Jamming is a lot like Working Out Loud

When I am not working, I am sure 98.3 % of the time you will find my fingers drumming on any hard surface (provided it lends itself to an interesting vibration frequency) in a spontaneous burst of staccato rhythmic beats.

Yes, I know what you are thinking. You are right.

I don’t even know when I am doing this. It has become a habit. I can’t help it. My finger tips have been throbbing with rhythm ever since I started playing Mridangam  (south Indian percussion instrument) when I was seven years old.

In the milieu I grew up in, learning Carnatic music outside my school was as much a norm as learning cursive writing inside my school. As kids, we were learning one or the either forms of music?—?vocal or instrumental and picked up instruments that mesmerized us.

In my case, it was easy. I fell for Mridangam hook, line and sinker.

If you’ve never heard the androgynous sound of Mridangam?—?to an unfamiliar ear, the deft strokes are bound to remind you of a feisty romance between two warring Gods?—?spare few moments and listen to this King of Mridangam play with a metronome for us.

This article and everything else in this world can wait.

When I was three years old, before I knew anything about Mridangam or Music for that matter, I remember fooling around in the kitchen, drumming on aluminium rice containers that were twice as big as I was.

These days, I jam with my friends regularly during weekends. We practise “Open Jamming” where we invite musicians from diverse schools of music and improvise on familiar riffs to venture into the unknown. As you can see, our music is a delightful Cassata Ice-cream with colorful Carnatic, Western and Blues music generously sprinkled with nutty pop music aesthetics for the audience who come to hear us play. No wonder, our band is called Terrasen Cafe?—?named after the vegan cafe I play on Saturdays.

In all these years, music has been my powerful mooring which lets me plumb deeper to be that sheepish three year old who drummed on aluminium containers to his heart’s content because it was fun.

Talking of jamming, in the past three years, my professional work?—?helping clients solve the knotty problem of Enterprise Collaboration?—?has provided me with an interesting lens to examine the seemingly effortless process that unfolds whenever I set out with my friends to jam and make music together.

My inquiry began with a question which troubled me like an ear worm?—?you know that weird feeling when a catchy piece of music refuses to stop playing in your head

Why does it feel so easy to collaborate in the world of music when you know how fiendishly difficult it can get to motivate employees in large organizations to collaborate?

Of course, I am aware of the deep chasm between the world of music and business. The former happens in the world of play, while the latter happens in the world of games. And, lest you think otherwise, there is a critical distinction between the two.

Here is one of my favorite social scientists, Shiv Viswanathan wisely distinguishing between the two:

“A game is a bounded, specific way of problem solving. Play is more cosmic and open-ended. Gods play, but man unfortunately is a gaming individual. A game has a predictable resolution, play may not. It allows for emergence, novelty, surprise. ”

In case you are feeling queasy with the term “God” here, I should probably remind you that the term has to be viewed in a mythological context. Perhaps, you might be able to better appreciate the divine aspect of “play” with this illustration I recreated, based on the book, Gamestorming.

Remember this. Play can create games. When you play, you first imagine a world?—?a world full of possibilities and set out to create it. You create the world by defining its boundaries in time and space, its rules of interaction to be abided by the players, and artifacts(think of a ball in the game of cricket) that carry the information about the game.

Once you’ve created the game through an act of play, you can play it any number of times. When the game is being played, there are only three stages?—?You open the world that has been created, explore the game world to achieve the goals defined inside its context, and close the world once those goals have been met.

When Shiv says, “Gods play, but man unfortunately is a gaming individual”, he is pointing out at the stark contrast between the two worlds, where you are completely “untrammeled by rules of any sorts” (to borrow David Graeber’s words in his book, Utopia of Rules) in the former, while you consent to remain bounded by the rules that define the game in the latter.

What makes “Open Jamming” a rewarding “play” experience is exactly this. When you improvise to bring together different worlds of music without allowing its rigid strictures to take over the music that is being created in the fleeting “virgin” moment, you create a fertile space for something “novel” to emerge. It is very difficult to describe this feeling and how it emerges.

At the risk of losing you, my dear readers, I am going to try this . Please bear with me, as I diverge slightly from the subject to zoom in and show you the kind of stuff that emerges during jamming.

I don’t know if you are familiar with this cult song of AR Rahman: Dil Se Re.

Now, do me a favour.

As much possible, try to ignore the hyper-energetic Shah Rukh Khan goofing around in the video, and focus on one particular bass riff piece pattern- played by the legendary Pink Floyd bass guitarist Guy Pratt?—?from 3:32 to 3:48 in this song.

Did you listen?

Now, try to imagine inside your head what could happen when you play Carnatic style percussion (of the likes you heard in that metronome video) along with that bass riff pattern?

Yes, this happened recently, when I played Kanjeera?—?shall we say, it’s a sister percussion instrument often accompanied with Mridangam in carnatic concerts?—?for this piece during our jam.

It was heavenly! I wish I could grope for the right words to tell you how it felt in that goose-flesh inducing moment!

