An Interview with Michael Gold: Jazz Impact

Michael F. Shaughnessy

Eastern New Mexico University

Portales, New Mexico

1. Michael, you head up Jazz Impact, and try to teach businessmen and women, how music, and specifically jazz can help them in their endeavors. How long have you been doing this?

I started doing this in 2000. I was invited to speak to an international group of managers at AT&T Bell Labs at their World HQ in New Providence NJ. They were experiencing a sort of cultural dissonance in some of the Far Eastern countries they were expanding into.

They though jazz would stimulate some different ways of thinking. So I brought a great ensemble from New York- of which I was the bassist. I worked with a consultant on the event who directed me to some fascinating research that had been done in the 80’s and 90’s by some of the top academic scholars in the field of Organizational Development- folks like Carl Weick and Frank Barrett. They saw a connection between jazz and Organizational Effectiveness. That work helped me to organize the principles of jazz that are relevant to business and combine talking about those ideas with demonstrating them through the music.

2. Jazz requires people to improvise on the spot. How does this relate to the world of business?

I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “on the spot.” It’s more like on the go. No matter what the nature is, successful business means adapting and capitalizing on change of some sort. It means relating to diverse people and dealing with changing needs, it means creating need and demand and supplying innovative product or service. The core of this process is improvisation in the deepest sense. As with jazz, there will always be a plan or a strategy but that acts only to coordinate people in intention and direction. The daily implementation of business is human improvisation.

Jazz is an art form that relies on the process of human improvisation- at a very high level of expertise. Jazz Impact looks at the dynamics of collaborative improvisation in jazz- interpersonal dynamics- that are parallel to those in business.

Dynamics like:

• Building and sustaining trust in changing relationships
• Embracing uncertainty
• The interdependency of leadership and support
• Listening for the new
• A willingness to take risk
• And perceiving “competent” mistakes not as error but as opportunity to learn- an opportunity to be better.

3. In jazz, musicians play together, yet there are times for each musician to showcase their talents. How does this relate to the business world?

Perceptive and aware leadership in business and in jazz sets up conditions for each individual to succeed regardless of the magnitude or position of their role. In jazz there can be no collective success without individual success. Just as in the jazz ensemble, a highly effective business team will have a cross-functional understanding of one another’s roles. They will have the ability to work within the grey areas between those roles- areas that can be ambiguous and uncertain but at the same time, rich in possibility.

When I worked as an Operations Manager in Financial Services I realized right away that the best solutions for problems relating to customer service wasn’t going to come from strategy sessions held by the top executives but through brainstorming sessions with the individuals that worked at the frontline interface with the public.

Everyone in the ensemble solos- even the bass and drums whose primary role is supporting the leadership of the horn players or vocalists. It’s only by having the responsibility of leading that supporting members will understand how to support leadership- and more importantly- how leadership will understand what it means to support.

4. Often there are key changes in jazz. How does this relate to the business world?

A key change in jazz is kind of like shifting to a new location or context. You have to be competent in both the language of jazz and with facility on your instrument. But when the key changes so does the nature of ideas and possibilities. The same is true in business. Competency is critical and so is the emotional intelligence required to deal effectively with different people. Key changes in jazz are challenging- we have to learn to be facile with our ideas and with our instruments. Shifting to different keys means making real time adjustments to the ideas and to the interpersonal dynamics of working together in real time. Horn players are very comfortable in certain keys because their instruments are tuned to certain keys. When the keys shift to more difficult keys they may become more cautious or tentative- the kind of support they require may change.

So, too, in business. If a CRM team works well with one particular client culture that ease may shift to difficulty with a different client culture. Once simply a label for a category of software tools, today, CRM generally denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in synergy to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs.

Shifting to different cultures is like making a key change where ease, predictability and clarity of communication may become more or less demanding but the goal of consonant improvisation remains the same.

5. I think it was a Cole Porter song- there is nothing so finer, as the chord changes from major to minor- how does this relate to people working together to create a product or an atmosphere where there are common goals?

That’s a great question Michael.

Porter’s lyric is:

“When you’re near, there’s such an air of spring about it

I can hear a Lark somewhere begin to sing about it

There’s no love song finer,

But how strange the change from major to minor

Everytime we say goodbye.”

