Business, knowledge and all that Jazz...

Fear no mistakes.  There are none.  Miles Davis.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a stimulating day at the Henley KM Forum, exploring the use of metaphors in business, and particularly in relation to knowledge management.

We were assisted by Sergej van Middendorp and his gifted team of musicians from JazzinBusiness, who led us through the day, introducing a number principles for Jazz improvisation which the forum delegates discussed in a number of World Cafe sessions.

We looked at the power of minimal structures in the music, and of "taking turns" - how the musicians sense and make space for each other, giving each instrument the chance to solo perform as well as to support; - to lead and change direction as appropriate. 

Provocative Competence- where jazz musicians deliberately move to the edge of their comfort zones in order to generate something genuinely new.  As Sergej says on his blog, Once you feel comfortable with something you are not learning and growing, because learning and growing 'hurts'. Jazz musicians try to get out of their comfort zone on every occasion.

The group at Henley provoked their competence by asking them to play "Summertime" in a variety of genres and time signatures, including "Reggae", "Mozart" and "Waltz.

Embracing Errors as a source of learning - Jazz Pianist Folkert Oosting showed us how "forced, unforced errors" could be transformed in to completely new directions.  There was seemingly no dischord that he couldn't repurpose into a new musical direction.  Whilst technical professionalism in Jazz is key, the use of "off-key" errors can drive learning (when we pause to reflect) and innovation (when we pause to reflect and think).

Jazz improvisation is marked by a restless adventurousness, an eagerness to travel into unexplored territory. There are hazards, risks, gambles, chances, speculation, doubts. Jazz is an expressive art form that encourages players to explore the edge of the unknown and if improvisation legitimizes risk taking, it is inevitable that there will be discrepancies, miscues, and ‘mistakes’. Jazz musicians often turn these unexpected moments into something sensible, or perhaps even innovative. Errors are often integrated into the musical landscape, an occasion for further exploration that might just lead to new pathways that otherwise might not have been possible. Herbie Hancock recalls that Miles Davis heard him play a wrong chord, but simply played his solo around the ‘wrong’ notes so that they sounded correct, intentional and sensible in retrospect. Jazz musicians assume that ‘you can take any bad situation and make it into a good situation. It’s what you do with the notes that counts’ (Barrett and Peplowski, 1998: 559). 

Retrospective Sensemaking- because you can't fully plan ahead in Jazz.  The groove develops through a series of questions and responses, led by a particular instrument, or somehow by the music itself. Sergej and bassist Paul Berner challenged us around our listening - do we listen deeply enough to what's going on around us in business, so that we can respond with the next question or answer?  Or do we push through with a predetermined outcome and a set of well-rehearsed responses?   Sergej explores this with some excellent questions on his blog.

We  had some fun with the trio, asking them to play "blind" to test whether they use visual or auditory cues to keep in their "dynamic synchronisity".  They believed that they sensed by purely "listening" for direction, but when we placed screens between them, we all sensed that the output was less adventurous.  Perhaps we need the reassurance of a multiple senses to feel comfortable taking risks?

Some messages there for anyone who has tried to incorporate innovation into a virtual meeting.

Richard Potter - one of the Henley regulars, provoked the Jazz trio to improvise a piece of music which was precisely 67 bars long, and they genuinely struggled with this, spending longer planning how they might do this than actually performing and then (to our secret delight) failing the task! 

How often do we play the game of deadlines (year-ends, budget cycles, performance appraisals) and miss the opportunity to create something spectacular because we feel that we "have to" restrict ourselves and ultimately deliver something mundane?  Are we slaves to the 52 week score of the business cycle, or do we have the freedom to play by ear, and "create a new groove"?

Taking lessons back to school...

I've been thinking recently about "Lessons Learned", and how widely that term is used and abused, both inside and outside KM and Organisational Learning circles.  How often in the press do we see Government departments, Football managers, Chief Police Officers et al utter the immortal words:  "we will be learning the lessons from this..."?

I wonder what this really means.  Is a lesson learned when it is identified by a reflecting practitioner, after a specific experience?  Is it learned when it is codified and made available for others, in specific or abstract form?  Or is a lesson learned when another individual has applied it, and experimented with it?

That was the basis of Kolb's learning cycle...

kolb.jpg

...but I'm not sure that I could point to many examples of organisations where this cycle of organizational learning represents the norm.  Not

really.

The

Centre for Wildfire Lessons

puts it nicely: 

"A lesson is truly learned when we modify our behavior to reflect what we now know."

What I do see a lot of is something more like this.

