Article Face The Music and Go Beyond the Business Blues By Paul Kwiecinski Article reprinted from OD Practitioner magazine Conference Issue summer 2007 Summer 2007, Volume 39 No 3 Issue of the OD Practitioner

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Do you want to know what’s really going on with your employees, clients or co-workers? Get ’em to write and sing the blues!

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...

A little background: Face The Music is a company founded by OD consultants and musicians that delivers blues (and other musical genres) based programs as part of organizational interventions, offsites, and meetings. We realized that all of our clients have the blues, but they didn’t necessarily have a way to express them or go beyond them.

Using our clients as guinea pigs, we developed programs and found that participants joined in enthusiastically. After delivering the first few interactive programs—participants writing and performing blues songs about their work issues—our consulting group developed Beyond The Blues organizational processes that address the issues expressed in the lyrics set in the context of systemic behaviors and revealed in Face The Music sessions.

The methodology for organizational change is a two-step process: 1) Diagnosis and kickoff with blues writing and performance, and 2) Beyond The Blues, a process for addressing issues raised in the blues writing. This latter takes many forms, from a 2-hour debrief, processing, and action planning process, to a several month change initiative, that can also include music as a way to look at progress, address emerging issues, and celebrate milestones and completion.

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 perspectives. They are encouraged to take that cubic centimeter of chance and turn it into a new way of operating on the job, of approaching issues; one that looks for innovative results, and continually looks toward creating an even better future. This is the essence of the organizational work called Beyond The Blues.

Innovative practitioners have been using music as a way to shift organizational thinking for years—Max Depree’s Leadership Jazz, Roger Neirenberg’s Music Paradigm using a symphony orchestra, drumming circles, and Benjamin Zander’s Art of Possibilities sessions using small classical string groups, to name a few. All invoke the compelling power and magic of music. The blues songwriting, where participants create and perform their own work-specific tunes, ups the ante a bit with the truth-telling, real world lyrics and the risk of performing them in front of peers and leaders.

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 mistakenly convincing ourselves that the wild ride of the 90’s would last forever, in today’s challenging environment 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.

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 perspectives. They are encouraged to take that cubic centimeter of chance and turn it into a new way of operating on the job, of approaching issues; one that looks for innovative results, and continually looks toward creating an even better future.

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 of this already, but all too often it isn’t acknowledged or considered when roles are defined, initiatives designed, or plans 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 perceived mechanistically.

The phenomenon of “silos” within organizations is a symptom of 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. At a large bank, we designed sessions based on interdepartmental communication and cooperation, as they realized that after multiple mergers and tremendous growth, there were many opportunities with existing clients of the bank that were not being explored because other divisions didn’t know of their existence.

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

Chorus – A Face The Music Interactive Event

Participants 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 constructively, 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, and sing that song with the Face The Music band.” A few groans, some laughs, a little buzz goes through the room. The MC talks 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 only two hours, are the same sort of competencies that they are going to need to accomplish the business goals that 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 “The Overcommitted Blues,” or “24/7”:

I’m a 24/7 from the heart of Indiana.
I never take any time for myself,
It’s not that I don’t wanna,
It just seems that my business
Is cranking both day and night,
And I ain’t got time for sleeping,
Gotta catch an early flight.

The energy builds in the room as the bands name themselves, write the lyrics and start singing to each other. Hoots of laughter and exclamations of “you can’t say that” ensue. The energy buzz builds as they work in a flurry to complete the seemingly impossible assignment.

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

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

Verse 1 – What we do is our song

In one sense, there are two types of music we play: 1) The music the players wish to play, dream of playing, maybe 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 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 everyone 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.

In one sense, there are two types of music we play: 1) The music the players wish to play, dream of playing, maybe 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 call them up with one click of our remote control. The music produced at work is some combination of these.

The best work, that produces innovation, breakthroughs, and extraordinary results, comes from players that are composing and performing their dream music; 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 under pressure when they feel there’s no time to produce something interesting and innovative, or a re-run of the dissonant team theme, sung for years which 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, and themes you wish to create and live
• Mission – The impact you would like your songs to have
• Teamwork – Playing as a tight band
• Culture – The genre of your music, it’s history, values, norms, traditions; are you hip or classic, innovative or derivative, risk taking or conservative?
• Strategies – Responding from within an innovative structure to the music of the culture and your band mates to manifest the vision and goals
• Innovation – Not playing the same old tune
• 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

The songs people write are about what engages 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.

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.

Verse 2 – Beyond The Blues; Leveraging to Real Change

The opportunity is to utilize the “blue zone” to approach the issues and processes of their work from a new perspective. Now that we have it, what should we do with it? There is a half-life of a couple of days to take some action to make change, 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 leverages the new awareness, to stay in touch and to build on it.

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 to change their bottlenecks and non-productive patterns while taking on the issues they identified. Although our method uses the music and the blues, the basic principles of this methodology can be utilized using almost any experiential exercise—each have their own flavor. Our consulting group has also used outdoor ropes course activities, golf, horses, building activities, and made up exercises on the spot using available resources and landscapes. The common element is to provide an activity that requires creativity, collaboration, communication, and is complex enough to reveal rich information about the client system.

The process of writing and performing 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, (“The Holographic Organization.” Consulting Today. March 1997) Alain Cardon of Metasysteme France 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 that are the first steps toward larger system transformations that support the evolution of many teams, the organization, and 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.

Bridge – Themes, systems analysis; leverage; mechanistic vs. holistic system behaviors or characteristics

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.”

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. It is important also to develop 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 in Figure 1 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 a work 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 also. 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.

Verse 3 – Action, not desire, is what the future needs to find you

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? Let’s go there.

Outro – Jamming in the 21st Century

Jamming in the workplace is where the energy is freed up from the old polarizations, and is circulating and building. When jamming, listening is as important as playing—understanding what is happening, when to use a soft touch, when to step forward, crescendo-ing together as a group, playing between the notes, leading and supporting as needed. In this environment, everyone is invited to bring as much of themselves to the table as they want. The music and creativity is richer, and the body of work larger, the harmonies deeper and more satisfying.