Working the Jazz Metaphor: Musings Driving down I-5 Past Midnight Author(s): Eli Berniker Source: Organization

Science, Vol. 9, No. 5, Special Issue: Jazz Improvisation and Organizing (Sep. - Oct., 1998), pp. 583-585 Published by: INFORMS Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2640299 . Accessed: 26/10/2011 09:16
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

INFORMS is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Organization Science.

http://www.jstor.org

Working

the
down

Jazz 1-5

Metaphor:
Past

Musings

Driving

Midnight

Eli Bemiker
Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington 98447

Abstract
Applyingunfettered disciplinedimagination last night's but to Academyof Management 1995 session on the jazz metaphor, I asked:How would I design an organization if it were a as mediumfor improvisational jazz? I knowthatthe designmetaphorgrateson some sensibilities.Bearwith me. I am a tinkerer and bricoleurat heart.I write as thoughtemergedsubjectto
minor editing.

(Metaphor; Organizing; Improvisation; Jazz)

Reflective Premises
A. "Jazz Is Cold" Let us deconstruct the metaphor. We cannot have managers as jazz artists playing instruments whom we know as "employees." Conventionally, we give managers use and control of employees but no "reeds to play them with" (Bill Pasmore's anecdote). Thus, the metaphor suggests an organization of all virtuosi and no management of people. But-the inevitable dialectic-there are crucial management functions. Management is not irrelevant to organizational success. If the metaphor is good, we'll find a way to encompass management within it. B. How Can We Move Managers Towards an Improvisational Jazz Mindset? Suppose we ask managers to become "acting" managers instead of those who "owned" their employees. Instead of performing unselfconsciously, they would have to think about acting as managers. The role is not worn like a coat but improvised from available events and situations. To be sure, that is usually the case but that is not how it is understood. Our goal is to change the mindset. (The insight has a literary source. Gore Vidal (1985) in a posthumous review of Italo Calvino's work, noted that Calvino would have appreciated the multiple ironies of an "acting president" in reference to Reagan.)

How? (1) A manageiial jazz group consisting of four managers share among themselves a large number of employees engaged in a common project. The context might be a high-tech firm, design and implementation of an advanced manufacturing system, or even some aspect of medical delivery systems. The key is complexity and knowledge work. (2) Each manager is assigned as "acting manager"for another's set of employees. We have untied the manageremployee nexus. Acting managers may have influence but no control. It is a temporary role that may become permanent. (3) The task of the managers' jazz combo is to make music. The role of employees is to dance. The combo weaves themes, structure, success, failures, creating a groove from the stream of events perpetually cascading through the organization. Their challenge: turn the cacophony into music. They'll need all of the "provocative competence" they can muster. (4) Employees dance, which is the work of the organization. The jazz combo can't make them dance but, if they can create and sustain the "groove," dancing may become infectious. Effectiveness of management results from their ability to enact from the cacophony of organizational life a space formed by their music that enables a room full of people to dance. (5) Employees dance in ever-changing groups, constellations, and patterns, all expressing and elaborating their sense of the music while adaptively appropriating, allocating, and crafting that space among themselves. There are many ways to dance: alone, groups, circles, simply tapping out the beat. All are contained by the space and music. None are "ordained" by the music to use Gilbert Ryle's imagery (Ryle 1949). (6) From time to time, the combo announces its compositions, composers, and players. There are blues, ballads, fusion, and franticjazz mixed with slow contemplative interludes. These announcements punctuate the

C.

1047-7039/98/0905/0583/$05.00
CopyrightC) 1998, Institutefor OperationsResearch and the ManagementSciences ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/VOl.

9, No. 5, September-October 1998

583

ELI BERNIKER

Working the Jazz Metaphor

experiences for both players and dancers. So, too, do the requests from the floor. The only measures of performance are collective: the jazz combo and the dancing floor. Yet, in another dialectical twist, the lack of individual performance measures frees up virtuosity to flower on the egalitarian bandstand and dance floor. Failure is important. "To see the beauty of jazz failures of reach is to learn an important lesson." "There is an aesthetic of imperfection." (Karl Weick) Effectiveness, both on stage and floor, is expressed in failures of reach, for this necessarily creates learning, stretches the envelope of the possible, and crafts the future. Thus, effectiveness is tightly bound to improvisation. Ineffectiveness becomes the failure to reach. Failure to reach signals a dearth of innovation and improvisation and organizational rigidity. Both music and dance are controlled and predictable. What Kind of Sensemaking Does the Metaphor Suggest? Prospective or Retrospective? Was Ken Peplowski even aware of a time arrow while in the groove? Was it any kind of sensemaking or is sensemaking an academic imposition, a way to discover a rational actor when there is none? If thought before action is the sine qua non for rationality, then no rational actor was present while Ken played his best improvisational jazz inventions. D. Exquisite competence is manifested in the absence of a rational actor, or maybe because of the absence of a rational actor. Perhaps our question of sensemaking confuses more than it reveals. Rational actors think and do, i.e., they are sense makers of their own actions. Ken Peplowski demonstrates pure doing, performing sans sensemaking. Whatever sensemaking there is might come later, retrospectively. E. What Instruments Do Managers Play? Managers play their favored metaphors for organizing, working, and dealing with problems. It is "sensemaking" out loud except that it only becomes sensible, real time, to the dancers. An Aside. Design for combo. Select managers according to Myers-Briggs so that each quadrant is represented. Their music becomes the embellishment and evolution of competing and conflicting metaphors for what the organization is doing. Consistency is not a virtue but a trap. Coherence is crucial, which is why the improvisational structure and bare-bones score are central. Consistency fails because

