Today's
rapidly changing
and unpredictable environment, with which traditional management
principles
and practices cannot cope, demands new creative approaches. Quite
interesting
is the approach based on improvisation. The paper http://www.pioneerbooks.com/imporg.htm
examines
the essential characteristics of an improvising organization, and
suggests
several training exercises to develop this skill.
We know
that in musical improvisation,
a change in one sound calls to changes in many other sounds. This is
what
makes improvisation so interesting - a seemingly minor changes may turn
our to have a major impact (a kind of 'butterfly effect'!)
A quite
good paper on improvisation
is "ORGANIZATIONAL IMPROVISATION: WHAT, WHEN, HOW AND WHY" at ttp://www.fe.unl.pt/~jvc/Improv4w.html
Recently,
the school of Management
(Department of Organizational Studies, Boston College) organized a
symposium
on "Lessons from Theater: Beyond Metaphor", where theatrical
improvisation
techniques have been suggested as a tool for adopting the
improvisational
mindset in management. The abstracts presented at this symposium are at
p://cbae.nmsu.edu/mgt/jpub/boje/theaterlessons/
The
papers "Improvisation
and Learning: Soul mates or Just Friends?" at http://www.fe.unl.pt/~jvc/ImprLEAR.html
and
"Improvisation versus Order" at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/optionality/may97a.htm
are
are also quite evocative while searching for new ways of organizational
thinking under conditions of criticality.
Before
using performance
improvisation in your work with organization, it would be good to have
a read how the professional actors see the power of improvisation:
"Improvisation
is a form of theatre in which no script is used. Instead, the actors
create
the dialog and action themselves, as they perform. The most popular
style
today is "spot" improv, in which performers get suggestions from their
audience and use them to create short, entertaining scenes". More about
this at http://sunee.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl/improv/index.html
My
personal opinion is: Yes,
Improvisation can lead to creative insights in organizational practice!
As a matter of fact, unconsciously or consciously managers are involved
in honing their improvisational skill every time when they encounter
unknown
and turbulent situations - even an ordinary meeting is a kind of
performance,
a kind of improvisation aimed at pursuing some pre-set or emergent
agenda.
As Masters of Arts in CCC http://www.hawkesbury.uws.edu.au/academic/socialinq/complexity/MAchaos.htm),
we need to understand the power of improvisation in organizational
practice
and to apply when necessary in order to spur creative insights (which
is
vital under conditions of organizational criticality!). The warning is
not to lose the sense of reality when performing! Some practitioners
immerse
so deeply in the art of improvisation that they start to develop
distorted
pictures of both reality and themselves. It is good to remember that
emergent
phenomena in organizational development always manifest unfolding of
authentical
dynamics. Life is not a rehearsal or... What do you think?
In arts -
theater, music,
ballet, writing, etc. we use our skill to improvise in order to enrich
our own performance, to expand our own creativity, to explore new peaks
in the landscape of our own self realization. Therefore, improvising is
a kind of experimenting with ourselves - it serves our personal
endeavors.
The improvisational skill of Ella Fitzgerald in the jazz singing and
Maria
Kallas in the opera singing put them at the highest pedestal of
performance
never reached before (and still unreached today). As a result of this,
that is, indirectly, their achievements have aesthetical
influence
on those who are interested in jazz or opera.
In
organizational practice,
improvisation serves the organization - it is not so much centred in me
as a performer (look what a wonderful improviser am I, so please admire
me!) but in the organization as a whole (look what a high degree of
organizational
creativity my performance succeeds to stimulate, and how much this
helps
the organization in the present moment of such an extreme turbulence!).
In this way, the high improvisation skill of a manager has a direct
influence on people working in the organization by facilitating
conditions
for their self realization.
