decisions during performance on stage.
Without noticing, I had transferred these cognitive habits directly into leadership:
- Transformational programmes felt like multi-movement compositions
- Market data behaved like extended musical scores—full of motifs and variations
- Strategy pacing mirrored rhythmic dynamics in performance
I didn’t design this transfer. My brain simply operated this way.
HEC Paris sharpened my tools. Music shaped the way I used them.
From Personal Insight to Research Gap
Once I saw this clearly, a question emerged:
If artistic cognitive training might enhance executive effectiveness, why hasn’t this been rigorously researched?
Leadership development is a multi-billion-euro industry, but much of it rests on assumptions rather than evidence. Meanwhile, arts-based leadership research tends to be conceptual and anecdotal.
Many researchers lack C-level experience. They study leadership from outside, without having lived the specific cognitive demands of strategic decision-making in digital transformation.
The gap between my lived experience and the lack of systematic investigation became impossible to ignore.
That gap is where my doctoral work began.
Why I Entered Doctoral Research
At Antwerp Management School, my research focuses on examining these cognitive transfers systematically, using deductive and post-positivist methods:
Pattern recognition transfer
How musical interpretative processes enhance strategic sense-making in digital environments.
Structural awareness applications
Whether musical architecture supports leaders in mapping organisational systems and interdependencies.
Temporal mastery in leadership
How rhythmic thinking can improve pacing, sequencing, and multi-horizon leadership.
This is not metaphorical work. It is empirical research designed to build evidence-based frameworks that can be taught in executive education.
The Unassailable Credibility Triangle
My professional life has created an unusual combination of capabilities:
Executive Experience
More than 20 years in C-level and management roles—navigating the real cognitive demands of senior leadership.
Artistic Foundation
Conservatory-level training that developed the cognitive abilities now under investigation.
Academic Rigour
Three Master’s degrees—including the HEC Paris Executive MBA—and now doctoral research.
Most academics lack executive experience. Most executives lack methodological research training.
I’ve lived both worlds. This gives the research credibility that neither side alone can provide.
Why This Matters for Executive Education
Traditional MBA learning—strategy, finance, operations—remains essential. HEC Paris strengthened me profoundly in these areas.
But the world executives lead in today requires deeper cognitive capabilities:
- Navigating ambiguity
- Sensing patterns in incomplete data
- Holding multiple time horizons simultaneously
- Managing paradoxes without premature resolution
- Maintaining presence and clarity under pressure
These abilities resemble those cultivated in advanced artistic training.
If validated through research, they could become structured, teachable components of executive development—turning what was once unconscious and personal into something systematic and accessible.
Looking Ahead: Building the Evidence Base
The HEC Paris Executive MBA expanded my capabilities and accelerated my success. But it also revealed something I had long overlooked: my most distinctive strengths came from cognitive habits shaped through classical music.
My doctoral research will examine these mechanisms rigorously. And through The Leadership Artist—the consultancy I am launching in parallel—I aim to translate these insights directly into practice for leaders and organisations.
At 57, this is not a reinvention. It is the natural culmination of three decades of experience I am only now fully understanding.
The core question driving my work is simple and pragmatic:
How do we develop the cognitive capabilities executives need most for leading in complexity?
The research has begun. The foundations—in experience, in art, and in science—are firmly in place.