Getting in the Groove - Improvising isn't winging it.

A unique entertainment and learning experience that explores the knowledge and discipline behind the magic of jazz improvisation and its implications for the disciplined enhancement of organizational performance.

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I used to think, how could jazz musicians pick notes out of thin air? I had no idea of the knowledge it took. It was like magic to me. - Calvin Hill
Finally something for adults!!
Organizations continue to exist only if they maintain a balance between flexibility and stability. - Karl Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing
One of the paradoxes of improvisation is that it’s a mixture of two opposites—tremendous discipline and regimen balanced by spontaneity, listening, and playing in the moment. - Gary Burton
Just granting power, without some method of replacing the discipline and order that come out of command-and-control bureaucracy, produces chaos. We have to learn how to disperse power so self-discipline can largely impose discipline. - William O’Brien
Jazz tunes are great vehicles. They are forms that can be used and reused. Their implications are infinite. - Lee Konitz
When you’re very young, you don’t have the harmonic knowledge to create solos for yourself, so you begin by copying things that sound good in other people’s solos. - Benny Bailey
It all goes from imitation to assimilation to innovation on the way to creating your own style. Once you’ve created your own sound and you have a good sense of the history of the music, then you think of where the music hasn’t gone and where it can go – and that’s innovation - Walter Bishop Jr.
The more ways you have of thinking about music, the more things you have to play in your solos. - Barry Harris
Keeping the melody in mind, you always know where you are, even when you play intricate things. - Lou Donaldson
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. - Duke Ellington
If organizations must deal with uncertainty, the exercise of discretion by organizational members becomes a crucial element in organizational action. - James Thompson
Uncertainty appears as the fundamental problem for complex organizations, and coping with uncertainty, as the essence of the administrative process. - James Thompson
A jazz band is an expression of servant leadership. The leader of a jazz band has the beautiful opportunity to draw the best out of other musicians. We have to learn from jazz band leaders, for jazz combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals. - Max Depree
Conversation is the single greatest learning toll in your organization − more important than computers or sophisticated research. - Peter Senge
When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that person is crazy. - Dave Barry
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. - Albert Einstein
To live in an evolutionary spirit means to engage with full ambition and without any reserve in the structure of the present, and yet to let go and flow into a new structure when the right time has come. - Erich Jantsch
What leaders are called upon to do in a chaotic world is to shape their organizations through concepts, not through elaborate rules or structure. -Margaret Wheatley
I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don’t think that’s quite it; it’s more like jazz. - Warren Bennis
In this new world, you and I make it up as we go along, not because we lack expertise or planning skills, but because that is the nature of reality. Reality changes shape and meaning because of our activity. And it is constantly new. - Margaret Wheatley
What distinguishes good from bad in learned discourse is not the adoption of a particular methodology, but the earnest and intelligent attempt to contribute to a conversation. - Donald McCloskey
Jazz groups simply treat performance errors as compositional problems that require instant, collective solutions, in some cases, the skilful mending of one another’s performances. - Paul Berliner
You keep playing, keep studying, keep listening, keep learning, and you keep developing. It’s a way of life. - Red Rodney

The Latest Random Riff

Improvising Isn’t Winging It

June
18

The “cognitive dissonance” Random Riffs generated some interesting responses. One in particular raises a matter germane to the performance of both jazz ensembles and organizations. I’ll let my friend Peter Brown speak for himself.

A sequel suggestion -- on "risk". As you seek out the Kevins and Chrises in your organization, how do you think about risk? And from your jazz paradigm -- what's the "risk" in attending to Chris and Kevin? And how should one think of "lifting" into a non-jazz organization or situation? "Tolerance for risk" I think is the wrong expression -- we develop tolerance for certain snake bites and poison ivy. Or maybe everything is jazz and incumbents don't know it? I suspect a lot of learning about risk is implicit in jazz.

Read On

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