Work – Page 3

No Wrong Way

16 March, 2019

Kim and I were lucky enough to be having dinner at the bar at Les Zygomates last night when a unique (to me, at least) trio came on called The Gatsby Trio. They had a guitar player with a super chill hollow-body, a trumpet/flugelhorn player, and most interestingly a singer in a kind of 20s getup who was keeping time with brushes on a music stand. Turns out she is called Gabriela Martina and she also does a bunch of other stuff than the 20s shtik.

As a drummer I was both intrigued and mildly annoyed when I realized this singer was really going to keep time with nothing but a pair of brushes on a music stand. On the one hand, cool idea — brushes are idiomatic for 20s swing, after all, and good drummers know well that you can play anything that makes an interesting noise. On the other hand, given she’s mainly singing, can she possibly be doing a great job of keeping time at the same time? Doubtful.

Well I was very pleasantly surprised. She did in fact keep good time once she got warmed up and truth be told she’s better with brushes than I ever was. Plus she was a very accomplished singer who did a credible job scatting (hard to pull off with a straight face, much less well) and also took a couple solos whistling. Whistling, no less. All this while also keeping decent time with brushes on a flat music stand. We thoroughly enjoyed the music, which was not at all confined to 20s swing thank heavens but ranged through a whole bunch of interesting styles.

When Kim and I were revisiting the experience later, we realized that the great thing about this trio was that they had pulled together a very non-standard configuration — no bass, no drummer, no keyboard — and made us forget about it. That in turn put me in mind of one of the things I like most about jazz, which is that there is no wrong way to play it. In most cases, you have a tune — a melody — with a suggested harmonization. You’re not bound to play the tune as written and you’re not bound to the suggested harmonization, or to any particular combination of instruments. You play the tune at the beginning of the number and then you repeat (usually) the form while various people improvise over it, and then you play the tune again. It is just enough structure to let you play and bring your audience along with you, without limiting you very much at all. All you have to do to succeed is assemble good players, listen to one another, and not let your mind wander.

(Truly great players, of course, can discard even this meager framework. Coltrane’s Live In Seattle for example is one of the all time great jazz recordings ever, but it pays almost no homage to conventional form. But do not deceive yourself into thinking there is no form or structure — there absolutely is, you just have to be really familiar with jazz to know where to look for it.)

The question is, is it possible to live and work according to these same principles? Can a team at work function like a jazz combo — assemble good people, provide the absolute minimum structure, listen to one another, don’t let your mind wander, and success will follow? In some cases I think yes, and it is absolutely the best way to work when it is appropriate. But be careful: because there is no wrong way to do it, there is also no formula for how it’s done. So as a manager, if you want to assemble the best group you can, you’re forced to improvise every time.

This must be why I like being a manager…

A Speling Eror

14 March, 2019

Segways. By Source: aleehk82 [1]Derivative work: 丁 (talk) – https://www.flickr.com/photos/aleehk82/3144281707/, CC BY 2.0, Link

This is a “Segway.” It is, I am told, a self-balancing personal transporter.

This is a segue. It is a thing that happens in music, where you transition seamlessly from one thing to another.

Let’s just repeat that so it’s totally clear.

Segways, the personal transporter.

A segue, the transition from one thing to another.

Are we all clear now?

Knowing Where To Aim

7 March, 2019

In 1984 I wrote an essay for my college applications that became for a long time the “example essay” for the various sessions my high school did on how to write a college application. I’m not actually sure it was all that great but it did hit an important topic: I wrote about my own experience of having thrown myself into achieving a goal in a very driven way, achieving it, and then discovering it had not in any way been worth the effort.

I was a total car nut when I was a boy, and my fantasy land about what kind of car I would drive was vivid and populated with all kinds of wonderful four-wheeled creatures. I think the common thread among all of them was a deep-seated longing for social acceptance, which I was certain would come because my ride was so bad-ass. Why? I was a not-wealthy kid in a private school full of rich kids that was still trying to maintain the illusion that it was a Quaker-leaning classless utopia. I think my classmates and I were all too naive to realize the status games we were playing with each other, but we certainly were playing them. Anyway I was sure, I think, that the awesome retro chariot I was going to restore with my own hands and no money would make me an instant hero. I was, of course, wrong…

Now in retrospect spending all that time working on that car was not a terrible idea, I learned a ton including a few things about what I am actually capable of doing if I put my mind to it. On the other hand I would have been much better served spending the time either studying or practicing. And the car itself, that I put all the effort into… well, it was simply the wrong car. A big, heavy ’53 Ford coupe with a weak straight-6 motor and a column shift is nobody’s idea of a bad-ass ride. Had I chosen, say, a ’60s VW Beetle as my platform, things could have been different.

So, I made two mistakes, really: I chose to put a bunch of effort towards a goal, having a restored car, that was not a great goal; and, having made that choice, I picked the wrong car to restore.

It occurs to me that these two mistakes are actually qualitatively different. You can make the mistake of choosing the wrong thing to shoot for, and I think that mistake is actually really common because we are really really bad at predicting the future. Then you can also make the mistake of choosing the wrong way to achieve your goal, which I think depends a lot more on your environment, the quality of the advice you have, and the resources you have on hand. Note that the more important choice — what to aim for — is not something you can get help with. Only your own experience and your own desires can tell you if it is worth putting the effort into raising a family, or learning a language, or changing careers. Once you’ve made that choice, however, you can get lots of help with the how if you have the good sense and humility to ask.

Here’s a thing, though. Sometimes I don’t think it matters where you aim. Take my college essay, for instance. If I hadn’t had the wrenching experience of putting a crapload of time into restoring something that, once restored, was entirely uninspiring, then I wouldn’t have been able to write about it, and I might well not have got into some of the colleges I got into. It was worth having had the experience, even though the result turned out to be not what I wanted. My attempt at a PhD in English falls into roughly the same category, I guess — I quit the program after two years and left with a Master’s, but I wouldn’t trade the experience of those two years for anything. Wrong goal, for sure, but major growth trying to get there.

I guess this means it is always better to be striving for something, even if you’re not sure it’s the right thing. Some faith that it will wind up being worth it is in order. This is a bit more difficult to swallow when you’re leading a whole group, of course. It’s probably better not to admit to them you’re not sure this is the right direction.