Leading Teams - Insights from Jazz

I recently read an interesting paper on Leading Entrepreneurial Teams – Insights from Jazz authored by Ucbasaran, Lockett, Humphreys.

In considering the generic question ‘How is leadership enacted in creative teams operating in dynamic environments?’   Ucbasaran et al examined Jazz to understand how teams innovate, create and improvise.  The paper looked at diversity, potential conflict and three key leadership themes: i) team formation, ii) team coordination, and iii) managing team turnover; examining three jazz leaders - Ellington, Davis and Blakey.

A common finding was that jazz leaders sort diversity as a means of fuelling creativity – recruiting a diverse range of individuals with broad knowledge sets and alternative perspectives.  This would often bring about the challenge to manage two forms of conflict - “Functional (also known as cognitive) conflict is task-oriented and arises from differences in judgment or perspective. In contrast, dysfunctional conflict (also known as affective conflict) is emotional and arises from personalized incompatibilities or disputes.”

Here I highlight the three key points:

Team Formation to create something radically new requires bringing together musicians known for their individual creative flair and let the opportunity, referring to the music, emege through the creative process.  Davis, with his drive for musical innovation, would often choose individuals who did not know each other and had not worked together and therefore become familiar.

Similarly to Davis, Ellington would not start with a clearly defined opportunity but rather sort what emerged from the raw materials – referring to the diverse members of the band.  Comparing Ellington’s approach to selection to that of a painter; using a range of different colours to create a picture.

Blakey, in contrast to Davis and Ellington, had a clearer notion of the opportunity upfront with his own and chose his team members to fit in with this, the attraction for team members was that they would be nurtured, creating a musical opportunity with Blakey providing educational guidance.

Secondly and summarising briefly here, Team Coordination is required to ensure that the players are given just enough structure to innovate within, an environment where mistakes are not punished, tolerating differences and letting players express themselves.

The final theme, Team Turnover, is a way of teams adapting to wider environment changes.  Their evidence suggesting that team member departures are a common feature of highly diverse, creative teams. Departure, or in Davis’ case disbandment, allows injection of new knowledge and skills into a team.

An interesting paper please see the link here.

Is obliquity the answer to complexity?

Solving complex problems in an oblique way acknowledges their complexity

John Kay’s book Obliquity presents his theory that our goals are best achieved indirectly.  This book looks at the differences between direct and oblique problem solving, and for me it is an enjoyable read on the challenge of complex problem solving.  Kay draws out some key distinctions in problem solving styles, where direct: where all possible outcomes are explored and the best is selected and there is direct connection between intention and outcome, and oblique: where a limited number of options are explored, and a continuous adaptive approach adopted as intention  is neither necessary nor sufficient to secure the outcome.

He recognizes that oblique, or complex problems, are problems where the same problem is never encountered twice.  That is not to say that patterns do not emerge but acknowledges that complex problem solving requires discipline, to ensure the problems is fully explored and framed appropriately before moving on to look for solutions.  A good read.

Macro-factors of IT Consumerisation

Just presented seven of the many macro-factors of IT consumerisation, thought I'd share:

1. Near ubiquitous connectivity
2. Mobile devices are getting more capable and sophisticated
3. We are becoming more social online
4. Cloud computing is an enabler - particularly SaaS
5. It's getting busy out there! Many niche apps.
6. 4 Generations - Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Digital Natives.
7. War on talent (McKinsey Term) are you retaining, developing and attracting those with post-digital skills?
...

Complexity

Dealing with complexity is a growing challenge for today’s business leaders. Advancements in consumer-based technology have empowered employees to explore heterogeneous behaviour, somewhat making their own decisions on technology to support their personal and increasingly business messaging and collaboration. A pattern that is increasing as digital natives enter the workplace together with their born-digital expectations – now what's your plan to accommodate them and how are you going to respond? To behave heterogeneously, or as an individual, is one of the three main characteristic of a complex adaptive systems according to Michael Mauboussin, who neatly outlines the subject in this month’s Harvard Business Review.

A second characteristic of complex adaptive systems is that agents (us) who can (and are free to) interact with one another,we can freely message and collaborate as individuals, or perhaps even as digital natives. We can network, chat, message, self-organise and collaborate around products, services, events and ideas.

The third characteristic of complex adaptive systems, according to Mauboussin's article, is that of emergence, where a complex adaptive system abstracts and is allowed exhibit its own collective and natural behaviour. Behaviour that is not directed but behaviour that emerges as each agent (employee, customer, suppliers...) navigates their daily work life and private life. Ebbing and flowing in their own diverse way, exploring the edge and synthesising and making sense of their changing world. This is where business innovation happens, where employees, customers, suppliers and a whole host of stakeholders are free to explore. The edge explored, hopefully safely.

Question, has nature provided a way of dealing with complexity? Could diversity help? Allowing organisations to respond to complexity through the greater insight of diverse opinion, from supporting diversity for employees, plugging into and leveraging a broader ranges of experience. An earlier article in the same edition of HBR provides an example of this describing a somewhat counter intuitive approach to hiring, whereby candidates could be selected for their combined diversity and not necessary on their ability to state the same answers correctly. If we all think the same way then we do not benefit from a diversity and multiplicity of opinions and experience.

So what can business leaders, and specifically CIO’s take out of all of this? For me it underlines the importance of effective messaging and collaboration tools, to help employees connect and communicate. It also underlines the importance of harnessing diversity and not trying to homogenise your organisation unnecessarily. Yes we can all fill out the same holiday request form, but we must surely allow employees to explore their points of view, express themselves through creativity, with freedom to raise and channel ideas exposing their natural diversity to embrace the chaotic business world of today and tomorrow. Finally, and as I have said before emergence (as its name suggests) is not a behavior that can be mandated, it should instead be supported, with the freedom, provision of effective tools and or appropriate policies. Can diversity help respond to complexity enabled with digital-native technologies?

London Social Business Summit 2011

Social Business Summit 2011, #SBS2011. Great day of informed debate on Social Computing and its growing business relevance in today's information age. Had the pleasure of speaking with John Hagel about his book the Power of Pull @jhegel and the importance of passion in business, excellent read and in my view one of the key texts of the Social Business movement. Jazz Impact were fascinating presenting the jazz band and jazz music as a metaphor to creating flow and innovation in modern business, please see more notes in a co-authored article on Atos Consulting's blog (quoting Duke Ellington) - it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.   Thanks @Headshift for the invite.