From the Founding Editor

EDITORIALI

t is with great sadness that I have to report the loss of another colleague, Don
Michael. Don died at age 75 of complications from pancreatic cancer thatwas diagnosed two years ago, but with the help of some new treatments, Don
was able to continue his full and rich life for those two years. Don died withthe same grace that he lived, quietly going while listening to Mozart. We were
fortunate in Reflections to be able to bring some of Don’s great insights to all
our readers. He thought deeply about things and was, in a sense, a wonderfulconscience for all of us in that he never would shrink from the reality that hesaw. He reminded us persistently and with intensity of the power of the unconscious within us and the hidden forces around us that make learning such acomplex and difficult process. We can honor Don best by taking seriously what
he saw and what he tried to get us to see.
In this issue, we turn explicitly to the problem of seeing. By focusing on
the role of the arts, the aesthetic dimension in society, and the impact of artists on our own life, we hope to broaden our readers’ vision. To enhance thispurpose, we include in this issue a photo essay by our own team member
Emily Sper, who has shown us with her photos how much our eye can deceiveor enhance.
We believe that the world of business in particular has ignored the role of the aesthetic to its own detriment. The importance of the arts in relation to other societal concerns was first pointed out to us by our editorial board at our first seminal meeting in
Chicago in 1999. We are especially grateful to John Seely Brown and John Kao for stimulating our thinking in this area. Subsequently, Ray Stata made a significant comment in
one of our executive education seminars that bears so pointedly on the role of the performance arts and improvisation. He said that one thing he had learned as an executiveis that “Everything happens through conversation.” What we see and how we choose totalk about it is thus critical to everything we do.
As a consequence, we have launched a serious exploration of this topic. In this andsubsequent issues, we hope to expose ourselves and our readers to what the arts haveto offer us and, in that process, to expand our own vision and our own capacity to respond more richly to the complexity that surrounds us. I have my own view of what artists and the arts can do for us and have put those into my essay at the close of this issue.

Ed Schein

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EDITORIAL

In This Issue
Edgar H. Schein and Karen AyasW

2e have tried to give the reader a variety of viewpoints on the role of the arts andartists in society and business. We start with a photo essay by Emily Sper illustrating the beauty we fail to see in our everyday lives. Next is an interview with John Kao
whose life itself is a work of art. As the reader will discover, in his current seventh career, John is creating environments for practitioners that will enable them to utilize theircreative potential fully as they solve business problems.
The artistry of business processes is exemplified in the description by Philip Mirvis,
Karen Ayas, and George Roth of a mundane process of business transformation reaching
truly creative heights when a group of executives and consultants put their minds to it. A
learning “performance” in the desert of Jordan marks the leadership passage, and we hearfrom Tex Gunning, departing company chairman, about the artistry of leading change. Bill
Torbert, a true master of “performativity,” sums up with his learnings and questions.
Next, Robert Fritz reminds us that the creativity is not just in the performance andthe improvisation that it affords, but in the composition of the score itself. The thoughtthat practitioners are really “composers” bears serious reflection. What managers canlearn from jazz and the roles of improvisation and creativity in entrepreneurship is further explored in a two-part article by Stephen Buckley in which he has interviewed an
executive, a researcher, and a consultant.
Much has been said about the role of improvisation, especially in music, so next isa thoughtful piece by Alf Westelius, an academic and musician. Drawing from classicalmusic, he illustrates the way in which musicians combine the discipline of playing withthe score, listening to one another, and maintaining that delicate balance between learning and performing. Karl Weick comments from an academic stand, and Noam Cook, aflute player who has also studied how flutes are made, comments as well.
Drawing from theater, Dvora Yanow explores improvisation from the viewpoint ofwhat it takes to be effective and how it can and should be used more in the process ofteaching. Michael Jones, a pianist and composer, shares his own experience of being a
successful performer.
We then shift to how practitioners working with artists have transformed some ofsociety’s institutions. Jean Horstman and Julia Rowntree describe the transformation oflife in a moribund London hostel after an arts program was introduced. Rowntree also
tells of her experience at the Business Arts Forum, a series of seminars and performancesat the London International Festival of Theatre, which created a new dialogue between
arts and business.
Next we offer an original contribution from Nancy Adler, an enthusiastic commentator from our Spring issue, and Lew Yung-Chien. We close with a brief essay by Ed
Schein on the role of art and the artist that illustrates the range and depth of the arts’impact on society.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSContributors

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Nancy J. Adler is a professor of management, McGill University, currently an artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Tamar Arnon is a photographer and Curator of the Arts Programme at Aldgate Hostel and of
One Mile East.
Karen Ayas is associate editor, Reflections; research fellow, Erasmus University, Rotterdam;and partner, The Ripples Group.
Stephen C. Buckley is an entrepreneur, writer, and independent consultant in Somerville, MA.
S.D. Noam Cook is associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University, a consulting researcher at Xerox PARC, and a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus.
Nils Fonstad is a doctoral candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Robert Fritz codesigned (with Peter Senge and Charles Kiefer) the original “Leadership andMastery” course on which The Fifth Discipline is partly based. He is a consultant, composer, filmmaker, and author.
J. Jean Horstman is a member and former managing director, Society for Organizational
Learning. Prior, she worked internationally in the arts.
Bill Hughes is a managing partner at Cambridge Incubator.
Michael Jones is a pianist, composer, and author of Creating an Imaginative Life. He integrates his music and personal narrative in talks and seminars exploring the synergy between work, art, and creativity. <www.pianoscapes.com>
John Kao is founder and CEO of The Idea Factory, film producer, and author of Jamming: The
Art and Discipline of Business Creativity.
Lew Yung-Chien conducts workshops on Tai Chi and leadership for executives and managers.
Philip H. Mirvis is an organizational psychologist whose work concerns large-scale change
and the character of the workforce and workplace.
Felix Reyes-Nunez is a participant in the Serpentine Gallery photography project at Look
Ahead’s Bayswater Hostel.
Arthur Roberts is a consultant to individuals, groups, and organizations.
George L. Roth researches learning across organizational boundaries. His current focus involves knowledge supply chains and knowledge partnerships.
Julia Rowntree is director and originator of the London International Festival of Theatre’s
Business Arts Forum.
C. Otto Scharmer is a visiting lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and faculty member of the Fujitsu Global Knowledge Institute.
Edgar H. Schein is Sloan Fellows professor of management emeritus and senior lecturer at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Emily Sper is a photographer, graphic designer, and author-illustrator in Boston, MA. Her photographs have been exhibited in the United States and abroad. <www.sperphoto.com>
Bill Torbert is professor of organization studies at Boston College, partner of HarthillUSA, anddirector of Trillium Asset Management.
Karl E. Weick is the Rensis Likert Collegiate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology, School of Business Administration, University of Michigan.
Alf Westelius is a professor at Linköping University and associate researcher at the Stockholm
School of Economics.
Dvora Yanow is professor and chair, Department of Public Administration, California State
University, Hayward.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSBeyond the Surface

FEATURE

Emily Sper

© Jane SperW

hen I look around, I see colors and patterns. I’ll stop to gaze at light reflecting off awindow. Or it might be crows silhouetted against an evening sky. Sometimes bizarre juxtapositions make me laugh out loud.
Ordinary objects take on a new dimension when you take the time to really lookaround. For me, the side of a car or a wall become landscapes; the black and white dots
of a metal bench play a game. A walk down the street is always a new experience, nomatter how many times I’ve walked down the same street before.
Growing up in a wooded area instilled in me an appreciation and love of nature. If I
don’t find nature in my environment, I create it in whatever medium I’m working in.
When I photograph, I begin with a subject that is usually seen as harsh, whether itis the side of a car or a concrete wall. These are man-made products that have beenbrought into the environment by industry. Instead of showing the contrast between nature and industry, I have chosen to turn our synthetic landscape into a softer, more visceral one. My images invite the viewer to enter and explore the space within by creating
the illusion of depth and movement.
And, at times, I concentrate on the interaction of real and abstract imagery, the play
between nature and man-made materials. Instead of escaping from the world of metal,
glass, and cement into total abstraction, I keep some hints of that world.
Thinking of photography as two-dimensional dance, I choreograph the different elements within the camera’s frame and paint with color and light. For me, a successful photograph or drawing makes visual music. In my opinion, all the arts are interrelated. You
may feel the influence of painting, sculpture, dance, music, and poetry in my artwork.
I hope that my photographs will evoke a mood or feeling. Each viewer will see something personal and different. I encourage you to use your imagination.

Emily Sper photographing a metalbench in London.

Bench

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© 2001 by Emily Sper.

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SPERBeyond the Surface
Vines on Wall

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Car I

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Beyond the Surface

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Van

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Wall

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Radiator

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Beyond the Surface
Water on Glass

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Car II

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FEATURE

Conversation with John Kao
C. Otto Scharmer

John KaoCEOThe Idea Factory

Dubbed a “serial innovator” by The Economist, John Kao is a thought leader for the New
Economy and a Tony-nominated producer and business pioneer. Kao is the founder and CEOof The Idea Factory. Combining salient elements of design studio, production company, andtheater, The Idea Factory offers new methodologies to firms seeking to embed innovation in
their organizations. Kao has also founded other companies in areas such as advanced tissue engineering, next-generation cancer diagnostics, and feature film production.
Kao is the author of Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity, a Business Week bestseller that has been published in 20 languages. He is also co-editor of Innovation (1997), published by HarperBusiness as part of its Business Masters series. His
other publications include the monograph “Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Organization”(1989) and the book series Managing Creativity (1991), The Entrepreneur (1991), andThe Entrepreneurial Organization (1991), all published by Prentice Hall.
Kao has been active in the entertainment industry as a consultant and producer. He
served as production executive on sex, lies, and videotape; executive producer of Mr. Baseball; and producer of Golden Child, which was produced on Broadway and nominated forthree Tony awards, including Best Play. He recently produced and directed a feature length
documentary film based on Jamming. He is co-chairman of Ealing Studios in London andcofounder and director of Escador, a pan-European e-services company.
C. Otto Scharmer conducted the interview, which was held at The Idea Factory, San
Francisco, on April 12, 2000, jointly with Ikujiro Nonaka, professor, Hitotsubashi University. The interview is part of a McKinsey–Society of Organizational Learning Leadership
Project (1999–2000).
C. Otto Scharmer (COS): Let me ask you my eight questions at the start. What underlying issue does your work address? What do you consider the blind spot of the twentiethcentury in your field? What is the essence of the creative process? What environments
foster the creative and entrepreneurial process? What is the relationship between creation
and awareness? What can improve the quality of awareness, both individually and acrosscompanies and systems? What are you currently working on? And, finally, how does all
this relate to the more personal context of your own journey?

10

C. Otto Scharmer
Lecturer, MIT Sloan School ofManagement
Lecturer, University of Innsbruck,
Austria
Research Partner, GeneronConsulting© 2001 by C. Otto Scharmer.

John Kao: Professor Nonaka once introduced me to an audience by saying that I comefrom many contexts, which probably relates to my interest in the subject of innovationand creativity. It’s hard for me to pin down the one context I come from. I was born in
the United States of parents who had come to the US from China only a few years before.
My parents were academics, had graduate degrees, and had to make the leap to being
new immigrants. Growing up in New York, I would wake up inside a Chinese house,leave, and go into American society to an American school with American friends—thencome home again to this Chinese house.
Every day I had to make the transition from one world to another and then backagain. My challenge at a very early age was to take these two different, often conflicting
contexts and put them together in a way that allowed me to live my life. If I reflect on
one theme, it’s that every time I’ve been somewhere new, I’ve figured out some way to
combine different contexts. When I was in college, I didn’t do just one program of study;
I did two and combined them. One was philosophy, primarily nineteenth and twentieth

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONS

Career 1: Musician
I’ve had a number of different career goals, so maybe one of my specialties is serial retirement. My first career goal was to be a musician: I wanted to be a concert pianist.
Nobody told me that there were only 20 people in the world who make a living by being
concert pianists. When I was in college in the sixties, I wanted to be a rock-and-roll star.
The high point of my musical career was playing for three months with Frank Zappa andthe Mothers of Invention in LA when I was 18.

SCHARMERConversation with John Kao

century European philosophy; the other was behavioral science. I did all the integration
inside my head.
In the 1980s, when I was teaching at Harvard Business School, I would fly to Los Angeles once a month where I worked on film projects as a movie producer. I would change
contexts from the academic environment to Hollywood and then back again. My life has
always been about making these journeys back and forth between different contexts.

Career 2: Jungian Psychoanalyst
It was hard to improve on that, so I decided I was going to become a Jungian psychoanalyst. Jung appealed to me because he had a very integrative perspective. To do that, I had
to go to medical school, and then I did a residency, a post-doctoral program in psychiatry, at Harvard Medical School. Then I decided that I didn’t want to stay in medicine, because I did not want to be a researcher in an academic medical environment or aclinician. But I learned an incredible amount that continues to be valuable to me today.

Career 3: Professor at Harvard Business School
In 1980, at age 29, I became a first-year MBA student at Harvard Business School. In thespring of my first year, they approached me about joining the faculty, which was somewhat
unusual. They were very interested in my background in psychiatry. They thought they did
not have enough of the soft stuff to offset the more traditional business disciplines.
The other job I considered seriously was as head of a film production company in Hollywood. I decided that being an assistant professor at Harvard Business School was better
because it would allow me to do different kinds of things. I joined the faculty in 1982. WhenI wanted to start my own course on entrepreneurship and creativity, it provoked a reallyambivalent response. A lot of my colleagues warned me that this was not a good subject toteach. It was too soft, and everything was already known about the subject, so “don’t risk
your career,” they said. That, of course, was a real invitation to go forward rapidly.
I launched a course called “Entrepreneurship, Creativity, and Organization.” Some
1,900 Harvard MBAs took it. The reason I was able to stay at Harvard for 14 years waspartly because the students responded. They knew the New Economy had to do withentrepreneurs, high-tech, and entertainment. I had cases on George Lucas, Richard
Branson’s Virgin Group, the video game industry, and Lotus Development Corporation
when these were not considered important companies.
I stopped wearing a suit and tie to class fairly early. Harvard faculty had this normthat you had to dress like an executive when you were teaching. You had to have a really expensive suit and shiny shoes and everything. I started wearing jeans or chinos andsweaters. Some of my colleagues were very offended. I said, look, all the people I’m
studying—who are real CEOs of real companies—dress like this. They don’t wear suits.
How can I wear a suit if I’m going to teach material about their companies? I don’t thinkthey were convinced, but in any event, that’s what I said.

Career 4: Founding and Co-creating Companies
During that period, I began to start companies. The typical faculty extracurricular activity
is to teach executive programs or do some consulting. I thought, why don’t I take my day
a week and start some companies? In 1986, I started a biotech company in the tissueengineering business. If you have a burn, we take a little bit of your skin, grow it in a lab,

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SCHARMERConversation with John Kao

and give it back to you. It’s your skin, but 10,000 times larger. It can cover your body if
you have bad burns or some other problem. The same company now manufactures cartilage and other kinds of tissues.
A blue-chip roster of venture capital companies financed the company, and it ultimately went public. I was the first person working on this company; it was just a pile ofpaper on my desk. I found a CEO, wrote the business plan, raised the money, and overabout six months, pulled it together.
COS: And where did that idea come from?
John Kao: I personally knew a scientist at Harvard Medical School who had originatedthis technology. He wanted to do something with his patents. People who had been severely burned had no place to go because there was no cure in those days.
I thought to myself, gee, I sit around a day a week for six months, I’ve got these
papers, and I talk on the phone. Then I’ve got this company, and all of a sudden, it’sworth something. So that’s when I began to start companies. The Idea Factory is number ten. About three years ago, I decided that my time at Harvard was over. When you
are somebody who is not a standard guy playing by the standard rules, you need someone who’s going to look out for you. My mentor and protector at Harvard Business
School was the dean, John McArthur. He offered me the job when I was a first-year student. Whenever somebody wanted to cut my head off, he would protect me. So I could
do whatever I wanted to do. This is an interesting point about innovation. If I had had
to obey the rules and act like everybody else, I wouldn’t have stayed at HBS because I
wouldn’t have been happy. McArthur was the necessary ingredient because he ran interference for me. Or, as he put it, he provided air cover so that I could go about mybusiness. When he left, it became clear that it was time
for me to leave as well.
If you boiled down what people knew about innovation, it had to do with two things. One was ideation. How
do you generate new ideas? There’s a very mature set of
disciplines relating to ideation. The other was the productdevelopment literature, which comes right from manufacturing and the old economy: “Let’s figure out our process
and make it as efficient as possible. We’ll vary the conditions so we can get more performance, but we’re not going to add innovation to organizational priorities like how we’re managed or structured or how we develop strategy.
We’re going to see it in a narrow way, which is developing products and services basedon our core assumptions about our business.”
I’d been spending a lot of time with companies that are driven by innovation: film
companies, software companies, biotech companies. I knew that, even in the early 1980s,
there was going to be an explosion with lots of start-ups, lots of capital. The power balance between established companies and new companies was going to change. I thought
the ideas we had about innovation were not adequate for creating best practices in what
we now understand is the New Economy. When you have thousands of companies being
created to pursue opportunities and an abundance of talent and capital and people pursuing nontraditional career paths, all the conditions for innovation change. If you buy
into the distinction of disruptive versus sustaining innovation, the whole new game versus existing game argument, it’s even more different. Almost all the innovation practices
I knew from the academic literature had to do with the old economy and incremental
improvement, not with game-changing, transformative kinds of innovation.

. . .the ideas we had about innovation
were not adequate for creating bestpractices in what we now understandis the New Economy.

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Career 5: The Idea Factory 1.0
I moved out to San Francisco because I had the idea of creating a company with thetheme of innovation. I said I’m going to call it The Idea Factory. I wanted it to be the kindof situation where, when somebody walks in, I tell them the company has a mission ofreinventing innovation for the New Economy.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSSCHARMERJohn Kao: First, I wanted to have a physical environment. I knew in my bones that innovation happens in places. That’s why artists have studios and Hollywood has protectedenclaves where you have to go through a guard’s gate and have a pass to get onto a studio lot. There are all kinds of ceremonial elements to make sure people know that there’s
a distinction between ordinary life and the creative environment where the work goes on.
I get myself into predicaments when I want to learn things, because I go out andcommit to something that I don’t know how to do. In doing that, I learn something—and hopefully I don’t embarrass myself too much.
There’s a group called the International Design Conference of Aspen (IDCA), whichis the Cadillac of design groups in the United States. I told them that I thought they were
missing the boat because designers are really much more important to the mainstream
business than they realized. Instead of having a conference on design in the post-Bauhaus era or about fashion, I told them they should have a conference on the new relationship between design and business, reinventing the business of design, reinventing
the design of business. They suggested I do the conference. So I did. On the same stage,
we had the digital designers who invented the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park; coexisting with
Saul Bass, the leading graphic designer in the United States; coexisting with Tom Peters,
who spoke for free; along with my friend Hatim Tjaby´I, who was then CEO of Verifone,
one of the most innovative companies around.
So I got a chance to hang out with some of the best designers in the world. A lot ofthem had offices that are not dissimilar from The Idea Factory—very unstructured, open
environments that were deeply interesting, where the physical shell and the furnitureand the way people interacted all combined to create a kind of ambience. Most companies that say they create knowledge don’t have a place where that happens. They havethese places called conference rooms, which are really like hotels, but the kind of hotels
you rent for about two hours for furtive activity. All the knowledge is in your desk, andthen you bring it to the conference room. You might havean incredible meeting where you lay things out, andsomebody lays other things out, and there’s a lot of meaning in the relationship between things tacked on the wall.
But then you have to take it all down and put it away, because somebody else has to use the space.
My question was, what would happen if you had aplace for innovation where knowledge could live there on
its own schedule and not have to be put away because of some other scheduling constraints? What would it be like to have a physical space where you could create experiences? I had been groping toward this for years.

Conversation with John Kao

COS: Can you explain how that idea took shape in your mind?

. . . what would happen if you had aplace for innovation where knowledge
could live . . . and not . . . be put away
because of . . . scheduling constraints?

Career 6: Producing Films and Lessons from Hollywood
I didn’t mention that, in 1989, I was involved with producing my first film, sex, lies & videotape, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. I was one of the financiers.
COS: Really, you did that?
John Kao: Yes, I thought I knew something, so then I produced Mr. Baseball. The film
was never widely shown in Japan, but it was about an American baseball player whogoes to Japan to play baseball for an American team.
I got involved in the details of producing movies in the eighties and knew what it felt
like to be on a sound stage with a director and a crew of 150 people, spending $200,000 a
day trying to get certain kinds of shots, dealing with all the uncertainties of production.
In a funny way, that was a precursor to thinking about how to manage an innovationoriented environment in an innovation-oriented business. A lot of the Hollywood modelis relevant for innovation. Hollywood doesn’t make uniformly wonderful movies, but they
have a process for making movies that works well enough to get movies made.

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SCHARMERConversation with John Kao

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COS: What process things are you thinking of?
John Kao: Every movie starts with one person who is theprime mover. It could be the person who has the idea, aproducer who gets interested in a subject matter, or a director who’s interested in something.
They then hire staff so they have a custom-made contingency work force for that project. Then they let the staff
go. Everyone is an independent contractor, so there’s ahuge amount of negotiation involved in putting a team
together.
There are also behavioral norms for collaboration in
Hollywood that are very functional. People make fun of
Hollywood, because everybody’s so nice and never says
no. There’s a certain functionality in the positive aspects of collaboration, because people bond ver y© Emily Sperquickly. When you go on a set and have a job to do, youalmost immediately can meet the person who has theinformation you need and who then makes it easy to get what you need done. Theirjob is to create lubricated relationships that work well instantly, even though they’venever met you.
That’s also true in the structure of innovation, in the institutional sense. In the earlytwentieth century, there were movie studios that were the so-called “dream factories,”with walls around them. There was an economic logic for that because some elements
of production were scarce. Some people knew how to do certain things, like setting up
lights, and the studios needed to make sure that spies for other companies could not see
how they did things. Value always migrates to what is scarce, and in this early stage in
Hollywood, what was scarce was production knowledge. Actors were cheap; anybody
who looked good could go in front of the camera because they didn’t have to talk in thesilent movie era. Hollywood has a fascinating history of innovation, because the organizational models and business models evolved to keep pace with different, evolving
power dynamics among different players.
It seemed to me the elements of a design-oriented business that borrowed from theater, from Hollywood, and from the world of traditional design would begin to accomplish my goal. The question was, what are the new practices around innovation in the
New Economy? How does innovation have to work in the New Economy? My conclusion was that the people who had those answers were probably not strategy consultants,business school professors, or heads of product development. People outside those traditional disciplines, from places like improvisational acting, scenario planning, and theanthropology of customers, had the new ideas. The history of The Idea Factory has been
the history of weaving together different disciplines to try to find this new toolbox.
COS: What was the blind spot that applied only to the old economy?
John Kao: It’s not even one blind spot; it’s the fact that, on the one hand, if innovation
practices are focused on ideation, all you’ll get is a bunch of ideas. But ideas are easy, andthey don’t necessarily lead to value. If you are just tweaking your product development
process, you won’t get outside a narrow product orientation, and you also won’t really put
yourself in the best position to come up with radical, game-changing innovation.
If there is any attribute of the New Economy, it is that you have to be fast. You haveto do a lot of new things in a highly experimental way. You’re moving toward uncertain
outcomes because you don’t know how things are going to turn out. You have to makebets. You have to take a position on what you’re going to do, relative to your competition. Things are moving so fast that to sit still or to simply optimize processes is not an
option. You have to be doing this innovation stuff continuously. So the question thenbecomes, what are the practices that enable that kind of speed and continuity and volume of innovation activities?

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSJohn Kao: One is design. Design is an innovation process that is not just figuring out aspecification and then filling in the picture. Design is creating interim understandings ofwhat you want that you then work hard to go beyond. Specifically, it’s a process ofprototyping, which is modeling or simulating your best current understandings precisely
so that you can have a shared set of understandings that enable communication, especially among people from different disciplines. You break the prototype and iterate, prototype and iterate, until you get to some desired outcome that you could not havepredicted at the beginning.
Most designers understand that when you start improving a toaster, the way you getto the place where you stop and say, “I like that end point,” is a process that cannot be
predicted. It’s like jazz. You have to achieve a balance between structure and freedom
to get to that end point. It’s not like engineering, where you start with a specification,and then, if you do all the things that specification says, you get to the end point. You
do get to the end point, but you also exclude all the other branches of the tree. Design isabout enabling any relevant branch to be traveled on to get to that end point.
The essence of design is prototyping and iteration. It’sa process for getting to unpredicted outcomes. My thought
was, why not apply design to strategy? Why not apply design to organizational structures? Why not apply design tocorporate culture?
The second core element is theater. Companies commonly complain that, “We spent all this money on strategy,
but nothing changed, nothing happened.” In order for an
organization to embrace innovation, people have to take risks and be really committed
to doing something new. Taking risks means that there are unpleasant outcomes, as well
as pleasant ones. You have to allow people to shift their perspective so they see whysomething is important and develop the commitment to pursue that goal. So if, for instance, I hand you a memo that says we’re going to have this thing called the French
Revolution, and here are the five reasons, please check here if you’re interested in participating, it’s not an exciting experience. But if I take you to some revolutionary theater,and I show you bad things that happened and give you a lot of symbols and images andred colors, you’ll get very excited and you’ll want to do something dramatically different.
Theater goes back to the Greeks. The purpose of theater was to transform people’s
deep, moral perspective. Moral perspective implies dealing with several large archetypal
questions like: What is the good life? How shall the city be governed? Issues that aretranscendent—archetypal kinds of questions. These questions are just as relevant to acompany as they were to the Greek polis.
Theater is how you transform your perspective and develop an emotional reaction
to what you see that changes something profoundly. It addresses the issue of how tocreate new communication tools that allow the change process to become truly revolutionary. By that, I mean not just sharing content, but creating a context around the content that allows it to become alive in a very immediate way.
The third and final leg of the tripod here at The Idea Factory is the notion that innovation processes aren’t simply about an end-to-end product development approach orsome periodic ideation. They are about designing integrated, organizational systems. In
our language, it means designing an idea factory for a company. An idea factory involves
addressing issues all the way at the top about leadership. Does leadership really champion innovation? Does leadership make sure that innovation processes and strategy processes are meaningfully integrated?
Then there are all kinds of organizational design issues. Many companies think that
if they have one venture development process and one funding mechanism, they’redone. I would argue that they’ve just started. Companies that are great at innovating

SCHARMERCOS: If you were to describe these new practices and the process around which they alignthemselves, what are the core elements of the emerging new model?

Conversation with John Kao

Elements of an Emerging New Model. . . why not apply design to strategy?
Why not apply design to organizational
structures? Why not apply design tocorporate culture?

