The Power of Music Thinking in a Connected System
music thinking
Great approach to bridge Design Thinking, Sustainable Innovation, and Branding. Check out the Book, Podcast & Workshops!
About leadership and followership, or better leading and following! Some thoughts about The Power of Music Thinking: Listen, Tune, Play and Perform by Christof Zürn
?When people work together in the workplace, you sometimes hear expressions such as 'we need to orchestrate this', 'pull out all the stops', 'we need to improvise more here', or 'jam a bit' and 'work in the right cadence'.?
?People who collaborate often use musical terms, which is not surprising because musicians are 'natural collaborators', and we need them precisely in our current society and business. Leaders, teams and organisations need to cultivate a fruitful collaborative working atmosphere to get people to work together effectively to deliver good products and services that people need, want, buy and use.?
?FROM FOLK TO JAZZ
You can find parallels in how musicians work together, deal with leadership and create something entirely new and inspiring. This applies to all kinds of music, from folk to jazz and classical to electronic dance music.
Before my time as a creative director, design thinking coach, management consultant and service designer, I studied musicology. So, I thought at one point: How can I develop a practical framework that makes sense to all aspects of working and innovating together? I finally found it in creating the music thinking framework that treats different methods and tools as instruments that can sound together based on input, output and repetition.?
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HOW DOES IT WORK?
The music thinking framework (see picture below) comprehends four overlapping phases: listen, tune, play and perform. Each of these phases connects with six corresponding musical entities, called cues. The cues are JAMMIN', EMPATHY, PERSONALITY, SCORE, AGILITY and REMIX.
All the cues have two sides, think yin and yang.
By acting from a particular cue and using related instruments, you connect the cues and the work on themes such as strategy, research, culture, production, experience and co-creation.
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You feel that all elements relate to each other, and in this way, you optimise collaboration, resulting in a more balanced organisation.
Music Thinking is a practical way of simultaneously experiencing your company from different perspectives and aligning solution directions. Discover how you can orchestrate an organisation like a symphony, let a talented team jam like a rock band or improvise like a jazz band. It's time to 'Listen, Tune, Play and Perform' - and then repeat.
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DOES IT WORK FOR EVERYONE?
Just as you don't need to be a designer to apply Design Thinking, you also don't need any knowledge of music to employ Music Thinking. In my book, you will find several exercises with a QR code to templates, which you can use to download and use in your business. Furthermore, each central chapter has its playlist with music examples: some of them you might have never heard before, but are fascinating because of how the musicians work together.?
In the 'backstage' section, you will find a glossary with short explanations to better understand some instruments, for example, the difference between target audience, aspirational persona and reality persona. In other words, know your instruments! In other words, know your instruments!
After all, a violin is not a cello, but also not a ukulele.
To bring music thinking to your organisation, you can do the following:
Act:?Call us to help you integrate music thinking into your organisation.
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About the Author, Christof Zürn is the founder of the Dutch consultancy firm Creative Companion and musicthinking.com. Before that, he was Chief Design Officer at the Design Thinking Center and interactive creative director at Studio Dumbar and Clockwork. Christof has been a member of the improvisation collective Raum-Musik für Saxophone since 1987.