“Negative_capability”_

People seek meaning in their existence. Meaning comes through connection, either with an idea or with another person. There is a space, a distance, between our “self” and the “other” where connection takes place.

What measures the depth of that connection is the degree to which each individual feels they have been “heard” or understood. That requires recognizing that there is a space between us where our intent is received by the other- a space that is neither our selves nor the other. The collaborative act of communication takes place in that space.

Jazz is the art of connection staged in that space between us. Hopefully, we come to that space aware and respectful of how instantly that space reflects the level of empathy that we do or don’t bring to it. In that sense, the rules, the boundaries, the constraints- the social capital we bring is critical because it defines the experience we will have.

The challenge in jazz is to meet in that space and to make something of value happen by building off of one another’s ideas. We use the language of music- rhythm, melody and harmony to convey ideas that are every bit as nuanced as those in spoken language. In fact, the ideas in music can convey a much deeper level of emotive value through sentient sounds that the technology of language cannot express.

In language or in music, all connection happens in the context of structure – even chaos is structure of a sort.  When infrastructure is rigid or driven by the absolute constraints of technology, emotive knowledge and the energy critical for exploration and invention is diluted or eclipsed. What organizations can learn from jazz is that structure makes or breaks the depth and quality of the collaborative connection we are able to achieve.

How do our organizational, political and economic structures shape the quality of collaboration? We’ve become experts at analyzing the quantitative and qualitative aspects of “what we have done” after the fact. We then take those past results and apply them to our “structures” moving forward.  We seem to always be “just beginning” to get a handle on the fact that change is as much about  engaging what is emerging as it is about applying the past to the future (and probably more). Why is this so hard?  It’s hard to perceive because we can see it only when we are present in the moment both to ourselves and to one another. There’s the rub because being in the present ultimately means accepting our vulnerability towards change, uncertainty and risk.

Structure is malleable. It is constantly changed by our actions intentionally or unintentionally.

The great jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus once said, “You can’t improvise on nothing, man.” Yes- a double negative- and he meant it. When we improvise together it is always about something. Even when we think we are working from scratch, we are constructing the very structures that will either enhance our expansion or constrict it. Our improvisation is never separated from the conditions that contain us.

What if we could create structures that would dissolve the barriers to collaborative creative potential? What if we began to realize that we are the creators of our own limitations? We do know this and we do act on it, too. Things eventually improve- they always have but ever so slowly.  It’s coming from an unconscious understanding of the dynamic role that we play in shaping our reality.

Jazz is an art form that speaks to waking from unconsciousness. Structure in jazz is not separated into hardware and software, objects and relationships, material assets and human capital. The structure in jazz is an integrated balance of technological, social and stakeholder capital.

Social media is fundamentally changing the way businesses relate to themselves and their markets. One of the most immediate challenges to integrating social media is managing the inherent uncertainty of open engagement.

Life is an elegant improvisation. But how quickly we rush to impose our designs of control on uncertainty. The essence of any social community lies in its capacity to learn from itself. And learning requires a context of open engagement. The art of jazz offers insight into this fundamental shift in thinking.

Jazz is a collaborative process that generates creativity and engagement and that makes it fundamentally different from processes that produce fixed outcomes. The symphony produces a fixed outcome by rendering a beautiful interpretation of an idea that is fixed in time. The jazz ensemble produces new ideas based on the logic of an underlying strategy every time it performs.

In the symphony (and many organizational hierarchies,) leadership is top down and roles are tightly siloed. In the Jazz ensemble leadership is shared and roles are cross-functional in nature. By sharing the responsibility of leading and support, jazz musicians build the skills to learn rapidly from one another in constantly changing contexts.

Cross functionality and the removal of silos are critical in contexts where people have to self organize into small, agile, autonomous groups.

