One line summary: Explore using music to discover new languages and paradigms, and to help access people's innate creativity and depth as a key strategy in creating the high performance, holistic organizations of the future.

I. Intro

It's 7:38 on a hot Miami evening. The room is slowly filling with people from all over the world - jet lagged, disheveled and a bit dazed from the conference's endless meetings. The house lights dim, and one-by-one the musicians take the stage. The guitar player strikes his first long drawling chord and music rises from the glowing amps. The crowd - surprised at first -settles in, and a low buzz sweeps through the room. By the end of the first song the mood has changed as the sound of the blues starts to work its magic…

As South Bend Slim said: "If the blues teaches us anything, it's that there is an alternative to despair in the face of adversity." During a Face The Music interactive event, participants enter into an altered state, the "Blue Zone", in which normal culturally accepted limitations are suspended, and participants are more receptive and responsive to new ideas and new perspectives. They are encouraged to take that cubic centimeter of chance and turn it into a new way of operating on the job, a new way of approaching issues; one that looks for innovative results, which feels better, and continually looks toward creating an even better future. This is the essence of the organizational work called Beyond The Blues.

It is the goal of every organization to get beyond their blues and achieve the success they're looking for. To do this they have to listen to what the blues have to say. What's really going on? Where are people at with that, assessed emotionally as well as with the conventional metrics?

This perspective and attitude is especially important in today's business climate. After convincing ourselves that the wild ride of the 90's would last forever, we need to develop business in a way that taps the resources and resonance deep within people. That is, where the power, the motivation and the "no problem" attitude in the face of adversity lies. The downsizing, — do more with less — drink a little more coffee and do a couple more hours — mine for profitability is sledding fast down the icy back slope of the law of diminishing returns curve.

There's something coming, finding a way for people to bring more of themselves to their work. Their passion, values, and spirit; their seemingly unrelated talents. A way to engage the wisdom they gain in dealing with life. People bring all this already, but all too often it isn't acknowledged or considered when roles are defined, initiatives designed, or plans are refined. It's time to redefine the boundaries that once served well, but are based on old understandings that beg to be updated, that need to reflect the evolution in awareness in human systems, consciousness, and the nature of reality. Physicists have been talking more like Zen masters for decades, but we have yet to incorporate their discoveries into our organizational systems. Their world is holographic, but ours is still largely mechanistic.

The phenomenon of "silos" within organizations is a symptom of our mechanistic understanding — that one's team, department or division has interests that are separate from the whole, and that its actions can be determined without considering its interdependence with the larger system.

Music, and the blues, is a door that can open into that next level. The sound of it describes a deep multi-dimensional actuality, which is at the same time simple and true, local and global.

II. Chorus-A Face The Music Interactive Event

Picture this: Sixty-five directors and middle managers from a division of a global electronics firm are meeting for three days at a conference center in rural Wisconsin to plan initiatives to achieve their goals for the coming year. Upper management has defined a new direction; and many roles and personnel have changed. On the evening of the first day they arrive in the ballroom, which is set up to look like a blues club, and are seated at tables of six. Some Muddy Waters is playing in the background, and on the stage is a band setup — drum set, amps, PA, mics, etc.

They haven't been told what's going to transpire, but they will soon find out. The house lights dim…

After the first song, the MC sets the context for the evening: "We know from experience that everyone here has some business blues; what you may not have, is a good way to express those blues in a constructive way, and a process to look into how you can, individually and as a group, go beyond those blues. Tonight you'll have that chance. You'll have the opportunity to write a business blues song about your work at Panasonic, and sing that song with the FTM band." A few groans, some laughs, a little buzz goes through the room. The MC gives some context about the tradition of working blues, how it applies today, and how the innovation, teamwork, collaboration, time management, risk taking, etc. that it will take to accomplish this in two hours are the same sort of competencies that they are going to need to accomplish the business goals the were presented this afternoon.

Impossible — seemingly. Perfect — yes. Before the songwriting and performances begin, the group has a chance to discuss what the pressing issues are, which ones carry the most juice, and what impact they are having on their results-all this is raw material for the songs to come. They also get a chance to pick their own blues name, e.g. High-Voltage Tammy Watkins, or Fearless Freddie Bluestein, which, aside from being fun, gives the participants a chance to step outside of their day-to-day personas and approach the task at hand from a different perspective. Sprinkled throughout these processes, the band plays some of their own business blues songs, like "Call Me, Beep Me, Page Me," or "The Overcommitted Blues."

Just before songwriting begins, the band plays a song they've written just for this client, developed from interviews with key players leading up to the conference. In a half an hour they've gone from a general discussion about blues and business, to a song specifically about what's going on in their company. They're ready! The band presents a few templates-songs they can imitate in form to compose their song-and they're off. The people seated at each table become the "band," and coached by the FTM band they write and rehearse their song.

