8.25.2007

The Right Attitude to Rain

I’ve just come back from a brisk walk with my new Nordic walking poles. Although I was highly suspicious of their effectiveness, I must admit that they have totally won me over. Now I definitely have to do some stretching afterwards, just as my chiropractor has ordered. It’s funny how gadgets can be instrumental in creating a frame of mind, transforming a stroll into training.

When I was at the Summer Reflection workshop at Bore Place, we did some walking in the beautiful surroundings. Although the weather was somewhat daunting, we nevertheless put on our boots and ventured into the unknown. James included this in his reflections, viewing walking in the rain as a metaphor for his approach to Appreciative Inquiry.

Alexander McCall Smith is perhaps best known for his books featuring Mma Ramotswe, the first lady detective in Botswana. I do enjoy these books immensely since they provide insights into such diverse topics such as societal entrepreneurship, gender aspects, cultural differences, child rearing and love. However, he also writes about Isabel Dalhousie, the editor of Review of Applied Ethics. In his latest book, The Right Attitude to Rain, Isabel is faced with a number of philosophical and ethical questions mostly regarding to what extent we should tell people things that they probably would benefit from hearing but nonetheless do not want to know.

In the book, W H Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues” plays a significant role. Although this is a very touching verse made popular through the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, I think I like his villanelle If I Could Tell You even more.

8.18.2007

Say Yes to the Mess

What if your organisation was like a jazz band? What would it look like? How would work be organised? What would it feel like? How would decisions be made? How would errors be viewed? Who would be included in the band?

When I was at the Summer Reflections workshop at Bore Place in Kent last week, one item on the superbly composed agenda was to watch a DVD with Frank Barrett talking about creativity and improvisation in jazz and what implications this has for organizational learning. I had the benefit of participating in an AI course featuring Frank in Copenhagen in 2005, organised by Resonans. He then told us about how he combines his experience of being a professional jazz musician with his job at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. He has written an excellent article in Organizational Science about it, where he emphasise the hope that jazz brings.
”Finally, jazz improvisation can be seen as a hopeful activity. It models individual actors as protean agents capable of transforming the direction and flow of events. In that sense, jazz holds an appreciative view of human potential: it represent the belief in the human capacity to think freshly, to generate novel solutions, to create something new and interesting, reminding us of John Dewey’s contention that we are all natural learners.” (p. 620)
Hope was also one of the underlying themes for the Summer Reflections workshop, at least that was what I felt. We were thirteen AI consultants sharing experiences, reflecting upon our past and making plans for the future. Anne Radford, who organised the workshop with Jane Magruder Watkins, also introduced us to another metaphor: The Jewel Net of Indra. This wonderful story about how to view the world and its connectivity was a great point of departure for our discussion concerning how to create an AI network in the UK. Anne brought us this metaphor from the AI Consulting network, who uses it in its charter:

The doctrine of The Jewel Net of Indra is an ancient view of the universe from Hua-Yen Buddhism. It teaches that the cosmos is like an infinite net of glittering jewels, all-different and each located at the connecting points in the net. In each one we can see the images of all the others reflected. Each image contains an image of all the other jewels; and also the image of the images of the images, and so ad infinitum. The myriad reflections within each glistening jewel are the essence of the jewel itself, without which it does not exist. Every jewel is a Centre of the universe. Organizing in this image is not a machine. It is more like a hologram. Each part is the whole. Indra's Net is a web of relationships that sparkle, nourish, and amplify. It is an ancient image of oneness and diversity.
One of Frank’s messages, based on his jazz metaphor and also experience from an increasingly complex world, was “say yes to the mess”. For a person like me who likes order, is good at organising and makes a living by helping others create order, this sometimes is a hard lesson to learn. However, jazz is not totally without order. There is a basic structure with chords, there are some rules although they are sometimes not made explicit. The secret lies in providing just enough structure, making room for improvisation but also creating wonderful music. I would like to be better at creating jazz. Maybe I should start playing the bass clarinet again…