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.

Tyler Cowen is looking for science and innovation to the create next decade's low hanging fruit

In his latest ebook Tyler Cowen argues that with much of its low hanging fruit gone, America needs to innovate its way back to growth. Median income and productivity, he states, can only rise in the long-term through technology breakthroughs that help create a step change in productivity and with it bring jobs and increased prosperity. In reading his thesis, I recall a recent radio interview I listened to with Tim Smit, the founder of the Eden Project, in which he stated that in his view the answer to today's growth challenge would be to not stand still, but be a generation that does the right thing and invests in tomorrow's technologies. Both Tyler and Tim are broadly of the same opinion that innovation is the way back to growth. Not discounting trimming out waste but making selected investments for the medium-term now. An interesting polemic, please see link here

Social Computing - Unlocking Innovation

Could Social Computing help unlock innovation in your organisation? Please follow the link to my recent post on Atos Consulting's blog here

The Work Foundation say the UK needs an 'innovation eco-system' to rebalance the economy

This morning I attended an early breakfast meeting hosted by the Work Foundation in London.  The meeting launched the latest Work Foundation Statement [of work], presenting the argument that by 2020 the UK needs to have developed a more innovative, creative and entrepreneurial economy.  An economy that moved away and re-balanced from, what their report refers to as, the previous ‘credit-boom fuelled economy’ powered by financial services, property and construction.  Both Will Hutton and Ian Brinkly, the research lead, hosted the event unveiling their view that the UK needs to develop an ‘innovation eco-system’.

Given we are in uncertain times, and weeks from an election, the Work Foundation are doing exactly what they are designed to do and that is presenting some well researched and formulated guidelines (policy levers) for our economy so that the next Government (whichever party, or combination of parties) can take hold of and move forward.  UK businesses can follow and that we, the workforce, can hopefully align to - to help map out our own innovative, creative and entrepreneurial work journey over the next ten years.

One of the key points made this morning, was the ‘need’ for our institutions to unlock access to private long term capital.  Will Hutton stating the somewhat alarming statistic that only £100 billion of bank balance sheet debt, is invested in businesses, the large majority being retail mortgage debt thus suggesting that UK businesses and therefore UK innovation is starved of funds in the current system.  A hunger that hopefully the new ‘innovation eco-system’ would address – getting investment into the hands of those that are innovate, creative and entrepreneurial.

The report is due out tomorrow and will be published on their website www.theworkfoundation.com. To wrap up, Ian Brinkly posed the question of what was missing from their planned research through to April 2011?  My own view is that on top of the suggested low carbon economy, creative and cultural section in the innovation eco-system, high tech manufacturing and services (what the Work Foundation refer to as Manu-Services) and other report topics, I would hope that Work Foundation take a strong look at the social networks and how they can be leveraged, to amongst other things, signal change in fast moving markets and stimulate and tap into innovation both inside and outside an organisation's firewall.  I hope the resulting ‘innovation eco-system’ has at its core an ability to harness the value of networks and self-organising systems to help keep UK business at the forefront of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship not just in 2020 but ongoing.

18 minutes of fame

Next week www.ted.com comes to Oxford for its annual conference, where 700 delegates debate some of the most important ideas of the day.  Split in 12 sessions ranging from 'What we know' to 'Nature's Challenge' it is an interlectual feast of ideas and debate.  Unfortunately I will not be attending, but one comforting factor is that many of us are still seeking out intellectual debate, we want to debate the big issues and seek out those with big ideas that can possibly address them.  If this is not provided through the mainstream politics and media we will seek it elsewhere.  That is why ted.com freely releases the videos from the event, it wants to provide a platform for intellectual debate.  Each presenter is limited to 18 minutes, I strongly recommend having a look if you have not already done so.