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

15

SCHARMERConversation with John Kao

need to do a lot of different kinds of things, including those that are redundant, messy,
overlapping, and inefficient. Companies need to have an innovation portfolio, not justan innovation strategy.
We will often sit down with a company’s senior management and actually do an
innovation audit. We try to understand the current innovation practices and what theyneed to be for the company to achieve the desired outcomes. We think through how tobuild an innovation system with everything, including the tools of compensation, resource allocation, organizational structure, and communication systems. If you are serious about innovation, you’re committing yourself to a long road, because innovation
touches almost everything about a company.
We are not really a consulting company. And although we have a venture fund now,
we’re really not a venture capital company. We’re not an incubator, because our businessis not swapping our services for stock. And we’re not a corporate venture team or a corporate venture platform in the conventional sense. We’re not any of those conventional
approaches to making new things happen, which we might call innovation. We’re something different, something new. I can’t describe what that thing is, except that the goal of
our company is to gather ingredients under one roof. The Idea Factory has a toolbox fordeveloping ideas. The Idea Factory value-added is the talents, capital, and pieces of embedded technology that will speed up the process of creating new, valuable assets. Imagine if we had data-related engineering capabilities or embedded technology that enables
business-to-business or business-to-consumer commerce. And imagine that we also had
ways of working with large companies. Now we wrap all these things together.

Career 7: The Idea Factory 2.0
What we are doing now is version 2.0 of The Idea Factory. Version 1.0 was big companies coming here and we would work with them and help them change. Version 2.0 is
the business of creating assets. We leverage the intellectual capital and The Idea Factory
assets in order to create new companies, new joint ventures, or new business containers
around intellectual capital so that interesting, new things can happen.
We also try to find high-leverage opportunities to deploy our intellectual capital. For
instance, we’re setting up a network to deploy Idea Factories in different European countries. We’re doing some interesting advisory work for the US government and for somebranches of international government. We think those are great opportunities to take ourintellectual capital and have it touch a lot of people’s lives. I can’t tell you what the outcome of version 2.0 will be because I don’t have a clear picture of it right now.
COS: In the 1.0 version, you charge for service. What’s the business model in the 2.0 version?
16

John Kao: The business model of 2.0 is—through friendships, alliances, business tie-ups,
joint ventures, spin-outs, start-ups, or whatever—to use our Idea Factory assets, ourpeople, our embedded technology, our capital, and our processes to create new, valuable
companies; new, valuable processes; new, valuable joint ventures; or new corporate spinouts that will have an asset value, an economic value as opposed to a fee-for-service,economic model. We’re still going to do consulting, but we’re going to expand our model
to focus more on asset creation.
COS: If you look at the whole ecology of entrepreneurship, you are describing a generative field where various ventures evolve and then develop. If you take the three elementsthat you described—design, theater, and the systems approach—along with the field thatyou just indicated, what keeps it all together and ensures that it remains a living systemthat continues to bring forth innovation and entrepreneurial action?

Creating an Innovation Keiretsu
John Kao: In a way, it’s a keiretsu, an innovation keiretsu. Part of what makes thekeiretsu work, the glue, is that there’s a certain amount of cross-ownership. For example,
I’m working with a technology company in the business of creating business-to-business

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSSCHARMER
Conversation with John Kaoexchanges in market spaces. We’re talking about swapping 1% of our stock, because wehave comparable valuation. When I call them to do a project for us, I want them to feelthat they are obligated. We’re a part of them, they’re a part of us. I’m involved with otherprojects where there’s an equity link.
Another part or glue that makes the keiretsu work is that there are people who see
the whole picture, rather than only parts, the local layer. I recently bought a movie studio in England with some partners. Now we have this very beautiful, old-fashioned British movie studio in my keiretsu. So we’ve got that, The Idea Factory, and a venture fund.
My job increasingly is to weave these connections back and forth. Because I’m on such
good terms with everybody, they’re all interested.
Third is process glue. People throughout the system understand how to do certain
things in certain ways. We’ve developed tools and ways to do things that are relevant indifferent parts of the business. We have a common vocabulary and common understanding around innovation. Here, at The Idea Factory, the people understand how the words
are used, what the words mean, and how to communicate. So there’s a whole set of processes and process knowledge that holds things together.
Fourth, if we didn’t have interesting projects, then there would be no glue. Whatholds things together are projects. One thing we’re really good at is coming up with interesting projects. For instance, we’re meeting later with people interested in The Idea
Factory, in Ealing Studios, in our venture fund, all of it. That project will pull together a
lot of different elements.
The fact that our team now has some capital is also glue. People expect that if theycome up with a good idea, there will be a way to get things done, and they would rather
stick around here than go somewhere else.
COS: Projects, process, and cross-ownership are easy to replicate for other organizations.
But the fourth factor is difficult to replicate, because it’s John Kao.
John Kao: Or people who weave things together.
COS: So how do you replicate that?

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

17© Emily SperJohn Kao: First of all, I don’t think processes are a commodity yet, so embedding new
kinds of processes in organizations is pretty valuable. But who does the work of weaving
things together involves training people in understanding that role. I’m doing a workshop
with a very senior group from the US military on how they see their responsibility inmanaging the knowledge of their organization. They thought it was a very soft issue until I persuaded them that it is probably the most important
thing they do. It also is different from being commandants,
because you have to be a peer, a colleague, and a facilitator, an enabler, and many other untraditional things. It’s afascinating example of how to move people rapidly fromold economy to New Economy, or how to expand theirroles for both.
We use cases, simulation, business games, and things
like that to train senior people for the role of innovation
weaver or what I call producer. In Hollywood, I produce
movies. What does that mean? Well, there was an idea I
liked. I knew some people whom I could get excited about
it. I knew where to get the money. So I was a producer.
Without me, these movies wouldn’t have happened. Without me, that biotech company would not have happened.
One day, my mother asked me a question that summarizes the confusion of many people about the New
Economy. She said, “You know, I’ve watched you work,and you act like you’re not in a hurry, and you talk on thephone a lot, and you kind of sit at your desk, and then you
go have lunch with somebody, and all these things hap-

SCHARMERConversation with John Kaopen. I don’t understand what you do that goes from sitting and talking to the actual creation of these companies and the value and stuff.”
People associate value creation with muscle work, very tangible kinds of work.
What I do is very intangible and involves time. Actually doing it in an inefficient way ispreferable to doing it in an efficient way because ideas need time to germinate, and interactions need time to become richer and more relevant. Talking to people, gathering
ideas, or the incubation process cannot be scheduled in aconventional way.
I think the architecture of innovation is going tochange dramatically over the next five to ten years. Quitea few companies are interested in having some kind of
corporate think space or quiet space or slow space where
new things can happen. A lot of companies are fiddlingaround with the architectural principles. But five to ten
years from now, it’ll be a more commonly understood need, and people will have waysof practicing innovation that are, if not standardized, at least recognized.

What I do is very intangible andinvolves time. . . . Ideas need time togerminate, and interactions need time
to become richer and more relevant.

Catching the Entrepreneurial Process
COS: When you begin the process your mother described, what do you do first?
John Kao: The first thing is to define what the opportunity is, which is the same as becoming captivated by an idea or a possibility. Any design effort starts with problem definition. The better the problem definition, the more likely you’ll have an interestingoutcome. I often spend a lot of time with companies, helping them figure out what theywant because they know they can benefit from thinking about it more. That provides thefoundation for everything else. The more you address the issue of problem definition, themore you see new things. Everything starts because somebody falls in love with an idea
or an opportunity. You need the initial spark.
COS: What practices do you use, maybe personal practices, that increase the probabilityof these sparks emerging?

18

John Kao: I often try things that I don’t know how to do. For instance, when I was teaching at Harvard, I would, a few weeks before starting my course for the year, take a course
in something I didn’t know anything about. While I was teaching, I was walking into theroom as a big professor, and everybody was very respectful. It actually was very helpful toexchange the context by stepping into the student world and experiencing that first.
The space here at The Idea Factory is innovation- and creativity-oriented, but I also
have a studio two blocks away. It is just a loft with almost nothing in it except for a stereo, some books, and an exercise bike. It doesn’t even have a telephone. I go there when
I want to be totally quiet and think about things. This week, I’ll probably spend two halfdays there, just mulling over stuff. Last week, I was too busy, but this week, I scheduled
a few blocks of time to go there and just think.
I also spend a lot of time with different kinds of people. I like to collect relationships
with people whose talents I really respect. When I did my little stint on Broadway—I
produced a play a couple of years ago—I was working with one of the best directors andone of the best playwrights in the world. Then I mixed that with working with some of
the best Internet entrepreneurs. I have as partners some of the best venture capitalists.
When that gets boring, I can go talk to my 22-month-old son. That’s always interesting.
Ikujiro Nonaka: How does all that relate to the process of jamming?
John Kao: Jamming for me is an important concept and set of practices because it embodies almost everything that people are groping for when they try to figure out how to
be more innovative.
I like the metaphor because people actually study how to play jazz. They don’t justwish to play jazz; they go to school, they practice, they have exercises to do. There is a

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONS

Ikujiro Nonaka: How do you develop that capacity?

SCHARMERConversation with John Kao

knowledge-mastery curve associated with it. It’s the perfect way to balance a lot of theparadoxes of innovation, because you start from somewhere, but then you have to go
somewhere new. You always have to have knowledge, but you have to find ways of being naïve—in a good sense—so you’re open to new possibilities. You always have somekind of knowledge or legacy, but you have white space—a beginner’s mind.
So navigating through those paradoxes is jamming. Every time a musician plays anote on a keyboard, he is making a choice that resolves that paradox in that moment. It
may or may not be the right one, but there is no right and wrong. It’s just whatever feels
right at that particular moment. Ultimately, you know when it’s good, not only by intellectual criteria but by emotional and pattern-completion criteria as well.

John Kao: The way you learn jazz is by listening to a lot of jazz. You listen and improvise solo, but then you copy it down, because if you can hear it and write it down, then
you know it. Then you put yourself in the situation of performing to gain the experienceof collaboration. You cultivate a certain mentality in which the music always sounds better when you don’t have a lot of preconceptions about it. If I don’t have a lot of preconceived ideas, I can get back to a beginner’s mind.
Jazz musicians understand that you need a special environment to try out new
things. You have to believe that you can do something great, because you can’t prove itin advance. That, in a simple way, is the whole issue of creating a culture of innovation:it allows people to be brave. It allows them to step forward and try new things themselves. Companies are not very good at giving their people courage or the belief thatsomething extraordinary can happen. The whole corporate culture agenda around innovation boils down to: How do you create a brand identity for innovation that allows
people to be brave, step forward, and do new things?
COS: We talked about the initial stage of the entrepreneurial creative process—opening
the mind and allowing the sparks to emerge. Could you describe what would be the next?
What are the practices that you would use in order to nudge the process on?
John Kao: Ideas are easy; they’re just the starting point. Designers understand that thegoal is to translate that idea immediately into some tangible form, like prototypes, so thatyou can begin the real work of innovation. Having a prototyping process within an innovation-oriented environment that allows the prototype to be done on its own terms, on
its own schedule, would be the next step.
It’s important to avoid linearity, which is characteristic of a lock-step industrial process. In the future, innovation in companies will happen in many different ways. Sometimes an idea pops up out of a strategy meeting. It’ll be an accident that occurs in a
prototyping environment. Or somebody in the company meets with the customer, and a
new idea pops out. Or maybe somebody shows up with a business plan that’s recognized
as valuable.
I think the image of a linear process is less appropriate than the image of a gameboard. It’s like the difference between golf and pinball. Golf is a linear game where you
have to hit all 18 holes and then you’re done. In pinball, the ball goes wherever it wants,
and you never can predict the path. The ball itself kind of traces a path through the landscape. In a funny way, the innovation environments that work well allow an idea tomove around in that highly unpredictable way. Then form follows function; function
does not follow form.
COS: But in order to do that, you need this differentiated ecology of enabling spaces,right? You described prototyping and tapping into tacit knowledge. Are those the twomain enabling spaces? What are the others?
John Kao: There needs to be a holding space at the senior management/strategy/formulating level. There need to be shared understandings and shared space between thosepeople and the people doing a particular project. Where is the knowledge about the mar-

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

19

SCHARMERConversation with John Kao

ketplace and customers held? Where is the knowledge about technology? Where’s theknowledge about the technology landscape? There are a number of different agendas.
There’s no one way to design the corporate innovation ecology in terms of a suiteof spaces. You need to have a sense of all these different elements in the innovation mix.
For a lot of companies, it may be as simple as having one space that can be used in manydifferent ways, trying it, learning from it, and then progressing to a next step.
I’ve been looking at the decision-support environment of the US government. They
spend a lot of money on situation rooms, war rooms, and rooms with a lot of computer
technology and nice furniture. We’re trying to understand where they should go to accomplish true collaboration. A lot of rooms are used to rubber-stamp ideas, not to comeup with something dramatically new, which is what’s needed in a crisis. What are theenabling conditions for good thinking in that kind of environment? We don’t know. The
best thing is to have a room that can function in different ways and that can be flexible.

The Intangible Essence of The Idea Factory
COS: You said The Idea Factory is not about what you see; it’s not the tangible, it’s theintangible. You’ve described a lot of concrete practices and spaces. What is the essence of
the intangible Idea Factory? And how does it relate to the topic of qualities of awareness?

20

John Kao: I’m not sure I would say that it is all intangibles. The physical environment andthe physical properties we have here are significant. For instance, when people come here
because they want to develop e-business strategy and we let them play our e-business war
game for a few days, that’s a highly tangible process. People get physical items that increase the intensity of the experience in their physical environment and interaction withother real people.
Is process knowledge intangible? It is and it isn’t. A lot of our process knowledge resides in tools. They could be as simple as a template for writing things in, or something
online, or a way of visualizing complicated relationships. We have many different approaches to modeling languages. We don’t say that any one is the right one; we let people
try out different approaches, or we recommend different approaches based on our intuition.
People come to a place that is supposed to be about innovation. They expect whencoming here that something interesting will come out of it. There’s a safe-space phenomenon; people are away from their day-to-day environments. We have no difficulty getting people engaged here, even though they might come from left-brain, bureaucraticenvironments. It’s easy to create a feeling of fun here. The physical environment changes
the way people relate to each other.
It’s hard to figure out what the absolute essence is. Clearly, putting together a teamthat functions like a high-performance jazz group is a lot of it. We are now at the stage
where we almost don’t have to talk about what we’re doing.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSLearning in Performance:
How a Dutch Company
Transformed Itself

FEATURE

Philip H. Mirvis, Karen Ayas, and George L. RothIntroduction
In February 2000, we were with Tex Gunning, then chairman of Van den Bergh Netherlands (VdBN), a foods division of Unilever, and 200 leadership team members in Wadi
Rum, a valley amid jutting mountains in the Jordanian desert. The team leaders, stirred
by a morning camel ride, unfolded their previously prepared, annotated time lines of important events in their work lives, beginning in 1995. Nestled in mountain crevices, theleaders, grouped in business teams, swapped “stories” about the reasons for successes
and failures. Later, around a campfire, they unfurled cloth banners that recorded eachteam’s experiences, and business heads cum “tribe leaders” summed up the lessons. This
process, which continued for another day and a half, was carried forward at the firm’s
annual learning conference where 1,800 employees joined their team leaders, shared theirown story lines, and broadened the circle of reflection and learning.
Before moving to his next assignment, Gunning wanted to document the transformation of VdBN during his five-year tenure. So, in late 1999, we began a learning history to identify key transforming events, find their meaning and significance, and assess
their impact on employees and the business. In so doing, we wanted to involve all concerned in the analysis of events and detailing of lessons learned.
The learning history was the joint effort of a team of action researchers, including
us and several leaders from VdBN. Every employee, selected managers from Unilever,and various suppliers and contractors contributed to the findings. The formal process
began when Gunning and Philip Mirvis, a consultant to the company, compared notes
about the transformation and developed a set of “action theories” to interpret what had
happened and why. In Jordan and later gatherings, the hope was that engaging leadersin evocative storytelling at memorable venues would itself be a historic event in thecompany’s time line and carry the lessons forward with added vigor (see Part III on using a learning history as an intervention).
The transformation story began in 1995 with the appointment of Gunning as chairman and the turnaround of the Unox factory and brand. It continued with the merger ofseveral Unilever food businesses under one flag in 1997 and the decision of the management board to have 200 leaders. It continued through 1998 to 2000 with large-scale
events, like that in the desert of Jordan, designed to mark progress, develop and deepen
the changes in the business and culture, and create a legacy of growth.
The learning history of VdBN is a chronological story of events and experiences,
covering the two cycles of change. The first transformation concerns Unox, which has
meat, sauce, and soup factories in the south of Holland. The second transformation involves the merging of Unox into VdBN, headquartered in Rotterdam, to create the largest food manufacturer in Holland. Of the total current workforce in VdBN, about 800
employees have lived through both transformations.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

Philip H. Mirvis
Organizational Psychologist,
Consultant

21
Karen Ayas
Associate Editor, Reflections
Research Fellow, Erasmus University
Partner, The Ripples GroupTo comeGeorge L. RothResearch Associate
MIT Sloan School of Management© 2001 by Philip H. Mirvis, Karen Ayas,
and George L. Roth.

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance

22

Each transformation had a unifying vision, captured in the slogan, “Competing for
our future,” that appeared on hats and clothing, on company flags, and as a recurring
theme at companywide gatherings. This growth message was expressed quantitatively
in “stretch targets” and unit-specific performance measurements. A mix of “hard” and“soft” changes were implemented, based on these analyses and goals. At Unox and later
VdBN, the hard side of change involved restructuring, asset sales, and staff reductions,along with the formation of business units and introduction of profit-and-loss accounting and responsibilities. On the soft side, new types of management meetings, staff training, team building, and organizational development efforts were launched.
One unassailable conclusion is that the business grew during the five years. The
overall rate of growth, in sluggish categories in a mature industry, was 4% per annum.
The foods business unit, which introduced several new products, entered new markets,and used new channels to fuel the growth engine, grew by 13% in 1999. The fats business unit, after prior years of decline, stabilized volumes, increased market share, andgrew several of its brands. Efficiencies in several factories improved from 60% to morethan 80%, and trading losses decreased dramatically.
A key conclusion of the learning history is that these results have been neither incremental nor routine. On the contrary, they have been shaped by business breakthroughs and innovative change management. We found that the change process at
VdBN has been guided by a set of principles, often tacit and unspoken. For instance,transformations typically begin with an awakening—the aims of which are to focus attention on the “current reality,” break through denial and resistance, and create urgency
for change. In both Unox in 1995 and VdBN in 1997, there were orchestrated efforts to“wake up” the organization to current problems and foreseeable performance gaps. But
the wake-up calls were noteworthy on two counts. First, attention-getting events, rich insubstance and symbolism, helped to ensure that all employees understood the depth ofproblems and need for action. Second, these emotive experiences were complemented
by intellectual rigor: Andersen Consulting and other experts worked with the leaders toanalyze each situation thoroughly and identify areas for change.
Tracking these two cycles of transformation suggests that VdBN leaders have, overthis period, been learning to manage change proactively. The change management methods introduced in the first transformation—from a symbolic awakening and assessmentof current reality to the detailing of a vision and implementation of new ways of working—are replicated in the second transformation. Efforts to mobilize people are similarin the two cases, albeit more encompassing and engaging in the second.
Companywide gatherings called learning conferences spread and deepened the transformation process at Unox. This was amplified even more in the second transformation cycle
at VdBN through culture-building events, such as team-leader days and annual retreats, plus
the elaboration of learning conferences through preparatory and follow-up activities.
While some facets of change management at VdBN were carefully planned, others
were more or less improvised (see the sidebar, an interview with Tex Gunning). The real
story of leadership and transformation at VdBN is the “holistic integration” of activities
or, more colloquially, the “art of management.” This was the result of continuous experimentation and learning, a mix of planning and improvisation, and space for serendipity.
Events, increasingly more sophisticated and engaging,
punctuated the growth of leaders and development ofcompany culture. Rites and rituals are universal: tribes everywhere, ancient and modern, use them to mark time andachievements. These events, which might be termed “performances,” are unusual in business and have been singular at VdBN for their creativity, scale, and impact.
Next, in Part I, we elaborate on the idea of marking progress and creating change via
events and underscore the performative aspects of the VdBN transformation story. In Part
II, Karen Ayas provides a first-person account of the team leaders’ event in the Jordaniandesert in February 2000—a “performance” that marks collectively the leadership passage.
In Part III, George Roth describes how a learning history becomes a “real time” intervention and part of the performance in Jordan.

Rites and rituals are universal: tribes
everywhere, ancient and modern, usethem to mark time and achievements.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSScene 2
Eighteen months later, skaters glide on frozen canals through Holland. It’s that special
spontaneous holiday, ElfStedenTocht, when waterways linking 11 cities freeze over, andthe nation takes a day off to play. Along the waterways, the same Unox employees, now
numbering only 800 due to restructuring and asset sales, hand out bright orange stocking caps that bear the Unox logo. To conclude the day, the employees, vigorous andproud, assemble en masse, strip off all but their orange hats, and dash into the wintry
North Sea. Later, tens of thousands of skaters, in towns large and small, are pictured onnational television and on the front pages of newspapers wearing the orange hats.

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH

Scene 1
In a Unox warehouse in the south of Holland, a fleet of forklifts has amassed 10,000 pallets, stacked floor to ceiling with canned food labeled “waste.” This crisp morning, buses
arrive from three nearby factories. Managers and their cost accountants, quality experts
and production workers—some 1,600 employees—tour aisles of spoiled material, countthe massive loss of money, and contemplate the waste of their own time and talents. The
stage is set for outbursts and resentment, analysis and confrontation, and later
acknowledgement and first steps toward a new way.

Learning in Performance

Part I. Leading Change: From Process to Performance

Scene 3A year and a half later, in the cellar of a medieval monastery in Belgium’s Ardennes forest, some 200 leaders from Unox and its merger partner VdBN hop from one cold foot toanother as they wait to hear the words of their chairman. There are no histrionics on
spoiled food this time. Instead he speaks from the heart about the death of his father, his
abusive family, the highs and lows of his schooling, and his career. As he finishes, ayoung supervisor shouts out, “Thank you for sharing that, Tex. It’s good to know you
better.” The leaders then share their own “emotional life stories” and talk about their lives
and work, who they are, and what has shaped them. In the small group discussions andwhole-group dialogues that follow, there is the sense that this is something new and important in their dealings with one another.
In the language of business and the social sciences, the vignettes above describe processes. While definitions vary in specific applications, processes in general involve theordering of tasks and activities across time and space, with specified steps from A to B.
There are well-mapped processes concerning the flow of work, patterns of communication and control, steps in problem solving and decision making, and so on. Managers,in turn, are expected to apply process thinking to production, quality control, and service delivery tasks, and to develop processes for change management and organizational
learning (Garvin, 1998).
Each scene above is an element in a process. For instance, the carefully constructedwarehouse tour, in process terms, typifies the start of a change effort whereby new information helps to “unfreeze” an enterprise that has grown complacent about quality
and stayed profitable through price increases. This event is a prototypical wake-up call—which was followed in this case by intense study of production practices and consumer
trends—that helped staff to develop a clear if unforgiving view of current reality.
Outfitting skaters with the orange Unox hats exemplifies an inspired promotion process. Marketing studies had shown that customers were bored with the products, whichwere losing appeal. Improving the quality might improve taste and, in time, profit margins, but market gains would hinge more on repositioning the product line and giving
the brand an updated identity and some sizzle. Interestingly, the skating event not only
associated the brand with vitality and fun, but also had unanticipated benefits: the buzzenhanced Unox’s corporate image and people’s pride in their employer.
The meeting in the monastery was emblematic of culture building—a process toblend cultures in the post-merger period (Marks and Mirvis, 1997). The chairman usedbehavioral processes when presenting his life story to model openness for the staff,

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 423

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance© George L. Rothstimulate dialogue, and demonstrate the commonality in stories from people in two different companies. This not only hastened development of rapport between merging
staffs, but also sped up their fact-finding and collaborative efforts.

Performativity

24

In the language of the arts and the emerging discipline of performance studies, the events
described might be termed performances. In each instance, the actions of the leaders andstaff are more or less scripted and unfold through scenes. The events themselves arestaged, with scenery and actors in place, costumes and props ready, and the chairman cum
director exerting a strong or light hand, depending on the performance. The parallels between process and performance are striking: the latter also involves an arrangement ofactivities across time and space, dramatization with a beginning and end, and activity,
termed by scholars of the genre as performativity, that pulls it all together (Carlson, 1996).
This distinction may seem moot. In everyday language, people speak easily of the“art of leadership,” read about management as a “performing art,” and move toward
craftsmanship in labor, harmony in teamwork, and “world-class” performance. But to lift
up and focus specifically on the performative aspects of leadership, we believe, offers afresh, useful way to see, understand, and undertake organizational change.
Let’s look again at the “awakening” in the warehouse in theatrical terms. The staging is surreal: the staff’s early morning bus ride to an unknown destination; secrecy
about its intent and the part they are about to play; stacked pallets whose meaning
emerges as the tour progresses; signs detailing the contents, costs, and causes of themess; all amplified by company officials in white lab coats. As performance, it immerses
employees in an unfamiliar, unexpected reality. The sights shock them, the smells fromopen cans nauseate them, and the sound effects—Mozart’s requiem piped over loudspeakers—add another layer of showmanship. The act ends with an aptly staged scene:
forklifts move pallets from the warehouse to a nearby pit where the waste is buried.
That change follows a script is not surprising. Anthropologists have documented ritesof passage that punctuate change in many cultures, and the idea that cultures enactchange through social dramas—in the formula of an upheaval, then conflict and reordering, and finally reintegration—is well established (Turner, 1957). Indeed, a well-known
framework characterizes organizational change as a “three-act drama” (Tichy and
Sherman, 1993). In these academic uses, however, drama is a metaphor for cultural activity. By comparison, in the case discussed here, the drama is an experience. Indeed, weVolume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSMIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH

Appeal to the Head and the Heart:
An Interview with Tex Gunning

Where did it go from there?
A few months later, we shared our personal and business stories in a management team-building
session. People first spent 45 minutes writing their life stories. What have been major factors inyour life? What do you stand for? What do you want to achieve? When we shared the stories, thefirst manager who really opened up was responsible for a plant. He was a very respected person
who had been on the board for eight years and played an important role in the transformation.
He cried and talked about what he had been through. This set the scene for me. I was the last to
speak, and I broke down too. We were open, honest, and real with each other.
Afterward, my coach Laura was furious, “There was a guy sitting there crying, and you could
not even put your arms around him!” I was shocked and I realized how poor we were because
we could not express our emotions or our empathy.
That all changed on our trip to the Ardennes. In the cellar of a ruin, I presented my emotional life story. It was not easy. I was in a little space in front of 200 team leaders, talking
about the death of my father, an abusive family, and the ups and downs of my adolescence. The
silence became tangible. You touch people’s hearts when you talk openly about your emotions.
I will never forget that a young woman in finance was angry that I had not told my story
sooner. There was an implicit message: “We would have forgiven you, if we could have understood you.” In that cellar, everyone created their own emotional life story and shared it ingroups of two or three. The purpose of this in business is to help others know you and explain
why you behave in certain ways.
How does this link to the transformation?
The logic was simple: we needed to grow the business. For the business to grow, we needed creativity and diversity. And people had to take initiative and responsibility, which require an open,
respectful, and trustworthy environment. But that wasn’t enough.
People can write a value statement saying that they will be honest, open, and respect eachother. I had done that before, and it does not work. To get real openness and respect, you have

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

Tex Gunning

Learning in Performance

How and when did the emphasis on heart and emotions come into the business?
What I always do is think deeply about where we are in the transformation process. What is theissue? What should be the next move? Where are the people and the leaders? What do theyneed?
With the merger, we had had a tough year. At the end-of-year management conference in
Antwerp in December 1997, we wanted to reconnect with who we are and who we want to be
and to the best in us. In the morning, in a church-like building, we first discussed business. I encouraged and gave credit to those who deserved it. But it is also my role to say when things are
not going well, even my own performance. I was tough and told it straight.
After lunch, we viewed a clip from the movie Abyss in which the main characters have tochoose who will survive the swim from a leaking sub to a ship. The man, who is the betterswimmer, gets the only oxygen mask. He has to drown his wife, although the water is so coldthat she has a slim chance to survive. Once on the ship, she is declared clinically dead, but hedoes not give up until they revive her. After this emotional scene, board members were crying. I
began by asking, “Do you feel that there is more in you than just brains? That you also haveemotions?” I told them that I had had a lousy year, both in business and personally. For the firsttime, I had been unable to bring a real team together, which frustrated me and kept me off balance. I apologized because I had not delivered what I should have as a business leader. Then I
told them that if they wanted to grow, they had to connect with each other and with themselves. We began to discuss emotions. The effect was tangible. I had hit a nerve, appealed towhat everyone wanted, and unlocked the energy for growth.