Social media provides serious tools for organized improvisation. But technology is only a tool. This was very eloquently explained by Cordelia Krooss, the Senior Enterprise Community Manager at BASF SE, Germany. I encourage you to read her blog.  Managing social communities means constant learning from the information flows produced through internal and external communications.

As with jazz, the flattened hierarchy of social business design requires agility based in very high levels of personal responsibility.

Jazz calls for a fundamental shift in the social nature of collaboration. Connection, transparency, trust and listening are critical. So too in the connected communities based in social business media.

Social media is escalating the pace of change to the level of real time improvisation. The global benefits are real and profound but it means the capacity to manage change in new ways that perceive connection as organic and ubiquitous.

It’s hard to see this from the old paradigm of management. In 1969 Marshall McLuhan said, “An environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.” Leadership in the 21^st century will be measured not by the individual but the capacity of the organization to see beyond the immediate horizon.

To achieve this community quality the idea of leadership becomes meaningful at every level of hierarchy. Leadership is a frame of mind one takes in making choices. Every decision has an impact on the organization as a whole and leadership in a connected company implies an understand of all concentric rings of impact.

Organizations are living communities and every situation will require an empathic understanding of its unique context. While that skill may be more present in certain individual, leadership moving forward will mean the capacity for all involved to act quickly on those cues and to learn what is unique about the situation.

Jazz is the collaborative practice of knowledge transfer- making explicit the tacit knowledge of each individual in order to transform the organization as a whole. When we improvise together  our goal is to surface new ideas- to transfer knowledge from the imagination of the individual into knowledge that can be shared by the group. We’re all working off of an underlying strategy- a shared understanding and appreciation of the beauty and architecture of a tune. The process of improvisation is like research and development because it involves the rigorous exploration of possibilities inherent in that tune. There is risk involved because we don’t know what we will play until the exact moment we express our ideas. Much of what is improvised is repetition of old knowledge and capability- what worked well in the past that we know we can repeat. But the essence of improvisation is that we are always pushing the envelope-trying to hear new things by playing what we already know in new ways. This process will always yield incremental breakthroughs in insight. Insight rarely emerges any other way. Often these insights begin to emerge not through a specific idea by one individual but through a collective shift in the feeling of the groups rhythm – the groove. Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly what is surfacing. It may come as a result of something the bass player does or an energy shift created by the drummer, or even the fact that the pianist stops playing altogether leaving space where none had been. And even though the focus may be on the leadership of the sax player as he/she furiously mines the possibilities of the tune (as it is with John Coltrane’s historic rendition of Giant Steps) the process of surfacing breakthrough insights cannot be separated from the actions of the others in the band. The value of knowledge in jazz (and in organizations) becomes transformational only when it is shared. How do the structures of our organization support this essential truth about the nature of human interaction? Perhaps a more important question would be  ”what aspects of organizational design inhibit the transfer of knowledge?”

Very intriguing post. You mention that “It is unfortunate that the world of the arts is not as prepared as it could be for this unique opportunity to recalibrate the one-sided relationship of the artist as dependent upon patrons.” I’m curious what you envision such preparation might entail? Are there organizations you feel have already done a good job of pioneering “viable products” around arts based learning?

Greatest thanks, in advance, for any further thoughts.

Kira

My Reply:

Preparation starts with the way “the arts” are taught, especially at the undergraduate level when young people begin to recognize that developing their artistic expression is a priority for them.

As a musician, the few really powerful teachers I’ve had always focused my attention on the critical balance between technique and feeling. As artists, we develop a keen sense of this balance. In arts that involve social interaction like music, theater and dance, this capacity to balance the manipulation of technique with empathic intention translates into critical skills that are needed by those whose work is to manage creativity and change in organizations.

As artists we learn to blend the intangible aspects of social dynamics like trust, listening, appreciation of diversity, curiosity and passion with manipulation of the tangible aspects of our media- musical instruments, physical bodies , language, paint, film. . . etc.