The energy builds in the room as the bands pick their names, write the lyrics and start singing the songs to each other. Hoots of laughter and exclamations of "you can't say that" ensue. The energy buzz builds as the bands work in a flurry to complete the seemingly impossible assignment.

Then comes performance time. The excitement climaxes as the audience watches their co-workers, some in hats and sunglasses, sing, dance, and get out their blues.

The Face the Music blues band leads employees of Sanofi-Aventis through their blues song.

They've sung, they've laughed, many said it's the most fun they've ever had at a business event. How does this translate into organizational change and productivity?

III. Verse 1-What we do is our song

What we do it is our song — our actions, emotions, the way we create our desired results — or not, how we speak, move, breathe, solve problems, celebrate success, deal with disappointment - you get it. We're all playing our songs: alone; in duets, trios, quartets; and sometimes in choirs & choruses. Let's look at our work through the metaphor of music.

In one sense, there are two types of music we play: 1) The music the players wish to play/dream of playing/intend to play-the vision, and 2) Their default music-the stuff that can be generated without thought or intention-the themes and modes that have been programmed into our very selves since we were born, and that we can call up with one click of our remote control. The music produced at work is some combination of these.

The vision music is the creative, cutting edge, fun, productive work. The default setting is that old madness of trying to get a different result by doing more and more of the same thing. The theme could be: "It's like trying to climb a muddy hill to get all the departments to cooperate and to get anything done around here." It's been played over and over, and when the next project is approached from the same place, the song will be played again.

The best work, which produces innovation, breakthroughs, and extraordinary results, comes from players that are composing and performing their dream music; they're going for their vision. And though the song doesn't always sound like the dream they had in their head, its music resonates with originality and insight.

Mediocre results come from players imitating and regurgitating the same-old same-old, like the over-worn jingle put out when under pressure and they feel there's no time to produce something interesting and innovative, or a re-run of the dissonant team theme, sung for years, that no one has stopped to rewrite the harmonies.

The Beyond The Blues work identifies the music you want to make, personally, as a team, and as an organization, and helps you develop the tools and systems to create and produce that music.

Lets look at some business terms and transpose them into the music metaphor:

• Vision — The music/songs/themes we wish to create and live
• Mission — The impact we would like our songs to have
• Teamwork — Playing as a tight band rather than a group of talented, but unaligned noodlers
• Culture — The genre of your music, it's history, values, norms, traditions; are you hip/classic, innovative/derivative, risk taking/conservative…
• Strategies — Responding from within an innovative structure to the music of the culture and our band mates
• Innovation — Not playing the same old tune in the same old way
• Leadership — Conveying a compelling vision to the band and responding appropriately to the needs of the band members and the listeners to make the vision happen
• Time management — Keeping time and playing together in complimentary rhythms
• Clients — The listeners and consumers of the music; you're playing for them

Business Blues

FTM assesses the current situation in an organization through blues. What's going on right now? The blues is a good medium. It is a deeply ingrained musical paradigm in our culture. Almost all popular music can be traced back to the blues: jazz, rock & roll, country, folk, and now rap and hip-hop, have their roots in the blues. The blues are about speaking the truth about what's going on and how you feel about it. It engages the emotional intelligence of the participants.

According to Antonio Damasio, author of the book Descartes' Error: "Feelings point us in the proper direction, take us to the appropriate place in a decision-making space, where we may put the instruments of logic to good use."

The songs people write are about the things that engage them emotionally, what their work extracts from them, and gives back to them in the process of doing the job and creating the results. They express the issues, problems, and absurdities-and also the victories, areas of pride and accomplishment, and the stories of adversity overcome to achieve realization of a goal.

To take a shot at writing your own business blues song, go to: www.facethemusicblues.com/bluestemplate. You will be walked through the process of writing a song about you business blues, and you can sing along with the virtual band.

There is an intense burst of energy and enthusiasm when these groups write and sing their blues, after which they find themselves in a new space. It's been fun, electrifying, and even perhaps a bit of a riot; and now there's a new perspective, the process has brought them to a new space where insight and a detached re-evaluation of situations can take place.

Big Joe Williams said "What made the real blues singers so great is that they were able to state all the problems they had, but at the same time, they were standing outside of them and could look at them. And in that way, they had the blues beat. It's a mistake to try to get inside the blues-those old singers used the blues to get outside their troubles."

IV. Verse 2-Beyond The Blues; Leveraging to Real Change

After a FTM interactive event where people have written and performed these songs, there is a window of opportunity; they're in that space that they have created themselves through music. They composed and performed their own music, it wasn't some jingle or corporate anthem that someone played for them-they spoke the truth, and had a blast doing it.

