Creating Unique Solutions

The whole point of any ensemble is to create something together that is more than the sum of the individual parts: something unique that could only have been created by this particular group of people.

This is most obvious in improvisational jazz, where the ensemble creates something musically new and unique every time the musicians play together. But the same is true of every performing art: theatre, classical music, dance.

Dr Frederick ‘Fred’ Seddon is an academic and researcher who has published widely about social enterprises – organizations that have both business and social goals – with a particular focus on the role of empathy in social enterprise.

He carried out research with both jazz and classical ensembles to explore the almost magical moments when a group of players are so finely attuned to each other that they are able to create something in the moment that was both unrehearsed and utterly unpredictable: something that has been produced from the unique mix of those players’ musical expression on this particular occasion.

Seddon put forward the notion of ‘empathetic creativity’ to describe these moments of improvisation, which emerge from a state of ‘empathetic attunement’, where the musicians are both ‘decentred’ and exquisitely conscious of each other’s playing.

The musicians move out of their comfort zones, throwing out musical ideas like challenges for their fellow players to pick up. This involves risk, by definition – it involves working ‘at the edge of chaos’ – and the exhilaration of this shared risk-taking contributes to the musicians’ (or actors’ or dancers’) sense of being in a state of altered consciousness.

As Seddon’s jazz musicians rehearsed, he noticed they would move from ‘cooperative’ behaviour – basically ‘getting the piece right’ in a technical sense – to ‘collaborative’ behaviour, during which key decisions were made about the piece’s creative content, sometimes in discussion, sometimes non-verbally, by demonstrating a musical idea on their instruments. In performance, collaboration becomes entirely non-verbal and requires empathetic attunement, as the musicians respond in the moment to the ideas and emotions expressed in each other’s playing.

Seddon talked about how the musicians showed ‘extraordinary receptiveness’ to each other and how they experienced a great sense of inventiveness and musical freedom: “a great sense of relaxation increasing their powers of expression and imagination, being able to handle their instruments with athletic finesse and being able to respond to every impulse.”¹⁷

For a later study, working with a Venice-based classical string quartet, Seddon saw the same process of preparation. The musicians rehearsed a piece, ‘cooperating’ verbally and non-verbally to share their thoughts on how it could be performed, leading to the ability to ‘collaborate’ entirely non-verbally in the actual performance, creating a unique performance.

As the quartet’s cellist told the researchers:

At this point, the quartet are not any more four individuals with their own individualities, their own personalities, their own knowledge but it is only a unique energy. In this condition, the risks are high … you are aware that there is a risk, but it is a risk that gives great joy

because in that moment you are really making music.¹⁸

In business, we tend to focus on teams. We often call a collection of individuals ‘a team’ when there is, in reality, very little scope for them to interact – to come together and work collaboratively to address an issue in a creative way.

A lot has been written about ‘high-performance teams’. A high-performance team is not necessarily an ensemble, but an ensemble is a high-performing team with an additional creative dimension.

A high-performance team carries out a particular task very efficiently. But if the team is following a set of instructions, no matter how effectively, we have not created the conditions that would allow that team to become an ensemble.

It is perfectly possible to create highly motivated teams – teams with a real sense of purpose and commitment, with good camaraderie and a degree of bonding. But if we are simply asking them to carry out a series of tasks in the usual, linear, ‘industrial era’ way, then we are preventing them from becoming a true ensemble.

We are not allowing them to use their innate creativity and their collective intelligence; we are not challenging them to deliver a true performance that expresses the unique combination of the ensemble’s talents.

If we want innovation in business – at the micro level as well as the macro – we must create real ensembles, not teams, no matter how ‘high-performing’ those teams might be.

The late J Richard Hackman, a psychology professor at Harvard and a pioneering investigator into the dynamics of teamwork, argued that certain core conditions were needed to create successful teams. He suggested that the team should have: a compelling direction – a challenge that was meaningful, with a significant and rewarding outcome; substantial autonomy, so that they could ‘own’ their task and feel responsible for the outcome; and good organizational support, in terms of a well-designed reward system and the information and resources needed to carry out their task.

But Hackman also noted how teams could make the step-change from successful teamwork to real ensemble behaviour. He called it ‘group synergy’.

One aspect of Hackman’s definition of group synergy dealt with efficient process: less wasted time and energy. This is the equivalent of musicians’ ‘cooperative’ behaviour; part of the groundwork involved in ‘getting things right’.

Hackman’s view of group synergy also included ‘Creating Innovative Strategic Plans’ – the equivalent of collaborative behaviour leading to ‘empathetic attunement’ and empathetic creativity. In the language of Performance Thinking, teams with group synergy have become ensembles – they have started to create new ideas and novel approaches.

Hackman put it this way:

Groups can develop ways of interacting that occasionally result in truly original or insightful ways of proceeding with the work. For example, a group might find a way to exploit some resources that everyone else has overlooked; it might invent a way to get around a

seemingly insurmountable performance obstacle; or it might come

up with a novel way to generate ideas for solving a difficult problem.

When group members get in the habit of thinking creatively about how they will do their work, interesting and useful ideas can

emerge – ideas that did not exist before the group invented them.¹⁹

J Richard Hackman, ‘The Design of Work Teams’

Perform duties Make a contribution

Disengaged Engaged

Individualistic Collaborative

Leadership imposed Leadership allowed

Leadership exclusive Leadership shared

Reactive Proactive

Rigid Fluid

Repetitive Improvisational

Predetermined Creative

Rational Emotional

Joyless Joyful

The point of an ensemble is to collaborate: to come together to perform a task that requires them to create something unique.

A team of people sitting at their desks in front of their screens, working on individual tasks, may not be an ensemble – there may be no meaningful sense in which they interact with their colleagues to create something collaboratively. A group of people working together in a shop is potentially an ensemble: they can create an atmosphere, an ‘event’ that either pleases its audience or fails to please.

Here are some useful questions about working as an ensemble:

Is everyone equal before the task, or is someone telling us what to do?

Do we fully understand the nature of the task?

Do we know what success would look like?

Are we autonomous and in charge of our own destiny?

If we succeed in our task, will it make us feel happy/proud/rewarded?

Is everyone able to make a contribution?

Does everyone understand that it is their duty to contribute?

When we make our contributions, are they welcomed and added to?

Does the success of everyone else in the ensemble help me

perform better?

Am I pleased and excited when fellow members do something

especially well?

Am I actively helping my fellow ensemble members to perform well?