The connection is of course metaphorical.

So much in organizational culture is focused on the bottom line.

And as a result management is always trying to eliminate uncertainty.

But that bottom line cannot sustain itself without emotional commitment and passion on the part of each individual.

Human nature is uncertain and when you create organizational structures designed to eliminate uncertainty you eliminate possibility, you eliminate breathing space for creative expression and action.

The Organizational Psychologist Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi wrote a very important book entitled “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” in which he shows how total engagement in what we do translates into both happiness and productivity. That is a gross oversimplification on my part about the content of “Flow” but it points to the fact that business organizations need to be critically concerned with the emotional well being of the people that make up their cultures. Managers need to be trained as empathic leaders not just organizers.

In any given day, in any given business culture, the “key” changes from major- positive and moving with certainty and predictability, to minor- uncertain, foreboding and calling for strength and fortitude, over and over again. The bottom line cannot sustain itself unless people have the emotional commitment and passion to negotiate constant key change. We could never survive in the jazz word if we only knew how to play in C major.

6. How does transposition relate to the world of business and industry?

Transposition in music means taking a specific idea in one key and moving it into another. Transposition in business could mean many different things. It could mean setting up shop in a new place, implementing a strategy- one that worked well in the past- in a new and uncertain market or really any situation that requires taking proven successful ideas and implementing them in new contexts or environments. What is required to successfully accomplish transposition in both jazz and business is competency on the part of all concerned, the ability to listen cross-functionally and to respond creatively to the unexpected.

It takes clear understanding of how the past relates to the present and how to use that understanding to accommodate new challenges that may not have been present in the past.

7. And how do you teach people to transition from one task to another?

That depends on the task of course. If it is a question of physical procedure like running a specific type of machinery then there’s a specific predictable process- akin to performing written music if you will. Follow the instructions and you get the desired result.

But when a company faces the challenge of sustaining innovation or the cultural transformation of a merger, it must learn to improvise. That means that transitions have to be managed creatively and responsibly by individuals at all levels of the organization. It means that those who are collaboratively negotiating change are able to relinquish the control as circumstances change and delegate to others whose expertise is called for at that precise moment. If they can’t act spontaneously at these important moments- they lose the opportunity that presents itself.

Jazz and business require a high level of empathy and emotional intelligence. Every individual is beholden to the capacity and commitment of every other individual. There’s no such thing as a zero sum game.

I used to love the song “ I remember Clifford.“

8. Are there any specific songs that you use to exemplify the interconnectedness of jazz and business?

If I had to pick one it would be Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Aint Got That Swing”

9. I understand you did some work with Vodaphone over in Europe. What was that like and how were you received?

It was great. I’d done a program for The Hay Group International in Venice in 2003. A fellow who was saw me at that conference was working this past year for Vodafone- setting up a week long meeting for their most promising top execs from all over the EU, Asia and the Middle East. He remembered our program and called me to ask if I’d create one for Vodafone. They loved it so we went back again for their second conference.

Europe loves Jazz Impact. We’ve been there several times a year since 2000. They have a deep appreciation of the collaborative improvisational nature of jazz and in the case of the top executives I worked with at Vodafone- they really understood their roles as improvisers in the culture of Vodafone.

10. I was fortunate enough to recently meet Larry Ham, jazz pianist par excellence. What is his contribution to your endeavors?

Larry is a deep inspiration for me. First and foremost, he is one of the best jazz musicians out there. His musical intelligence embodies the real essence of jazz- he worked for years with Lionel Hampton, Illinois Jacquet and is a close protégé and past student of Barry Harris- the keeper of the flame. For me, the music has to be authentic in order to make the parallel between jazz and business real. I have to provide music that people who have no prior experience with jazz will be moved by. Larry is one of the people I can always rely upon to bring a deep authenticity to the performance. But he is also a close friend and shares a genuine understanding of the power of learning at the intersection of the discipline of art- in this case jazz- and business. I’ve spent hours talking with him on the road about how people perceive and respond to the program. Over the years he’s really helped me to gain objectivity about a very unusual experience that we offer to people who don’t necessarily think of themselves as creative- and the thing is if they want to be successful in a sustainable way then they have to think creatively. Larry’s my main man. And he’s got a great sense of humor- that’s something we all need in this world right now.