The capacity to integrate these two very different and often opposing forces is a skill that artists must learn because it’s what makes art “art.” At the same time people learn to balance these forces is precisely when we have the opportunity to teach them to speak across the boundaries that separate arts and business.

I envision interdepartmental seminars between students in the arts and those in business oriented classes like economics, organizational psychology, management, etc. where theses grey areas that relate to the blending of tangible technique (or technology) with intangible aspects of theory and interpersonal dynamics could be explored and articulated.

The benefits would be two-fold. First, it would spark an interest in both camps to explore the “intersection” and it would help to define the parallel skills and talents that might exist there. We might expect to ignite some interesting conversations about relationship between aesthetics and economics or art history and engineering or music and psychology or dance and biology- the possibilities are endless.

Second and perhaps most important, a colloquium like this would engage students from contrasting disciplines in dialogue where a new way to talk about the parallel concerns and behaviors could be developed. The dialogue is the product in arts-based learning for business because it’s during the “debrief” after the arts based intervention has occurred that insights are surfaced and integrated. Students on both sides of the table have to be skilled in facilitating this special kind of dialogue that would harvest and integrate insights. These are skills we can teach.

The question of “viable products” is more difficult to answer. At this point in the emergence of this new field we have to look to applications in both academia and the workplace to find durable examples.

Institutions like Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and The Bled School of Management in Slovenia are leaders in development of arts-based learning programs primarily in the field of leadership development.

Two of the best places I’ve worked are Proctor and Gamble’s Clay Street Center in Cincinnati https://theclaystreetproject.pg.com/claystreet/default.aspx and The Banff Centre for Leadership Development in Alberta, Canada http://www.banffcentre.ca/, both of which provide rich environments for arts-based learning.

One of the most powerful experiences I’ve had working with ABI’s was as a participant in The Creative Dynamic Workshop at The TAI Group http://www.thetaigroup.com/in New York City.

Many of the arts based learning experiences I’ve conducted have taken place in off-site locations. From a logistical point of view such settings are convenient and comfortable but can be problematic because they set a context that separates people from the conditions they want and need to change. Those I’ve conducted in home-based contexts seem to be the most relevant environment for ABI’s to take place. It juxtaposes the immediacy of the experience and insight with the physicality of the structural barriers and ingrained protocols that management sought to change in the first place.

Thanks for furthering the conversation Kira

This is a piece I wrote for Americans for the Arts. The topic was:

The arts have relied on patrons for thousands of years, but the new landscape of arts and business partnerships offers much more than just exchange of money and goods. More than ever, the arts are being deeply integrated in business strategy to benefit workforce development, recruitment and retention, management training, creative problem solving, community engagement, and to celebrate diversity.

The question was:

Whatever happened to art for art’s sake? Will there be a backlash?

‘Art for Art’s Sake’ in a Digital World

Jazz is an art form that explores our capacity to improvise with time and structure.

Improvisation is both an ancient and ultra modern idea in regards to our use of language. Language is reflexive. The way we use it changes our world. Language is procreative – you combine two ideas and get a hybrid of the two – a new idea that opens new possibilities. In this way we generate new thoughts in the world.

Improvisation is at the core of all human interaction. The fundamental act of translating thought into language is an improvisation.

We have always lived in “the flow of time.” The nature of temporal existence is that things are always changing. Life is change – every breath, every thought, every decision in our day is an event that influences the direction of change for the entire world. It is not only absurd to expect certainty but, as history has shown, very dangerous to create environments that purposely try to eliminate uncertainty. Let me qualify this statement. Eliminating uncertainty is desirable when the outcome must be completely predictable as in the functioning of a nuclear power plant or the mass production of individual cans of Coca Cola, or cars or iPads.

But we are now in an age where these processes can and should be completely automated. We have been freed from the technological weal. We have, in a sense, returned to the drawing board stage where we are squarely facing some primary existential problems. We are challenged with re-inventing (improvising and innovating) indeed colonizing our own future.