This interview was held on a gloomy Sunday afternoon in Tex Gunning’s office overlooking
Rotterdam, in December 1999. Philip Mirvis and Karen Ayas participated in the conversation.

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MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance

to become open yourself and, therefore, vulnerable. If you want growth, you need an open, respectful culture. It took us a while to make the link between opening the emotional side andgrowing the business.
Another turning point came when the management team held a fishbowl discussion in frontof the 200 team leaders. When I angered one of my managers, the team jumped on me. I apologized. People came out saying, “These guys are prepared to expose themselves.” That was the“miracle” that we needed.

Time line

26

What do you mean by a miracle?
You can never create miracles. But you can create an environment that is inspirational, where itis safe to try things, where you can start to inquire. You can do that by design. At every teamleader event, at every learning conference, we try to create space for that miracle. At Ardennes,
we used the emotional life stories and the management team’s fishbowl discussion. Vulnerability is powerful. All the units became connected; there was a different tone.
Right after the Ardennes event, the management team had lunch together. I knew the learning conference for the whole company was coming up, so I asked them, “Are we prepared to do
this with 1,800 people? Which of you will do this? I’ll be telling my life story first.” One said yes;then three others. Two management team members agreed to tell their life stories; two others
would do masks [to share what is behind the masks they wear at work]. We would demonstratethat we are serious about openness.
Two weeks later, 1,800 people came together in a big theater. I did not start with my usual song-and-dance presentation about the figures. Instead I sat on the stage and said,“Before we begin, I’d like you to tell you a bit more about me.”I cannot recall whether I told the story very well, but I wastense. Later, when I did my normal presentation, I couldn’t doit. By then, I was too emotional to tell a rational story. I had a
two-hour fight with myself to “get connected with the audience,” and I could not.
After a break, the two plant managers told their stories. One
described his early childhood during WWII; he never saw his father until after the war because his father had been arrested asa collaborator. From that day, his life changed. In disgrace, he
had to change schools; the family had to keep the curtains in
the house drawn. His father was eventually acquitted, but thedamage was done. He also told of how he had been working with someone who had cheated andstabbed him in the back. He combined these two events to explain how his trust had been broken.
Only then did I realize why this guy was so independent in his work. He rejected interdependency
purely because of his childhood and his career experience. He broke down on stage, and the effect
was profound. People thought they knew this man, and realizing they did not, they felt guilty.
Then the other plant manager talked about going to a Belgium boarding school, which, he
explained, was not just for rich kids, but also for young criminal kids. He described how he wasbeaten up every day. He had resolved that he never was going to be beaten again.
Next were the two managers who demonstrated their masks. One was an Englishman who,
even in the exercise, did not really show himself, but became very emotional about his relationship with his wife, showing everyone her picture. At last, we saw his human side. Then the finance director, not the most open character, described his attachment to his family.
At that point, the 1,800 people went to work on their own emotional life stories. I will never forget the silence. Normally, there would be enormous noise with that many people working, but it
was quiet. People were drawing and concentrating. I could not believe the intensity with which they
approached this task.
After the learning conference, this company became more open. People realized that the
management team was human. I had told them that I alone could not grow this business. I
could help, bring strategy, and be a coach, but they could not expect me to grow this business. I
told them, “You can do it; just be yourself.” And that is what we did.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSREFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTHAnthropologists have documented
rites of passage that punctuatechange in many cultures . . .

Learning in Performancecontend that the performativity itself was transformative; Gunning and his team transformed through their performance. Their warehouse theatrics, akin to the first act of thedrama, are a harbinger of the further transformation—of themselves and their business.
The skating performance is a different kind of theater in which the performance islargely unscripted and the audience drives the show. Consider the elements of improvisation: the orange hats, for example, came from the chairman,
who had no plans for how to use them. The idea to linkthem to skating was a leap of imagination and wholly dependent on cooperative weather (freeze-overs do not happen every year). Staff members had only the vaguest idea
where to gather and how to get their countrymen into costume. It’s likely that few of the skaters—who, by turns, wereaudience and actors—appreciated at the moment how their costuming, vigor, and color
choreography added branding to the spectacle. Interestingly, the staff’s dash into frigid waters, imagined as a cast party, turned into a social performance itself. Their costuming, orlack thereof, made the experience even more memorable.
A serious scholar might develop the symmetry between the two scenes: the symbolic
death of the old culture in the food burial pit and the subsequent rebirth of a new culture
through baptism in the sea. No doubt this rite of passage afforded a deep, if subliminal,
meaning to the occasion. But consider two other aspects of the experience. First, the performance was a one-time event. Its uniqueness and singularity, coupled with widespread
media coverage, made the experience even more memorable. Second, the performance
was successful because people played. In a mix of improvisation and street theater, thestaff had fun chasing after skaters, surprising them with hats, getting them into the act,
and then watching the swathe of orange hats gliding against white snow. To what degree
did the instinctually appealing aspects of play and interplay, with laughter and hilarity,
make this event a transformative experience for employees and consumers alike?
By comparison, the meeting in the monastery was a far different kind of show.
When Gunning effected the merger of Unox into VdBN, he analyzed problems and opportunities, developed a vision of growth, and then launched successful new products
into the marketplace, all the right moves. But something was missing. Managers meeting in late 1997 agreed that, although business was improving, the company lacked“heart.” What emerged was top managers’ aspiration to reconnect deeply—intellectuallyand emotionally—to each other and to customers.
In early 1998, aided by Laura Tan, his adviser (or dramaturg in theater terms), anda team from the Foundation for Community Encouragement, Gunning led the retreat into
the Ardennes forest for 200 leaders from every level. In addition to sharing emotional life
stories, the leaders bicycled and camped together, met for fishbowl-type discussions (thetop team in the center, observed by all), and joined for both quiet reflection and boisterous revelry. Subsequently, at a companywide learning conference, all 1,800 employees
prepared emotional life stories and talked about themselves and their work.
Two aspects of the Ardennes performance are significant. First, Gunning and his top
team had to be role models for the staff (actors) and put on the show (producers). A
complex script with complicated staging, set designs, and logistics lay behind this performance. In pulling it all together, top managers demonstrated their own teamwork andreconnection to the leaders of their business. (See the sidebar interview with Gunningfor his view of the drama as both director and actor.)
Second, the experience moved everyone into what anthropologists call “deep play,”
wherein fundamental ideas and cultural codes are open to inspection (Geertz, 1973).
Whereas the skating experience was primarily “fun,” the Ardennes retreat and subsequent
all-staff learning conference enabled people to “play” with their culture. In reflective conversations—very much part of the performance—they talked about their frustrations, skepticism about change, and difficulties of truly connecting as people. They in turn made acommitment to be authentic with each other, to listen deeply, and to deal with difficult business issues. In this respect, the performance was an occasion for cultural reflexivity. In playing their parts, the employees were developing new cultural mores. One attendee summed
up: “For me, the experience represented a major turnaround. . . . The way leaders and then
all the people of Van den Bergh showed something personal about themselves. The example

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MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance

Table 1 Process and performance distinctions
Process

Performance

Plan
Steps
Staff
Do
Manager
Deliver

ScriptScenesCast
Act
Director
Delight

showed that I am more than just a ‘working’ person in the company. The ‘whole’ person is
welcomed.”

Process versus Performance
The idea that leadership, management, customer service, and, indeed, almost any work
can be understood as a performing art has intellectual merit for scholars and decided
appeal to many practitioners (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). There are several outstanding
comparisons between the elements of organizational and theatric performance. Consider
some of the following process versus performance distinctions (see the table).

Plan versus Script
Processes are based on plans. Mission statements, the goals they express, and the activities
needed to achieve them describe what has to be done and the steps for doing it. Although
the inputs, throughputs, and outputs differ in, say, strategic, financial, and operational
plans, what they specify in toto is what has to happen to get the job done right. Scripts serve
this function in performances. But the script goes deeper and further by elaborating anddetailing how things should be done. One could quibble about the what-how distinction byreferencing the tactical plans, instructions, and performance requirements through whichplans are elaborated, activities specified, and controls designed. Instead, think of it as a matter of shading and intention. Consider the highest compliments that are given to a plan: agood plan is logical, sensible, sound. While a script conveys a plan, it also addresses the expression of emotion, suggests how to bring activity to life, and reminds us that “art” is to be
performed. That’s what makes a good script beautiful.

Steps versus Scenes
In process steps versus performance scenes, we find the same relative emphasis on what
versus how. Both dictate sequence, flow, and timing. Attention to the scene also stresses
the emotive aspects of action and aims at the experience of being there. One could argue that precisely because the warehouse awakening wasstaged, it had such a powerful impact. Compare these
employee reactions to the informative and performative
aspects of the warehouse event and to its impact as ameeting rather than an experience.
Informative:
At the warehouse, we were told what we were doing was not
right. We got more information. We got to see the numbers.
There were quality problems. That was a shock for me because
the people did their best and they were never told. This factoryis our bread. If it goes bad with the factory, it goes bad for us.

28

Performative:
The whole thing was definitely masterminded. The structure of
the event was to introduce the strategic situation in a verygraphic and powerful way. Exultant music. Piles of products.
The stamp ‘reject.’ Oh God! This is a warehouse full of rejectproduct!

Staff versus Cast© Philip H. Mirvis

Working and acting join in the “roles” people assume on
the job and on stage. Indeed, the organizational use of theterm borrows from theater precisely to put work into a performance context and communicate fully its performative
standards. Still, there is a different social significance tobeing a member of a “cast,” rather than part of the staff. For

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSMIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH. . . because actors are playing andthe experience is “make believe,” they
can reflect from a distance and . . .
learn something about their art andthemselves.

Learning in Performance

instance, the work of the actor getting into character, with the attendant imagining, rehearsing, costuming, makeup, and so on asks more of people than, say, standard job descriptions and demands more presence than simply showing up. In turn, actors often feel strong
loyalty for their performances and their own artistry. This is akin to staff having a professional rather than organizational identity and is a mixed blessing for managers: self-styled
impresarios sometimes value their own performance far
more than the sucess of the show.
Working as a cast involves teamwork and like any highperforming team, a theater troupe has inescapable interdependencies and everyone has to play their part for the show
to succeed. But, more so than most teams, theatrical performers have to rehearse their work, and collective performance is so valued that everyone involved gets listed in thecredits. Being seen as a cast is also distinctive. Show business has an undeniable cachet. Recognizing this, top entertainment, dining, and transportation companies—Disney, Hard Rock Cafe, and Southwest
Airlines among them—have dramatized their customer service and staged it.

Do versus Act
While do and act seem synonymous, acting, as performativity, has some distinguishing features. The creation of an alternative reality through play frees imagination, generates energy,
and opens possibilities for new directions. In turn, precisely because actors are playing andthe experience is “make believe,” they can reflect from a distance and, in so doing, learnsomething about their art and themselves. Certainly, the use of role play in management
training and of psychodramas in clinical settings is based on these assumptions.
Acting out new behavior can have an impact on individuals and companies that
extends beyond any particular performance. Consider the experience (and its limitations)through the eyes of two Dutch managers:
For a couple of days, you’re in a completely different surrounding. Flying in an airplane,
biking, and canoeing is something you don’t do every day. You’re more or less lost, so all
the experiences have an impact on you as a person and on your work with your colleagues.
Today I would describe the company culture as playful. Playful, loose, creative . . . changing
directions. Playing is good; you are open to new possibilities. What is lacking is a clear purpose. What’s the next thing we have to do? We have to start moving in a direction, and I
don’t see that movement.

Manager versus Director
We do not need to repeat the countless tracts telling managers to orchestrate, choreograph,coach, and in other ways add to the artistry of organizational performance. But managers cum
directors can benefit from artistic sensibilities and skills. They have the authority and responsibility to ensure the integrity of a performance—its narrative, presentation, and flow. They
should also have an eye for symbolism and ear for what sounds flat. Gunning has remarked:
There is the managing of intangibles. And it is the integration of these intangibles that makes
the difference. I can work on people’s emotions; I can work on people’s intellect. But in theend, I want to integrate this at continuous, higher levels. So the cumulative effect of events, ofwalking your talk, of being consistent in your beliefs is integration at a higher level.

Deliver versus Delight
The distinction between the sought-after end of process versus performance is admittedly
arbitrary. Nevertheless, there is a tendency in process management to focus so much on
concrete, measurable deliverables that creativity and fun are simply driven from the process. In the service of efficiency and to gain predictability and control, processes becomecompartmentalized, routinized, and lifeless. In many instances, processes are equatedwith bureaucracy, so to put an idea “through a process” is akin to slowly killing it.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 429

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance

Performances, by comparison, aim to delight in their delivery, reinforcing the aesthetic agenda and reminding us of the life-giving power of art. Of course, there are many
mass-produced performances and many creative ones that prove mediocre or miss theirmark. The performances that we have discussed here tried to embody and promote aspirations for change. These deliverables and their delivery necessarily include the intangibles that Gunning mentioned and artistry in the overall production.
Context contributes to the success of performance. In studies of performance, thesocial drama of life and the aesthetic drama of performance are depicted in a figure eight,
with each either contributing to or detracting from the other. A Dutch employee and castmember spoke about the all-staff learning conference:
The learning conference is not just an event in itself. With no continuity, with no teambuilding, we would not have results. We are one small company in Delft, but we are working with 1,800 people. We talked about ourselves in business, about the power we had in
our own hands. People spoke about their own practice, not from the book, but from theirexperience. For me, that is gold.

Performing and Learning
Marking progress and creating change in organizations via events is still a new idea. Despite managers’ and scholars’ budding interest in performativity, there is not much wisdom or tested practice on staging performances that simultaneously inform, stimulate,and develop individual and collective capabilities. The performances we’ve describedhere shared certain design characteristics:
 Leaders performed actively and visibly with staff members by legitimizing theatrics
and role modeling.
 Experiences were staged to engage individuals and groups. The rationale was to build
capacity from the bottom up and stimulate change from the inside out. The performances
also worked from the top down, and energy and direction came from the outside.
 Each scene engaged multiple senses, and sequences employed multiple media. The
leader retreats and all-staff learning conferences were “happenings.”
 Each event appealed to the head and the heart. In terms of performance and its aesthetic impact, the twin criteria for judging success were whether the experience wasintellectually convincing and emotionally appealing.
Our history validated that the warehouse wake-up call, orange-hat skating promotion,team leaders’ gathering in the Ardennes, and the learning history effort in Jordan morethan met these criteria.
30Part II. Making History in the Desert of Jordan
Karen Ayas
Passing the TorchI catch myself weeping along with many others. His voice muffled by tears, I barely hear
him say, “That’s it; I am gone now.” We are in Ed Deir—a Nabataean monastery built into
an immense cliff face in Petra, Jordan. This is the final scene of the drama, which is at
its peak. He continues, “I am leaving. You can do it. But you have to reinvent yourselves.”
After four days in the desert in Wadi Rum, reflecting on the past five years they haveworked together, 200 leaders of the business are gathered to say goodbye to their leader,
Tex Gunning. I did not know most of them five days ago, and now I feel as one of them.
I celebrated their successes, I witnessed their breakthroughs, and now I share their pain.
The setting and staging is perfect for this grand finale. Gunning and his “tribe leaders” (six business unit leaders) are in a small, elevated chamber, the tribe leaders standing in a semicircle behind Gunning, facing the audience. The little light penetrating theVolume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSMIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performancemonastery is projected onto them. The acoustics allow us to hear every breath. Gunningsteps down after what seems like endless applause, passing the torch to his successor,
the new chairman. The two keep hugging each other, through tears and cheers.
This was not in the script, I think to myself. And I am not sure that there ever was ascript. There was absolutely no way to predict how this scene would play out. Until thelast minute, we were not even sure that the new chairman would be there. But there is noquestion that the scene had been carefully staged. Many hours had gone into the meticulous design of this event, seeking to create, scene by scene, just the right setting and circumstances. Gunning is both the producer and lead actor. All the participants created theperformance and didn’t know the script. They played their parts, and the actions unfolded.
Once I manage to detach myself from the effects of the drama, I am filled with awe
and delight. I feel relieved that it has ended, far better than I could have imagined. Given
the complicated logistics, the multitude of actors, and the lack of coordination, so manythings could have gone wrong.

The Event

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

31© Karen Ayas

Day 1. We welcome the 200 leaders to Jerusalem. Gunning sets the stage by addressing thequestion of why we are here. After a half-day experiencing Jerusalem, we head south. We
stop for a swim in the Dead Sea and then continue on until we reach the Jordanian border.
Once we cross the border, the tribes (business units) separate into different campsites. Aftera two-hour, bumpy jeep ride in the dark, we end at a Bedouin campsite in the desert. Tents
are set up; there is food and a campfire. It is a beautiful night. The first day has been all about
getting there, both physically and emotionally. We are all exhausted and go to sleep.
Day 2. We wake to the sounds of camels. We are in the middle of an immense desertof pink sand and multicolored rocks. We leave on an hour’s camel ride. Camels are themost relaxed animals: as they eat, they walk. They seem to be in tune with the majestic
scenery. As we continue our ride, other groups of camels
appear on the horizon, each coming from a different direction. We dismount and form a big circle; the tribes arecalled on to unite for their new mission. We have started along “process” day, mostly engaged in reflective conversations while perched on rocks.
We spend the morning on visioning and the afternoon
in deep discussion of what had been significant during thepast five years. In preparation for the event, team leaders
had been asked to reflect on their individual history, major
breakthroughs, and significant moments. Now, as a unit,
they construct their learning history. At the end of the day,we share everything around a huge fire. We form a big
circle with each tribe holding banners documenting theirmost significant learnings. We return in pairs to our campsites in the dark, sharing personal visions. Conversations
about business and personal stories continue into the night.
Day 3. We spend a whole day riding in jeeps on
bumpy roads. Each time we stop, we switch jeeps andcontinue to share learnings from the previous day. The last
stretch of the ride is spectacular and dangerous, with increasingly challenging curves and narrow roads atop cliffs.
Just as it gets dark, we reach our campsite, all tribes now
united at one site. The community feeling is enhanced bya huge campfire in the middle and caves surrounding us.
Day 4. We leave the campsite early on a five-hourhike to Petra. This scenic trail has many dangerous passages leading to the monastery on top of the mountain.
All ascend for the final scene: the passing of the torch. We
spend two hours visiting Petra and then check into a hotel and celebrate until 3 AM.

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH

The “Miracle”

In this event, the magic, or the “miracle” as Gunning refers to it, is twofold:

Learning in Performance

1. In producing change—the mix of planning and improvisation that leads to timely
action, allowing the desired change to unfold.
2. In performing change—the intensity and profoundness of engagement in the change
process, as individuals and as a community.

32

In one of the many meetings in preparation for this event, I recall Gunning saying:
We need this emergent thing—continuous feeling and sensing and changing plans accordingly. Keeping in touch with what is happening moment by moment. Because that is when
miracles happen. Everything is interrelated and needs to follow a particular sequence. If
one misses out on one tiny little decision, it may all fall apart.

Only a few had been involved in the initial production of this learning performance. Asidefrom the external facilitators and the outdoor event organizers, no one knew where thegroup was going. In preparation, Gunning met with the tribe leaders, who in turn were
responsible for preparing the leaders of their respective units. The tribe leaders werebriefed about the logistics only after they arrived in Jerusalem, but still didn’t know
where they would be spending the next four days.
A group of about 20, including tribe leaders and internal and external facilitators,
spent a half-day in Jerusalem to prepare for the event before all the team leaders arrived.
Gunning used about half the time to communicate clearly his vision for revolutionary
growth and his message—the need for them to reinvent themselves as individuals andas a business if they were to survive in the new economy. Little guidance was provided
in terms of the process. Little time was spent on clarifying roles. No debriefing time
among facilitators of the different units was included.
There could have been chaos, with people not knowing where they were going
physically or what was next in the process, or with tribe leaders and facilitators trying
to follow a changing program. Yet people played their roles impeccably, each leader producing part of the script in the performance. Though uncoordinated, all actions and interventions happened in a timely fashion, and things fell into place with a little nudge
here and there, in synchronicity.
The underlying lack of control increased the sense of drama and created circumstances that brought people even closer. People were not preoccupied with the logistics;
they were living every scene, moment by moment. They were in this together, but notbecause they felt helpless or feared what would happen next.
The design of the event and the staging were constrained by the logistical requirements. There were some process steps that didn’t make sense. The jeep rides, for instance,
were terrible conditions for conducting highly personal, significant conversations, yet,they worked beautifully. Some of the major breakthroughs came during lunch break. Every tribe gathered on its own, doing whatever was needed.

Observations
Of the 200 leaders, only one had been to Petra before and a few to Israel. Roughly half
work in factories. Most live in Oss, a small town in the south of Holland. Some had neverbeen on an airplane. For many of them, this could have been just an incredible trip. But
all they saw was Jerusalem for two hours and Petra for two hours. The rest of the timethey worked, engaging in yet one more important conversation.
After arriving at a campfire following eight hours of riding in jeeps and three daysof hard work, there might have been a big party. Instead, people chose to resume theirwork. Even after the grand finale, when they were told it was time to stop, some groups
decided to continue their dialogues.
The group’s energy was nearly palpable. They were engaged both emotionally andintellectually in shaping their future, helping each other in the process. In a few days,
leaders from six different units became one big family. They spent hours listening to eachothers’ stories, learning from each others’ successes and failures, and sharing their personal visions. Perspectives shifted; many conflicts were resolved.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSThese events were staged to create
intellectually convincing andemotionally appealing experiences.

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH

I base my observations on what I saw and felt at the moment. It is possible to question towhat extent an organization can really be transformed or how much magic remains. Still,much was achieved in a few days, and the use of sacred space appeared to be instrumental.
I cannot overstate the compelling nature of the desert. Wadi Rum is a majestic place
where I immediately felt in harmony with the universe. My frame of reference shifted:
there was something much bigger than I was, and I felt part of it. Engaging in dialogue
and addressing business issues in such a space of grace opens new possibilities. People
can think with their hearts and souls, where they can be emotional and not be constrained by intellect.
Such an event engages people on a path to personal growth and aligns individualand business goals. The setting opens possibilities not
only for the business but also for the individual, resulting
in many new insights and revelations. Since these personal breakthroughs occur in a business event, amongcolleagues, bringing your whole self to the work getseasier. Sharing your deepest fears and aspirations builds astrong basis for trust and a community of commitment.
Working on personal vision in the context of the business creates the inevitable connection and interdependency between personal and business breakthroughs.

Learning in Performance

Interpretations

The Bigger Picture
VdBN has had other miraculous events. During the past five years, the company has usedlarge-scale events to launch, develop, or deepen the transformation process. These eventswere staged to create intellectually convincing and emotionally appealing experiences.
Such memorable events have developed learning capabilities at the individual, group, andcollective levels and accelerated the transformation.
Reflecting on the role and impact of the events, Gunning says:
I always see three major things in these events. One, you bring the people to a certain space
so that you can approach them emotionally. You cannot do this in the office. Therefore, youstart to integrate intellect and emotion.
Second, you benefit from the dynamics of large groups, so you can move faster. In an organization, you can work on transformation one by one or team by team, but that is not
fast enough. And by bringing the cynics and skeptics into these events, in four days, they
begin to move with the large group. Everyone becomes connected to the transformation.
Third is the gift issue. If you do it properly, people accept the events as a gift or a reward
of sorts—the travel, the experience, and the investment in personal growth.

Both the production (script and staging) and the performance (acting) of these events are
an artful practice; it cannot be reduced to a few principles. There is no blueprint for reproducing it. As in any performance, much depends on the producers and actors, withno guarantee that the performance will give the audience what it needs or that the event
will create the desired progress.
Eric-Jan de Rooij, organizer of outdoor events, comments:
When you have these events, you go into them with a certain mindset of what you want toget. And you never get exactly what you want. You can provide the space for people toopen up. You can direct, follow the energy, and feel the breakpoint. Such an event is like amagnifying glass. You can really see where your company is, and people can see eachother. With such transparency, you can easily define the next steps. But strong leadership is
the key to the success of the event and to what happens afterward.

My own conclusion is that while we may never discover the secret to a successful event,
it is the practice that makes the difference. In the acting, people change. Each performance may not be better, but with each performance, people change for the better.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

33

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance

Part III. Design for Learning
George L. RothLearning from experience is something that every individual does naturally. We think andact to achieve our goals, and then rethink, react, and regroup when we find that our efforts have been unsuccessful. But as individuals, we aren’t perfect learners. Many factorsof which we are not aware affect our performance. We aren’t always thorough or systematic about connecting objectives, actions, and outcomes so that we can test and refine ourunderstanding of how things work. And our drives to make the world more understandable often lead us to develop simple rules of thumb for complex situations. For these reasons, there is increased interest in how we can learn collectively, hence, the interest inorganizational learning.
Research into organizational learning has focused on describing, developing, andtesting conditions that support collective learning. One such effort, developed initiallyto capture and diffuse what can be learned from managing change, involves learning
histories. In developing a learning history, people work together to assess and learn fromactions and results. The process of assessing and learning together produces a “jointly
told tale” about significant events (Roth and Kleiner, 2000; Kleiner and Roth, 2000). The
resulting document presents retrospective accounts of people’s key experiences, in theirown words. The stories come from those who initiated, implemented, participated in,
and were affected by the effort. We edit and weave together quotes to produce an account from different perspectives. We pay attention to literary standards in telling powerful stories. The metaphor we evoke is that of thecampfire story, as if everyone were sitting around thecampfire telling his or her version, respectfully breaking
in or building on the previous speaker.
The document becomes an artifact from which newgroups can discuss what happened, why, and how it applies to them and their actions. As people read, discuss,and reflect on the work of others, learning historians try to recreate an experience fromwhich they learn. The experience itself is a learning intervention—in its telling throughinterviews, production by an inside-outside team of historians, and validation throughquote checking, and in its reception in reading and discussion sessions.

