Organisations are complex places full of ambiguity and paradox and where the only sensible thing leaders can do is to improvise with what they have and with what is happening.

An article by Frank J. Barrett in which he uses the metaphor of creativity and improvisation in jazz, has inspired me to write this article.

Improvisation is both a process and a reaction. It is a process in that it requires an understanding of the context in which events are occurring and an ability to use information from the current experience to inform the next step. It is a reaction in that it builds on what has just happened with an immediacy that appears to take place without conscious thought. In Barrett's words -

'To help us understand the relationship between action and learning, we need a model of a group of diverse specialists living in a chaotic, turbulent environment; making fast, irreversible decisions; highly interdependent on one another to interpret equivocal information; dedicated to innovation and the creation of novelty. Jazz players do what managers find themselves doing: fabricating and inventing novel responses without a pre scripted plan and without certainty of outcomes; discovering the future that their action creates as it unfolds.' (1)

The idea of improvisation is central to the way I work with Gestalt in organisations. Gestalt is an approach to understanding how people relate to themselves, each other and their environment. [Originally from Germany it was developed by Fritz and Laura Perls in the US in the 1950s and 60s.] Gestalt focuses on what is happening in the moment and how this impacts on the way that people respond. Though most commonly used in psychotherapy, it has been developed for working with people in organisational settings and its use in business is growing steadily.

Spontaneity and emerging possibilities

Gestalt as a philosophy of contact and relationship has a wonderful freshness that I believe is the dialogic equivalent of jazz improvisation. As each moment unfolds something new and different happens. Each response and reaction is conditional on what has gone before. The spontaneity of the dialogue as it unfolds takes the therapist or coach and the client into new regions of understanding. Even when the content of the dialogue is similar, what happens with it, the intonations and the emphasis vary. There is always something emerging, bringing with it new possibilities.

Dave 'I'm seriously thinking of stopping these coaching sessions.'
Trevor 'When?'
Dave Looking surprised, 'I'm not sure, I wanted to tell you about it first.'
Trevor 'OK so let's talk about it.'
Dave 'I don't feel as if I am making any improvements.'
Trevor 'Improvements in what way?'
Dave 'Well I had hoped that I would be able to be more confident in building relationships.'
Trevor 'So tell me what's happened.'
Dave 'I went for a meeting with the new chairman and I was so nervous I could hardly speak.'
Trevor 'I imagine I would've been nervous in the same situation.'
Dave 'What you? I don't believe it.'
Trevor 'Yes, I can be very nervous on important occasions and I imagine this was an important occasion for you.'
Dave 'Yes it was.'
Trevor 'And how did it go?'
Dave 'Well actually it went very well.'
Trevor 'So perhaps your nervousness helped?'

Responding to what emerges in the moment, without apparently spending time thinking about the appropriate response, creates a freshness and an aliveness that is both surprising and stimulating. This in turn leads on to further responses as each response fills the moment with something new. Spontaneity leads to novelty and to 'this has never happened before experiences that sparkle and vibrate with opportunity.

As each opportunity is taken and each moment passes the newness and brightness of the next moment of spontaneity leads to discoveries and experiences that could not have been imagined before they arrive. Once they do arrive these discoveries and experiences lead on to the next response and so the process flows, rising and falling with each new interest as it arrives. Working with only what we have in the moment provides a glorious freshness.

Pragmatism - working with what you've got

The craftsman fashions his work from his materials. He converts or transforms them into something useful and often beautiful. He cannot work with what he doesn't have. In Gestalt work with individuals, teams and whole systems, it is only possible to work with what is present, with what people bring with them into the work. As this is rarely known in advance, it requires both client and coach to improvise and to discover what they can fashion out of what is available.

'OK so let me get this right, You want to create a world-class team and when I ask you how many of your team you think have the potential to be world-class you tell me that no one comes to mind. Are you a world-class leader?' The CEO stopped and looked at me, a long hard look. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Well I think that the best I can do is to work with you and your team to see what is possible. To support you in becoming the best that you can be.'

This is a unique process, unique because of the unknown nature of the materials and because of the particular mix of skills and abilities available for working with the materials.

The outcomes of such work are always unexpected, new and different. They cannot be planned or fashioned in advance; though people do try to do this they usually fail and are frustrated and disappointed by not getting what they want instead of being excited and thrilled by what they do get.

I explained this process to one CEO as follows.

'Imagine that I am a carpenter and I have arrived here with all my skills and tools ready to work. You ask me what can I create for you and I tell you that I don't know because I haven't yet discovered what materials you have for me to work with.'

