How Should We Help People Learn Leadership? - Getting in the Groove

Random Notes

Road Riffs

How Should We Help People Learn Leadership?

August
27
2009

An associate of mine, Ian Cook, posted a blog article discussing a recent Random Riff - The Sceptical Muse: "What Is The Question For Which This Is the Answer?" Give it a read and discover Ian's take on the issue at hand.

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

Road Riffs

Groove in the News: March 5, 2010
Brian Hayman’s governance article in Charity Channel

Groove in the News: January 20, 2010
Ian Cook: “In Their Play, We Are Only a Supporting Actor”

Groove in the News: August 27, 2009
How Should We Help People Learn Leadership?

Groove in the News: August 24, 2009
Brian Hayman Featured on Professionally Speaking TV

The Groove Team: May 15, 2009
Tim Shia has been busy ...

Groove in the News: May 7, 2009
Check out the article about us in Arts about Town

More Random Riffs

Confessions of a Commuting Eavesdropper / February 18, 2010

Disregard of Uncertainty: Willful, Fearful … Or Just Plain Dumb? / January 29, 2010

Reclaiming the Imagination … Conversation Beyond Methodology / January 13, 2010

Conversations on the Edge: They Work in Practice … But Will They Work in Theory? / December 1, 2009

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who in the Land is Fairest of All? / October 27, 2009

Chickens & Eggs; Functions & Forms / October 3, 2009

Be Wary of the Numbers; Listen to the Story / September 2, 2009

The Sceptical Muse: “What Is The Question For Which This Is The Answer?” / August 17, 2009

My Muse and Me: Getting to Know Her / July 22, 2009

Improvising Isn’t Winging It / June 18, 2009

I Never Thought Of It That Way Before ... or Cognitive Dissonance Ain’t An Illness / May 31, 2009

Broken Images: The Sequel / April 21, 2009

Broken Images and the Aesthetics of Imperfection / March 5, 2009

Organizational Myopia: Purple Loosestrife and the Law of Requisite Variety / January 26, 2009

More From Inside the Blue Zone: A Matter of Trust and Free-Falling Cows / December 14, 2008

Inside the Blue Zone: Phil Meets Grace / November 5, 2008

Uncertainty, Discretion and the Tricky Business of Organizing / October 22, 2008

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high… / July 29, 2008

Stan and Chet: Star-crossed Jazzers / May 24, 2008

Jazz and the Music of the Improvised Life / April 29, 2008

Mosaics, Diversity and What to Make of it All / March 10, 2008

The Musical Conversation: Jazz and the Learning Organization / February 4, 2008

Beyond Clever: Leadership in a Different Key / January 9, 2008