The process of assessing and learning
together produces a “jointly told tale”
about significant events.

© George L. Roth34

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSMIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance

What makes the learning history of VdBN unique is the effort to integrate it directly
into the transformation of the business. It was very much part of a “performance” involving Gunning and his team leaders. Indeed, the first stage of the history-writing process,begun in Jordan, compared lessons from the past about growth and change to aspirations
for continued transformation and future growth. It was designed to produce creative tension between current achievements and what could be accomplished with further breakthroughs in business understanding and collective resolve.
The first day included a visit to the old city of Jerusalem, a place of overt, palpable
historic significance. During the event, people passed Mesada (which the Jews defended
against King Herod), and the caves in Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found).
We met in Wadi Rum (where Lawrence of Arabia gathered Bedouin tribes) and climbed
a mountain to descend into the Nabataean civilization of Petra (where sandstone cliffs
are etched with the facades of the architectural styles of Egypt, Greece, and Rome). Western civilization has been shaped by the history that comes from these places. The choiceof these learning locales was not accidental, but made one question—how history shapes
us—real and immediate.
In preparation for the Jordan event, team leaders reflected on their personal history
with VdBN through a time line. In Jordan, after team leaders worked on their units’ history, they presented their thoughts on banners to each other. Everyone could hear how thepast affected different parts of the organization. In turn, visions of a collective future were
set in the context of others’ experiences. Later, as the team leaders took their learning backto the organization, they compared the “lessons learned” with their staff’s personal lessons
about change. They presented the team stories to others at the learning conference and included them in the history book that each team created. The books covered each team’s
history, vision for the future, and lessons from the past on which they wanted to build.
Even as people in VdBN created their own history books for learning, a small teamof insiders and outsiders followed the more typical learning history process of collecting
data through interviews with individuals and groups. This learning history effort is
aimed at the outside world, including audiences within other parts of Unilever. We expect that managers will find reflection on the use of performances in transformation interesting and challenging. We encourage them to design a learning performance, wherein
the making of a learning history is itself a history-making event.

Part IV. Final Reflections
At VdBN, we helped to create a learning history about two transformations that had unusual features and compelling results. To the extent that the methodology differed fromthe standard format (which is itself still novel and experimental), it is appropriate to closewith some thoughts about the change process, the research effort, and their commingling
as performances.
First, the best practices identified by the learning history, both soft and hard, arefamiliar to academics and experienced change managers. Indeed, discussions of themproduced a lot of head nodding among team leaders in Jordan and at the 2000 VdBN
learning conference. This indicates how the company’s team leaders have learned aboutchange over the years. Yet systematically identifying key transformational events, documenting the actions, distilling conceptual themes, and deriving lessons added rigor totheir understanding about change management on site and weight to conclusions about
its impact on people and the business.
Our emphasis on the artful combination of practices, or “holistic integration,” as key tosuccess is no doubt agreeable to most scholars and appreciated by managers. But the research yielded no “models” on holistic practice per se. How artful actions connect causallyto changes in people’s attitudes, behaviors, and business results is, at best, speculative. In
the same way, it is foolish to assume that the practices documented can be applied in a“cookbook” fashion. As Gunning remarked, “I have tried the cookbook. It doesn’t work.”
As for the significance of the performative events, the jury is out and must remain so.
Certainly, the notion that organizational change follows nonlinear, reciprocally causal, andunpredictable directions is not new. Nor is the idea that to understand and appreciate such

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

35

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance© Philip H. Mirvis

36

patterns, we might turn to nontraditional forms of assessment, such as storytelling, video
documentary, and performance art (Michael and Mirvis, 1977; Mirvis, 1980). In viewing
VdBN’s transformation as a series of “performances,” we suggest that it be judged partly
in aesthetic terms. It unfolded through different acts, sets, and scenes. The improvised
script built on prior events, dramatized current situations, and set the stage, figuratively
and practically, for what happened next. The methods and criteria of literary and theatrical critics, and of the performing art scholarship more generally, would provide a rigorous
if subjective means for gauging the transformation of VdBN in its aesthetic dimensions.
When we assess this transformation as an art form that has engaged and changed acommunity of people, however, it seems less appropriate to use these tools or to teaseout the key performative elements that made it work. When looking at a painting, we
can attend to details such as brush strokes, lighting, colors, and shapes, or focus on thearrangement of the canvas and its framing, but in the end, what matters is how the painting strikes the viewer. In his commentary on the validity of art, Polanyi observed that its“truth” lay in the experience it creates for those who see the artwork or, in this case,participate in the performance (Polyani, Prosch, and Prosch, 1977).
The learning history was both part of and contributor to the transformation of VdBN.
When performing, actors tend to take on and become their roles and, with artistic license,
dramatize and orient themselves for effect. Certainly, we as researchers had this concern
when we heard rapturous accounts of the Ardennes event or watched evocative videos ofother meaningful events in the company’s transformational time line. We would “check” forbias by probing people’s positive experiences at events and challenging them to show demonstrable results of their impact. At the same time, the goal of helping people look inward,
backward, and forward to learn from experience is one with which we identified and tried
to bring about. Thus our probing and challenging had less to do with objectifying the experience for academic purposes and more to do with advancing the learning agenda on site.
Conflicts between action and research are commonplace and create their share of dilemmas (Mirvis, 1985). The twist here is that, in Jordan and at VdBN’s learning conference, we ourselves were part of the show. We were assuming roles and performing on
stage, had license to dramatize, and had effects we wanted to achieve. Clearly, this is not
the norm for fieldwork, and our participation in staging a meaningful event no doubt influenced the way we see things and report on them. In that way, our experience is parallel to that of the VdBN staff and managers. We have to check our own biases in reporting
what happened and what is to be learned.
Not all aspects of the performances at VdBN, including in Jordan, were intellectually, emotionally, or aesthetically compelling. There were flops. As producer and direc-

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSMIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance

tor, Gunning had his own failings, and, as he has said, his performance was not always
on the mark. Of greater concern going forward is his centrality to the transformation. We
wonder whether change management by performance can or even should continue at
VdBN as the staff undertakes another transformation and Gunning moves on.
The extent to which his approach to change management can be generalized to otherfirms and leaders is questionable. In many companies, planned change processes seemrote, and the experience is grinding and ultimately defeating. Adding performativity to
the change process at VdBN made it playful, meaningful, and ultimately rewarding. One
indication of this approach’s validity is that selected team leaders have begun to stage
learning performances for their own businesses and teams. We will continue to examine
whether leaders in other companies carry performativity further.

References
Carlson, M. Performance (London: Routledge, 1996).
Garvin, D.A. “The Processes of Organization and Management.” Sloan Management Review 39(Summer 1998): 33–48.
Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Harper, 1973).
Kleiner, A. and G. Roth. Oil Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Marks, M.L. and P.H. Mirvis. Joining Forces (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997).
Michael, D.N. and P.H. Mirvis. “Changing, Erring and Learning,” in Failures in Organization Development and Change, eds. P. Mirvis and D. Berg (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1977): 311–334.
Mirvis, P.H. “The Art of Assessing the Quality of Work Life,” in Organizational Assessment, eds. E.
Lawler, D. Nadler, and C. Cammann (New York: Wiley, 1980): 471–489.
Mirvis, P.H. “Managing Research Whilst Researching Managers,” in Organizational Culture, eds. P.
Frost, L. Moore, M. Louis, C. Lundberg, and J. Martin (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications,1985): 201–221.
Pine, B.J. and J.H. Gilmore. The Experience Economy (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999).
Polanyi, M., H. Prosch, and K. Prosch. Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
Roth, G. and A. Kleiner. Car Launch: The Human Side of Managing Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Tichy, N. and S. Sherman. Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will (New York: Doubleday
Currency, 1993).
Turner, V. Schism and Continuity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1957).

Commentaryby Bill Torbert
June 12, 2000, journal entry. The S-4 meeting of a dozen or so SoL (Society for Organizational
Learning) consultants and researchers occurred today. S-4 represents what we need to learn in ourefforts to generate the transformational alchemy of individual, team, organizational, and even societal learning that the new economy calls for. The four Ss stand for “Speed, Scale, Scope, andSustainability.”And, as Otto Scharmer has said, this formulation misses the fifth and most important S, namely, our Selves. Or, as Adam Kahane mentioned after today’s meeting, he has adjusted
the sixties bumper sticker, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” to read, “If
you don’t realize you’re part of the problem, you’re certainly not part of the solution.”
In a previous S-4 meeting, I had presented a case concerning my role on a major corporate board of
directors when the organization achieved remarkable results, such as a merger, a spin-off, a number
one ranking in its industry, $100 million losses two years in a row, the firing of the CEO, and theboard-initiated resignation of the entire board. One striking learning from this experience is that all
three CEOs who shared responsibility for the losses had, in their previous CEO roles, successfully generated organizational transformation and had always produced positive business results. Then all threefailed in one way or another in this different environment (during a downturn for the whole industry).
Based on their past experiences, these CEOs believed that they were part of the solution and,
thereby, without realizing it, became part of the problem. They invoked again the charms (ormiracles! [Lichtenstein, 1997]) that they had learned would work during their previous leadershiptransformations. In particular, the CEO who was fired did not seem to recognize the difference be-

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

37Bill Torbert
Professor of Organization Studies
Boston College
Partner,HarthillUSA

MIRVIS, AYAS, AND ROTH
Learning in Performance38

tween his previous situation and this one. Therefore, he tried again the recipe he had previously
learned for success, rather than engaging in transformational learning again. (During his earlier
success, this had been the core of his genius; he had modeled transformation by transforming himself. But, like most of us, he did not recognize the core of his own genius.)
At that same S-4 meeting, another member also presented a case. Karen Ayas had just jetted inafter dancing all night in Jordan at the conclusion of an extraordinary five-day pilgrimage by some
200 members of a corporate leadership team. With eye-popping enthusiasm, she regaled us withthe extraordinarily flamboyant transformational exploits and business results of Tex Gunning, theCEO of VdBN, and his leadership team. In the past three years, the CEO has configured adventures
for his widening leadership team to the forest of the Ardennes, to Scotland, and to Israel and Petra.
When Gunning shared his emotional life story at the Ardennes meeting, both he and the seniorteam thereby modeled the significance of each leader in the company becoming a part of the solution by examining how he or she contributes to the problem. Will this transforming Dutch CEO suffer the same fate as the CEO with whom I interacted as a fellow board member? Will his successful
personal and corporate transformation experience make him believe that he is now only part of thesolution and blind him to the new motes he will find in his own eye in his new circumstances?
Karen Ayas presented the case again at today’s S-4 meeting and brought with her a member from
VdBN, George Roth, and Phil Mirvis. Karen also showed videotapes that the company uses to remindand attune the company’s 2,000 members to the major events in its recent history, including footageof the meetings in the Ardennes and Jordan. These four participants told us the story from many perspectives, including the year-by-year dramatic improvement in business results. They then invited us
to question them, to help them think about the key issues in this learning history, and to suggest its
primary audience. Is the primary audience Tex Gunning himself, off to his new assignment in Asia? Or
is it the new CEO of VdBN and the leaders reinventing the company once again? Is it VdBN’s parent
company that says it wants to foster an entrepreneurial culture across its more than 100 operatingcompanies? Or is the primary audience all executives and scholars who are interested in generatingorganizational transformation and improved business results? Or are you and I, trying to improve ourlives in organizations, whatever our current positions may be, the proper primary audience?
The company member who was with us at the S-4 meeting mentioned that Gunning is not very
impressive in person; certainly, he does not appear impressive to me on the videotape. According to
the company member, what is convincing about him is that he is always authentically trying tolearn and deal with the current issues; this seems to be the source of his integrity. From the examples offered, some of us cited this “unimpressive” leader’s evident ability to repeatedly “do theright thing at the right time,” integrating immediate business issues and grandiose, symbolic, emotional gestures that shift the company’s culture.
But how does one teach such ongoing authentic inquiry and timely action, when it must not replicate
any past pattern, but rather reconstruct such patterns to meet the unique requirements of the present?
How can we learn to reflect on the past, while increasingly “presencing” into what is going on now, andsimultaneously lead toward the emerging future? How can we learn to act and inquire simultaneously,both in a timely fashion? Or, putting the same question differently, how can we learn to enact, and simultaneously to inquire about, our own innermost assumptions and our intended outermost effects?
During our “check-in” at the outset of the S-4 meeting, we had each cited our current dilemmas
or victories, illustrating repeatedly that these difficult questions on how to integrate inquiry andaction in the present concern our intimate relationships, our spiritual inquiry, and our whole lives
even more than our work. Given today’s furious pace, how can we simultaneously inquire and taketimely action throughout our lives?
We must learn the secret of how to simultaneously take leadership and conduct research in ongoing real-time. Our inquiry must guide us and others into the “perpetual present” (Jaques, 1982;
Scharmer, 2000)—that inclusive present, where the traces of the past meet the emerging future(Fisher, Rooke, and Torbert, 2000).

References

Fisher, D., D. Rooke, and W. Torbert. Personal and Organizational Transformations: Through Action Inquiry (Boston: Edge/Work Press, 2000).
Jaques, E. The Form of Time (New York: Crane Russak, 1982).
Lichtenstein, B. “Grace, Magic and Miracles: A ‘Chaotic Logic’ of Organizational Transformation.” Journalof Organizational Change Management 10 (1997): 393–411.
Scharmer, C.O. “Presencing: Learning from the Future as it Emerges” (Presented at the Conference on
Knowledge and Innovation, Helsinki School of Economics, May 2000).

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSA Lessonfrom the ArtsFEATURE

Robert Fritz

M

uch has been made lately of the role that improvisation has in our professional andorganizational lives, with parallels to the tradition of jazz, a music in which improvisation is an essential ingredient. This is a very good notion, because cross-disciplines
enrich us in many ways from the practical to the philosophical. But, too often, instead of
truly looking to the principles of the discipline itself, we generalize and idealize the image of the discipline. The discipline becomes merely a metaphor, and the manner, rather
than the substance, is studied. In the case of jazz and improvisation, we can glean many
useful insights that are directly applicable to organizational life.
Probably the most important insight is the role of composition to improvisation.
This would be akin to the role of strategic planning to the role of self-organization. Does
self-organization have an important place within the organization? Yes. But only in thecontext of an overriding, larger organizing principle. What we learn from music is that
self-organization is rich when used in the right context, and exceedingly limited in thewrong context. What defines right and wrong in this regard is a function of size. The
larger the organization, the more the need for formal organizing principles. The smaller
the unit, the more the ability to use improvisation.
In thinking about jazz and improvisation, we can broaden our picture by including
what happened to jazz in the late sixties and early seventies. This was a period in thearts when many traditional forms were radically abandoned. In theater, there was the“breaking down of the proscenium.” In art, there were the “happenings” led by the likes
of artist Alan Kaprow. In classical music, there were the experiments with indeterminacy
of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. And in jazz, there was a “free jazz” movementin which the traditional forms were put aside for a kind of longer free-form composition.
What we can learn from this movement is the limitations of self-organization, because,
after more than a decade, most of the innovators of these freer forms rejected them infavor of the traditions they thought they had left behind.
This was an incredibly rich period in the history of the arts, somewhat akin to thegreat period of the twenties in which Dada was the aesthetic guiding light. But that period, like the later one, was followed by a return to stricter
organizing principles, formal structures, thematic unifying
concepts, and greater control of the materials. And the reason for this is simple. After all the experiments, and after
the shock value wore off, the art itself became predictableand often rather boring. What the artists in the various
disciplines were learning is the value of focus. Water, focused through the nozzle of a hose, has more power. Expression, focused through the compositional rigor of a form, had more power thanunharnessed improvisation.
If we look to the history of the arts, our answers about self-organization are all there.
The great experiments have been conducted, and the experience stands as a bright beaconof insight. The wisdom that had emerged was that improvisation was particularly useful inthe context of a larger compositional process, and less useful without such a composition.

Robert Fritz
Composer, filmmaker, organizational
consultant, and author of The Pathof Least Resistance for Managers

39

Expression, focused through thecompositional rigor of a form, hadmore power than unharnessed
improvisation.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4© 2001 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

FRITZA Lesson from the Arts 

What Managers Can Learn from Jazz
We need to remember that most jazz improvisation occurs in the context of small groups.
The larger the group, the less the improvisation per capita. In a small group, the musicians
may use a large degree of improvisation as a theme and variation (play the “head” andthen have many solos), but this is performed within the context of song form, one of thesimplest and most basic structural forms in music. The musicians are really following thisvery strict form harmonically, rhythmically, modally, and melodically. In a way, the script
is written, and the players are then creating a kind of spontaneous performance of it.
The impression a listener may get of complexity is illusionary. There may be a lot
going on, but it hardly ever gets to a point of structural complexity as does a fugue,
which is a highly organized contrapuntal form.
Not that we should think that complexity in music is a right or desirable goal. Someof the simplest folk songs have profound power—think of “Amazing Grace” or “Black Is
the Color of My True Love’s Hair.”If we were to try to apply a notion of improvisation to organizations, we would needto have a very small organization indeed (a trio, a quartet, a quintet). The members ofsuch a company would have to know their business well enough that they could spontaneously strategize, translate that into tactics, and learn to work together to deliver exceptional customer service within a compressed time frame. This type of business does
exist in small coffee shops, in the service industry, in real estate offices, and in manyother small businesses. But as the business grows, the need for organization and a “compositional process” grows with it.
This should be no surprise, for the history of jazz has the same pattern. Jazz emerged
from the marching bands of New Orleans, which would break into spontaneous improvisation while coming back from the funeral they tended. These bands soon formed into
smaller units, and Dixieland was born. There were three major soloists to this music: theclarinet, the trumpet, and the trombone, often playing simultaneously while they wereaccompanied by the other instruments. As the twenties became the thirties, we see theclarinet become the reed section, the trumpet become the trumpet section, and the trombone become the trombone section of the big band era. Solos became part of the larger
arrangement, and the likes of Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson became the driving
forces of swing. One of the greatest American composers grew out of this tradition—Duke
Ellington. While he had some of the best jazz improvisers in the world playing in his
band, he used their talents within the context of his truly brilliant compositions.

40© Emily Sper

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSFRITZA Lesson from the Arts As bebop emerged in the late forties, small groups came into favor once again, andhere’s where we see the birth of a new musical style. But this style was very clear. It had
its rules and principles, and everyone learned these rules or they would be jeered off the
bandstand. The form was almost always fixed. A tune, two choruses for each soloist on
which to improvise, and then “trading fours,” which meant that the drummer would solo
for four measures and then the band would play for four measures for two more choruses.
While improvisation was key to individual expression, there arose definitive regional
styles. New Orleans, Kansas City, Chicago, New York, West Coast, East Coast—all had
recognizable styles. These styles existed because, independent of the degree of improvisation, the musicians observed strict common practices. The implication here is that,while the solos were improvised, much of the musical material was not. Style was anorganizing principle that determined many of the decisions the players made.
But throughout all the years and eras, and no matter what the style, the same principle was true: the larger the band, the more the need for and use of composition, andeven bebop had some famous big bands, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thad Jones. The later decades saw the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra come into being.
As professionals, there is a need to learn how to use improvisation along with otherskills within management. And we need to avoid the trap of glorifying improvisation as
if it were the key to self-organization, and then glorify self-organization as if it were thekey to organizations. When we look more closely, we find it takes composition to make
improvisation work well, and the principle of scale and scope determines how muchcomposition one needs.
Here are some points that we might want to consider: In organizations, self-organizing systems tend to lead to a predictable pattern of oscillation, as competing factors vie for power, authority, control, headcount, higher
budgets, and more power. The reason this is so is that each unit takes on an unspoken, but assumed, goal of survival, and the parts do not support the whole, but
merely attempt to accomplish longevity.
 A compositional approach to the organization does exactly what it does in music; itties the parts to a whole. In music, this is called stylistic or thematic unity, an essential dimension in art. A piece of music couldn’t make sense without it, and neither can an organization.
 In jazz, the reason improvisation can exist well in small group settings is that, withinthat context, the group is small enough to create spontaneous unity among the members. As I’ve pointed out, the larger the group, the less this unity happens without astrong compositional process and a strong leadership function to coordinate the various parts (the conductor or the band leader).
The art and discipline of music is one of the best fields for study to learn many lessons
that apply directly to organizations. But we must really look to music itself, and not makeit into a metaphor for it to be particularly useful. The lessons from jazz and from the artof improvisation are very useful to managers, indeed, especially when understood in thelarger context of a compositional process.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

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VIEWS

The Arts in Practice
Stephen C. Buckley

T

Stephen C. Buckley
Entrepreneur, writer, and consultant

he process of incorporating aspects of the arts into business means more than simply
hanging paintings in the lobbies of our corporate offices. While many such programs
exist, they are really only a nod to the role of the arts and, in effect, continue the segregation that has long existed between the artistic and business worlds. The art hangs on
the walls, but business continues as usual in the offices and, more importantly, in theminds of the people working in them. From a business perspective, there are potentiallyenormous economic gains to be realized from adopting artistic methods and practices inbusiness. For example, we, as business people, can learn much about team work and innovation from understanding what makes a great jazz band or comedy troupe create acomplete performance on stage from thin air. There is also much to be learned about how
we develop and market products from how a visual artist creates “an experience” for theobserver. Lastly, we can learn, or perhaps rediscover, a great deal about ourselves as human beings with an innate desire to create and contribute as part of a community, rather
than as so many highly specialized cogs in some vast machine. In the following two-partarticle, I spoke with a corporate executive, a researcher, and a consultant to provide a few
examples of how business entrepreneurs are using artistic method and practice to achievebusiness objectives.

The Discipline of Improvisation
Nils Fonstad
MIT Sloan School of Management

42

Bill Hughes
Managing Director
Cambridge Incubator© 2001 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Perhaps you’ve had the pleasure of watching an improvisational comedy troupe or
hearing the musicians in a jazz band work a particular theme and carry it to newheights right in the moment, without following a script or a score. Part of the thrill isin enjoying the creativity of the performers and the surprise that comes from the factthat no one, not even the performers, really knows with any certainty what is going tohappen next.
Improvisation such as this can also occur in the world of business where the needto innovate and evolve in concert is becoming increasingly important. Recently, an MIT
researcher and an executive from an Internet incubator have been working to uncoverwhat makes improvisation work effectively in Internet start-ups. Nils Fonstad is a Ph.D.
candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management who is writing his doctoral thesis on
improvisation in the workplace. During the summer of 2000, he “shadowed” the nonprofit Internet start-up, Secure Sponsorship, to discover how people improvise at work
as a way to innovate new products. Bill Hughes is an MIT alumnus and a managing director at Cambridge Incubator, where he co-directs the Internet Product Development
Group. Cambridge Incubator fosters the rapid development of Internet start-up companies. Hughes is responsible for managing the process by which fledgling Internet startups define and build their technologies.
Fonstad and Hughes note that, while improvisation can seem like an anything-goes,
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of experience, there is a great deal of discipline and expertise behind doing it well. As in a jazz band, improvisation may occur in the course ofplaying, but what keeps the improvisation from sounding like noise is the expertise of theindividual musicians—how well they know how to play together and how well they un-

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSBUCKLEYThe Arts in Practicederstand the essence of the melody. They may be improvising, but they are all playing thesame song. The same holds true in a start-up. While improvisation can happen, it needs
to happen within certain parameters and with finesse to keep from sounding like noise.
Think of an initial business plan as a first draft of the score for a song. What has tohappen before your band gets its first major record deal? Both Fonstad and Hughesagree that there are three major things entrepreneurs need before they can attain thestart-up’s equivalent of such a deal—first-round funding from venture capitalists. These
three things revolve around improvising an identity for: (1) the team, (2) the business,and (3) its products.
Usually, well-established businesses already have a relatively stable business concept and established teams, so, in these situations, improvisation most often occurs
around their products. But in a start-up environment, improvisation occurs not onlyaround the creation of the product identity, but also in the team and business identities
as well. Says Fonstad:The three critical questions that a start-up needs to tackle in determining an identity are:
1. How are we represented in a product?
2. How do we represent ourselves in a business plan?
3. Who are we as a specific team?
You don’t answer one of these questions and then the other two. They are circular andoverlapping. It takes a while until they all mesh into something that’s somewhat stable. A
lot of people don’t see this hurdle and its complexity. And by nature, it’s a messy one.

So how does improvisation help or hinder a start-up? Fonstad and Hughes agree that in astart-up business, improvisation is a fundamental process for innovation. It cannot behaphazard or random, but rather can act as a way to reflect on your situation, make senseof that situation, and create something new. Discipline is important, as Hughes points out:
Improvisation is riskiest at the earliest stage of a start-up, because that’s where you are trying to define your fundamental identity; who you are and where you are going. What we
do at Cambridge Incubator is ask the entrepreneurs questions we really care about as a wayof keeping them focused.

As in jazz, you can improvise, but you still need to be playing the same song. “Incubators introduce due diligence,” says Fonstad. “They question the finances, the audience,and help people who don’t necessarily have that discipline. This helps insure that people
are improvising around a very finite number of things.”
What makes effective improvisation possible? A great deal seems to rest on the expertise of the players. Fonstad uses the example of the “elevator pitch.” Say you are an
entrepreneur, and you happen to get on an elevator with a key investor. You have only a
few minutes to introduce yourself and explain your business and its next steps. “Youhave practiced the discipline of preparation, so in that moment, you are able to improvise a pitch. It really takes a
lot of work and practice to improvise. Then you are able
to improvise as easily as you are able to breathe. The art
is in making it seem easy and effortless. Practice makes
the pitch seem like a no-brainer.” Hughes adds, “You haveprobably heard the expression that some people maketheir own luck. But what’s really happening isn’t entirely luck. What’s happening is you
put yourself in a position where you are ready to improvise. You are so expert that you
know exactly what to do in whatever situation you are in.”
As in a jazz band, everyone in a start-up has a part to play. “People improvise
around certain specialties,” says Hughes, “which can cause some companies to haveproblems if they don’t discern what the strengths of the players are. For example, you
might have someone who is really good with people, and his or her strength is in bringing the group together, and you put that person in a position of authority and responsibility. But that strength might wear off if the goal is analysis and planning. You have tolet certain people play at certain times, and it’s the melody that has to drive it.”