Let's call it "Collison's Ignorance Spiral"

(I hope the name doesn't catch on!).

cis.jpg

Somehow, the "abstract conceptualisation" bit seems to wear a bit thin - too many motherhood statements in lessons learned reports which fester on electronic shelves.   Now it might be that a deliberate abstract conceptualisation step can be short-circuited completely, through storytelling and the rapid exchanges and collaboration available through social media.  Perhaps abstract conceptualisation is a personal, subconscious step, rather than a clumsy organisationally imposed process. I need to think more about that one. 

But I'm still left with a lingering doubt that

we just aren't very good at designing lessons with a (future) learner in mind

. I've been in a number of lessons learned reviews where the intent of the meeting seems to be catharsis for the team or compliance with the process, rather than learning for the organisation.

So, just for fun - what does a well designed lesson look like in a

school

? 

Let's take a primary school lesson as an example (especially as I have a primary teacher conveniently sitting beside me right now!). I am reliably informed that a well designed lesson will have the following components.

Introduction - explain what you want them to learn; clear objectives. Test past learning, build on the results of past learning. Provide exemplar expectations - what would "good" look like? Be accessible to different learning styles (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic). Be capable of differentiate to multiple levels of capability. Combination of activity-based learning and theoretical-based learning, individual and group. Have a list of accessible resources. Conclude with a  plenary to summarise and test what has  been learned.

How do the lessons in your organisation measure up to that checklist?  Perhaps I should spend more time in the classroom...

Bridge-building in Bangalore

I had the pleasure last week of spending two days in Bangalore with Robert Bosch India Ltd, running a number of seminars and workshops on different aspects of Knowledge Management.  One of the highlights was a bridge-building exercise designed by Learning to Fly co-author Geoff Parcell, during which the participants apply the principles of learning before, during and after, and captured knowledge to demonstrate an improvement in performance.

The picture below shows the new record span in this exercise – congratulations to the associates at Robert Bosch!

It was my first trip to India, and, although I was warned to be ready for an “assault on the senses”, and it certainly was – especially the traffic. I’m still getting over it – a whole new take on choas and complexity…

What struck me most though, was the insatiable appetite for learning and improvement demonstrated by my companions for the two days.  Robert Bosch India is already a strong performer in knowledge management, but their dissatisfaction with “good”, and unswerving desire for “great” made them a charmingly demanding client to spend time with.  There aren’t many companies in the West who could fill a conference room at 18.30 on a Friday evening for a two hour seminar on”creating a learning culture”.  Watch out Buckman Labs and Novo Nordisk…

Lights, Camera, (after) Action (review)!

I spent a fascinating day last week with some senior NHS clinical staff at a Leadership Development Centre in Leicester. From the outside, the building looks like any other office in the city, and as you go past the smart reception, it still looks relatively familiar, although signs pointing to areas like "Narrative Centre" hint at a something out of the ordinary. Then, turning the corner and pushing though a pair of double doors, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of an NHS hospital ward, - it even has that disinfectant-like smell like a hospital ward! This one, however is devoid of any staff or patients, but has a number of hidden cameras. Kind of like Big Brother meets ER. In fact, it was built by the same company that constructs the set for the British medical drama-soap, Holby City.

This elaborate and incredibly lifelike environment has been built as part of an "immersive" senior management development programme. Professional role-players act out scenarios involving the real professional staff - often tough, highly emotional scenes, whilst the other delegates observe the video relay, debrief and discuss . Speaking with some of the participants, they were all amazed at how quickly they found themselves "believing" what was happening during the role plays.

My role was to provide some input relating to After Action Reviews (AARs), and to use the role-plays to help the clinicians translate this input into real life - well, it felt real to us!

I was really struck by the power of simulation in learning - we don't use this nearly enough in business. I was also really encouraged that parts of the NHS are sufficiently progressive to develop their senior staff through such innovative approaches - and are committed to learning-whilst-doing.

In-know-vation

I was with the Henley KM Forum last week running a workshop with Christine Van Winkelen. I'm part of a project team looking at the relationship between knowledge management and innovation, and in particular, at the way in which KM practices can support innovation. A number of the members organisations conducted local research drawing out their innovation stories, which were scanned for recurrent themes. As a group, we then put some "flesh on the bones" and created a self-assessment tool (maturity model) , based on the combined experience of the room, plus an analysis of current research. I thought I'd share the high-level headings here:

Recognising/finding high-value opportunities to innovate, Re-using Knowledge, Internal collaboration, External Collaboration, Learning from Innovation activities, Building a learning organisation.

Next step is for the member organisations to self-assess and identify areas where they can share and learn from each other using the "River Diagram" approach - setting off a number of new conversations, and a whole lot of new learning...

Peer Assists - the movie...

Ever wondered how a "Peer Assist" works?  It's a meeting designed to help a team "learn before doing" by drawing on the experience of others.  Simple eh?  But not many people do it, because we like to get straight in to the action... Here's a fun flash movie from the University of Ottowa that explains how it all works...