My professional role promotes collaboration within organisations, my research role analyses processes of collaboration and the complexities that arise within them. I have a third collaboration as piano player in a jazz trio named Decanter. Here is a video we made this Christmas: Come Together
This posting is in part to show the video, and in part to unpick the various facets of the term collaboration. I hope to draw some helpful parallels between the processes of musical collaboration and other forms of collective endeavour. Here are five aspects:
1. A musical performance takes place in real time. There is no option to pause, think things through, and develop a plan; because if you stop, so does the performance. As piano player in a trio I provide the context – various predictable combinations of chords in different arrangements, changes in speed and volume create the soundscape within which the song happens.
Obviously you can play it again. Rehearsal provides the opportunity to review previous performance and to think carefully about what is going on within a song. This creates ways to learn from experience and for things to improve. Service provision can be understood as the delivery of a repeating performance. It’s worth thinking about rehearsal.
2. Every musical performance is different. The performance chemistry is driven by a multiplicity of variables starting from the musicians and their inter-relationship. I cut my finger slicing food two days before recording this video the obvious result is a plaster visible on my finger. Less visible is the relief that I was not so badly hurt I couldn’t play. Many physical, emotional, and relational factors will be in operation. Other factors include the venue and the audience. Their interest and appreciation interacts with the band and conditions the performance. When things go well the result will necessarily be special and personalised to the setting, this perspective helpfully informs the design of bespoke services.
3. When Rittel and Weber coined the term “wicked problem” to identify some problems as dynamic systems that seem to remain one step ahead of the folk attempting to solve them, they identified ten key factors underpinning this process. At number five was “Every solution to a wicked problem is a one-shot operation…every attempt counts significantly” – every note you play changes the song. Life in a jazz trio is entirely built from these change processes none of us do the same thing every time the result is always different. This is enjoyable rather than a wicked problem!! and a good example of a dynamic systems perspective.
4. Collaboration derives from co (alongside or together) and labour (as in working). Crucially these processes of inter-relatedness are about people together. A crucial element of team function lies in the location and nature of decision-making. A leader who does not devolve decision-making stifles creativity. There are costs and benefits here – it may be crucial that troops in combat operate with single-minded focus but this single-minded approach restricts creativity and fun and would kill the band. Musical decision-making requires shared trust and authority. This co-ownership can be achieved in many team settings, and grown through effective leadership.
5. Daniel Stern famously writes about the attunement between a mother and infant and its developmental impact. Effective attunement is emotionally satisfying and it is likely that this is one of the reasons that playing and listening to music are enjoyable. A “tight” band evidences attunement not just in the quality of the music but the also the nature of its interrelatedness. This can be observed in exchanges of glances, and other physical movement. This is, in part, how dance enhances performance. It is equally possible to observe these processes in settings where teams work together. I am currently using observation of inter-agency meetings as a source of naturally occuring data for my research.
I would be happy to discuss ways in which these perspectives might be brought to bear within your organisation, or project, to improve collaboration. Feel free to contact:
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