The process of Jazz is relevant because it emerged at a time of existential crisis for both disenfranchised African Americans and for the creative process in the world of music itself. It is this latter aspect that holds very powerful messages for the world of business.

At the turn of the last century the crisis in European composed music centered on a consensus that the tonal system of music some 1200 years old could no longer produce any really new ideas. The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg led a movement that turned to atonal methods of composition – a process that called into question all assumptions and hierarchical rules of the tonal system. He developed a system called 12 tone composition that was brilliant in it’s schematic and mathematical complexity but created music that was cold and without human sentience – at least to the ears of the world at that time.

The emergence of jazz in the first decades of the 20^th century broke open the siloed world of European through composed music. In so doing jazz forecast the democratization of information and knowledge that would occur with the internet 70 years in the future

Jazz  did not seek to abandon the tonal system but rather to redefine the structures and rules around which music could be made and delivered. The siloed roles of composer, performer and conductor are all fused together in jazz into a new role: the role of the improviser. Jazz standards, the underlying structures and strategies that guide the collaborative musical performance, are structures that draw from the legacy of knowledge and information of the past. The designs use fundamental constructs that underlie all of tonal music – architectural principles that provide guidelines to coordinate the improvisers in time and intention. But because the musicians are challenged with creating the music rather than simply interpreting what has already been created, these structures are simplified to allow for experimentation, ambiguity and the latitude to make and learn from mistakes.

Jazz could not have evolved without the “unexpected.” There would have been no learning without mistakes and if uncertainty were eliminated there would have been no realm of new possibility.

This is precisely the place that business finds itself in today. We’ve run the gamut of market paradigms and maxed out most of the possibilities inherent in our approach to business from the past two centuries. In fact we have lost sight of the real power of commerce – to create new ideas.

Business holds the solutions to mediate the tremendous economic disparity that exists in our world. As such business becomes a supreme artistic force capable of re-inventing or improvising new solutions to very old problems.

We use the model of jazz not to suggest business “like” art, but rather business “as” art.

What the audience heard at this concert was shockingly different. Onstage with Miles was an electric bassist playing a very simple repetitive rock drone over a static harmony (one or two chords) and a rock drummer laying down a funky groove to the bass line. Miles had his trumpet amplified through gigantic speakers. With his back to the audience, he would utter a short blast followed by long silence and then arbitrarily another blast- quite ambiguous and without the linear logic that traditional “jazz trumpet solos” were expected to follow.

The audience sat with their mouths open while Miles and his associates sustained this same idea for well over 30 minutes. Then suddenly. . .  they just stopped. Miles walked off the stage. People were aghast. They actually booed and quickly retreated to the lobby where they all began to share their confusion and despair over the totally unexpected direction that Miles had taken- he had disrupted their expectations.

This wasn’t new behavior for Miles Davis. He’d done something similar less than a decade earlier after the tremendous success of Kind Of Blue. This recording represented a radical shift from the complexity of bebop to a much more simplified context that, in turn, demanded a higher level of risk, originality and collaborative design than required by the complex frameworks of bebop. The timing of this shift was brilliant because the legacy value from the past 4 decades of jazz was beginning to hinder the process of innovation in jazz. Simplifying the harmonic structure liberated and reenergized the creative spirit of the art as a whole. In the early 60’s Miles et all were practicing what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called  “creative destruction.”

What made “Kind of Blue” such a success was “authenticity.” And for Miles that value was always associated with blazing a new trail in the world of jazz.  So he disbanded the group- one of the greatest jazz bands of all time- and started again with Hancock, Carter and Williams- younger players unaffected by the gravity of that past success. I don’t mean to imply that the creative abilities John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Wynton Kelly and the other stellar jazz figures that made “Kind of Blue” were in anyway tainted or diminished by the success of the record. But as an entity, an innovative organization, it would have been extremely difficult if not impossible to create anything with the same vitality and authentic energy they felt when recording “Kind Of Blue.”

