Carl Stormer's JazzCode

Laptop running on battery: how to finish in less time

A few weeks ago I was to give four back-to-back lectures (essentially, the last module of the JazzCode Presentation Method) to a group of executives from a global IT company attending London Business School.   I had decided to spend time revamping all of my teaching material.  But as I unpacked in my hotel room, getting ready to start working on my computer I realized that my power supply was left at home.  I called the concierge:  Can you help me? I asked, trying to hide the desperation I felt.  The voice in the other end was polite, but unable to help.  He knew of no computer stores open on a Sunday afternoon in London.  The green battery on my task bar showed me that I had two hours left before the electronic heart of my computer body would stop, two hours before everything would shut down, like a suffocating body going into coma.



I realized that I had no choice.  I had to finish in two hours.  I had to ignore my own desire for perfection.  I wrote out a message on the back of my business card:  Ignore your urge to be perfect.  I photographed it with my cellphone and transferred it to my computer.  I placed it as the second slide.  I discovered that I had spelled "perfect" wrong.  I did not have time to change it.

I finished ten minutes before the deadline imposed by the lack of power.  I sent it off five minutes before I was liberated from technology by the lack of power.  I was relieved. I had six hours to myself, six hours where I could sleep or read a newspaper or sit in a restaurant or go for a walk.
I had learned something.  Imposing absolute boundaries forces a very healthy discipline.  I was reminded of two sayings from my past:

- The less time you have, the less time it takes.
-  Perfection is the enemy of the good.

How can you set yourself deadlines that are absolutes -- for yourself, for your team and for your subordinates?

How to delegate staffing of a great group

When I recently gave a JazzCode in Berlin, I did not know any musicians
in Berlin, and the way I found the right players was different and very
successful.  I went to the biggest jazz club, found the most busy bass
player who played with the most bands, checked out his website,
listened to a few recordings with him, and ended up hiring Marc
Muellbauer.  Then I asked him to hire his favorite pianist in Berlin.



Every time I do the JazzCode in a new city, I have to put together a
new band for the event (I now have alumni bands in Berlin, Barcelona,
Boston, Bergen, London, Paris, New York, Miami, Stockholm, and Sydney).



But how do I find the best players?  How do I locate guys who don´t
have an attitude problem or are unreliabale? I can´t really ask local
musicians who I should hire, because most likely, they will suggest
that you hire them.



I usually start with the bass player because. as a drummer, no other
factor can more effectively make me sound good (or really bad).
 Furthermore, if the two of us can hit it off, then the job is much
easier for piano and sax which is usually the instrument combination I
work with.

Great players are always busy because they are in short supply.



In Berlin I hired Marc.  I knew that if I asked him to contract for me,
then he would hire a great team.  As one of the top calls in Berlin he
had played with all the best players.  And, as a contractor he knew
that hiring the best guys would make him sound better too.



In that way he was very accountable, the way performing artists usually
are extremely accountable.  In jazz we usually work in small
transparent teams.  Every role is unique, every instrument different,
but every part is needed in order for the music to work.  You can of
course reduce the size of a group if one of the players don´t perform.
 But if a quartet must perform as a trio, then the reduction in
textural combinations is far greater than the 25% you might guess.  In
fact, going from four to three players, you lose 50% of your possible
instrument combinations (A quartet has 14 combinations, a trio has
seven), but at the same time, each remaining player must do a bigger
part of the job with less available sound combinations.




We always try to get the best possible people in the team.

In Berlin, once I had found Marc, I knew that he would get me great
players because it would make him sound good, and it would
enhance the likelihood that I would use him on a later occasion.


The lessons for small professional teams who needs to improvise together to get the job done might be this:

1. 
   Find out what the most scarce or in demand skill is given the context
2. 
   Locate the best person with the required skill
3. 
   Make sure your chosen person is also sensitive to the external context
4. 
   Ask that person to suggest the best people given the task

In an improvised performance culture, you always look for people with
big ears.  But in addition to big ears, you need a sense of "horizontal
perfection", someone willing to sacrifice the urge to make every moment
perfect in order to stay in sync with the rest of the team and not get mired in perfection of one thing while the others forge ahead.

Great article about the JazzCode in Australia

MusicBuzAustralia.com have a great article written by Joy Medley Park answering the question

Can music-making create better business organizations?

A large part of the article is a neat summary of how the JazzCode applies to business -- written by someone with deep understanding of both business and music.  I met Joy this summer when she attended a workshop I did for her company in the U.S. 

Joy Medley Park has written an insightful summary of what organizations can learn from music.

Why would business corporations which focus on 'hard' performance
measures like profits and market-share spend resources to enable their
employees to make music?

Because it can improve innovation, strengthen leadership and teamwork,
and assist in both recruiting and retaining talent.

Suggested listening for beginners

After our JazzCode session at 606 Club in London last week I recieved a nice letter from a Swiss account executive working for a leading multi-national IT company attending London Business School:

Dear Carl,

thank you very much for your performance yesterday - I think it was great and inspiring. I am an absolute jazz beginner and you showed a slide in 606 with some of your favorite records - can I ask you to give me me a few
recommendations if I wanted to start with jazz listening?

Thank you, Thomas

Here is what I think would be a good start:

1. Kind of Blue with Miles Davis
2. Coltrane Plays the Blues
3. John Coltrane and Duke Ellington
4. Any record with Errol Garner
5. Jazz Samba with Stan Getz
6. Milestones with Miles Davis
7. Porgy and Bess with Miles Davis
8. Big Beat with Art Blakey