If Miles Davis Taught Your Office To Improvise
Submitted by Steve on August 14, 2012
From Frank J. Barrett at Fast Company:
Nurturing spontaneity, creativity, experimentation, and dynamic synchronization is no longer an optional approach to leadership. It's the only approach. The current velocity of change demands nothing less. It demands paying attention to the mental models, the cultural beliefs and values, the practices and structures that support improvisation. Following practices can help your organization emulate what happens when jazz bands improvise.
Approach Leadership Tasks As Experiments. When you approach leadership actions in this way, you are uncommonly receptive to what emerges, and you heighten self-awareness while in the middle of taking action. By definition, successful experimentation requires suspending a defensive attitude. In paying close attention to your own experience, you notice the constraint of your own bias as well as the nuances and gradations of others' responses.