Miles’ new group reinterpreted the standard jazz repertoire giving much more harmonic and rhythmic freedom to the ensemble than had ever before been imagined. The driver in this group was the drummer Tony Williams whose brilliant capacity to superimpose different rhythmic feels expanded the rhythmic dimensions of jazz as radically as Charlie Parker had expanded the harmonic possibilities 20 years before.

The audience at this particular concert had come with expectations. They wanted to hear music that pushed the boundaries of the conventional format but still remained within the domain of convention. For Miles Davis, though, the real “product” was not the what but the “how.” For Miles the how always meant breaching the boundary- the process of extracting core value and reinventing it in ever-changing ways. That’s what constituted innovation in jazz. Adhering to convention for Miles meant the abdication of authenticity.

There was one critic in the audience that night who understood the significance of the change. At the intermission he rushed to a payphone in the lobby (no one had cell phones in those days) and called a major jazz publication to describe what had just happened. In a voice loud enough that most people in proximity could hear he reported that Miles had once again changed the organizational structure of jazz- evolving the concept of the traditional soloist and the traditional rhythm section; merging the roles of leading and support; democratizing responsibility and the subsequent gratification and autonomy of each of the artists within the ensemble.

People listened to what he’d suggested and over the next 20 minutes, the critic’s perspective spread like wildfire through the mezzanine. At a certain point, someone noticed the music had started again. Everyone rushed back to their seats. The trio had picked up again exactly where they had left off, oblivious to the fact that no one was even in the hall. They played the exact same groove with Miles uttering dissonant blasts through the huge amplifiers for another 30 minutes without stopping. When they finished . . .  the crowd went crazy.

A year later Miles released “In A Silent Way” and reshaped the trajectory of evolution in Jazz. Critics were at first mixed about the radical transformation implied by “In A Silent Way.”

One critic, Phil Freeman, wrote:

“It didn’t swing, the solos weren’t even a little bit heroic, and it had electric guitars… It was the soundtrack to all the whispered conversations every creative artist has, all the time, with that doubting, taunting voice that lives in the back of your head, the one asking all the unanswerable questions.”

Another critic, Lester Bangs, wrote:

“It is part of a transcendental new music which flushes categories away and, while using musical devices from all styles and cultures, is defined mainly by its deep emotion and unaffected originality.”

Miles understood something important about the relationship between the emerging global market for jazz and the product he put into that market. While it was an accepted fact that one had to produce product for a specific market, Miles perceived that if the core value of the product was authentic he would be able to influence and change that market. He sensed the market would not only respond but would redefine its expectations and tolerance for change within the idiom of jazz.

Looking back on the results of “In A Silent Way” and then the hugely successful “Bitches Brew” of the same nature, these works did not destroy the traditional foundations of jazz but rather opened and expanded all of the different niches within the tradition that had yet to be explored. Perhaps it was the “simplification” and democratization” that Miles so boldly demonstrated with “In A Silent Way” that generated the global fusion of all the different ethnic influences that characterize jazz in the 21st century.

I’m not suggesting that business take the type of bold risks in the market that Miles was able to take as the leader of innovation in the world of jazz. I am pointing to the need to recognize the reciprocal relationship between those who produce product and those who consume. Business has tremendous artistic influence and capacity because it creates the “things” of the world. The creative courage needed to remain authentic will be as different for each organization as it is for each individual- but it is nonetheless one of the most important considerations for innovative businesses today.

The problem is authenticity is hard to measure and quantify- and most in the business world are of the mindset that recognizes value only if it can be measured and quantified. Rightfully so given the level of uncertainty in the world. If, however, we create arts-based initiatives within organizations that give people an opportunity to explore the visceral quality of authentic creative experience then we can use those experiences to identify a shared language that a community can use to describe it’s own sense of authenticity. The quality then becomes  tangible enough that it can be connected to measurable results.