[Improvisation] cannot be haphazard
or random, but rather can act as away to reflect on your situation . . .

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

43

BUCKLEY

A Conversation with Arthur Roberts

The Arts in PracticeArthur Roberts is an MIT graduate who worked in professional theater before majoring in
psychology. He took a master’s degree and then did postgraduate training as a Gestalt psychotherapist. He now works as a consultant to individuals, groups, and organizations.
Creativity and the origin of new ideas is a subject that remains largely a mystery. In
this interview, Roberts addresses the subject of creativity and innovation as it relates tothe entrepreneur.
Stephen Buckley: Why are creativity and the creative process important topics to theentrepreneur?
Arthur Roberts
Consultant

Arthur Roberts: That’s a tough question because it seems so self-evident! Creativity is
an important topic for entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs trade in creativity. It’s what
they do day in and day out, and either they’re doing it skillfully and with awareness, orthey’re doing it blindly and leaving a lot to luck. But the point is that all entrepreneurs
are creative. Even if you argue that some entrepreneurs aren’t really “creative”—that
they’re just good leaders who put together “creative people” to implement their plans—
well, that’s creative work! There’s a big misconception that “creative process” is something that happens in isolation. Creativity is a “field event”—it’s something that happens
when certain conditions in the field are met, and it doesn’t happen when they’re not met.
It’s very clear that certain things foster the flow of creativity in individuals and organizations, and certain things hinder it.
Stephen Buckley: What do you mean by the term “field” in this context?
Arthur Roberts: “Field” is an ambiguous term, but it’s necessarily ambiguous, I think.
It’s not a term that’s easily pinned down with clarity and conceptuality because it’s moreof an experiential term. It refers to the way we experience our “lifespace.” Kurt Lewin[1999], another MIT affiliate, used the term “lifespace” in the forties, as well as promoting what he called “field theory” in the social sciences. The concept as I use it is similar
to the way it’s used in the physical sciences—especially physics—as it describes a flowof forces, within a region, which are interconnected in a highly responsive way. These
forces influence the entire system; in some ways, they are the entire system. The implications of this would require a long exposition. But perhaps the most important point tomention is that there are certain leverage points, or “nodes,” within any given field that,by virtue of several factors, exercise more influence than others, and these are what you
want to identify.

44

Stephen Buckley: What is meant by the term “working at the boundary”?
Arthur Roberts: “Working at the boundary” is my term for a way of working that many
people have experienced at one time or another. It means to work at the boundary between the known and the unknown, and usually induces a state of focused concentration, immersion in the moment, and creative flow—the kind of state where new ideas andactions and feelings seem to “happen” of their own accord, almost effortlessly. At thetime, it does seem effortless, but it’s not accidental. Creative experience like this occurs
for two reasons:
1. We know precisely where to put our attention.
2. We are working in a “creative field” and are so deeply aligned with it that “it” works
through “us”—we become vessels for something much wider. Almost all
groundbreaking creative work proceeds along these lines.
Stephen Buckley: What are some ways that people and organizations can foster creativity?
Arthur Roberts: This is actually a specialized question. Aside from the issue of how tofoster individual creativity, there is a larger kind of perspective that must take into accountVolume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSStephen Buckley: What are some of the tools, methods, or
exercises that individual people can use to become morecreative?

BUCKLEY

. . . Creating a social environment inwhich people’s ideas are routinely
received . . . creates a . . . trust thatlets people know that they’re allowed
to think new things.

Arthur Roberts: There are a number of ways to approach
it. At the individual level, simple education and coaching help tremendously. What mostpeople don’t understand at this level is that creativity doesn’t come from the head; it comesfrom the body. We usually get stuck and frustrated when we try to think our way to somenovel solution, or when we rely on the intellect alone to come up with some creative idea.
It’s like banging your head against a wall. It’s very rare that anything new comes just fromthinking about it. But when people discover for the first time how much information isstored in their bodies—how much the body already knows, before the mind does—it’s likea revelation. The big breakthroughs almost always come when people learn to dip into theirpresent experience—not their present thinking, but their present experience—which is unavoidably an embodied experience. People in the arts understand this. It’s why you hear
painters and writers and actors talk so much about “being in the moment” and working
from the “heart” or from the “guts” instead of from the head. Half the battle in creative
work is getting out of your head! But at any rate, there are many exercises and methods
that help individuals learn how to become more creative in their day-to-day work.
At the group level, this question gets very interesting. Helping companies to become
more creative essentially means helping them to see the dynamics that are either hindering or supporting the flow of creativity within their organizations. One powerful way
to do this is setting up what is called a “field constellation.” Individuals in a workshop
are chosen to represent key forces or people within the sphere of the company. For example, one person may represent the president of the organization; another, the competition; someone else might stand in for the founder, the receptionist, the stock market,
or whoever else is a relevant force in the company’s existence. The representatives arethen arranged in space relative to each other so that the resulting “constellation” ofpeople becomes a kind of live model of the actual forces at work. From here, you canmake all kinds of interventions. The information that results from this kind of work is
startling. Because the forces that govern the flow of creativity in organizations are invisible to the naked eye, the field constellation is the instrument we use to amplify our powers of perception. And when we do, hidden dynamics and solutions present themselves
quite plainly. It’s amazing to see.
Stephen Buckley: What are some of the tools or practices we can use to make our workplaces more creative?
Arthur Roberts: When I have time, I’ll have to write you a book about it!

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

The Arts in Practicethe wider environments within which people do creative work. Certain environments support creative work, and certain environments hinder it. As far as I can tell, there are social and environmental factors that people and companies can control, and that promotecreative activity within the boundaries of those environments. As a very basic example,
in some work environments, new ideas—especially new ideas from people who “aren’t
supposed” to be idea people—are often dismissed or ignored. But intentionally creating asocial environment in which people’s ideas are routinely received, explored, and entertained creates a kind of trust that lets people know that they’re allowed to think new
things. When this is done successfully, even people who “aren’t creative” find themselves
having valuable thoughts about the collective work that their team or organization is involved with. It sort of catches fire, and productivity and morale go through the roof.
It’s a little more complicated than that, of course, but the remarkable thing is thatwhen it’s done well, you find that everyone has something to contribute. Everyone hassome piece of the puzzle, some bit of information, that’s important to the wider field. The
things that individuals come up with in such an environment are almost invariably relevant to the overarching goalsof the group, or team, or ensemble, or organization, or
whatever.

45

BUCKLEY

Arthur Roberts: Well, it’s really a false dichotomy—the “businessperson” and the “artist”—especially today, with technologies like the Internet that really require new ways of
doing just about everything. But there is a useful distinction between the modes of beingthat are traditionally ascribed to one or the other group. If you look at it that way, then“business people” and “artists” have an enormous amount to teach one another, and thedomain where their interests intersect is in the area of creativity. This intersection is no
coincidence, because creativity is a human characteristic; it doesn’t belong to any pathor profession. It’s a natural, inherent trait. Human beings can’t not be creative. And each
type, “the business person” and the “artist,” has its own characteristic ways of approaching creativity. In business, for example, there are the traditional brainstorming sessions
and other such ways of freeing up creativity, while in the arts, you’ve generally seen more
attention paid to physicality and non-verbal approaches. You need both kinds, of course.
But today something very different is happening as people begin to see the connections
between all these levels: between the verbal and the non-verbal, the individual and thecollective. It’s a very exciting time. There are unprecedented opportunities for doing trailblazing, creative work.

The Arts in Practice

Stephen Buckley: How does the role of the artist, or the arts, interplay with that of theentrepreneur and business? What can they learn from each other?

References
Lewin, K. “Experiments in Social Space.” Reflections 1 (Summer 1999): 7–13.

46

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSOn Classical Musicand Business—Listening,
Leading, Learning

FEATURE

Alf WesteliusTeamwork is becoming ever more important in organizations. Sports are often seen as
inspiration and a source of metaphors for business, usually focusing on leadership,coaching, and the ways in which one individual may help enhance team performance. I
spend much time playing classical music, and offer orchestras and the string quartet asadditional sources of inspiration and a way to further teamwork.

Symphony Orchestras
In Sweden, it is becoming increasingly popular to bring in conductors to lecture at leadership programs. Symphony orchestras share many similarities with hierarchic business organizations, with some marked differences. The conductor has the final say and decides
on interpretation, timing, and so on. Depending on instrumental qualifications, the conductor may even suggest solutions to technical issues, such as bowing or fingering. The orchestra is a hierarchy, and within each instrumental group, the first chair decides on technicalissues during rehearsals and uses movement and gestures to coordinate the playing.
The conductor metaphor is one of leadership from the leader’s viewpoint. The focus
is on the woman or man at the top who tries to convey an idea or vision to the membersof the organization, the musicians. As a musician, I attempt to present in this article theview of being led, interpreting cues, and playing a part with other orchestra members.
Following a conductor is no more a precise science than following a business manager. Each orchestra develops its own tradition on when to play in relation to the
conductor’s beats—on the beat or slightly after—just as a culture may develop in a business organization on paying heed to the manager’s cues. In the orchestra, hearing is far
more accurate than sight for timing and other coordination issues. The conductor gives
the general timing of an entry, but a combination of listening to the other instruments
and watching the cues from the first chair gives the exact moment. Volume is similar:
the conductor provides a general idea, which is then calibrated against the audio input
from the other instruments.
Tuning also requires the constant attention to the pitch of other instruments and, inparticular, to instruments playing in unison or in parallel musical figures. Each player
receives sensory input from nearby players. Due to the physical grouping of the orchestra according to function—part or instrument—it becomes more difficult to coordinate
with the instruments that are farther away. As in a company, coordination is achieved
to a large extent by putting the middle managers—the first chairs—close to each otherand in close contact with the conductor, their manager. However, in an orchestra, youhave a somewhat better opportunity to develop responsiveness and communication withthose playing other instruments than you have of developing your own view of the total
operation in a business organization and tuning in to colleagues. The signals are there
to pick up if you learn to pay attention to them.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

Alf Westelius
Professor, Linköping University
Associate Researcher
Stockholm School of Economics

47© 2001 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

WESTELIUS
On Classical Music and Business Paying attention not only to those playing your own part but also to the conductor
takes practice. The better you know your part, the more you have played in an orchestra, and the better you know the whole piece, the more you can listen to others and adjust your own playing accordingly. Each player has his or her particular sound and wayof moving, behaving, and responding to cues. Instrumentalists who are experienced orchestra players can achieve acceptable coordination almost from the start, but superior
performance requires extensive rehearsing with the same people. The conductor may
give instructions by gesturing during a performance, but to a large extent, must explain
verbally during rehearsals. These explanations are general ideas about expression andemphasis or direct instructions, such as “oboe too loud here,” “trombone slightly flat
there,” “second violin behind the beat,” and so on.
Musicians expect visionary as well as detailed instructions, although status affects
how they receive the instructions. They find it more acceptable to be instructed or evenreprimanded by a well-known, respected conductor than by a junior or less respected
one. But the power of position is insufficient for making the conductor’s word the law.
There may be a degree of civil or less than civil disobedience.
However, disregarding the conductor upsets the way the orchestra functions and themechanisms by which it works. In crises, such as when a conductor misses a beat, disobedience may save the performance, but, normally, failure to take the conductor’s cues
results in inferior performance.
Performing classical music, such as a symphony, is an exposed kind of service delivery. Everyone—from the individual instrumentalist to the first chairs (the middle managers) to the conductor (the manager)—meets the “customer,” who scrutinizes and evaluates
their actions and performance then and maybe publicly after. Team efforts of 100 or more
people are not unusual in business, but it is rather rare that the “moment of truth” encompasses the whole team, and as transparently as it does on the stage. The way the orchestra
handles a performance is through clear division of labor, strict hierarchy, detailed written
instructions (sheet music), and careful rehearsal. But this is not sufficient. Above all, eachmember must listen attentively and be aware of what the other players are doing.

String Quartets

48

Turning from the large, hierarchical organization to a much smaller one, the string quartet, we find a very different form of organization. In a string quartet, interpretation, coordination, choice of music, and selection or acquisition of performance opportunities
may be more or less centralized, distributed, or truly collective. However, in my experience, a string quartet tends to be a self-organizing, rather than hierarchical, organization.
But first, let’s look at the quartet’s environment.
Unlike sports, where organized competition under clear rules is the norm, the string
quartet operates in markets that more closely resemble enterprise markets—where successor relative lack of success may be determined by rules that are neither clear nor apparent.
Just as many companies can exist side by side and find customers, string quartets exist
simultaneously and find listeners without the need to show who has a gold medal andwho does not. Rankings and explicit competitions exist in
business and in chamber music, but they are constructions,
not the primary goal of the companies or the quartets.
In theory, as well as in the media and everyday discussions, it is often assumed that profit is the primary goal inbusiness. However, a closer look at practice reveals otherlogics: a striving for growth, power, self-determination, or
fame; a preoccupation with challenging tasks; or the appeal of technological excellence. These may exist anywhere, but are often obvious among entrepreneurs. In chamber music, the absence ofclear rules leaves room for complex interaction and freedom in setting goals and quality
standards. As with entrepreneurship, the goal may be to work according to your own
beliefs, while financial matters are a means to keep going, not an end.
Chamber music is not profitable, and even the professional quartets view income asa restriction, a means of sustenance rather than a goal. Having chosen to earn my living

In chamber music, the absence ofclear rules leaves room for complex
interaction and freedom in setting
goals and quality standards.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSWESTELIUS
On Classical Music and Business 
Evening Journal Staff Photographer, 1930

in business and academia, I have found that playing music takes up a considerable
amount of my time and competes with other activities, but is only occasionally remunerated. My fellow musicians are a mix of professional musicians, managers, professionals, and workers, women and men, some well off, some of humble financial means. The
common denominator is an interest in chamber music.

Rehearsing and Performing
In most service companies, training to become proficient may be undertaken individually
before meeting customers, but training on the team level typically occurs in front of the customer. A string quartet would find it extraordinary to perform without having first rehearsed
as a group. Rehearsing affords the quartet members time to experiment, argue, and develop—
something that would benefit other organizations too. The members of a string quartet spend
around 90% of their time practicing individually and rehearsing together and 10% performing. In many other professions, the opposite may be the case; charging mainly for the timespent in customer contact leads to a tendency to spend little time rehearsing in private.

Quality
Quality includes obvious individual parameters, such as playing the right notes, in key,
and with a good sense of rhythm. There are also team-based parameters. Four people,
each playing a part in tune, may produce chords that are out of tune, either systematically because one player has a slightly different sense of pitch, or on some chords because
the players do not listen attentively to each other.1 Interpreting music involves interpreting some not very precise instructions, such as “slower” or “louder,” but it also involves
deviating rhythmically and dynamically from the explicit score. Most music would seemdull and uninteresting if played metronomically as written; slight attenuation andshortenings of notes “within the rhythm” give life to the performance.
When playing string quartet, the team assembles in one place in physical proximitythat affords full sensory input. The members see each other’s minute movements andhear what they play and say, along with their breathing and sighs. This closeness israrely achieved in companies. There are much richer opportunities for coordinating withthe viola player sitting by your elbow for half the time you spend on the quartet than forthe developer to coordinate with the salesperson she rarely meets.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

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WESTELIUS
On Classical Music and Business 

Having rehearsed the piece thoroughly, you are well acquainted with how you interact with your fellow players when you finally meet the audience. Because of this, youhave the option of paying more attention to the audience and the “feel” or “atmosphere”
in the room than you would if you had only a rough idea of what your companions will
be doing. On the other hand, the interaction with the audience—the “customers”—israther limited, and the feedback is ambiguous until you’ve played the final note and you
hear polite or enthusiastic applause.
Rehearsing has its benefits, but so do attention, novelty, and challenge. A piece thatis too well rehearsed can lose its players’ interest, and it may also lull the musicians into
inattentiveness because they feel that they know everything about how the others areplaying. The comment, “Let’s not rehearse until we are bored with the piece; let’s keepsome excitement,” is well known to musicians. This “nerve” in the delivery is, for example, also recognizable in teaching situations, speeches, and other occasions with adegree of “stage performance.” What distinguishes the quartet setting from businesscounterparts is the extreme degree of coordination required by the quartet and the continuous rather than sequential interface between players.

Assembling the Team50

A professional quartet assembles itself, possibly initiated by one or two players, and plays
together for years or decades. More temporary quartets may assemble for a single production. They too are typically organized by someone within the group rather than assigned to the team by an outside actor, such as a manager. The self-organized nature of
the quartet implies that all members must consent if the quartet is to continue. In companies, self-organization of teams is sometimes possible, but more often, people are assigned to teams. And team members are usually current employees. Pulling together aquartet is more like forming a group in a virtual organization; potential members belong
to the networks of the initiators or their networks’ networks. Any player may form thequartet; it is not the prerogative of the cellist or the first violin.
The selection of members depends on many parameters—individual musical qualifications, social compatibility, time to rehearse, quality standards, interest in the music—
but does not always focus on the most accomplished musicians. Some very good players
may not want to rehearse more than a minimal amount, while someone less accomplished may be willing to spend more time rehearsing. Then it can be possible to achievea better result by relying on those who are willing to spend more time. There are also
long-term considerations, such as developing a relationship and learning to play with aparticular player to open future opportunities rather than just trying to make the best
choice of player for a certain concert.
The end result depends on each player’s mastery of the instrument, knowledge ofthe music (style, composer, actual piece of music), level of experience in playing chamber music, how often the group has played together, how well they get along, eachplayer’s emotional and intellectual attitude to the piece, how the group responds to a particular audience, and how well rehearsed the group is.
As in companies, people who get along and work welltogether tend to prefer working together when new
projects arise. However, in a quartet, the match between
the players goes beyond ability to work together. Because
the performance involves all four players, simultaneously,
all need to be on a par to create an enjoyable performance.
To some extent, it is possible to choose music that poses
different requirements for each player, but large differences between players severely limit the repertoire. Unlike
business projects, trading tasks within the team is limited,
as is the possibility of utilizing temporary participants for part of the job. The cellist cannot trade parts with the second violin for a complicated sequence, and the viola player
would not engage a more accomplished musician to play the third movement with thegreat solo. If there is a mismatch between a player and his part, the available solutions,short of replacing the member, are to practice harder or to try to hide the problems.

Pulling together a quartet is more likeforming a group in a virtualorganization; potential members
belong to the networks of theinitiators or their networks’ networks.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSFeelings and Emotions
In the original sense of amateurism,2 music is a field where feelings are strong and sensations of “beauty,” “magic,” and other emotions are common and accepted. “Whatmusic; it brings tears to my eyes!” or “Isn’t this truly beautiful?” are comments that do
not have their counterparts in my other fields. There are darker feelings too. When firstrehearsing the Second Gorecki String Quartet, I felt anguish gripping my chest forcibly
and physically. The second violinist said, “You will have to find someone else to play thispart. I can’t endure this.”
Because of emotions and feelings, choosing pieces to play is a field of negotiation. I
may accept playing a piece for which I have no enthusiasm, given that we will, sooner
or later, play something I prefer. But enthusiasm or the lack of it may also rub off onother members. When a respected member, having played through a piece, said, “Withsome music, you do the composer a disservice by performing it,” it affected the othermembers’ evaluation of the piece. On the other hand, when a member introduced a pieceby saying, “This is the most marvelous piece of music; I heard it on the radio someweeks ago and immediately felt that ‘I just have to get to play this,’” the other members
looked for aspects to appreciate in the music too.
In business, it is the manager’s job to spark subordinates’ enthusiasm. In a quartet, that task is not connected to any specific player. Normally, the member whochooses or suggests the piece may have to “sell” it. This may be due partly to the selection of members on the basis of positive feelings for the piece. Once the quartet isassembled, the advocate for the music tries to start the rehearsal positively, marshaling purely emotional or intellectually emotional arguments such as, “I just love this. It
is a marvelous piece of music,” “It would be a feat to perform this,” or “I am so curious about this; it is almost never played.” If this fails, the quartet may gradually agree
to change the repertoire. Obviously, love for the music played will benefit the rehearsals and the performance.

Status and Opinions
The functional roles of the players are usually set; it is obvious who plays the first violin,
the second violin, the viola, and the cello. When putting the team together, players sometimes discuss which violinist will play the viola (viola players are often scarce). Unlessthe choice is obvious, based on differences in competence or seniority, the group may
also discuss which violinist will play first violin or second violin. During the rehearsals,
many decisions are made: setting quality standards, choosing repertoire, scheduling rehearsals, and deciding on interpretation and quality control. After the functional roles areset, who decides what remains open.
The first occasion for stating position and establishing team roles is when we gather
for rehearsal. After some preliminary chatting while unpacking instruments and setting
up chairs and music stands, we sit down. The first violinist makes the normal opening
remark, “Let’s start by just playing it through to get an idea of the music and to see
where the difficulties lie.” Given that another player has chosen the piece, he or she may
advance the comment or accept or reject the suggestion.
Usually the quartet awards the first violinist the main coordinating role because thecomposer often confers the leading role in the music on that part. However, sometimes
another instrument will give the coordinating cues. Dominance in coordination may tend
to give the first violinist the lead in determining interpretational matters as well. But

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

WESTELIUSOn Classical Music and Business 

There are many similarities between the string quartet that is not full-time and workor project teams. Quartets may assemble for a particular performance, just as a team mayassemble for a specific project. For the quartet member, playing is one of many tasks thatcompete for time and attention, just as the project or team member is only rarely dedicated to that task. Even in terms of professionalism, there are differences among the capabilities and performance of quartet members and among team members. In addition,
the team member’s and the quartet player’s role may be her or his forte or a peripheral
capability or qualification.

51

WESTELIUS
On Classical Music and Business much authority stems from personal traits, from experience and musical accomplishment, or from personal likes or dislikes.

The First Rehearsal
When a quartet first meets, there is some tension, especially if the members have different formal titles and if their actual capabilities are unclear. If, for example, a player is amember of a well-known orchestra, while others are not, that player may strive to ascertain his status in the quartet. If there is another player with unquestioned high status, theone trying to ascertain his status may try to show that they are equals or peers. In thesmall talk during unpacking, he may try to establish a common history like, “Remember
when we . . .” or “You have also . . . , haven’t you?” When the rehearsal starts, the player
may make comments like, “This is how we always play this passage” or “Obviously, thisshould start upbow.” If the others do not accept and follow these suggestions, the firstplayer may revert to lecturing a player with inferior status. This tactic either succeeds orleads to counterattacks by the attacked player or another player.
Truly excellent musicians rarely engage in this sort of jockeying for power or esteem.
A fine first violinist may say, “For my sake, could we please take from bar 65 again. This
passage is a bit tricky.” Everyone will see that the player making the suggestion is not theone who had made the mistake, but they also see that pointing fingers will not improve
the situation. A climate in which admitting faults or problems is admissible and rewarded,
rather than frowned on, results in far more effective (andenjoyable) rehearsals.
Now everyone lifts his or her bow to the strings andpays attention to the first violinist. On a cue indicating the
tempo, we all start to play. Given that nothing completely
disrupts the playing, the music continues without comments until the end of the movement. Everyone makes
mental notes of coordination cues, unexpected and expected difficulties, interpretational
ambiguities, and differences in interpretation between players. Listening to each other’splaying, we have a first round of adjustment to each other, in tempo, pitch, volume, andstyle. Someone may say, “Could we please take it from B again. I did not quite understandit.” But more likely the suggestion will be, “Okay, let’s continue.”

Truly excellent musicians rarely
engage in . . . jockeying for power or
esteem.

Setting and Achieving Standards

52

When the piece is finished, the negotiation starts. If there is a player who is obviously far
more experienced than the others, that player will suggest what to do next, and everyone
will follow. More probably, all players will suggest a passage as needing more rehearsal.
After brief discussion, we reach consensus and lift the instruments in a first test of concentration and mental calibration. If all the quartet members are on an equal level, theplaying will resume on a slight cue from one member. If, however, one member is lessconcentrated or not as agile, there will be a brief pause, followed by, “Um, from where,
did you say?” Or, in a less open climate, after the playing starts, it soon turns out that one
player has misunderstood. In these cases, the complete “flow” of thinking and acting together without an obvious command hierarchy breaks down, and at least one player takeson the role as “first-line supervisor,” making certain that the less agile player receives
unambiguous instructions. This works but shatters the magic of a rehearsal with “flow.”
Once we start to rehearse various problem spots, we don’t play the entire piece forquite some time. Attention to detail takes over. The rehearsal resembles a kanban production line where each player has the right to “pull the line,” which stops the conveyor
belt (the playing) and draws attention to a problem. Now there is discussion, demonstration, attentive playing, analysis, attempts to identify the root of the problem, and new
attempts to reach the developing standards. Our first goal is to straighten out any major
rhythmical misunderstandings, misreadings, or misprints. Another goal is to establish
which passages deserve rehearsal as a quartet and which should be practiced alone before the next rehearsal. At times, a single bar will receive great attention to get the tuning or expression right. Sometimes a shorter passage will be analyzed, played very

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSREFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

WESTELIUSOn Classical Music and Business 53© Emily Sperslowly, and then reassembled to achieve the desired result. Sometimes a problem spot is
pinpointed, but left unresolved.
The negotiations on what to rehearse and what is “sufficient” quality are multifaceted. One concern is to use the available time so that the overall result is acceptable toall. Another consideration is the members’ varying preferences for speed, intonation,
distinctness, quality of tone, and a host of other aspects. The group generates and sets
the standards of “acceptability,” but may be influenced by outside factors. One member
may not have as much time and accepts lower quality. Another may feel particularly
responsible for the quality, based on the audience or some specific listener. Yet anothermay not be concerned with this particular performance and will accept less quality. Fora quartet to work well, aspirations cannot be too different. An important aspect of developing a long-standing quartet relationship lies in knowing each other’s standards andcalibrating yours against your fellow players.
The search for quality consists of two logical (but not necessarily consecutive) steps.
The first step roots out mistakes. The second makes the interpretation more interesting.
The quality criteria of the first step deal with tolerance—what we consider to be “intune,” “rhythmically correct,” and so on. Absolute goals concerning pitch and rhythm
can be objectively determined, and the quartet successively establishes criteria for being
sufficiently in tune and rhythmical. One player may have a narrow tolerance for pitch.
Someone else may want more stringent treatment of rhythm, with the result that thepitch-proponent backs down or the striving for perfection increases, accompanied by aneed for more time to achieve the new standards. The weight of each player’s arguments
may be based on how the others evaluate his or her expertness, on how closely the criteria match the general values of the music community, on the proponent’s general leadership qualities, or on the proponent’s degree of “ownership” of the performance. The otherplayers may see the member who arranged the performance or assembled the quartet as
more responsible toward the audience for the performance.
The second step, that of achieving a more interesting
interpretation, involves a greater degree of developing
norms and of calibrating ideals. Would a slightly higher
tempo be better? How emotional do we want this passage
to be? Is the balance between the instruments good, and
if not, should the viola play louder or the other threesofter? The road to achieving consensus, and to improving
the result according to the developing ideals, is interactive
knowledge evolution. Someone may phrase an idea inwords and complement by demonstrating; then there is arenewed attempt at playing, while listening and feeling,followed by verbal feedback from the idea’s originator orsomeone else. This quick feedback sequence is important,and, when leading to perceivable improvement, gives afeeling of flow—creative, enjoyable achievement, and improvement. If broken, it may lead to frustration. It may
temporarily break when a player fails to understandanother’s comments. It may also break when a player is
not at the same pace as the others. The fast feedback loop
requires that agreeing on where to start playing is a minor
detail and is often implicit. “Once more, please,” followed
instantly by playing is the basis for a different learningpace than, “Once more, please,” followed by, “Fromwhere?” the explicit identification of the starting point, theverbal communication of it, the counting of bars, “Okay,
now I’ve got it,” and then playing.
During quick feedback, norms and ideals develop inparallel with the agreed-on improvement. The more aquartet rehearses together, the more the players learn
about each other’s norms and ideals, about listening toeach other, and about how to reach consensus, and theWESTELIUS
On Classical Music and Business more they construct shared ideals and norms. To some extent, the sequence allows theteam to achieve a given result more quickly, but it need not result in fewer rehearsals.
As the players learn more about functioning as a team, they may raise their standards
and tackle new tasks. The urge to raise the standards may be a curse of quartet playing,
but learning together is one of the great rewards.

