‘Being Jazz’ SenseMaking in Complex Times - Part 2 - The Audience

I have always enjoyed using analogies and one of my favourites is that of musical performances - Symphony Orchestra and Jazz. Each is a manner, a mindset to create music, but in very different contexts.?

Leading a band is what most successful leaders do. Picking up from the previous article, let us leave aside the leader and consider the audience of both these performances (the Customer). After all, they are the one’s paying for a good time!

The Orchestra band practises hard and long. The band leader holds and deciphers the blueprints to the performance and is the North star for the entire team. All the practise (all development) happens behind closed doors, in an environment where variables are kept under check and allowed to function only in a pre-determined manner.?The entire onus of delivery is shouldered by the Leader and executed by the team. And the performance is about delivering a masterpiece to your audience - the Crescendo - a Solution that is WOW and an experience that is incredible!

Now the audience holds the power to accept or reject the performance. Their reaction determines how successful the delivery has been - the applause, the cheering and how loud it is (customer response translating as product acceptance or rejection). The Orchestral system creates and then works between the two structures - The Band Leader and the band (the Organisation) and the audience (the Customer). And both are separated by the performance (the Moment of Great Reveal).

Orchestration is an awesome process to be highly efficient, right the first time, reliable, consistent and repeatable. Here the enterprise management builds Central repositories of resources - both tangible and intangible and they flow unidirectionally. It is a great mindset to have when the Business context is Complicated.?

But to have an Orchestral mindset in today’s context will lead to a build up of fault lines in our system, as we try harder and harder to control the practise and the performance. World over people are voicing against the seeming pandemic management and orchestration too!

We need a different approach, a new metaphor for the present context, which is Complex with bouts of Chaotic hurricanes. Because our offices are lying empty and our team members are geographically scattered. The physical presence upon which the hierarchy rests and operates is absent.?        

What we need now is something like a Jazz Music Night - music to calm us down, then jam together and co-create through the current VUCA Chaos.?

In the previous article, I’ve shared how the Jazz mindset manages an Organisation in the previous article. But what about the Jazz audience?

Well they can certainly leave their seats, move about and dance and the musicians enjoy it too! The audience (the Customer), their reactions, mood and participation is very much a part of the creation process.?

The audience response is not something to be speculated or assumed. It is not something which is unknown and will happen at the end of the delivery process. The response and creation are in sync, real-time and mutually responsive. There is true co-creation.?

And so in Jazz there is no King-making, neither the musician nor the listener (neither the company nor the customer) is King. Greatness is to be claimed only by the performance (product / service) and the applause is equal from both sides.

What is true in music, could it be true in Business too. What do you think?

To be continued -? Seeing, Sensing & Shaping - Approaches to build the Jazz Mindset!