no single metaphor can encompass the complexity of organizational life. Competing metaphors woven coherently are encompassing and therefore become sensible to dancers. Consistency is not needed because acting managers do not give orders to dancers. So the managerial jazz combo is about sensemaking after all? Is it not possible that what may not be sensemaking on the stage may become so for the dancers? The action may not be sensemaking but the product makes sense to the dancers. In jazz as art, sensemaking is not a solitary expressive form but a dialog between combo and dancers. The conflicting, evolving, paradoxical improvisations provide coherency to dancers, for they enact a universe within which they can function, work, produce, and, above all, dance. F. Another Reflection We might compare earlier views of enacting with those implied by the improvisational jazz metaphor. Managerial enactments by those in authority seek to direct organizational functioning. The best of these aspire to gain commitment of employees. More often then not, they achieve "determinedhead nodding" which passes for commitment. Enactments as art arise from a dialog with an audience. They are tested for resonance. They strive for dance and not simply nodding heads. And How Shall We Describe the Product of the Dance Floor? And What About the Door? Customers, clients, students, patients, prisoners, parishioners, passengers are all clamoring to enter. How shall they be included in the dialog between jazz combo and dancers? These last two reflections must await the aging and seasoning of what precedes them. They will gain form over time. G.

June 10, 1996 Further Musings on the Jazz Metaphor: Aged and Seasoned over Time
And How Shall We Describe the Product of the Dance Floor? Peter Senge cites Deming as saying, "Ourprevailing system of management has destroyed our people." There is no prevailing on our dance floor. The essence of jazz improvisation is that its structure enables creative freedom. Nor is there much system. At best, a Piagetian "deep structure"is created, a set of relationships that generates patterns for organizing, capable of indefinitely large varieties of performance. Organizing occurs within, and as a result of, tensions between themes expressing goals, H.

584

ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 9, No. 5, September-October

1998

ELI BERNIKER

Working the Jazz Metaphor

generative structures patterning player and dancer roles, and creative freedom challenging their virtuosity. So what is happening on the dance floor? The dancers, and players, achieve a "flow state," Csikszentmihalyi's (1975, 1990) term for the common experience of people intensely engaged in "autotelic" activities, ultimate intrinsic motivation. Awareness merges into action, consciousness of self disappears, attention is concentratedon tasks at hand, and there is a strong sense of control, all within a context of adequate challenge. He studied rock climbers, poets, and dancers among others. The dancers are not alienated. Flow is the polar opposite of alienation on each of its dimensions (Seeman 1959) save one, self-estrangement. Self, a defensive role vis-'a-vis others, is not needed when our dancing confirms us as actors. So What Is the Product of the Dance Floor? Phil Herbst (1975) wrote that "the product of work is people." Our achievements on the dance floor become our past and what remains are our qualities and potential as human beings. The product of the dance floor is dancers. Maybe the dance is our answer to Deming's condemnation. Can we hope for dancing/organizing that elevates, confirms, and even creates our humanity? Can we conceive of "sustainable organizations" whose organizing dances cultivate more humanity than they consume? G. And What About the Door? What is the door? One set of doors is the musical menu whose improvisations signal spaces for outsiders to join and participate.Successful managerial music opens doors internalizing the environment by including customers and clients among the dancers. Somewhere, hiding in the music, are rituals for joining and leaving. The loose threads of improvisations are grasped as entrances and exits. Not enough. So far, the outsiders remain incidental to the dance. Something is missing. What is their role? One role is audience. It is an honorable and crucial role

in the arts without which performance loses its edge. Errol Gamer teased his audiences with long improvised introductions before letting the music announce the selection. Our dancers may experience joy in performance before a live audience. Still not enough. Who is this crowd at the door? What kind of world have they enacted that brings them to our door? Who do they think we are? Who do we think we are? Is there meaning to our dance beyond our walls or have we simply been seeking nirvana in isolation? If nirvana, lock the doors lest we lose our groove. Otherwise, the improvisations must create space for those at the door. They, too, dance and respond to the combo and make requests selecting from among improvisations. They exit carrying our meanings beyond our walls bringing others to our door bearing a precious gift: they know who we are. As successive waves of newcomers join our dance, repeating some requests and not others, organizing discovers its identity mirrored in transient dancers. Our "we," improvised and created in a dialog of music and dance, appears reflected in the experience of others passing through. They tell us who we are. And so coherence emerges from improvisation and organizing becomes real. References
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi. 1975. Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harperand Row, New York. Herbst, Philip. 1975. The product of work is people. Louis E. Davis, Albert B. Cherns, eds. The Quality of Working Life, Vol. 1. The Free Press, New York. Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. Hutchinson, London, UK. Seeman, Melvin. 1959. On the meaning of alienation. American Sociological Review. 24 783-791. Dec. Vidal, Gore. 1985. Obituary. The New York Review of Books. 32 3. Nov.

ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 9, No. 5, September-October 1998

585