Just got an email from a friend from Boston, a guru in his own right, who wrote:
Your productivity question is a good one. I suspect for experts, the only way to increase productivity (output of ideas?) is to remove all distractions from them, and give them whatever environment most stimulates their creativity. Other than that, I don't have any great insight...
In American culture, we assume that more/bigger with the same or fewer resources is what productivity is all about. You hit the nail on the head that sometimes the issue isn't more/bigger, it's APPROPRIATE amounts. Like Goldilocks, perhaps maximum "productivity" for genius is the produce just the right ideas, not necessarily the most ideas.
How do you increase productivity -- yes, it's a great question, and my answer is more focused on enhancing the team potential rather than the productivity of the individual.
Carl Stormer performing the JazzCode with Dave Edge at the Oslo Concert House, March 07.
I belive we -- partially via sharing of knowledge, better education and increased specialization -- to a certain are approaching the top of the S-curve with respect to individual productivity.
Yes we can continue to enhance the mental output of experts, but what happens to our ability to collaborate when the context becomes more and more fluid and unpredictable?
Learning from jazz can help us increase the collective output of teams when improvisation is the acknowledged way to operate.
If we could help people work better together, and if we could help them do so with less preparation, then we could really build serious competitive advantage.
To do so in an increasingly dynamic context means that we must help and train people to listen more and better. If we can enhance their ability to listen and sense what is taking place around them, then we can help them shape their contribution more appropriately to the the context in which the contribution is being made.
But how do we remove distraction and noise?
Maybe management in this context involves helping people to do less, not more? Maybe management is about more about ensuring that the task at hand matches better with individual and team skills and abilities? When musicians practice, they do so in order to release their attention required to play their instrument; only through mastery can they direct their listening towards what is going on around them.
In jazz as in all music, the instrument ensures a good match between what you are good at and what your do. The more you master your instrument, the more attention you can use to listen.
The best musicians are those with internalized skills and experience enough to know what not to play. Instruments are also a good way to ensure diversity and division of labor. In addition we have a collective way to manage risk (you take more risk, I become more predictable and static in order to increase your predictability), and we have a canon of repertoire which helps us to establish shared references across geographies, culture, language etc. We also have a method for learning improvisation (role models and roleplaying and imitation) and we avoid vertical perfection in favor of flow -- i.e., don't stop the music. This is part what I call the JazzCode.
See also my post about contextual fit.
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