Reflections on Quartets and Business
The symphony orchestra is functionally and hierarchically organized, although there ismore local decision making and responsibility resting on each individual than might be
immediately evident. In the string quartet, the formal structure is absent; I am struck by
the amount of self-organizing. Even though a member may dominate in suggesting andforming decisions, the group does not consist of a leader and three subordinates. There is
not even a formal, rotating leadership such as in the self-organizing groups of the Swedish
manufacturing industry in the seventies and eighties. Quartets have constantly shifting
leadership or continuous self-organizing—from moment to moment, issue to issue—and
constant consensus building to develop and set standards and make other decisions.
The kind of communication that occurs in the string quartet is multifaceted andmultisensory. Physical proximity provides the opportunity, emotional involvement provides a setting, and the nonverbal task and the need for continuous coordination provide a demand for using all available sensory input. In larger teams and moregeographically dispersed teams, the physical proximity that enables rich communication
rarely occurs. The members of a symphony orchestra havesome physical proximity, but their sheer numbers—obstructing sight and hearing—crowd out opportunity for thequartet’s rich communication and force a reliance on hierarchy and restricted cues.
In companies, we tend to value rationality above emotions. This sets limits to what we regard as legitimate
modes for, and topics of, communication. Verbal and graphical reports, presentations,and business meetings limit our communication to words and charts. The division oftasks into individual work packets with minimized interfaces and the accompanying
minimization of meetings and time spent working together reduces our opportunities fortraining and learning to develop better communication.
In business, people revert to specific “team-building” activities, such as rafting or
cooking together, to compensate for the lack of rich communication in everyday tasks.
Sometimes I work with people with whom I have played in a quartet, and to some extent, the quartet experience helps us achieve better communication at work, but I feelthat we do not always take full advantage of the potential. We view playing as playing
and work as something else. Perhaps rafting, cooking, or quartet playing are needed tostart building capabilities, but we might examine the opportunities of daily work settings
for richer communication.
In quartet playing, the main work is rehearsing (and practicing); only a small
amount of time is spent in direct contact with the audience—the customer, if indeed theaudience is the customer. Perhaps we are the main customers ourselves? The reason forplaying is not to make a living; a reason for making a living is to be able to play. However, the audience is present during the rehearsals too. We in the quartet decide on quality standards and ideals, but a part of our frame of reference is what we think theaudience will appreciate and how it will react, based on experience and fantasies of theperformance. During the performance, the interaction with the audience is only indirect;
we can feel the attention, or lack of it, and perhaps enthusiasm or dislike for the performance (or the music), but the audience does not take part in the performance directly.
In business settings, at one end of the scale, there may be intense, observable interaction: the participants in a seminar may actively discuss an issue; the sales team andthe customer will arrive at a deal in overt interaction. At the other end of the scale, theovert interaction may be even more limited than in a quartet: programmers designing
software are, in many cases, never in direct contact with the customer; the kitchen staff
rarely enters the dining room to meet the diners. The orchestra, somewhere in the middle

The kind of communication that
occurs in the string quartet ismultifaceted and multisensory.

54

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSWESTELIUS
On Classical Music and Business of the scale, spends considerable time rehearsing, but also spends a large share of its
time performing. An orchestra’s interaction with the audience during performances issimilar to a quartet’s, but the command structure reduces the orchestra members’ latitude in reacting to the audience.
The separation from the audience or customer has pros and cons. On the one hand,separation affords the quartet or team a sheltered space in which to experiment, makemistakes, and learn from, with, and about each other with no one else scrutinizing andevaluating their efforts and results. On the other hand, separation allows for the development of standards and ideals that may not appeal to audience or customers.
The extreme closeness in quartet rehearsals is coupled with high vulnerability. By
working closely and communicating openly, members can annoy each other. Some quartet sessions are very tense, and quartet members may find that they want to avoid eachother. Another vulnerability is that each has to play his or her part, with the resulting
quality affected by each player’s performance. If one player does not know his part, all
the others suffer from it, and the resulting totality is unrewarding. If one player does notconcentrate, the chances of having a fruitful rehearsal are limited. If one player is ill or
absent, little useful rehearsing or performing can take place. This strong interdependence
creates group pressure and can be quite stressful if not handled mindfully.
To conclude, I believe that, in reflecting on practices in the realm of music and, particularly, the self-organizing quartet, we can draw valuable inspiration. We can attempt
to achieve rich listening to ourselves, our colleagues, and our counterparts in the business network and to our interactions—not just listening to what is said, but using all
senses and allowing feelings and emotions to play a part. The interactive and mutual
nature of giving cues, perceiving, following, and calibrating in reaching consensus thatquartet rehearsals exhibit can influence our view of leadership, standard setting, anddecision making. Finally, by using the example of an organization in which learning isconstantly the focus, we can question the set routines and practices of our daily work.
Do we want to change the balance between learning and performing?

Notes
1. The normal tuning of a piano today is a compromise: a “well-tempered” tuning that allows music to be played in any key without sounding too out of tune but no chord to be perfectly in tune.
2. Amateurs originally meant “those who love what they are doing.” I have met professional musicians who are amateurs in this sense, and those who are not. I have also met many nonprofessionals who are more accomplished musicians than some professionals.

Commentary55

by Karl E. WeickManagement and music have gone together ever since Peter Drucker equated managers with symphony conductors and envisioned the symphony orchestra as the epitome of the flat organization(specialists play directly to the conductor without an intermediary). Here’s a typical Drucker quote:“The task of creating a genuine whole also requires that the manager in every one of his acts consider simultaneously the performance and results of the enterprise as a whole and the diverse activities needed to achieve synchronized performance. It is here, perhaps, that the comparison withthe orchestra conductor fits best. A conductor must always hear both the whole orchestra and, say,the second oboe” (Drucker, 1973). What is missing here are newer emphases on teams, improvisation, project leaders, and collective interpretation. Drucker is aware of these untouched issues, as
was clear in a 1997 interview: “The soloists, the chorus, the ballet, the orchestra all have to cometogether—but they have a common score. What we are increasingly talking about today are diversified groups that have to write the score while they perform. . . . What you really need now is agood jazz group. . . . So how can you have a big company or a very big organization when you haveto develop the score as you go along? Today you build different teams. Sounds beautiful. Yet nobody has really found a way to do it” (Beatty, 1998).

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

Karl E. Weick
Rensis Likert Collegiate Professor of
Organizational Behavior andPsychology
School of Business Administration
University of Michigan

WESTELIUS
On Classical Music and Business 

56This is a near perfect segue to Alf Westelius’s article. He has found a way “to do it.” And what he has
found stays within Drucker’s beloved classical tradition. By focusing on the more entrepreneurial worldof string quartets, Westelius helps us understand some subtle determinants of learning in teams.
To mention just one example, Westelius describes the search for quality in quartets as “interactive knowledge evolution.” This search takes place mainly in rehearsals where 90% of quartet work
is done. Rehearsals are fascinating because they are sites where people try to learn despite frequentinterruptions. This feature is nontrivial because interruptions produce agitation and strong emotion(Weick, 1995). And sustained agitation precludes swift learning. What is striking, therefore, isWestelius’s finding that the better quartets maintain a “flow” of reworking, negotiation, and interrupting that the poorer quartets do not. The better the flow, the faster and deeper the learning.
This is captured in the contrast between the person who says, “For my sake, can we take it from bar
65,” and the person who says, “I don’t understand the problem; where do you want us to start?”
This suggests that there are two layers of interruption that can interfere with learning, not justone. There is the interruption of content that occurs when any task that is moving toward completion is stopped unexpectedly. That is frustrating enough and slows learning. But there is also interruption of the smooth flow of repair work. When people can’t agree on what needs repairing or
how to do repair, this is a second source of interruption and represents an interruption of process.
Interruption of both content and process should make for considerable agitation. If agitation increases, learning becomes more difficult, which raises agitation even more, which triggers a vicious
circle that is made all the more vicious because people are in face-to-face contact. Good quartets
don’t fall into this trap. They use what Westelius calls “quick feedback.” They signal the problem andthen quickly play it out of existence. This resembles what military teams refer to as learning
through an OODA loop—observe, orient, decide, act, observe, and so on (Sullivan and Harper, 1996).
The important point here is that process interruptions may entrap people when they try to repair
situations from the inside.
To convert inevitable interruptions into a flow of interrupting is to achieve an important part ofself-organizing. A learning team may be distinguished as much by its competence at repairing, as byits competence at performing. Even more important, any kind of situated learning may be vulnerable
to interruption twice over. Thus, the advantage of learning in the very same situation where you will
perform the learned task cuts two ways. It makes it easier to implement what you learn, but it makes
it harder to concentrate on learning when you keep getting interrupted just short of the goal.
This Reflections article is a wonderful medium for reflection. Westelius lures readers into the
midst of some fascinating issues and invites them to think their way out. He argues, for example,
that large differences in background among quartet players limit the repertoire of works that canbe included in the quartet’s library. But large differences in background may also increase the variety of interpretations that might be suggested. And in a world of competing quartets, success inbeing “more interesting” is non-trivial. Homogeneous backgrounds may encourage homogeneousinterpretation, which may encourage predictable, uninteresting performances. That’s what I mean
by lures that compel us to think our way out. If quartets can do it, so can the rest of us.

References

Beatty, J. The World According to Peter Drucker (New York: Free Press, 1998): 126–127.
Drucker, P. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: HarperCollins, 1973): 399.
Sullivan, G.L. and M.V. Harper. Hope Is Not a Method (New York: Times Books, 1996): OODA loops are discussed on pp. 45–52.
Weick, K.E. Sensemaking in Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995). The idea that interruption is
the precondition for strong emotions is discussed on pp. 45–49.

Commentaryby S.D. Noam Cook
Alf Westelius makes a welcome and provocative addition to an unfortunately small number ofworks on the significance of musical groups as models for understanding organizations in generaland organizational learning in particular. The value of musical examples has been demonstrated insuch work as Bougon and Weick’s now classic reflections (1977) on cognition in the Utrecht Jazz

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSWESTELIUS
S.D. Noam Cook
Associate Professor of Philosophy
San Jose State University
Member, San Francisco Symphony
ChorusConsulting Researcher, Xerox PARCOn Classical Music and Business 

Orchestra, and Kao’s recent book (1996) that uses playing jazz as a template for designing activities
that can foster creativity in business.
Nonetheless, the most common non-business examples in the organizational literature seem tobe drawn from the likes of sport and the military. But such examples, because of their ethos ofcompetition and winning, along with their lingering gender bias, may have increasingly limited operational applicability to modern business organizations where competitiveness and winning are, attheir best, by-products of cooperative and creative work among men and women. Accordingly, musical examples such as those Westelius offers, where learning how to work together closely and creatively is constantly central and essential to success, can offer valuable and practical insights. I wish
to underscore two points from the article.
Westelius importantly points out that the work of music is more in rehearsal than in performance. Rehearsing is not simply a preparation for performing; it is the core of a musician’s work,
an end and a joy in itself. A performance is as much a public report of what has been learned in rehearsal as it is a creative exercise. This suggests a powerful model for organizations. In rehearsing, agroup not only learns a piece, it establishes its own identity: in learning how to play together,learning what interpretations work, etc., the individual musicians establish themselves as a groupwith a particular identity and a particular expertise that is deployed in both rehearsal and performance. For musical groups, learning, creativity, and innovation are part of who they are and part oftheir on-going work. Many organizations would do well to explore ways of making this kind of creative learning part of daily work, not an interruption in it.
My sense of communication in large musical groups differs somewhat from that of Westelius.
For him, an orchestra’s “sheer numbers—obstructing sight and hearing—crowd out opportunity forthe quartet’s rich communication and forces a reliance on hierarchy and restricted cues.” I see thisas a difference of kind more than one of quality. As Westelius points out, there is a great deal of intimate and effectively precise communication that goes on within the sections of an orchestra(and, I would add, a chorus). This is rather like the communication within a team or work group in alarge organization. But, in either case, small-group communication should not be isolated. It needs
to be coordinated with and shaped by a different, less intimate—yet equally precise and effective—
kind of communication that must go on at the level of the orchestra or the corporation. Otherwise,
there is noise not music, disorder rather than productivity. There is a long tradition in the organizational literature of the importance at the level of the group of a “sense of the whole” (or “the field”
or “the culture”). Today, this has a renewed importance, given the growing appreciation of the roleof groups as innovators within larger organizations. Insightful examination of communication andinnovation across the levels of larger musical groups, as Westelius shows, suggests valuable models
for developing a more robust sense of how organizations can learn to develop and deploy this role.

References

Bougon, M. and K.E. Weick. “Cognition in Organizations: An Analysis of the Utrecht Jazz Orchestra.” Administrative Science Quarterly 22 (1977): 606–639.
Kao, J. Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity (New York: HarperCollins, 1996).

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

57

FEATURE

Learning in andfrom Improvising:
Lessons from Theaterfor Organizational Learning
Dvora Yanow

Everyday speech is a case of improvisation. More than that, it’s a case of shared improvisation. You meet someone new and you create language together. There is a commerce offeeling and information back and forth, exquisitely coordinated. When conversation works,
it is, again, not a matter of meeting halfway. It is a matter of developing something new toboth of us.
Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts 1

58

Dvora Yanow
Professor and Chair
Department of Public
Administration
California State University,
Hayward© 2001 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Some have suggested that jazz improvisation can teach us much about managerial practices. I propose that theatrical improvisation is an even richer well to draw from, partly
because of the wealth of existing theories about improv, and partly because much performed jazz is, in fact, scripted. Drawing on my recent experience as a novice theater student, I outline some of these lessons from theater.
I had several goals for my sabbatical from 1994 to 1995: some of the usual stuff ofacademic life (revise a book manuscript for publication, reorganize another manuscriptand get it ready for submission), others more personal (design the landscaping for thehouse, reconnect to the folk music and dance worlds with which I’d lost touch after moving from Boston to California). After years of teaching three nights a week (our master’s
program is designed for students who work full time), I was suddenly enriched bystretches of time to explore new activities. The city’s main-stage theater advertised an
acting class, and I signed up. The class was small—only three or four—and I was by far
the oldest; the teacher was inexperienced with adults; and the subject was improv,
which, had I known in advance, would have chased me away: I do not “make like an
ice cream cone and melt,” as the Chorus Line hoofer sings.
About halfway through the course, as I was skipping class in a convulsion of anxiety and self-doubt, I saw a notice that the city’s musical theater was offering scene-basedclasses. I went. The class had already met twice, and the instructor was doubtful about
adding a newcomer, especially one without recent experience. (Mine had been 36 years
before at summer camp, not counting the college mime class that I skipped half the timein similar states of performance anxiety.) I assured him that I was in full sympathy withhis concerns and shared them myself. I suggested that since I was there, he let me takethe class that night. If, at the end of the class, either he or I felt that I was out of place, I
would make like an ice cream cone on a hot day and disappear.
By the end of the evening, I was hooked, even though the class was grounded in many
exercises I recognized from the improv course, and the instructor tried to persuade me that
I must have blocked out extensive prior experience. I finished that class, signed up for the
next semester, and went back for two more the following year. (I tried a third year, but

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSYANOW
Learning in and from Improvising

couldn’t manage it with my teaching schedule.) Aside from the explicit, intended content
of the classes, I found the exercises and lessons tremendously insightful not only for teaching, but for managing as well, and especially for theorizing about organizational learning.

Improvising
Possibly the most egregious misunderstanding about improvisation—whether in a theater
setting or in an organization—is the notion that improvised activities are invented on thespot, from scratch, as if in a void, without any preparation and without context. Whatbecame clear to me in both the improv and the scene classes is the extent to which improv
teams practice together—work together, interact together, and observe one another extensively, over time. Improvised activity, invented “in the moment” in response to someprovocation (a concept in the theater, a crisis in the workplace), builds on extended, priorconjoint experience and mutual, collective, inter-knowing (as well as self-knowledge).
There is extended preparation (training or apprenticeship) in the rules of engagement, therules of practice. In the class, I learned to know the body language, facial gestures, tonesof voice, and rhythms of my classmates; these subtle knowings guided me in choosing
when to intervene and with whom. I learned to know whom I could count on to interrupt
me in order to take over a scene, or whom I could count on in a scripted scene for theemotional support necessary to carry the point home. (The difference between a class anda troupe, I warrant, is that the troupe’s director weeds out the individuals who cannot becounted on, as she builds a team of members who all pull their weight.)
These are some of the principles of improvisation: it
rests on sustained practice over time; the engagement is acollective undertaking; and it is focused on its subject.
Improv terminology for this focus is “being in the moment.” The actor has to be fully present, fully engaged in
the enterprise at hand. If the scene is about surfing in
Malibu, introducing an Eskimo floating by on an iceberg
will require a tremendous leap of logic (or faith). This ties
in with a fourth principle, which holds for theater in general, not just improv: activity is purposive, and each character has, or works to establish, an objective in his or her scene.
Lastly, team members support each other. In theatrical improv, this support has twodimensions: “Taking care of your partner,” and “Yes, and . . .” Taking care of your partner
requires other-directedness—being “in the moment,” attuned to what your teammate is saying and doing, rather than focusing on yourself and what other people are thinking aboutyou. “Yes, and . . .” requires you to respond to what was just said, to affirm it, and then add
to it to move the action to the next phase. If a teammate says to you, as you walk on stage,“Hi, Mom,” your response, “Gosh, Sis, what are you doing here?” would be a very bad“Yes,” making the “and” problematic. In improv, such a move is called a “block,” “a refusal
to accept an offer and thus a denial of the reality as established by the first improvisor.”2“Yes, and . . .” is another way in which team members are
attuned to each other, taking care of each other and of the(inter)action and focusing on the collective, on the purpose,and on being in the moment.
The lessons from improv for workplace practices aretransparent. Improvisation will flourish only on the basis ofmutual experience built up over time, both in terms of familiarity with workplace practices—the activities that are
central to the organization’s or group’s purpose—and interms of interactive, interpersonal knowledge and reliance.
The establishment of collective, practice-oriented familiarity
and trust enable improvisatory acts directed toward anorganization’s or group’s purpose under conditions that foster other-directed care and undistracted attention to that
purpose. Managers can stifle improvisational acts by curtail-. . . the most egregious
misunderstanding about improvisation. . . is the notion that improvised
activities are invented on the spot,from scratch, as if in a void . . .

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4© Emily Sper

© Emily Sper59

YANOW
Learning in and from Improvisinging opportunities for such conditions to grow. For example, they may constantly rotate personnel on short notice or not encourage the development of teams and teamwork: strangers are not likely to improvise together.
I see specific implications of these lessons in three areas: organizational learning,
research methods, and teaching and other professional practices.

Improv and Organizational Learning
For organizational learning scholars theorizing from an individual/psychological approach, the problem has been to describe “organization” empirically. For collective organizational learning scholars, the problem has been to describe “collective learning”
empirically (Cook and Yanow, 1993; Weick and Westley, 1996; Yanow, 2000a). The acts ofan improv team provide an empirical example, and theorizing about those acts brings out
the following dimensions of a cultural-interpretive approach to organizational learning.
First, organizational learning is practice-based, focused on sustained interaction
with the materials or processes of that practice over time. It is context-specific, situated“in the moment.” The context of work practices provides the constraints—the rules ofengagement—within which improvisation happens. That it is not scripted is its improvisational quality. The learning is, instead, dynamic and provisional.
Second, organizational learning is a collective, group, or team undertaking. The learning is undertaken by the group, within the group, focusing on the group’s activities. Practice-based learning is interactive in another sense: it cannot be done by any individual acting
on his or her own. Karl Weick tells the story of a Los Angeles fire captain who arrived at thescene of a fire after his crew had already deployed personnel. He launched into his own
action without coordinating with the crew, causing injuries
and additional loss of property.3 Organizational learning is
not the activity of a “loose cannon” or “freelancer” acting foror on behalf of the organization. “Yes, and . . .” is built on
trust; it requires taking care of the team.
Third, these characteristics mean that not all of organizational learning is visible, nor is it measurable in conventionally researchable ways.
What can be seen is mastery in action, in practice, through an ex post reflective sensemaking, as researchers observe organizational members engaging with the language andphysical artifacts or objects used in that practice. This is tacit knowledge in Polanyi’s
sense: something learned while focusing on something else (Polanyi, 1966), whether
that is organizational structures learned while focusing on action or some other aspectof organizational life.

. . . organizational learning is acollective, group, or team undertaking.

60

Improv and Research Methods
I have argued elsewhere that a collective-cultural approach to organizational learning
requires research methods appropriate to capturing its practice-oriented focus (Yanow,
2000a). As I reflect on what I have learned from improvisation classes, I see many of thesame characteristics in interpretive methods (Yanow, 2000b). Observing (with whatever
degree of participation in) the action at hand and conversational, in-depth interviewing
require improvising in the moment. In the context of the situation, of one’s role, and of
the rules of engagement stipulated by those methods, the researcher does a lot of “Yes,and . . . ,” acknowledging what he or she has just been told and responding in such a
way as to move the conversation or interaction forward. This is likely an uncomfortablerole for the Shakespearean or other script-oriented actor. For him or her, the scientificmethod, survey research, and statistical analyses are closer parallels in that they entail
less improvisatory open-endedness.
But interpretive methods are no less methodical and systematic: “interpretive” does
not mean “impressionistic.” Methodicalness and systematicness reside, first, in training
and preparation and then in sustained observation over time, as we have seen in
improv. In fact, one of the reasons interpretive methods are denigrated may derive fromthe academy’s privileging of scripted action—of the text—over more situational, in-themoment improvisatory acts.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSImprovisatory Practice
What is required in all three contexts—workplace learning, the research site, the classroom—is practical judgment.4 John Forester draws a contrast between the “human calculator” who “tries to be a skilled engineer” and the person of practical judgment who“tries to be a sensitive and principled moral improviser” (Forester, 1999: 224). The latterdoes not engage in unprincipled ad hoc-ery any more than the participant-observer/
ethnographer does. To capture the difference, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum turns
to improv: “The salient difference between acting from a script and improvising is that
one has to be not less but far more keenly attentive to what is given by the other actors
and by the situation. You cannot get away with doing anything by rote; you must be actively aware and responsive at every moment” (quoted in Forester, 1999: 225).
Based on my own years of nonacademic practice, I think that practitioners know
this. I think that the search for scripted practice—for regularities and formulas, whetherof leadership or of learning—has been largely driven by academics, in a misguided application of nineteenth and twentieth century positivist science to delimit and control human ambiguity. It has cost us the lessons that improv can teach: the contextual, humanrichness of being in the moment and of taking care of our partners.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

YANOW
Learning in and from Improvising

Ed Schein once remarked to me about the extent to which
he saw elements of clinical consulting practices reflected in
improv. I suspect that he may have been responding to theinsights that I derived for classroom teaching and for interpretive research methods.
How often, in making a presentation, does the professor focus on him- or herself in relation to the listeners,
concentrating on not screwing up and on looking good tothe students? We could learn from improv to shift our focus to our partners in this activity—our students—andstay actively focused on them. If I am so focused on myself (my hair, my dress, my rumbling stomach, my achingfeet), I am not in the moment.
What a profound, if subtle, shift in casting occurs
when my students become my partners in the learning
enterprise. I cannot then maintain the “firehose” or“empty vessel” theory of pedagogy, in which the professor is the repository of all wisdom and the students are
waiting to be filled with knowledge. This shift recasts
students as active agents, rather than passive reactors,
equally responsible for their own learning. That also lets
me off the hook in important, freeing ways. This conception of the learning process and the student-professor relationship is more democratic, with direct implications
for many other professional and workplace-based roles.
One of a professor’s worst nightmares is to arrive inclass having forgotten lecture notes or having grabbed thewrong file. Were we more open to improvisation, knowingthat years of practice have prepared us for such an event,
we might lose the fear of being scriptless, and the nightmare would melt away.
The Socratic or case-based method of teaching is a largely unscripted, situatedbricolage, although it is well prepared and practiced. It is “Yes, and . . .” in action, taking what the student says and building on it for the professor’s purpose, much as conversational interviewing “Yes, and . . .” is for the researcher’s purpose. Together, as
partners, professor and students weave that day’s oral “script,” only to have it dissipate
at the end of the session, except for ideas jotted in a notebook, remembered footholds
in professor’s and students’ minds. What more could improv hope for?



Improv in Teaching and Other Professions© Emily Sper

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YANOW
Learning in and from ImprovisingSome years ago, Linda Smircich wrote of feeling love for her class (Smircich, 1985:
70). Improv teaches us to see our employees, clients, research subjects, and students as
our partners. It is, in the end, much more in keeping with democratic values.

Acknowledgments
These thoughts expand on reflections offered at the plenary session of the 1999 Academy ofManagement meetings in Chicago, “From Theater to Management: Reflections on Second
City Improvisation.” Mary Crossan organized and chaired the session. Rob Nickerson, amember of the Second City improv troupe, facilitated the audience discussion of their improvisation exercises. My thanks to Second City’s actors and especially Rob Nickerson, toMary Crossan, to panelists Mary Jo Hatch, Anne Miner, and Karl Weick, and to Ed Schein.

References
Cook, S. and D. Yanow. “Culture and Organizational Learning.” Journal of Management Inquiry 2(December 1993). Reprinted in Organizational Learning, eds. M.D. Cohen and L. Sproull(Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1995).
Forester, J. The Deliberate Practitioner (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
Polanyi, M. The Tacit Dimension (NY: Doubleday, 1966).
Smircich, L. “Is the Concept of Culture a Paradigm for Understanding Organizations and Ourselves?”
in Organizational Culture, eds. P.J. Frost et al. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985).
Weick, K.E. and F. Westley. “Organizational Learning: Affirming an Oxymoron,” in Handbook of
Organization Studies, eds. S.R. Clegg, C. Hardy, and W.R. Nord (London: Sage, 1996).
Yanow, D. “Seeing Organizational Learning: A ‘Cultural’ View.” Organization 7 (2000a): 247–268.
Yanow, D. Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 2000b).

