Jazz and Adaptative Project Management

Sometimes jazz may sound as if the musicians were producing notes flowing from the brain (or the soul) to their fingertips in a free way, but actually there is a lot of work behind, a lot of rules being applied, and a lot of changes being both reacted and proposed, for a fine resulting piece of music.

There are so many flavours of Jazz that have been produced along time from the first marching bands in New Orleans to nowadays Jazz music, that it seems difficult to pack them all in one and only concept. Being an amateur musician myself, the concept that comes to mind is this:

Freedom within and Order, Flowing with surrounding music, Changes are just opportunities to have even more fun

Let’s see how the mentioned terms are key in a world that is more a more challenging companies to unexpected changes.

A lot of work, because Jazz demands a lot of domain over the musical instrument to be able to explain your mind through it with no technical limit.

A lot of rules, because the harmony sets a framework (chords, structure) to the apparent anarchic play, in which the musician moves apart from the main melody line while still touching it back and again in the middle of the torrent of his or her music.

By sharing, since both work and rules in Jazz are always applied to the benefit of the group of musicians playing together, then sharing, the musical piece for the best possible result, while enjoying each of them in their individual performance.

A lot of changes to adapt to, because no matter how free you feel a jazz musician sounds, even when playing a solo, still his or her ears are with every one of the other musicians taking part in the play. And this resounds perfectly when applied to any teamwork at any company, where there is a common goal to achieve.

Having a common target in a group still allows for one of the members of the team to play a solo, as long as it is played with the proper skills and frequently touching base with the common objective of the team effort, of which the soloist is still a part.

I strongly recommend the Youtube video of the saxophonist James Carter clinic in a sax boutique in Russia, where he gives some advices and recommendations to other musicians while listening to them as they play, willing to demonstrate him their skills and hoping for some hints. The whole video is a charm, but if you watch it from minute 1:25 you will see that at 1:55 Mr Carter interrupts the player: “Hold it!”

There are 2 other saxophonists up to that moment, one of them playing the melody and the other one in the background accompanying his discourse. When James Carter asks them to stop he points out: “The two of you are playing together right?. Let him some of that at the end”. Then he sings some tune imitating what the melody sax was doing at the end of a phrase, and before letting him to continue, points to the accompanying sax so that it’s him who continues the phrase. Then he says “Share!”.

He comes back to it at 15:30: “Try to listen to each other a lot more. When you are in a jam-session-like situation, there are ideas just like a ball in a tennis match, that can be beaten back and forth”.

What comes immediately is an exercise he proposes between him and the other 2 players to demonstrate how to interact (from 16:00). The minutes ahead of that are gold, where you see them pass the baton from one to the other, the following player starting with the last notes or style of the previous player intervention, going on with his own contribution.

Both are playing the same song, the harmony is respected, the piano in the background is being listened by the players doing their solos, yet they are making their contribution, speaking to each other, reinforcing the ideas of the other and blooming it with their own.

It is beautiful to know that you are not only allowing for other colleagues in your team do things as they see fit, but also it is that you trust they will be doing it by the rules previously agreed by the group, and all of you will feel the joy of getting to the common goal the best possible way.

Adaptation of your music to meet the new proposal from another player’s music; Change by smooth transition; Freedom of Creativity to provide your own contribution within the order of the terms committed by the group… No fear for freestyle within a Team effort to meet Team goals, while Improvising around a framework.

Nowadays changes in the world are forcing companies and teams to continuously adapt. Whether they are natural or human catastrophes (volcanos, tsunamis, earthquakes, Lehman Brothers, COVID- 19,…) there are more and more global events impacting the established systems and structures.

As Joe Czarnecki puts it in his conference paper Adopting a jazz mindset for strategic execution and leadership which is an ever-up-to-date reading, "Adopting a jazz mindset will help individuals and organizations react to—and even initiate—change more quickly. Improvisation and daring to create new things using a more malleable approach to decision making can inspire high performance, not only in music, but in business, too.”

Sergi Corbeto, in his fine article Freestyle Management, conscious improvisation in uncertainty times, talking about how changes drive unprepared companies to a sensation of chaos and discontrol, recommends “Consciously improvising, making design and realization times converge, have turned into ways towards the fast adaptation to changing circumstances. It no longer seems an option but a priority to be fast in order to register new skills to be developed.”

The uncertainty about the future makes companies very difficult to plan. Budgets for the year are a guesstimate and monthly forecasts where the initial budget is reviewed are more and more frequent.

Having good practices in place like the Project Management Institute recommends in his PMBOK (Project Management Book of Knowledge) is helpful, it sets the framework in which the song has to be played.

Up to very recently, Waterfall methodologies splitting projects into quantifiable milestones, and Agile methodologies for gaining a way to boost the understanding and efficiency of a team by envolving the client in these milestones have been very helpful for making the whole project a continuous review and growth of smaller deliverables.

But adapting to change can make companies only a good accompanying player, changing at the pace the world is proposing, but still a boat in a rough sea trying to be afloat, with no actual command.

Also, when adopting rules turns into a goal so important as the project goal itself, decision-making is at risk of running on autopilot reducing the readiness to market environments so changing as the current ones do.

As suggested earlier, having a jazz mindset is not only about reacting to changes but also about creating the changes: prioritazing operation flexibility over speed, developing strategies to find new income streams, expanding overseas and associating to accelerate scalability, being not only agile but also adaptative.

Developing an adaptative mindset approach to the Project management work provides smoother reactions to business climates in frequent change, regardless of the actual methodology adopted.

Like Jazz music, adaptability and creativity may be put at the service of the strategic operations in business, by helping teams and organizations not only to react but also to initiate changes more quickly, balancing freedom with constraints, and adapting to a changing world by proposing your own changes.

So it has to be about reacting to changes, but also about being adaptative and proposing your own change.

Adaptative approaches are suggested by regulations like International Standard ISO 9001:2015 which included for the first time in its revisions a new paragraph 6.1 recommending to ensure that your organization is taking a planned approach to addressing risks and realizing opportunities, and that any actions taken have been recorded. Taking risk in order to pursue an opportunity is an option to address this. An effective risk management approach is not only good business practice but provides organizational resilience, confidence and benefits like taking advantage of opportunities and providing competitive advantage.

Helped by experts like Paula Pérez in the international standard ISO 9001:2015, or Yanina Wax in Agile Methodologies like SCRUM, KANBAN, etc, Zeus Smart Visual Data not only reacts to changes during the development of our projects, but also help in turn our clients to make decisions for reacting to changes by providing them with business dashboards, a way to be continuosly, visually and quickly aware of any change that may affect their businesses.

And beyond reacting to changes, the Business Intelligence dashboards help companies to make a quicker decision about the next step they are going to make for challenging the world with their own play in the music.

What will be yours?