'It is no good you expecting me to build you mahogany furniture when the trees you have are ash and beech.' I say to him. 'If that is what you are expecting, you will be disappointed.' 'I am not even sure I will be able to build furniture for you,' I tell him. 'What I can say is that I am able to work creatively with whatever materials you have available and that at the end of my work you will have the best that has been possible.'

Surrendering and letting go

Expectations tend to generate disappointment to a far greater extent than they generate joy. Having a fixed idea of what I want to happen, and how I expect that experience to be if and when what I want actually happens, is almost always going to leave me disappointed.

Anticipation is something quite different. 'What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?' 'Well,' said Pooh, 'what I like best' -- and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. (2)

I ask my clients to surrender to the moment and experience what is happening and to let go of their expectations. To be present in the moment and to be full of anticipation for what is about to happen even though they don't know what it is. This is hard for people to do when they have been brought up on a diet of planning and control and endeavoring to make happen the things they want to happen. To operate in a climate of exciting uncertainty is just too great a leap for many.

'So if we take this approach what will the benefits be?' the CEO asked me. 'I don't know, and if you don't believe there will be any then don't do it.' 'But I need to explain to the board what we are going to get for our money. I can't just operate on a wait and see basis,' he said. 'Well I suggest that whatever we say will happen is still a guess and is still a case of wait and see even if we do try to spell out the outcomes. Perhaps you could just say what you hope will happen and acknowledge the uncertainty.'

It is particularly important when working in a Gestalt way to surrender and to let go of the need to be the one who knows, to have the answers that the client is searching for. In talking about working with a client in Gestalt therapy, Joseph Zinker puts it like this.

'It takes immaculate discipline (and joyful curiosity)on the part of the therapist to stay with another person's process, to forego prematurely 'pinching' it off with half-formed statements of explanation or clarification. These premature moves generally come from the therapist's own anxiety to justify his role as helper and sage; they do not come from respect for the aesthetic nature of the client as a unique individual moving through time and space in a valid pathway.'

'Enabling the process to unfold does not deprive one of potency. The therapist is always there pushing, prodding, enjoying, laughing, and flowing in a sense of wonderment and fascination.' (3)

Trusting your process

When we improvise, what we have is the living material of the moment with which to apply our skill and experience in fashioning something new. It is not that we attempt something new; it is rather that if we trust our own process of creativity and composition we can do nothing other than create something new.

'So how are we going to become inspirational leaders?' the CEO asked. 'Well not by making big speeches and gestures,' I replied. 'Inspirational leadership is about doing the little things, the everyday things that inspire people day in and day out.' 'Such as?' he queried. 'Well here are three examples from my experience of how you work as a team

• talk TO people not about them
• once you have made a decision, stop talking about it and do it
• become purpose-full; consider the purpose of every action, discussion, meeting, etc.

When we are unable to trust our own process, we have to follow or copy someone else's process and what we produce is a repetition of the other's creation; if not exactly the same, it is not new. Sometimes interpretation enables us to embellish and enhance the work and ideas of others and this has its own value. And yet even interpretation demands that we trust our own process to develop and adapt what already exists.

True improvisation allows the materials available in the moment to become the clay in the craftsman's hands and what emerges is art. A unique creation happening as each moment unfolds, without direction other than the following of the flowing stream of ideas, responses and happenings.

Improvisation, complexity, ambiguity and paradox

In the modern organisational world, which is full of complexity, ambiguity and paradox, improvisation is an important way for managers and executives to cope successfully with uncertainty. There are no answers outside the ability to respond in the moment, to work with what is and to learn and grow from the experience.

To make decisions on the basis of expectations of what might happen is to be always shooting in the dark. You may hit the target, but this will be more a matter of luck than marksmanship. To work with what is and to improvise and create as each moment unfolds is to fashion the future.

'For now, with the jazz metaphor playing in the background, one can only pose a question; what would our organizations look like if managers and executives were encouraged to recapture a poetic wisdom, to be suspicious of comfortable routines, to create provocative learning relationships, to see appreciation and affirmative engagement as a core task, to value wonder over suspicion, surrender over defensiveness, and listening and attunement over self-promotion?' (4)

References

(1) Barrett, F. J. Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organizations: Implications for Organizational Learning, in Organization Science (Sept/Oct 1998) Vol. 9 No. 5

(2) Hoff, B. The Tao of Pooh, from The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne (1998) Methuen, London

(3) Zinker, J. Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy (1977) Vintage Books, NY

(4) Barrett, F. J. Cultivating an Aesthetic of Unfolding: Jazz Improvisation as a Self-Organizing System, in S. Linstead and H. J. Hopfl (eds) The Aesthetics of Organizations (2000) Sage Press, London