Music as Metaphor for Project Management — and all that Jazz!
September 3rd, 2003 by Hal
John Reh, management guide at about.com described management as The Music Paradigm in his blog. He was curious what I thought. Also see What is the Music Paradigm created by Roger Nierenberg, Music Director of the Stamford Symphony Orchestra in Fairfield County, Connecticut. I read the referenced work. Here's my reply:
Dear John,
Many people have used the music paradigm for management (and leadership). There's something about it that strikes me as being off. First, there are no conductors in business. Sure, there are strong managers who impose their intentions or will on the organization, but in a moment-to-moment basis no ONE person is conducting. The other thing has to do with the score. Orchestras play to a score. Some might say that is like a game plan. But all experienced managers know that the plan is good for the first play (sometimes), then it's all about improvisation.
Let me contrast that with what I'm noticing about consistently high-performing companies. Management attends to the systems and practices for coordinating action. They set standards and protocols for how people work one with the other, what is expected of each other when in commitment conversations, and how people will provide assessments about how business is doing. Systems, processes, and practices are managed, not people. The second issue has to do with planning. Planning is never a script or a score. Planning can take many forms. Good planning like sailing anticipates that people will never be 'on course', they will be making adjustments (tacking) to return to course. That takes two things: knowing what is intended and sharing the responsibility for assessing and acting to make the adjustments.
While the music paradigm is seductive, like all metaphors much more is hidden about the nature of that being described than is revealed.
Hal
No sooner had I sent the message to John than I remembered reading a paper on project management as improvisational jazz. After rereading the paper, I'm thinking project management is like performing music, just not like orchestral music.
The people at Project Jazz, LLC offer a different view in their article Playing the Live Jazz of Project Management, by Kim Wikström and Alf Rehn, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. I am offering the following quotes not to present their case, but to give you a flavor of their writing. My elaborations are in parenthesis.
(P)lanning projects is at best an act of guidance, as all aspects of the actual project work never can be completely mapped.
Standards (music) can be played straight up, but the best performances always consist of improvisation on a head (lead melody). To play a standard straight would be pointless because it is non-productive. The structure that the sheet music embodies is not even thought of as something to be followed, but as something to act with.
The historicity (embodiment of prior work) is constantly present even in the freest, most radical of pieces. This shows that the unconventional use of structure has not created fragmented or ignorant upshots, but rather freed these upshots to create better things from the same structure.
(T)hat ability to improvise should not be treated as non-conformity, but as a way to utilize what has earlier been best practice. We are quick to assume that knowledge and skills are technological concepts, where being able to use the given tools or methods in the best possible manner are seen as constitutive (central to its nature).
What is a recurring theme in this text is the observation that a performance is not born at the moment the first note is played, but neither is it wholly unplanned. The unalterable intermingling of planned action with instinctive reaction that occurs in both improvisational jazz and project work is an important starting point to map the nature of project management.
Greg Howell offered these comments:
Jazz is even more mutual adjustment (than orchestral music) and often internally both very competitive and cooperative. There is something about how the performance matters more than the piece ends. On a project we attend to the end and find little value in the actual performance.
Kim Wikström and Alf Rehn offer these parallels between improvisational jazz and project management in the order they say is important. I'll not comment on these individually. Collectively, the five 'linkages' express the essence of agile and lean approaches to project delivery.
- Plans are enabling, not constricting.
- Aberrations are normal.
- You work with what happens.
- Order is emergent, not pre-defined.
- Disorder is not chaotic.
(W)e argue…projects also are an imperfect art. They are not similar to regular industry in the sense that they should be optimized and that there would be a perfect way to implement one. While one cannot disregard that set goals should be attained, one must also recognize that new goals are created during the project, and a good project can have unexpected results that fall outside the master plan entirely.
The management of projects also seems to be a less straight forward activity than is usually assumed in the literature on projects. This management is less a following of a plan, and more the handling of continuous action, some ordered, some not.
I hope I haven't taken away the thunder of the authors' paper. Do read it. They have made an important contribution to the conversation of project management.
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September 4th, 2003 at 12:57 pm
A paradigm is a pattern or model used as an example, according to the dictionary. (I hate the overused word)
For my taste the Music Paradigm is too much of a stretch. Management is a lot simpler than symphonic music or jazz improv. In fact it’s so simple that smart people often think right past it and then think they need things like the music paradigm to bring them back to square one.
But I’m suspicious of anything that uses the word paradigm — always smells like a way to generate consulting dollars to me in my cynical old age.
September 4th, 2003 at 2:57 pm
Frank, Frank, Frank. No need to be cynical. While I don’t know the guys from Finland, let’s take their work at face value. They say they want to understand more about project management. They hope they have done something that contributes to the dialog.
I enjoyed both thoughts. Music as metaphor — conductor and orchestra — showed the commonsense we live with. It’s very similar to the machine metaphor that has ceased to help us improve project management. Improv jazz reminds me of the care required to build relatedness both in backgrounds (to recognize the historicity of the art form) and trust (to produce collaboration and innovation rather than competition).
The whole thing is only about exploration and understanding. I’m for more of that.
September 4th, 2003 at 3:37 pm
Ok, I’ll stop being cynical. There, I feel better already!
If jazz is a useful metaphor — and I think it is — Project managers are charged with managing the musicans, I think. Making sure they show up for the gig and have their instruments ready, for example.
How’s that for a paradigm?
September 7th, 2003 at 7:03 pm
Well, I hate how the word paradigm is used too! And I checked, the paper I and Kim wrote (it feels like ages ago…) does not contain said word. When we wrote the paper, we were interested not so much in jazz (a later version of the paper pointed out that jazz was more a metaphor than anything else), but in improvisation. And to me, improvisation is still an important aspect in how projects are executed. Just my two notes…
September 7th, 2003 at 7:07 pm
Oh, and one more thing: I never, ever did any consulting off this piece, nor would I. I’m a philosopher, basically, working on strange theoretical things, and never wanted to get into selling…