Organizational Improvisation
Growing older inevitable affects your memory. When you're young, that's fine. It grows larger and larger, you have no problem filling it high speed, and retrieval is a no-brainer. When you grow older the main problem is not that it does not grow anymore, I think it still does. The main problem is that retrieval becomes unreliable.
Why this intro?
In the last presentation of the Agile Holland Conference, October 24, 2008, Gert Poppe (http://www.jazzing-up.nl/) illustrated organizational improvisation by comparing it to improvisation that jazz musicians engage in. After the presentation I asked him if he was aware that Henry Mintzberg wrote an interesting article on this subject. Gert didn't. Good for him because, as far as I know ;-) Mintzberg didn't. Karl Weick did (Bougon, M., Weick, K. E., & Binkhorst, D. (1977). Cognition in organizations: An analysis of the Utrecht Jazz Orchestra. Administration Science Quarterly, 22, (4), 606_639).
If you want to read more on the subject of organizational improvisation, I think a good starting point is Organizational Improvisation, a book edited by Ken N. Kamoche, Miguel Pina e Cunha, João Vieira da Cunha, published by Routledge, 2002, ISBN 0415261767, 9780415261760. And, convenient for a first acquaintance, also available in Google books. Other relevant publications found in the search process: Minimal structures: From jazz improvisation to product innovation, by Ken Kamoche (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4339/is_5_22/ai_82493157, webpage no longer available), Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organizations: Implications for Organizational Learning, by Frank J. Barrett (http://www.leader-values.com/Content/detail.asp?ContentDetailID=961, webpage no longer available) and an interview with Weick in Wired, titled Complicate Yourself - which completes the circle by mentioning the fact that Weick studied the Utrecht Jazz Orchestra (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.04/weick_pr.html).
Mintzberg, by the way, wrote an article in which music plays a central role: Covert Leadership: Notes on Managing Professionals, in the November 1998 issue of Harvard Business Review. Good reading for the management of professionals. one citation: "Professionals require little direction and supervision. What they do require is protection and support."
Love the web, it offers such a fine compensation for an unreliable memory.
