Random Riffs
Improvising Isn’t Winging It
June
18
2009
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.
Peter’s right -- simply developing a tolerance for risk isn’t good enough. It's akin to developing a tolerance for co-workers and relatives we don't much like but with whom we are required to keep company. We have to do better than that. Let me make clear at the outset that when I speak of risk taking, I’m excluding from consideration those folks with weirdly wired central nervous systems who are incapable of experiencing fear and are, therefore, a menace to themselves and others. The humorist, Dave Barry, knows who I’m talking about.
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.
Let’s begin by acknowledging the obvious: risk is joined at the hip with uncertainty. If this were a book I’d devote a chapter to it, but it’s a newsletter so a line must suffice. Let me tell you a story that will serve as an outline for the chapter in the book I’m never likely to write.
About a year ago, the Getting in the Groove team was doing a workshop for a consultancy whose people, like those in many professional service firms, generally worked solo with its clients. This meant that they - like teachers in classrooms – worked and exercised discretion in dynamic environments characterized by uncertainty, unobserved by the firm’s management. So there we have the big three: uncertainty, risk and discretion.
At a certain point in the workshop, a consultant, relatively new to the firm, said that while she appreciated the confidence shown in her by the freedom she’d been given, she didn’t believe it was justified. In a nutshell, she didn’t feel that she had the competence needed for the assignments she was being given. In this and the discussion that followed her admission are all the ingredients I need for this newsletter.
Let me segue into this by quoting a classic, but, I think, instructive, bit of obfuscation from Donald Rumsfeld when asked a question by a reporter about the progress of the war in Iraq.
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.
So where, on this “known known; known unknown; unknown unknown” Rumsfeld uncertainty continuum was this gutsy, risk-taking gal. (Let me say, as an important aside, that credit is due the management of this firm that they had created an environment where she felt safe enough to say what she said.)
She was OK with the known known. And she was pretty much OK with the known unknown. I mean by this that while she couldn’t necessarily predict ahead of time what kind of problems clients might present to her, she was knowledgeable about a range of possible situations that might arise and the options available to her for dealing with them. While this area of her work came with certain risks, she felt she had the competence to deal with them. But consultants love to tell war stories and most of them are about the unknown unknown. And she’d heard them because consultants love to talk about their brushes with disaster − or, at least, the ones from which they emerge triumphant. It was these stories that were keeping her awake at night.
War stories are of no help here – especially when told by the self-aggrandizing. What was needed was someone who was able to help this consultant map the uncertainty domain and assess her competence in relation to the risk presented by the uncertainty. Matching consultants with client assignments is a tricky business – I know because I’ve done it. On the one hand, you want to give people assignments that will provide them with opportunities to learn by stretching them while, on the other hand, not putting the client’s interests at serious risk. Throwing people into the deep end of the pool is not a sound pedagogical strategy if you know they can’t swim – it’s felony murder.
Let me switch into jazzer mode here to make the “improvising-isn’t winging-it” point.
I’ve had the good sense to populate the Getting in the Groove musical team with musicians who are better than I am. Superficially, they make me look good. I have, however, more honorable and substantive reasons for doing so – they help me get better. I know I can’t play at their level but I know better than to get them to play at mine. So they push the envelope and I stretch. Is stretching risky? Absolutely. Is it paying off? Absolutely. I’m getting better – I can do things now that I couldn’t do six months ago. Would we take this pushing and stretching to the point where the performance was seriously jeopardized? Absolutely not!
Uncertainty appears as the fundamental problem for complex organizations, and coping with uncertainty, as the essence of the administrative process. If organizations must deal with uncertainty, the exercise of discretion by organizational members becomes a crucial element in organizational action. James Thompson, "Organizations in Action"
The appropriate exercise of discretion is what makes the difference between improvising and winging it. There is nothing timid about the kind of discretion I have in mind here as there is always risk in an improvised performance. Listen to what Kevin Barrett, one of team’s musicians has to say about that.
When I go out to listen to other jazz players, one of the things that always catches my attention is hearing them take risks and make mistakes. I love to hear a player I admire push her/himself to the point where a limit is found, and crossed. It's inspiring, and reveals something about their playing I wouldn't have otherwise heard. Much more engaging than hearing someone play note-perfect solos every time!
The risk-taking in improvisation – as opposed to that in winging it – is informed by an intelligent grasp of the nature of the uncertainty faced by the performers. When the musicians of the Getting in the Groove team encourage me to stretch and I go for it, it happens in a shared understanding of where the edge is. To stay away from the edge is to learn nothing; to rush over it is simply foolhardy. In the community of jazzers, an awareness of where that edge is and pushing it is a significant social achievement. And it’s a joy to be there.