The opportunity is to utilize the "blue zone" they are in to approach the issues and processes of their work from a new perspective. The innovation consultants are always speaking about this place. Now that we have it, what should we do with it? There is a half-life of a couple of days, after which the emotional state will run its course, and the event will become more of "a fun thing we once did." The key is to engage in some meaningful change work that builds on the new awareness.

The raw material of this work is: 1) The themes expressed in the songs, and 2) The process used to create them. This is the jumping off point for Beyond The Blues. Themes are business issues, areas of focus, and problems to be solved. These issues have just been presented in a way that they have never been expressed before. It's a great opportunity to engage dis-continuous improvement, a quantum jump in the way problems are approached, how potential solutions are generated, and what we decide to act on and implement.

The themes and process changes are tackled at the same time, as teams are given new approaches with which they can change their bottlenecks and non-productive patterns while taking on the issues they identified.

The process of writing and performing the songs reveals the operational systems this group of people employs in order to create their results at work. The way this 6-person band approaches writing their song shows a wealth of information about how the larger organizational systems operate-their strategies around time and resources, how ideas are captured and processed, what sort of leadership is shown, who is heard and who is not, what definitions of quality are adopted…it's all contained in that 45 minutes of intense songwriting and rehearsal.

In his article The Holographic Organization, Alain Cardon states: "The concept of holographics is as simple as it is universal; like the saying, 'Observe a grain of sand and you will perceive the universe. A group's processes and strategies observed over a few minutes can illustrate and reflect strategies over months, years, or tens of years." Organizational holographics can be used to diagnose organizational problems by giving clear global structure and process definitions of their systems. This diagnosis facilitates process and structure-oriented interventions that modify the system, thus improving results.

The process is focused on making near term changes in the participants' local environment-their circle of influence-changes which are the first steps toward larger system transformations that support the evolution of many teams, the organization, and all the individuals involved. Like a positive virus, the new way of acting and being infects the organizational DNA to change the overall direction.

The insights gained by looking at how a song was created can be used to consciously modify business processes within an organization. A group can work on what they are doing, and how they go about doing it. The how learning can be utilized in everything that they do, improving performance across the board.

V. Chorus-Case Study: Make It Up and Make It Happen

So what happened with our group of drafted-rather-than-enlisted blues musicians from Panasonic?

Their FTM event was a smashing success; great songs-funny, truthful, and they took interesting, creative turns in lyrics and song forms. Their performances were strong, perhaps aided by the fact that Panasonic has a deeply entrenched karaoke culture, so they had experience singing in front of each other. There were even some verses in Japanese, complete with translation.

The next morning they returned to the same room greeted by the band playing some easy "morning" blues. The program opened with a highlights video of the performances that helped, along with their morning coffee, to remind the group of the state they reached the night before.

They were then introduced to the Beyond The Blues process. The purpose: to address the issues they identified with specific actions, and to implement those actions in new ways, so next year they won't be singing those same blues.

The Beyond The Blues consultants led a debrief of the processes used in creating, rehearsing and performing the songs. They posted the insights, the patterns that were revealed, and the systemic conclusions of everyone present. These spoke directly to how they wanted to operate differently in order to get the kind of results they were going for in their business. In small groups they drafted proposed standards, operating principles and agreements that would support improvements in their system going forward. These were presented to, reviewed and adopted by the whole group, with musical support from the band.

Because one of the main themes was long, inefficient meetings, the group was taught the MetaMeeting Process. This is a simple (but not necessarily easy) format for running effective, results-based meetings using objective setting and meeting management roles to keep meetings on track and on purpose. This was a concrete tool that was taken back and implemented division-wide.

The group then generated a list of the themes and subject matter of the songs they had composed, and prioritized them by identifying which issues will have the most impact on making the new year's business goals. After a short brainstorming training, done as a talking blues, they broke out into brainstorming teams and generated ideas and potential actions to address the high-priority issues. The energy was high, and the VP was smiling. The criteria for ideas were that they be actions within their circle of influence; something that they could develop and implement with the empowerment and resources they were available in the room.

A lot of ideas came back. Each priority area had plenty to choose from — definitely not the same ol' blues.

On the break the VP decided to go with one idea that had been presented: to form cross-functional project teams around the high-priority areas. When they came back, this was done, and the teams generated their first draft project plans. They were empowered to make their own decisions on the ideas presented, and plan out the implementation. They were on the blues' case and chasin' 'em out the door.

The teams are now implementing their plans, the VP shared that through the Beyond The Blues process his group came to a place of enthusiasm and concrete action that otherwise would not have happened.