Notes
1. Nachmanovitch, S. Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts (Los Angeles: J.P.
Tarcher, 1990). From an e-mail message posted by Warren Linds, University of Regina, Canada,
to the ACTLIST listserv (3/29/98).
2. Rob Nickerson, Second City Improv Troupe (Chicago). Rob credits Keith Johnstone, founder ofTheatresports, with the “Yes, and . . .” concept; my teacher attributed it to Sanford Meisner.
The conflicting attributions indicate the extent to which this concept has taken hold in theatertraining and practice.
3. Related at the plenary session, “From Theatre to Management: Reflections on Second City Improvisation,” Chicago, Academy of Management, 1999.
4. Aristotle spoke of this as phronesis (sometimes called “practical reasoning”). I discuss the link
between local knowledge and practical reasoning in Yanow (2000b).

62

Commentaryby Michael Jones

Michael Jones
Pianist, composer, author, andspeaker

As I read Dvora Yanow’s article on improvisation, I recalled my own parallel experience as a young
pianist accompanying a dance class. It was my first day, so like Yanow, I was experiencing feelingsof anxiety and self-doubt. It turned out to be a turning point in my development as an improvisational pianist.
On that fateful morning, the dance instructor, looking toward where I was seated at the piano,
called out to me, “Michael, I want to warm up the class with some improvisational movement.
Could you please play some music with the feeling of rain in it for us?”
“Rain,” I thought. I had played Bach, Haydn, and Mozart, but I had not been taught to play “rain.”
Quickly, I turned to the box of music I had collected earlier that morning. As the instructor walked
toward the piano, I frantically searched for something with “rain” in the title. I was just looking
through “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” when she emphatically said, “No, no, Michael, notsheet music—just something that has the feeling of rain in it!” As she spoke, she demonstrated
lightly on the upper keys. “Like this,” she said.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSREFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

YANOW
Learning in and from Improvising

As she returned to the class, I put my fingers on exactly the same notes as she had and started
to play. In moments, the dancers were moving across the floor, fluttering their fingers, and letting
their bodies convey the impression of rain dripping off trees and bushes and drenching the ground.
“Now wind!,” the instructor called out.
“Wind,” I sighed. “I was just getting good at rain!” Again, I followed her lead. With broad, sweeping motions, I developed a rhythmic pattern. As I did, the dancers executed broad, bold leaps acrossthe floor. “Now thunder and lightning,” the instructor called out, using a voice that suggested theheightening of intensity and dramatic intent. Now I was ready for anything! The experience awakened a memory from my summers attending a camp in the near wilderness of central Ontario. I remembered playing the old upright piano beside a large open window in the lodge, feeling the windand rain and thunder as the great storms bent the pines and stirred the wind-tossed waves. To discover what this new world was trying to be, I needed to feel it, to experience its beauty firsthand,so that when I played, my fingers would be the rain and my hands would be the wind.
The dance class was an introduction to leading by following, or what poet T.S. Eliot spoke of as
the “awful daring of a moment’s surrender.” It is not uncommon for musicians to speak of this moment of letting go as a time when they could not tell whether they were playing or being played.
Yanow also writes of improvisation as “not invented from scratch, as if in a void, without any
advanced preparation and without context.” I agree. Both preparation and context, from my experience, are very important. Preparation provides opportunities for practice, and context elevates ourability to attend to the creation at hand. Practice alone, however, usually is not the experience ofimprovisation itself; it merely prepares us for it. Practice gives us the strength, confidence, and resilience to ride the pure wind without either shrinking from the unexplored territory of creation or
losing one’s way in it.
What sustains improvisation is the void itself, a willingness to risk going into the great unknowing—not with caution, exactly, but with a wise blindness that aligns us with the leadings of the moment. Our guide becomes a compelling question or sense of curiosity rather than a drive to achieve.
It is this great sense of mystery and miracle—where there was nothing, there is now something—that gives artists the hope and inspiration to go on. In this respect, improvisation teaches us tohonor what is and what wants to be, rather than any preconception about what ought to takeplace. This openness to the moment-to-moment unfolding of an inner reality—adjusting our thinking as the scene unfolds, as Yanow suggests—makes improvisation not only a technique or skill but
also a foundation for living and leading in a rapidly changing world.
In this context, I am reminded of the story about the American painter James McNeill Whistler,
in a cafe in Paris, listening to people try to explain the origins of art. Their discussion was wide
ranging, as they argued about how heredity, environment, the political state of the times, and so on
influence the artist. After overhearing all these arguments, Whistler simply interjected, “Art happens.” Indeed, there is something mysterious about art. It is not merely an abstraction of life, nor
can it ever be understood as such. Art is an experience, and “art happens” for the artist every time
he or she creates. If we live in an improvisational universe—one in which art is different each time
we create—a useful question to consider is not, “How do we improvise?” but rather, “How can we
not improvise?” The world is a place of mystery; as soon as we begin to improvise, we find ourselves
immersed in a creative matrix whose only certainty is constant change.
If “art happens,” we don’t need to learn to improvise, we are an improvisation. We ourselves are
the result of a loving inquiry that has been unfolding since the beginning of time. It is in our nature to be attracted to the truth that each moment calls for. And this truth changes. Each time wethink we have grasped it, it has moved again. “The human mind cannot become creative on its
own,” psychologist Walter Otto says. “Even under the most favorable circumstances, it needs to be
touched and inspired by a wonderful Otherness; the efficacy of this Otherness forms the most important part of the total creative process, no matter how gifted we are thought to be” (Otto, 1965).
This “Otherness” takes many forms. Most commonly, it is another person. But it can also be anidea, an organization, a musical instrument, a blank canvas, an image, an audience: anything thatspeaks to us and attracts our full attention represents this Otherness and serves as our partner increation. Otherness is important because improvisation is reciprocal. The attraction to the Other
sets up a resonant field—a circular flow of energy—in which the cues that guide our improvisation
originate not in either partner but in the generative space that lies between. In this manner, “arthappens.” Neither party in the improvisation leads or follows in sequence. They are doing both at
the same time. In this act of forgetting ourselves, we begin to see the familiar and ordinary in an
entirely new light. To engage with the Other with this kind of responsiveness and sensitivity in-

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YANOW
Learning in and from Improvisingvolves adjusting our ears away from the business of the everyday and toward the subtle sounds ofthe imaginary world.
In this way, one could think of the imagination as a kind of sensory organ, an aesthetic sensitivity
that involves listening for the “echoes” or cues that usually go either unheard or screened out. For example, Yanow’s perceptual context of theater includes body language, facial gestures, tones of voice,and the rhythm of her class members. Each of these helps her know when to intervene and with whom.
My own aesthetic at the piano relates to the “art of touch.” It includes letting notes fall lightly from thekeys rather than forcing them, molding and shaping the notes rather than striking them. It is my intent
to express what I sense, which requires a suppleness in my hands and clarity of articulation to convey
an ease, freshness, and fluidity in my playing. To accomplish this, I must sense the feeling of a piece, including the complex relationships among tempo, mood, harmony, weight, and tone.
My impression is that, even when we are well practiced, meeting with another is not a common
experience for many of us—including artists. Most of us have been educated to value independence
and autonomy, and it is often considered a sign of weakness to let go to a process that involvesaligning ourselves with forces over which we have no control. Yanow points to this when she says,“In improv, such a move is called a ‘block,’ ‘a refusal to accept an offer and thus a denial of the reality as established by the first improviser.’”
Ultimately, improvisation is a dance with creation itself. No
matter whether we are teachers, leaders, technicians, or artists,
we are all beholden to the same muse. And while the muse can betenacious and insistent, she is also shy. If we refuse her call too
often, she will leave us. And once gone, it is difficult to coax her
back. Yet if we practice regularly, the development of this aesthetic sensibility can strengthen ourfaith in improvisation and in our capacity to create an atmosphere that welcomes the muse. This
capacity for open-hearted, noncritical receiving is particularly important, because we rarely receive
her visitations in a form that makes sense to us at the time. We have to assume, as poet William
Stafford said about his process of writing a poem, that “there must be some reason for whatever isoccurring to us.” For Stafford, every impulse had its reasons, and he religiously followed each ofthem into a poem. He was a wonderfully prolific poet because he did not willingly refuse any call.
To prepare himself to receive the muse, he willingly followed whatever occurred to him, no matter
how foolish it might have appeared at the time. “If you behave alertly and readily,” he said, “youwill not dismiss your own ideas, your own pictures, your own puzzlement” (Stafford, 1978).
Often we refuse the call because we are too quick to dismiss an idea as foolish or impractical.
This attitude blocks the very inspiration in which we must put our entire faith if we are to create
anything at all. Impatience, judgment, and disapproval make it difficult for us to readjust our ear to
the nuances of creation. “There are leadings without any reason but they attract,” Stafford wrote(Stafford, 1986). By following these leadings, we fulfill improvisation’s deepest call, which is not art
for art’s sake, but something greater. If we are willing to accept and work with what is being given
to us now, then magic occurs. Then more ideas—better ones—will come to us later on. As Yanow
suggests, training only in scripted practice does not equip us for engaging with unscripted images
and ideas, particularly when they (at least at first) appear to us as trivial or odd.
This helps to explain why we so often refuse the call: we simply don’t hear it. Over the years, somany of us have trained our minds to shut out anything that appears peculiar, trivial, or a waste oftime. This may also explain the fear many feel when they try to improvise. It is the fear of inadequacyin the face of a blank page, the dark void, combined with the fundamental belief that what we havebeen given is not enough or that we are not qualified. Yet it is from this very place of “insufficiency”
that all true creative work begins. When I am improvising with another, I must set aside my repertoire.
In its place, I begin with a question. Then I let the question lead me into a process whose outcome remains uncertain, although that outcome has often proven itself to be superior to anything I might
have imagined or conceived before I began. And it is frightening to set aside our certainties. For mostof us, they represent the substance of who we are, what we know, and all that we have achieved. In aseries of talks he gave at Harvard in 1967 and 1968, poet Jorge Luis Borges put it well: “Every time I
am faced with a blank page, I feel that I have to rediscover literature for myself. . . . The past is of noavail whatever to me. I am nearing seventy and I have only my perplexities to offer you. I have given
the major part of my life to literature, and I can offer you only my doubts” (Borges, 2000).
Improvisation is a conversation that begins with thinking, not thought. Because thinking—as distinct from thought, which is a finished product, a record of that which has already been created—leads with a question rather than an answer, we experience it as being somehow inconclusive andUltimately, improvisation is a dancewith creation itself.

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Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSYANOW
Learning in and from Improvisingincomplete. What we may not recognize is that, once set in motion, improvisation continues to do its
work through a process of unconscious elaboration, even when we turn our attention to somethingelse. Much of my own musical development, for example, has occurred while I have been taking
walks. What always sustains my improvisation is an inquiry, including the doubts, uncertainties, andperplexities it holds.
Having said all this, improvisation is no guarantee of success. It is, however, a key to accessing
the abundance of the imagination and aesthetic rewards of a dedicated life. If we can stay thecourse of uncertainty, we will encounter an experience of wonder—a state in which we may cometo know ourselves as full partners in the act of creation, knowing that as we create, we are also being created. In other words, with imaginative labor, the goal is not reached through knowing where
we are going. Instead, it becomes apparent that we are in the right place after we have arrived. It isan experience that comes only, as Yanow says, to those who are willing to live an unscripted life.

References

Borges, J.L. The Craft of Verse, 2nd printing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000): 2.
Otto, W. Myth and Cult of Dionysus (Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, 1965): 25.
Stafford, W. Writing the Australian Crawl (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1978): 5.
Stafford, W. You Must Revise Your Life (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press‚ 1986): 38.

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REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

FEATURE

Learning the Art
of Neighborhood
J. Jean Horstman and Julia Rowntree

T

Simon Maggs

J. Jean Horstman
Member and former Managing
DirectorSociety for Organizational Learning

66

here are many reasons, from inspiration to conviction, to introduce arts into the urban environment or social settings to enhance the quality of life for all. In the UK and
the US, there have been many flagship building projects aimed at changing how urban
dwellers regard their cities and how others perceive the urban environment. However,when regeneration efforts focus on people, rather than buildings, the effects of the arts arenotoriously difficult to establish, let alone replicate at a practical level. These effects matter when resources have to be justified in competition with apparently more urgent needs.
Look Ahead Housing and Care, an association based in the UK that owns and manages some 1,500 hostels and housing projects, offers a compelling story of the effects ofa high-quality arts program in a hostel for homeless people in the East End of London.
After an arts program was established in one hostel, evictions from the hostel for violence were reduced by more than half at a time when they were expected to escalate.
And the sponsorship return on Look Ahead’s original financial investment stands at
117%. In addition, the Look Ahead administration has learned that, rather than simply
providing accommodation for some of the most vulnerable people in society, by introducing art, it can be a stimulus for building community across the socioeconomic spectrum and provide learning opportunities for neighbors in the surrounding area.
When we evaluated the arts program some three years ago, our aim was to illuminate the program’s effect on all involved and to reveal the management challenges facedby housing and arts practitioners and those wishing to shape policy on their behalf. We
took an approach based on the principles of the learning organization. This entirely new
perspective for such an evaluation demonstrates that the arts can provide a continually
renewable source of learning, stimulating connections beyond stereotype. We used thefindings as a basis for the extension of the arts program across the full range of Look
Ahead’s accommodations. We also brought the story of Aldgate, an old seamen’s hostel,to the attention of the UK’s Minister for Culture, who recognized the program as one of
the most outstanding examples of arts addressing issues of social exclusion in the UK.
In this article, we summarize some key learning points.

Setting the Scene
Julia Rowntree
Director
London International Festival of
Theatre Business Arts Forum© 2001 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Look Ahead Housing and Care provides accommodation for vulnerable people in London
and the southeast region of the UK. One of its buildings, Aldgate Hostel, is an old seamen’s
hostel on Dock Street, a five-minute walk from the Tower of London, a major tourist attraction. The hostel is bordered by a disused church, an elementary school, businesses, small
shops, and cafés. Nearby is a busy road junction with two railway bridges and, at the outset of the arts program, a neglected streetscape. A private housing development has been
built at the rear of the hostel next to a Victorian theatrical treasure—Wilton’s Music Hall.
The rooms at Aldgate vary in size, with shared bathrooms. The communal spaces
include the foyer, dining room, games room, access center, quiet room, cinema, and art
rooms in the basement. The hostel provides breakfast and an evening meal. The staff

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSImpetus for the Arts Program
In 1993, Look Ahead’s chief executive, Victoria Stark, decided to make a last ditch attempt to reverse the terminal decline in Aldgate’s atmosphere and reputation. She appointed a less authoritarian but more effective hostel manager and a team of workers
with responsibility for residents’ accommodation and mental health needs. She evicted
the most disruptive residents and installed security systems. At the same time, she took
steps to establish an arts program as part of a fundamental change to the physical environment and ambiance of the hostel.
The first rule when preparing for an arts program is to assume that it is not a quick
fix. Two years after Stark decided to change things at Aldgate Hostel, the arts program
was initiated in earnest. Stark also acknowledged that since this was not her area of expertise, she needed guidance. Early on, Stark met Jean Horstman, then a freelance arts
adviser with knowledge of arts and housing, and invited her to help Look Ahead initiate
the arts program, design a management structure, and appoint a manager.
Stark also knew that such an initiative would not work if it was entirely the fiefdomof the chief executive. She needed to spread ownership and inspiration among her staff.
From experience, Horstman knew that it was difficult for people to understand the roleof arts in housing without direct shared experience, because they can understand “thearts” only in terms of their own most recent experience of them. In Britain, still imbued
with class issues, the arts are often seen to be only for “posh”
people. Others are suspicious of self-reflexive contemporaryarts practice or patronizing arts programs for “the poor folks.”
At all levels of society, people are too frequently deprived ofhigh-quality arts programs in school and thus rarely havecommon points of reference.
For these deep-seated cultural reasons, staff and board
members were skeptical about the relevance of a sustained arts program in the problematic setting of Aldgate Hostel. Stark and Horstman knew that they needed to inspire
people from direct experience in order to move the program forward.
As a first step, Stark and some staff members visited the artists and staff of a pioneering community development program, Bromley-by-Bow Centre, where the arts haveplayed a seminal role. Immediately, the Look Ahead staff’s commitment began tostrengthen. They were personally inspired, a first step in a shared learning experiencefor staff and the chief executive. The visit took them away from their familiar setting andencouraged them to look at their surroundings differently.
It took a year to build the staff team to support the arts program at both the hostel
and head office. This team included the Aldgate hostel manager, the head of hostels, andsomeone from the maintenance department. As a group and individually, team members
visited other examples of artists working in a community development or health setting.
The process itself helped forge a different mode of communication across departments.
Meanwhile, for her introduction to Aldgate, Horstman toured the building with staff.
The tour enabled them to see the hostel through new eyes. Horstman pointed out thatnone of the natural wood, old maritime paintings, or areas around the paintings in thehostel had been damaged. The greatest destruction seemed to occur in the ugliest or least
well-designed areas. The damage occurred where the décor felt institutional.

HORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE
Learning the Art of Neighborhood

holds regular meetings with residents. Residents are charged rent, which is paid out of
their state housing benefit.
There are 35 staff people and 163 residents (approximately 28% women and 72%
men). Of those, 99.1% are unemployed. People gain access to the hostel by referring
themselves (22%) and through outreach teams (78%). In 1997, people who were sleeping in the streets were made a priority. Residents’ stays vary from weeks to months tosometimes years. The cultural background of residents is 47% British or European, 21%
African, 9% Caribbean, 5% Irish, and 5% Asian. About a third describe themselves asblack, and a small percentage are refugees or asylum seekers. Residents range in age
from 15% under age 21 to a majority between 25 and 40, with 20% aged 40 to 60.

[People] can understand “the arts”
only in terms of their own mostrecent experience of them.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

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HORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE

Recruiting the Arts Coordinator
Aldgate needed an arts coordinator to plan the program, raise additional funds, contract
and manage artists, and communicate with other staff. Stark wanted someone with achallenging, contemporary aesthetic rather than a candidate from a more traditional community arts background. Horstman drew up a job description, specifications, and an advertisement, which she discussed with Look Ahead’s committee to win support. The
committee set broad aims for the program, to which the staff agreed:

Learning the Art of Neighborhood To create a sense of welcome for the hostel’s staff, residents, and neighbors.
 To provide a sense of the hostel as home, created by a team of staff and residents.
 To create an environment that recognizes the self-worth of residents and staff.
After the arts coordinator candidates toured the hostel in small groups, they were asked
to propose the first steps they would take to develop the program. Two young women,
Helen Carey and Tamar Arnon, who ran their own commercial arts company, TC Arts, made the best proposal.
Look Ahead appointed them as part-time consultants. That
they also worked on other projects meant they kept theirfeet in the art world and could bring those contacts andfresh perspectives to Look Ahead. Without this, there wasa danger the program could become institutionalized. Look
Ahead was not appointing social workers, but arts curators
whose canvas became the hostel.

Over time . . . disruption came to bevalued as a way to stimulate
flexibility and a spirit of enterpriseacross the organization.

Settling in: Management Issues
Within the first six months, management needed to make certain adaptations to ensuresmooth operation with procedures at the head office and to establish common pointsof reference between TC Arts and Look Ahead staff, particularly in the area of maintenance. During the first phase of their work, Carey and Arnon visited various arts
projects, set up an arts steering committee, and established communications with other
Look Ahead departments, such as public relations. The staff team and the arts managers acknowledged that the new initiative would undoubtedly thrust new demands on
established ways of doing things. Over time, this disruption came to be valued as a way
to stimulate flexibility and a spirit of enterprise across the organization. Together, they
established the aims of the arts program in a three-year plan:© Felix Reyes-Nunez

68

From a project at another Look
Ahead hostel, self-portrait by Felix
Reyes-Nunez, with assistance ofartists Michele Fuirer and Andrew
Fisher, Serpentine Gallery.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSHORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE To help residents view their stay at Aldgate positively, giving them confidence toplan their futures.
 To enhance and improve the quality of the hostel environment for both residents
and staff in a permanent and progressive manner.
 To discover and encourage talents, either in the arts or elsewhere, through theenvironment-enhancement project and special events program.
 To put Aldgate Hostel on the map locally and initiate a program for the larger community; to endorse pride in the locale.
 To take this opportunity to contribute to art both locally and nationally.

Learning the Art of Neighborhood

A distinguishing feature of the program was this last principle. It was the artistic ambition that enabled the program to connect with people beyond the hostel’s boundaries.

Involving Residents and Staff
Getting the process of consultation right was critical to getting commitment from residents and staff. Carey and Arnon quickly learned to work within the hostel’s prevailingculture. The unpredictable and immediate nature of life at Aldgate meant that consultation on paper was difficult. Direct dialogue proved to be far more successful. Carey andArnon consulted residents outside the dining room after people finished their evening
meals so they could contact most of the residents. Even those people who did not stop
to give an opinion were curious. When the consultations were followed by practical results, people felt they had been seen and heard. For example, even if the paint colors theychose for redecoration were not used, they knew they had been consulted. The processof consultation helped to extend a sense of ownership of the hostel and communicated ashift of ambiance from an institution to a home.

The arts coordinators chose artists to lead the workshops based on the quality of their artistic practice, robustness of approach, outgoing personalities, and appeal across age, culture, and gender. Artists who are leaders in their fields often
led workshops, all of which were of outstanding quality.
One of the first artists to work at the hostel was Rob
Mulholland, a sculptor and furniture design er from
Glasgow. After consulting with residents, he evolved designs for the games room, one of the communal spaces thatwas key to transforming the hostel’s atmosphere. Many
residents felt the room was threatening, and the women, inparticular, were reluctant to enter it. The process of reinventing and reclaiming the space via the creation of shared
artifacts and custom-designed furniture made the room
seem safe. Enamel panels were also created for the entrance hall. The images used on these emerged from workshops and depicted the hands of groups of residents. Thesepanels, together with specially designed seating, created asense of welcome for anyone entering the building. There
was a tangible reduction in fear.
Following a series of interviews with mosaic artists,
ceramicist Rebecca Newnham was commissioned to redesign the bathrooms. The designs emerged from workshopswith residents. Another leading ceramic artist, Duncan
Hooson, designed and led workshops to improve the corridors. Witnessing the work under way prompted new conversations and new connections among residents and staff.
Other participatory workshops included mosaics,
enamel panels, photography, filmmaking, printmaking,furniture-making, ceramics, drawing, and drama. Many
took part in the workshops: around 22 artists or designers A resident of Aldgate Hostel works on a mosaic, led by artist Duncan Hooson.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4© Tamar Arnon

Workshops, Events, and Partnerships

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HORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE

Impact of the Program

Learning the Art of Neighborhood

led workshops or produced commissions; approximately 10 to 15 residents participatedin each of the 83 workshops.
Along with the core activities, many other positive opportunities have spun out ofthe program. These include a football team; culinary events with a theme, notably a
Caribbean meal and a French cheese evening; walks in the country or to the coast; trips
to exhibitions and theater performances; visits to businesses involved in the arts program; production of a newsletter, and workshops with local schools.

Look Ahead’s financial investment in the first three years of the arts program was £60,000.
Income of £17,880 via sponsorship and donations was generated for the arts program at
the hostel and of £87,000 (with an additional £25,500 pledged in 1998), for One Mile East,a wider neighborhood arts program. This was a return on investment of 117% over three
years. Cash sums have been significantly enlarged through sponsorship in kind from 47
sources. The percentage return takes no account of the significant goodwill generated
through the program or improved public and staff resident
relations.
When the hostel manager had first arrived, she described conditions as appalling. The staff barricaded themselves in the office. There was widespread drug dealing,
pimping, and prostitution. No staff member went alone
into the rest of the building without a walkie-talkie. From
the first day, Carey and Arnon ignored these conditions
and, in the words of one grant-maker, “just blew fear outof the building by laughing it away.”
Ultimately, the impact of the arts program emerges from the experiences of all whocame into contact with it and demonstrates art’s power to shift perceptions. Residents’comments illuminate best what they gained:. . . the impact of the arts program
emerges from the experiences of all
who came into contact with it anddemonstrates art’s power to shift
perceptions.

Things like this bring you up and help you find some self-worth. It showed me there werepeople in the hostel who were worth getting to know. It’s easier to build a bond when
you’re sharing activities.
Doing something different is great. Otherwise you just live off your giro [state benefit
check] and when that runs out, you stay in your room. I was sick the day of the first workshop, but Tamar persuaded me. When I came, I liked it a lot and then I forgot I was sick. I
didn’t like art till I came here. It’s a positive atmosphere; it gets your brain working.

70

There is nothing else positive happening in the hostel, so the art workshops are like an oasis.
I have put things up in my room and went to an exhibition which really opened my mind.
I did a drawing workshop and learned different techniques and all about different tones. I
asked for some paper, and then when I was walking along, I’d see something and then fit it
to another setting. Other people seem to like my drawings. I don’t necessarily want to makea living out of drawing; it means something different to me.
It’s good to have ambitious things, to have something in the hostel that is not just aboutproblems. It’s nice seeing different sides of peoples’ lives. There does not have to be an immediate payoff for it to be useful. It does not have to be just about training or jobs; it’svaluable in itself, and the payoff may come later.
Helen and Tamar have given me a heart and a soul. I get a surprise in the workshops every
time. I saw [my friend] laughing for the first time, smiling, with her face all beautiful. Normally everything is dragged down and heavy.

One participant recognized the part the program played in securing him a job and training in his chosen field, art direction in a film company. When he arrived, he said, “Theculture in the hostel didn’t encourage people to take initiative. I think people’s behavior
has changed. There is not so much mugging in the corridors.”

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSHORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE
Learning the Art of Neighborhood
Aldgate residents making a film.

© Tamar Arnon

The arts program has also affected the hostel staff and made their jobs easier in some
important respects. They noted that it contributed to a culture of mutual respect in thehostel and enabled people to be recognized as individuals with personalities and talents.
They are not just identified by their problems. This began a virtuous circle. As mutual
respect grew within the hostel, the quality of service from contractors improved. Previously, work often was done badly because the contractors didn’t think the hostel deserved any better. Now they were proud of their work. The program also encouraged
residents to take responsibility. With more activities, they could take on responsibility
and reduce their dependency. Some staff members commented:
The first thing I noticed was the residents making mosaics in the bathrooms. What was fantastic
was that instead of only having discussions about problems, people were saying, “Look at that.
Isn’t it beautiful?”
The physical environment makes a huge difference. There are pictures on the walls up the backstairs and on each landing now that are exclusively residents’ work. It makes the presence ofresidents tangible and leaves a note about people who have lived here. It lends a history.

