Management as Jazz Music
My son attended a week-long jazz camp offered by the Midwest Young Artists. Each night, starting around 9pm, the students would gather for 90-minutes or so of improv. They'd come on stage as a combo 7 or 8 person combo - trumpet, a sax or two, trombone, guitar, piano, bass, drummer - pick a song ... and play it. What was particularly interesting to me was that many of these combo players never actually played together before, yet ... they each knew exactly what to play, when to play it, and how long to play it for.
Combo Jazz songs, like Tenor Madness (Sonny Rollins), A Night in Tunisia (Dizzy Gillespie), and Watermelon Man (Herbie Hancock) to name just a few, are a fascinating in that they allow for such total improvization. But they do it within a pre-determined, formalized structure. I don't know how to explain it really.
Unlike professional jazz musicians, the students at the jazz camp made all sorts of mistakes - missed notes, wrong keys, off-tempo. But no matter how messy things got, the combo would always bring the song home in the end. No one ever got too far adrift that the song couldn't be rescued. No one ever got left out on a limb.
It's an interesting metaphor to play with. Think about your job, as example, and the people you work with. They're YOUR Combo. They're the ones who you need to be able to rely on when your solo goes sour. They're the ones who will be there to celebrate your great solo with. They're the ones who will be there to back you up and for you to back them up. The unexpected is an essential ingredient of jazz, yet one thing you can count on is that every player will know where the song is at any given moment.
Who do you know on your work team that doesn't know where the song is and how can you help bring them home?
Combo Jazz songs, like Tenor Madness (Sonny Rollins), A Night in Tunisia (Dizzy Gillespie), and Watermelon Man (Herbie Hancock) to name just a few, are a fascinating in that they allow for such total improvization. But they do it within a pre-determined, formalized structure. I don't know how to explain it really.
Unlike professional jazz musicians, the students at the jazz camp made all sorts of mistakes - missed notes, wrong keys, off-tempo. But no matter how messy things got, the combo would always bring the song home in the end. No one ever got too far adrift that the song couldn't be rescued. No one ever got left out on a limb.
It's an interesting metaphor to play with. Think about your job, as example, and the people you work with. They're YOUR Combo. They're the ones who you need to be able to rely on when your solo goes sour. They're the ones who will be there to celebrate your great solo with. They're the ones who will be there to back you up and for you to back them up. The unexpected is an essential ingredient of jazz, yet one thing you can count on is that every player will know where the song is at any given moment.
Who do you know on your work team that doesn't know where the song is and how can you help bring them home?
posted by Barry Zweibel at 12:10 PM
1 Comments:
Dear Barry,
Thanks for a thoughtful observation about jazz in your blog.
The metaphor goes far. The ability to listen to the other players, the standardized process (melody, solo, melody), the trade-off between perfection and flexibility, the inverse releationship between your own facility and your ability to listen to others, how the instrument compliments each other in terms of roles, and how the instrument matches skills with task -- they can all be applied to teamwork and collaboration among experts. I have developed this concept as a product for businesses --- Check out my blog -- http://www.carlstormer.com/jazz.
Sincerely yours,
Carl Stormer
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