When Kanjeera’s unique sound idiom pranced along with zeisty abandon in that sexy bass riff pattern, there was magic in the air. As we played along, we were discovering?—?along with everyone else?—?the beguiling charms of fusion music. (My sincere gratitude to the amazingly talented Aditya Raghavan from our band who brilliantly recreated the bass riff in his keyboard.)

I wish, so wish I had recorded it that day for you to hear and see.

Uff..Never mind…

It’s high time to shift gears and come back to the topic we are exploring together: What does this contrast between the worlds of play and game teach us about Enterprise Collaboration?

A lot, if you ask me.

Every business?—?small or large?—?operating today began its journey as a startup in the world of play. After all, every startup is, in Venkatesh Rao’s insightful words, “design fiction masquerading as business”, that aims to change the rules of the game we like to call: Business-as-usual.

Think of Facebook. Or Google. Or any organization from the older era. All of them began their journeys playfully, imagining newer possibilities. As they tasted the first kiss of success, they were hungry to play the big game, nursing ambitions at scale.

Startups couldn’t resist remaining just startups. They wanted to scale efficiently and become large corporations. As they became large corporations, the games they played slowly atrophied to become “processes”.

And, in the world of processes, organizations are bound to operate in what behavioral psychologists call as “functionally fixed” ways?—?a cognitive bias which demands you to view objects in terms of their most apparent functions. HR teams cannot but do HR; Marketing teams cannot but do Marketing.

We all know how such stories end. Don’t we? Entropy eventually kicks in, and large corporations slowly degenerate into bureaucracies.

This must be obvious. This the sordid tale of every corporation that dreamed big and yet went bust. The question remains: What do we do about it?

Before we jump ahead with prescriptions, I think it’s important to critically understand “bureaucracy”. In our current tech-obsessed cultural climate, our value judgement about “bureaucracy” clouds our ability to inquire deeply about its purpose and functions.

Among other definitions, I like Neil Postman’s definition of bureaucracy which appears in his brilliant book, Technopoly : “a coordinated series of techniques for reducing the amount of information that requires processing.”. In a nutshell, bureaucracy controls the information flow and makes it efficient.

How do bureaucrats reduce the amount of information? You know the answer. Don’t you? By devising rules which help alleviate the anxiety of information overload and control the information flows. Do you see where I am getting at?

Bureaucrats play games with rules and artifacts which standardize the information flows (think of a checklist or a box to be filled in a form) so that they can pretend to manage and control reality as it is?—?as true embodiment of chaos.

What ultimately lies behind the appeal of bureaucracy is fear of play’?—?David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules

This is a critical insight that needs to be understood. Why do large organizations are okay becoming bureaucracies? They fear “play”. They can’t stand open-ended creativity. It has to be brought under order through rules which can manage ambiguity.

So, here’s what we need, if we have to fight entropy.

We need to find ways to play improvisational games within bureaucracies, which can subvert the rules of the game ossified hard enough to be assumed as processes?—?shorthand for “This is how we are supposed to do things”

Enter Working Out Loud.

When I came across the idea of open, observable knowledge work several years ago, I began to embrace it heads-over-heels in the networks I work out of. The benefits seemed obvious. At least to me. It reminded me of the good ol’ days when I earnestly believed that “open source” could solve the world’s problems.

If we all had to walk around naked, we’d spend more time in the GYM”?—?Jim Whitehurst, CEO @ Redhat

Reality hit me soon. None of my friends and colleagues at work warmed up to it. At first, I couldn’t figure out the reasons behind their inertia to keep work “visible” for open contribution. I think I understand them now better.

When you play bureaucratic games in knowledge work, a lot of interesting things happen.

• Unless the user is self-aware, digital tools rarely lead breadcrumb trails. Changes made in an electronic spreadsheet lets you see new results immediately. In the end, only the final output is visible
• “Invisible craft” involved in knowledge work becomes a tool for wielding power in your sweet, little den in the hierarchy. Needless to say, territorial instincts start to kick in.
• Rules designed in bureaucratic games obviate the critical two-way communication needed to understand complex realities. This must be obvious. Isn’t that what bureaucracies do? Aren’t you supposed to just shut up, play by the rules and obey orders?

So, what are you doing when you are working out loud?

• By making your work visible and narrating your work, you indulge in “improvisational play”?—?sharing tiny breadcrumbs of your work which can be re-contextualized in multitudinous ways.
• By sharing your observable work, you do “open jamming”?—?allow anyone?—?not necessarily the one who is supposed to work with you as per the rules of the game?—?with those interested to contribute to your work.

Here is my humble definition for Working Out Loud in today's context.

Working Out Loud is a subversive approach to bring in “play” elements to disrupt the bureaucratic games played inside large organizations.

What do you think?

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If you liked this post, you should check these out

1) Three Ways to Kill an Enterprise Collaboration Project

2) When I am Working Out Loud

3) Reinventing Work As a Verb

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This post was originally published in Medium.

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