VI. Bridge-Themes, systems analysis; leverage; mechanistic vs. holistic system behaviors/characteristics

The Beyond The Blues sessions work on at least three levels at once. On the one hand they focus on clearly identifying issues and taking concrete, innovative, accountable actions to impact those issues.

On another level, they work on moving the context of the groups' work from its current reality toward "Let's make some cool music! As a team, and as an organization." It works the sorts of questions mentioned above: What music do we want to make if we choose it consciously? What would it look like to groove and jam every time I came to work, and have my co-workers jamming with me?

The third involves being able to critically assess one's organization in a systemic and holographic way, and, in real time, modify that system to operate more smoothly and get better results. Developing the lenses to look at your own role, your team's functioning, or the whole division, and see the patterns that need tweaking, and take action.

Beyond The Blues uses the model below as a tool to cluster themes and issues and to look at leverage areas and potential impact. The circle in the middle represents the client organization; it could be their team, division, or the whole organization.

The participants look at where their blues tend to cluster, and how they can design initiatives that are coordinated and synergistic.

Learning to play these new scales, rhythms, and harmonies needs practice and commitment. It needs a conductor with vision and direction. The songs get updated and tweaked along the way. The facility to adapt on the fly is enhanced, and once the basics are in place…sweet improvisation-just in time responses at the speed of change.

VII. Chorus-Another Application: Silos to Integrated Farm

We got a growing business; they call it Blue Rain ,
The crazy demands are really a pain,
They want 500 kilos, in only 4 days,
We got no ingredients; there'll be a delay;
Customer, Sales and Marketing, believe it can be done-
No matter what we do we ain't havin' no fun.

A band from the manufacturing division of a food ingredients company wrote this blues verse about a specific issue that includes aspects of communication, internal and external expectations, process definition, and output capacities. The implication of the last line is that they would like to have some fun producing Blue Rain, and that having fun was possible.

In Beyond The Blues they took on organizing a cross-functional team to clarify the existing capacity, define a new process with a goal of reducing turn around time on this line of products by 40%, and setting up ongoing customer service teams that included sales, marketing and manufacturing. They enrolled these other departments into their "song." Results included missed deadlines down by 88%, profitability up 35% in 9 months, and the cross-functional teams havin' some fun. When you're singing a catchy tune, it's easy for others to pick up on it.

Exercise:

1. With your team, list the 5-8 biggest "blues issues" you have in your business
2. Choose which issue is the highest priority for you, and is most in your sphere of influence-one that you can make an impact on now with the resources you have or can easily obtain
3. With that issue define:
   1. What are the symptoms we see?
   2. How do we feel about it?
   3. If we had a magic wand, what outcome or changes would we create?
4. (Optional step: Write a song about this issue)
5. Formulate a "How can we…." question that addresses the results you want.
6. Brainstorm solutions to the question-no editing or idea killing during brainstorming, jam!, step out; include at least one way you will operate differently in terms of team process to implement
7. Choose an idea or group of ideas that can be clustered to act on and make a project plan for it.
8. Make it happen

VIII. Verse 4-Action, not desire, is what the future needs to find you

The heart of these interventions is to find a new source of action for the teams and organization involved. How can they take a profound experience and apply it to inform their decisions on how they want to move forward? What can they do to remember the breakthrough experience and establish themselves in the new way of doing things? Without the commitment to action from insight, the event becomes another interesting thing we once did.

The key is to create the opportunity and get moving. "Wow, that sounds great!," without inspired, focused activity is opportunity lost. Start small, start big, but get going.

The fundamental role for the consultants is to convey the potential, and to understand where the leaders want to take their teams. What is this company really going for? Let's get clear on that. Is there a way for us to create the organization we always wanted to be a part of right here? Yes, let's go there.

IX. Outro-Jamming in the 21st Century

Have you ever seen a team that's doing well, having fun, and constantly building on each other's ideas as a part of their work? They're jamming. They've aligned on the fundamentals, and they make new, innovative work music every day. They each bring energy to the team, and are energized by it. Jamming is the elevated state of performance where people respond in real time to what's going on around them and add their own music to the mix adding further value. It's that place where you understand what Miles Davis meant when he said, "there are no wrong notes."

Jamming in the workplace is where the energy is freed up from the old polarizations, and is circulating and building. In this environment, everyone is invited to bring as much of themselves to the table as they want. The soil is richer, and the crop larger and more robust.

Summary: Music and theater have long been used at corporate events, but usually as a fun "teambuilding" activity. This chapter explores using these powerful tools in a way that can facilitate profound change. There is a shift from a mechanistic understanding of organizational systems to a holistic paradigm, where segmentation is replaced by insights into the nature of interdependence, and an organization can adapt to changes without serial restructuring. This chapter investigates using music as a doorway to that new awareness and how it can impact the results that are produced.