The staff acknowledged that the arts program contributed to the hostel’s atmosphere. They
were amazed by the range and number of people involved. The staff’s feelings of cynicism
and isolation changed. Before the program, there was a sharp divide and sometimes
adversarial relationship between the staff and residents. After the arts program’s inception,
staff and residents sorted out violent incidents together. The other dramatic change has
been in the reputation of the hostel. The nature of the work is much more demanding thanin other Look Ahead hostels, due to the higher percentage of people entering directly froma life on the streets. In spite of this, the hostel has a more positive atmosphere and, in turn,
attracts good staff.
The program also offered an opportunity for artists to learn about their own working approach. By being able to interact with people outside their day-to-day settings,
many were able to extend their practice and adapt their aesthetic approach. Artists in the
program had this to say:
The first week I was quite apprehensive; then I realized they were just like me.
I had some surprises. Like the woman who did the collage on the traffic-cone tables. First I
didn’t realize what she was doing. But it looked great. It was good with people experimenting.

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HORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE[The furniture workshop] gave people an opportunity to all be together and show strength andeven a heroic quality. Cutting wood and drilling gave people a real pride in using their strength.
It gave people a chance to use their authority, too, in working out how best to organize.

Learning the Art of NeighborhoodA business supporter commented that he and his staff had learned from having a positive, creative point of contact with the hostel. They had a reason to talk with each otherand the residents in a way that overcame stereotypes. People saw the residents’ art andrealized that they were not just drunks but talented people. They learned not to assume
anything and to see that they had common ground. As a business leader, he realized, “If
we are isolated from each other, nothing gets done. We just blame each other. The launchmade people more aware we could do a great deal in that community. There was more
opportunity to explore what we could do together for the benefit of both. The staff can
get involved without it being an isolated event.”

The Arts Program and One Mile East

© Tamar Arnon

72

In March 1996, the arts program was extended to the area surrounding the hostel. Thiswider initiative, called “One Mile East,” has been the catalyst for a growing number ofcommissions, workshops, and partnerships in the neighborhood. For the first time, ahousing association was the prime mover of a large-scale initiative to regenerate the areaaround one of its properties.
As a first step, Look Ahead sought the cooperation of neighboring organizations. For
example, maintenance responsibilities for artwork commissioned for a dingy railway
bridge needed the cooperation of both the rail owners and the local authority. Look
Ahead also sought the collaboration of a locally based national bank to ease access toresources and influence. One Mile East has made a visible difference to the area. For residents participating in the program, the results have ranged from simple enjoyment tooffers of work.
Children from the primary school located at the rear of the hostel participated in One
Mile East. The teachers had needed a lot of reassurance before getting involved. They
feared that if the children got to know residents, they might be in danger if they met
them alone on the street. Their fear was not exaggerated, as previously objects had been
thrown from the hostel onto the playground and racist comments had been shouted at
the children. After negotiations, some of the artists took the children outside to sketch.
They asked the children how they would like the area to look. This research fed into
subjects during the school day and a mural the children produced on a nearby billboard.
Parents, children, teachers, and artists celebrated together. Some of the talented young
residents of the hostel also took part. The teachers acknowledged that it had been a longtime since they had felt the school was part of a community.
Because the program was so compelling and involved so many different parties, stereotypes began to overturn. The local government manager admitted that colleagues in theauthority resented anyone trying to improve the locale. However, she was motivated to get
involved because she recognized that solutions can befound only in partnerships.
Funders learned to think differently about what might
be possible in other settings. A grants and policy adviser
was intrigued by the way the momentum for involvementin the program developed. She had an opportunity to see
the results of her initial modest grant grow in possibility.
A colleague in housing found a source of inspiration
for some challenges she was facing in her own hostels. After initial skepticism, she has become one of the arts
program’s biggest advocates. She realized how dreary
most institutions are—an indictment of the housing industry. She acknowledged a bias that public money has tobe spent on functional, utilitarian housing, although it
costs no more to make hostels attractive and may beStudent from Shapla Primary School with her artwork for a mural in acheaper in the long run.
nearby underpass.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONS

. . . the importance of changing thetenor of each day and giving a senseof purpose . . . is invaluable.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

HORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE

It is difficult to measure the impact of the arts program. However, the consensus is thatthe arts have made big differences, evident in the following themes:
Change. From the outset, it was assumed the arts program would challenge accepted
ways of working at Look Ahead, the hostel, and the head office. The support of the chief
executive was vital during these periods of chaos when procedures needed to be worked
out. Stark mentored both TC Arts and Look Ahead staff members.
Cynicism. Staff and residents had assumed that any art in the hostel would be destroyed. This has not happened. When there is deliberate damage in the building, it isusually where there is no art. The arts program has also allowed staff and board members to reconnect with the reasons they do their jobs in thefirst place and has renewed their sense of pride in theirwork.
Cynicism often resulted from previous experiences orcultural background. When asked if he had preconceptions about the arts program, one staff member replied:“I’m working class; I thought art was just for posh people.
I was quite cynical about it at first. The experience here has completely changed my viewof arts projects, and for an old dinosaur philistine like me, that’s something.” The program is also providing policy makers and funders with evidence of the impact of art onsome interconnected issues of homelessness. That evidence helps them overcome skeptical colleagues and interdepartmental obstacles.
Day-to-day differences. Everyone recognized that art did not suddenly solve all problems, and some residents still have great difficulties. Some individuals still come into thehostel and deteriorate in the daunting environment. However, the importance of changing the tenor of each day and giving a sense of purpose, albeit transitory, is invaluable.
Self-worth. Everyone touched by the program, residents, staff, and private-sector
committee members, learned about their own potential. Participants in the workshops
had a tangible sense of achievement. Some individuals worked with the children fromthe school, demonstrating that they had something to offer others, with unquestioning
acceptance and curiosity. Participation encouraged self-reliance and trust at all levels.
Consultation process. The seriousness with which Carey and Arnon took the consultation process gained everyone’s respect and helped to build an atmosphere of cooperation. They were seen as fearless, and their different styles as complementary. They werefelt to be from the outside world, removed from the problems and more institutional relationships of residents and staff, and at the same time bringing a sense of care, affection, and flair to the hostel.
Celebration, continuity, and history. Residents’ work displayed in the hostel and thevisible aspects of the program provided points of reference for a sense of continuity andprogress in an otherwise chaotic and immediate environment. The special event eveningsand day trips reinforced the sense of the hostel as a community and provided a sharedhistory for residents, staff, and visitors. These events and the arts program as a whole also
gave a celebratory reason for visitors to come to the hostel and for ex-residents to maintain contact and continuity of relationships with the hostel.
Links to the world. Links with organizations and projects outside the hostel werevaluable for breaking down an institutional culture. These links not only opened up realopportunities for broadening the residents’ experiences, but allowed both residents andothers to measure themselves against real-world standards. The workshops gave the artists an opportunity to reexamine attitudes to their own work and test their approach ina rigorous setting.
Social capital. The One Mile East project has helped change neighbors’ prejudicesabout the hostel and has also given many different kinds of people a way to contributeto the wider world beyond their immediate activities. It has helped to knit the hostel andLook Ahead into the local neighborhood and into London’s wider priorities for regeneration. The presence of local children in the hostel generated a feeling of connection andnormal life. In exchange, the children enjoyed doing the mural, and their teachers felt
part of the community through its execution.

Learning the Art of Neighborhood

Emerging Themes73© Tamar Arnon

HORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE

Contributions. A board member was surprised by how
quickly private-sector staff grasped the long-term benefitsof the program and noted, “They are doing it because theygenuinely like doing it. They make lots of time available
because it is so much more enjoyable than anything elsethey are doing.” For funders, the program provides an inspirational project that is delivering on a small scale what
they are seeking to do on a larger scale.

Learning the Art of Neighborhood

Leadership
At first glance, there may seem to be an element of magic
to the success of the arts at Aldgate Hostel. Magic is certainly there. However, on closer examination, it becomes
clear that this success is based on visionary leadership—a
proven approach to managing complex change. Understanding this factor makes it possible for other managers
who wish to replicate the successes of the arts program to
be innovative in how they approach the arts. Replication is
not about mimicking, but rather about learning from the
Aldgate experience how to tackle challenges in anothersetting. How can the arts encourage organizations to learn
and stimulate learning in their neighborhood and beyond?
The vital leadership steps in initiating a program ofthis kind are:

Artist Zoe Benbow working on a public art commission as part of One Mile
East.

 Identify a challenge or opportunity.
 Develop a vision for what you want to do.
 Enroll others in the vision and give them the autonomy to implement it.
 Manage the creative tension between the vision andthe reality.
 Share the glory.

The Nature of the Art

74

The quality of work commissioned and undertaken in workshops is paramount. The experience of quality transcends job descriptions and social status and generates hope. The
possibility of constant surprise is essential. Arts programs cannot be doled out routinely.
An element of mystery has to be at the center, rather than an instrumental, didactic, or
historical approach. People respond instinctively to artistic quality, even if they don’t
share a specific aesthetic. Controversial art at least provokes a discussion about aesthetics, rather than problems.
An arts program gives everyone the opportunity to move beyond standard approaches to problems, to revise job descriptions, and to maintain connections withpeople on a human level. It can facilitate a shift to team-based working practice, again
a proven management approach for generating creativity, innovation, and increased effectiveness. If art is seen as only an add-on activity for keeping people amused or theplace pretty, it will lose its effect.
With the success of One Mile East, the arts program has precipitated a change in
Look Ahead’s perception of its role from a housing provider to a catalyst for change andinclusion in the neighborhood. The hostel has moved from being a liability to becominga resource, not only for residents and staff, but for neighbors, artists, and policymakers.
Social exclusion is not just an issue for those at the lower end of the economic and social scale; it concerns all those who find themselves excluded at the wealthier end,
through distance, privilege, prejudice, or overwork. The arts program overcame somebarriers to understanding the real obstacles to social inclusivity and took the first steps
to more genuine social cohesion.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSHORSTMAN AND ROWNTREE

People respond instinctively toartistic quality, even if they don’t
share a specific aesthetic.

Learning the Art of Neighborhood

The arts program has also changed perceptions about the role of an arts coordinator. When Carey and Arnon began working with Look Ahead, they were contractors,delivering a specific service. Within six months, they had become key collaborators with
the Look Ahead team, not just delivering a joint vision for the hostel, but stretching andexpanding it. Their exceptionally successful work laid the foundations for extending thearts program across all Look Ahead’s hostels. As a result,
Look Ahead has appointed an arts manager to coordinate
the program at its other hostels.
Replication of this story is both easy and difficult. The
key is to resist the temptation to seek the same outcomesquickly by simply mimicking the program. The story of art
at Aldgate clearly argues against taking this route. Rather,it shows the effectiveness of learning from past experience and other examples, followedby equal investment in risk and subsequent reflection. Only in this way will an arts program be best adapted to the environment it seeks to enliven.
A housing association does not have to be sure of the art it seeks to commission, but
it does need to be sure of the vision it has for social housing. By committing itself and its
staff to provide residents with the same stimulating, welcoming, and cared-for environment most of us create in our homes, housing associations lay the groundwork for the
successful replication of this arts story. The outcomes will be similar; the paths will vary.

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REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

FEATURE

Learning, not Logos—
A New Dialogue between
Arts and Business
Julia Rowntree

Simon MaggsÊ

F

Julia Rowntree
Director
London International Festival of
Theatre Business Arts Forum76© 2001 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

or the past 13 years, I have worked to gain financial and other forms of support forthe contemporary arts, most notably for the London International Festival of Theatre(LIFT). My main focus has been securing support from the private sector. This search hastaken me on an interesting journey—one that opens up possibilities for how the arts and particularly contemporary theater and festivals can stimulate new ways of knowing the worldthat are illuminating for all, including those people who work to create wealth. It is also aroute to finding a way to sustain contemporary arts organizations in the new economy: global, wired, and largely privatized. Rather than providing any clear destination, my own journey may provide signposts and coaching stops for others who feel that the arts are not justentertainment or a badge of status, but a fundamental aspect of understanding the world.
Since 1981, LIFT has brought more than 4,000 artists from over 60 countries to London to stage their work in theaters, parks, churches, on the River Thames, and in surprising locations around the city. We choose productions because they take the form oftheater into a new realm or they say something particularly interesting about the culture
from which they come. When the festival began, London audiences found it sufficiently
interesting simply to see performances from elsewhere. Now the world has changed fundamentally, and in response, the festival links international artists and the people ofLondon, now thought to be the world’s most culturally diverse city. We do this via our
education program, which brings international artists and young people together to produce their own events in the festival. Our mission is to provide an opportunity for artists from around the world and the people of London to celebrate and explore together
what makes the world tick.
The festival, which happens every two years, allows us, at the beginning, to startwith a blank sheet of paper and ask ourselves: Why are we doing this? What are we for?
The new chapter in my particular story started with a crisis and indeed an exploration ofwhat I myself was for. For ten years, my job had been to raise money for the festival fromthe private sector. In the climate of Britain in the eighties, when market values were in
the ascendancy, I was up against a few obstacles. The festival is a highly developmental
operation; we found it harder and harder to attract commercial sponsorship for our activities. We did not have a Royal patron (nor did we particularly want one) and were not
the first choice for corporate entertainment. Productions were sometimes critical of thepolitical regimes of the countries from which they came, so businesses were not eager tobe allied with such artists. In spite of this, and against all the odds, our sponsorship
record was highly successful, representing around 13% of our overall budget.
However, in 1993, two things happened in one month that were to change my life.
Barings’ Bank, one of the oldest merchant banks in Britain and our longest-term supporter, crashed, and the sponsor of our education program pulled out. After ten years ofraising money for the arts, I found everything falling apart in my hands. I was throwninto a personal crisis and needed to answer some fundamental questions.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSROWNTREE
Learning, not Logos 

I had to think very hard about my own role and value. As a language graduate, I had
always been an interpreter between cultures of one kind or another. I had to find a wayof speaking that would allow a completely different conversation to happen with people
in the private sector. However, I discovered that not only did I need a new conversation,
I needed a new language and conversation with people completely different from thosewith whom I was used to engaging.
My mind buzzed with questions as I set out to discover anew what was the role of
the arts as I saw them, with no direct commercial application. Why would business beinterested in young people exploring their potential and abilities? What was the value of
encountering worlds other than your own? What was the role of celebration for ourtimes? What was the role of the artist who questions accepted ways of doing things?
What was the value of cultural activities in the public domain? What was the value ofthe public domain in a largely privatized world?
I couldn’t throw light on these issues by just talking to artists; we were all talking
about the same things. Since my particular focus had been the business community, I
needed to talk to business people. They were different, though, from the people I usually dealt with in the arts and community affairs departments of organizations. Throughno fault of their own, they were low in the corporate hierarchy and could talk only about
the size of the company logo or the amount of press coverage their sponsorship was generating. Whatever their stated community policy, their measures of success were marketing measures. We knew this was the situation for arts organizations and enteredwillingly into these contracts. However, I felt there were much more interesting conversations to be had. I had to find ways to engage in discussion with other individuals who
were asking their own questions.
I began to discover that business people hungered to embark on different kinds ofconversation beyond the boundaries of their own organizations. They had a desire toengage with the arts in a search for new language and new metaphors. There were evenpeople who were asking very long-term questions suchas, “What is business for?”However, the challenge for business people was tofind the time to engage with the arts outside their work
environments. Often they were lone voices in their organizations. Their in-trays were full, the pressures of producing financial targets so great, that colleagues saw
conversation with people in the arts as irrelevant. They had difficulty finding time tospend with their families, let alone embarking on other conversations or going to thetheater. My challenge was formalizing a way for people to engage with the festival. I wasdetermined that the conversation would be naturally stimulated by what we were presenting anyway in the festival.
One of our advisers, writer and broadcaster Charles Handy, came up with an incredibly simple way to do this. He said, “Let’s invite people to attend events in the festival,
and then we’ll talk about their experience. Artists should be part of the discussion. Thenpeople can hear what the artists had in mind when they were putting the show together.
They can ask how they got it off the ground and worked together.”After a long period of research, advice, and support from many quarters, this idea
has now become the LIFT Business Arts Forum. Practically speaking, this is a linked
series of seminars and performances in the festival that brings together people from thearts and private and public sectors to develop insights into how the world works. The
overarching question we pose to people is: What did you learn from LIFT events, theircreation and management? What would you do differently in your work as a result?
The first year of the forum, in LIFT 1995, we tested whether people in businesscould gain insights from the festival. They did indeed. Talks ranged from raw discussionsof race to the role of emotions in business. Participants commented:[People] had a desire to engage withthe arts in a search for new language
and new metaphors.

Businesses are obsessed with order and stability, but they are steeped in emotion.
Turbulence, confusion, things not being immediately obvious need not represent a threat,but something we can react to in a positive sense.

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ROWNTREE
Learning, not Logos 

To be innovative, we need to break down conventional categorization.
I’ve learned you have to listen to a minority view, even if you don’t like it.

Ironically, given my starting point, an accountant who had been involved in Barings’
Bank after the crash said, “All the financial regulations in the world are worth nothing if
you don’t understand the cultural complexity in which they are set.” LIFT can’t solve thatprecisely, but through its international and local program, it can sensitize people to justhow complicated culture is—culture that goes beyond nationality, of course, to include
culture of ethnicity, department, organization, class, and gender.
The forum provides space for contrarian views and experimentation. Artists too feel agreater sense of connection. Instead of just conversing with their usual audiences, they gaina more acute view of their role in society by extending whom they speak to. At LIFT, wehave learned a great deal about our own organization and the wider world, via the forum.
It has built an outstanding network of thinkers and advisers for our work. At a financial
level, the forum generates income to support one entire production in the festival.
So why is getting the business and arts worlds to think differently about each otherworth pursuing and why is it timely? During periods of huge uncertainty, such as we all
face, there are no ready-made solutions. This applies to all organizations andpolicymakers, in whatever sector they operate. The demands on leaders are changing asa result. Our success will depend on a readiness of mind and openness of attitude, anda certain humility to admit what we don’t even know we don’t know. The more organizations are in tune with a changing external environment, the more they are likely toadapt and flourish. The forum can develop many of those attitudes.
The venture brings people out of their familiar organizational settings, helping them to develop a “helicopterview”: seeing how they fit into the wider social, economic,
and value context both locally and globally. The forum
helps develop the strength to withstand sometimes lonely
and frustrating circumstances within the inevitable sluggishness of institutions. It encourages an ability to flourish
in ambiguous situations and a willingness to listen in greater depth to a minority viewor unfamiliar perspective. It encourages people to realize that they can’t control everything, and not only to think with their minds, but to use all their senses and to trust their
instincts.
There is another reason for renewed interest in the ways that artists of different cultures think and work. As we move from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based
economy, wealth creation is no longer determined by physical objects moving overphysical geography. Completely different cognitive processes are needed to explore newroutes to wealth creation. Former director of Xerox PARC, John Seely Brown, commented: “All innovation is aesthetic. It comes from the white spaces between fields,
when we put people together who have quite different points of view.” The forum provides access to artists’ thought processes and an opportunity to reflect on the social processes that increasingly will be the source of wealth creation.
The forum is useful at another level. The global economy runs closely with global
flows of information. News of corporate behavior travels fast; markets are increasingly
value driven. Businesses have to take stock of public opinion and face issues that have
perhaps been simpler or less public in the past. How does an individual within a company make sense of all this?
Sometimes an outside view and access to the very whole vocabulary of the theater
is the place to look. The forum has the potential to explore the complex ethical and cultural issues in which we are all implicated, whether producer or consumer. When the
power of technology means that you can do more or less anything, the question for business is: What do we choose to do? I suggest that business people cannot solve this question on their own. They need people of other disciplines with whom to reflect.
Artists also need to know more about the processes shaping our lives in order to dotheir jobs better. In a privatized world, power has shifted from the old social hierarchies
and government to the private sector. With power comes responsibility. Artists have al-. . . why is getting the business andarts worlds to think differently about
each other worth pursuing . . . ?

78

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSROWNTREE
Learning, not Logos © Emily Sperways had a relationship with those in power. This relationship has not been solely oneof patronage, but has also encompassed an examination of power and responsibility, its
paradoxes and dilemmas.
As for artists, what is their motivation for involvement in a new kind of discoursewith business when they are clearly not directly concerned with the profitability of business? In an increasingly privatized world, where the ideologies of socialism and capitalism have more or less merged, our lives are more and more determined by the dominantculture of capitalism. This will not be determined by political ideology, but by the aggregate of the myriad management, participation, and consumer decisions we all take.
These interactions constitute the culture of capitalism we are creating together. We needtime to reflect on this and a place of trust in which to do it. I believe that the LIFT Business Arts Forum is one way to start that conversation. Perhaps it is a reinvention of the
traditional role of the theater as a place to think, see, and feel the world differently andsee the world through the eyes of others.
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REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4© Nancy J. Adler and Lew Yung-Chien

80

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSThe Role of Art
and the Artist

VIEWS

Edgar H. ScheinW

hy is art relevant to other elements of society like business or government? Why
should managers learn anything about art and the role of the artist? I have thought
about this for years and have recently formulated some thoughts. I preface this short essay by noting that I have not done “research” in this area. Rather, I come at this from apersonal point of view, both as a lifetime sketcher and as a clinician interested in seeing
how artistic activity has affected my life and the lives of others with whom I have worked.
The several “functions” of art and artists that I will describe below overlap and interact.
I separate them to highlight the variety of functions that can be identified, once we reflect on this topic.
First, art and artists stimulate us to see more, hear more, and experience moreof what is going on within us and around us.
As part of their training, artists expand their perceptual and expressive range. One of
their key roles, then, is to help the rest of us see more, to broaden our perspectives, andto get in touch with both internal and external forces that we might otherwise not notice.
This point applies particularly to the visual arts, but is probably also a factor in musicalcomposition and performance arts. I suspect that composers and actors, like painters andsculptors, have to learn to see and hear before they can create. Many of the exercises
through which artists learn how to “see” better are highly applicable to human situations
we mismanage because we have not learned to see what is actually going on.
Second, art does and should disturb, provoke, shock, and inspire.
It is in the nature of culture formation that we seek stability and predictability in ourenvironment. We all live in safe cocoons created by our occupation, social class,ethnicity, religion, group memberships, and family. These cocoons determine our perceptions and what we consider to be appropriate things to see and think.
Art and the artist communicate directly with elements of our unconscious andthereby encourage us to broaden the range of perceptions and feelings that we allow
ourselves. Art should and does force us to look at what we normally avoid because it isdisturbing, anxiety provoking, politically incorrect. Art focuses squarely on precisely
those things that are forbidden in our daily discourse. It is often the only medium inwhich societal hypocrisy can be exposed because we can rationalize art as being “onlyart,” not reality. Yet that is precisely why art is needed and is potentially so powerful.
Third, the artist can stimulate us to broaden our skills, our behavioral repertory,
and our flexibility of response.
Through legitimizing and stimulating improvisation, the artist, particularly the performing artist, can help us to overcome “knee jerk” reactions and old habits. Many of ourhabits are stable because we have never thought about alternatives or taken the risk oftrying them. It is surprising once we are seduced into trying some improvisation exercises
how liberating and educational this experience can be. In a similar vein, to the extent thatart shocks or stimulates, it allows us to surface feelings that we may not have been awareof in ourselves. Incorporating those feelings into our emotional repertory and acting onthem makes us richer and more flexible human beings.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4

Edgar H. Schein
MIT Sloan School of Management81© 2001 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

SCHEINThe Role of Art and the Artist

82

Fourth, the role of the arts and artists is to stimulate and legitimize our own aesthetic sense.
We talk about “beautiful” plays on the football field, or the “beauty” of a sales plan,or the “beauty” of an intervention that a consultant made, but we don’t talk about or
consider what it is that makes it beautiful. We don’t really analyze or reflect upon theaesthetic dimension partly because we do not have any conceptual tools or principles
to draw on. The artist can teach us what the elements of beauty are and legitimize theimportance of beauty in all elements of our lives.
Fifth, analysis of how the artist is trained and works can produce important insights
into what is needed to perform and what it means to lead and manage.
By analyzing the skills that underlie different art forms, one can gain insight into
what is needed to perform in general. For example, the painter is not only dependent on
a creative muse to tell him or her what would be worth rendering on a canvas. He or
she needs specific knowledge and skills such as color theory, drawing skill, ability to see
clearly what is to be rendered, theory of perspective, eye-hand coordination, and thecapacity to draw on her or his own emotional and unconscious self. A poet needs to havea large vocabulary and a sense of how to put words together, including an ear for rhyming, if that is part of the poetic expression. A composer of music needs to be able tomanage the technical skills of composition as well as be able to play relevant instruments.
When we move to the performing arts such as orchestras, string quartets, and jazz
bands, we encounter a whole other set of skills such as the ability to read music, to playthe instrument competently, to relate to the other performers and the conductor, and, most importantly, theability to improvise.
The ability to improvise creatively is perhaps the most
relevant of these skills in terms of applicability to organizations because the performance of leaders and managers is
not as scripted as musical performance is. Leaders, managers, and organizers are more like composers who write ascore for others to perform. Team members create the performance from their reading of the score, their interaction
with each other, and the signals they get from their leaders,customers, and subordinates. Because they have to respondto so many often conflicting signals and cues, improvisation
becomes all the more necessary.
Improvisation in a team is, of course, much more complicated than individual improvisation such as individual
performing artists, teachers, and consultants engage in. In
order for the team to perform well, each member thinks interms of delivering a line that will enable another member
to get off a good line, rather than thinking of a good line
for him or herself. In business, consulting, teaching, sales,
and other interactive professions, one realizes if one is at
all reflective that improvisation is the major performanceelement in all of these occupations.
Sixth, and most important of all, the artist puts us
in touch with our creative self.
By emphasizing creativity as an intrinsic aspect of all
reality, the artist invites us to look at reality in a different
way; reality is not out there to be seen and appreciated.
Rather, reality is perpetually constructed through our own
daily creative activities. Or perhaps a better way to put
this is to say that the important part of reality, the partthat matters, is the part that we create for ourselves
through those activities that we own and in which we express ourselves.

Volume 2, Number 4, REFLECTIONSSCHEINThe Role of Art and the Artist

I am reminded of a story from the Korean POW camps in which the prisoners were
only allowed occasional recreation by floating on a raft in the river abutting the camp.
One of the highlights of these outings was to play a joke on the guards. It was forbidden
to leave the rafts, but invariably a prisoner would “fall” into the water causing the guards
to rush over to pull him out, at which point another prisoner on the other side of theraft would “fall” into the water, and so on. In the same vein, assembly-line workers arenotorious for their ability to creatively invent systems and procedures that defeat someof management’s goals.
The artistic is with us all the time, but if we do not pay more attention to the role ofart and the artist in our society, we run the risk of not noticing how much more effective
and happy we might be if we allowed the artist within ourselves to emerge more explicitly and consciously!

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REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 4