Below are some words concerning the agile management in the “sweet spot” between chaos and order (see [Domb11]) to gain the maximal flexibility coupled to sufficient stability.
A few days ago I stumbled upon an ARIS Expert Paper of IDS Scheer (now Software AG) written by Scheer, with the title “Jazz-Improvisation und Management” (see [Sche07]), that still was under the pile of references that I used for writing my book… In his Expert Paper, Scheer compares jazz compositions with the management of companies. Although the text is a few years old, I like this ‘metapher’, because it reminds me of enterprise collaboration between experts with different key competencies in Enterprise 2.0.
Scheer describes some similarities between jazz compositions and management. Below the core statements are summarized analogously (I’ll try to give a gist of the text, the original expert paper is in German language):
- Companies have to deal with a kind of ad-hoc, low structured processes – Scheer calls them “emergent processes” – that are unable to be scheduled upfront. Particularly this type of processes is of special relevance to gather a competitive advantage in turbulent environments.
- Although improvisation is associated with prejudices like slowing efficiency, Scheer (btw – he’s not alone in thinking this) sees improvisation as the key to address enterprise problems in turbulent environments and to handle emergent processes.
- Another key issue is how experts with different key competencies can be connected in order to be able to share their core competencies and to solve business critical problems – or figuratively – to “play” together in a highly connected manner to create a well-composited “jazz composition”.
All these facts are “not really” new. In professional literature, there are some similar approaches (see e.g. [Tome02]) and other comparable management concepts that go into the same direction (e.g. see [Clipp99], [Appe10]). But Scheer brings a number of ideas of agile management to the point. He sketches a recipe for a more agile management in a real, turbulent enterprise environment and reflects his ideas by using the jazz picture.
I describe some of these management ideas in my book, for details please have a look into it (see [Domb11]). As Enterprise 2.0 – services are emerging, agile and ad-hoc management with unstructured and emergent processes will become more and more relevant in future. Articles like the one of Scheer will gain more importance again.
But, get your own picture of it. You can download the IDS Scheer expert paper from Scherr (see [Sche07]) or have a look at the relevant passages of my book (see [Domb11]). Do not hesitate to contact me or to write me a comment…
Reference list:
- [Appe10] APPELO, Jurgen: “Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders.”
Amsterdam: Addison-Wesley Longman, 2010 - [Clipp99] CLIPPINGER, John H., III: „Order from the Bottom Up – Complex Adaptive Systems and Their Management.“ In: CLIPPINGER, John H., III (Hrsg.): The Biology of Business – Decoding The Natural Laws of Enterprise.
San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass, 1999, S. 1-30 - [Domb11] DOMBROWSKI, Boris: “Potenziale und Herausforderungen des Geschäftsprozessmanagements im Enterprise 2.0 unter der Berücksichtigung der Dynamik unternehmerischer Systeme.”
Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2011 - [Sche07] SCHEER, August-W.: „Jazz-Improvisation und Management.“ ARIS Expert Paper. URL: http://www.ids-scheer.de/set/6473/ARIS_-_Scheer_-_Jazz-Improvisation_-_AEP_de.pdf, last verified May 15, 2011.
Saarbrücken: IDS Scheer AG, 2007 - [Tome02] TOMENENDAL, Matthias: „Virtuelle Organisation am Rande des Chaos – Eine complex-dynamische Modellierung organisatorischer Virtualität.“ Zugleich Dissertation an der Universität des Saarlandes.
München, Mering: Rainer Hampp, 2002