Work Like Jazz To Create Flow

When I get space to listen to music on my own terms, i.e. without my kids demanding to listen to Hamilton or Frozen, I tend to default to feel good pop music like Coldplay and U2.

These pop rock bands have a gift for creating expansive sonic space that lifts the spirit and resolves with major-chord-confidence.

This undeniable feeling of resolution, even if only for a few moments, is just what my anxious soul needs…a taste of satisfying closure.

Miles Davis & John Coltrane

Jazz, on the other hand, is a style of music that I am learning to appreciate. The song structures aren’t as easily mappable for my pop-attuned ears.

Jazz musicians have the ability to listen and respond to each other, creating space for something to emerge. Nothing is prescribed.

Jazz is more like a dance.

Jazz music ebbs and flows. There is a shared intution among jazz members as they create fertile ground for improvisation. They sense when the song evolves and changes course, and they share leadership.

However, the closure is not aways forthright.

Living without closure

In our work life, closure and satisfaction are rare. This causes us to move through the world with underlying anxiety and dissastisfaction that, if we are honest with ourselves, will never be completed resolved.

When we let this inner discontentment drive our behaviors we unconsciously demand others to resolve it for us, which quickly undermines any ability to collaborate effectively or empower others, and it erodes any chance to increase collective potential.

This “pop rock” way of operating demands an immediate resolution. Give me the hook within 30 seconds or else…

It is a characteristic of the command and control, hierachical leadership style of a bygone era where managers demand results from prescribed objectives without much awareness or regard to the human implications or dynamics.

Unfortunately this is still extremely pervasive in modern day business which is chock full of performance reviews and pyramid-shaped org charts.

The Emerging Paradigm

The good news is there is an emerging paradigm, a new way of working that resembles an improvisational jazz ensemble, and it is forming in the midst of massive change.

We live in an age of profound disruption where something is ending and dying, and something else is wanting to be born. What’s ending and dying is a civilization that’s built on the mindset of maximum me. -Otto Scharmer, Senior Lecturer at MIT

Again, this is good news for all of us because it’s a movement beyond our current ego-centric culture towards an eco-centric approach that fundamentally honors all of life in it’s complexity, our nested environments, and is grounded in a deep hope for a better future.

So what does it look like?

Well, it can’t be simplified into an org design chart or succinctly defined as a step-by-step process. That’s why the word emerging is being used. We are in a state of in between where we need to pay attention, and the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.

Change is the new normal.

This emerging business paradigm is a future state that we are co-creating in an environment of constant flux. The new way of working embraces change as the status quo instead of resisting and controlling it.

With this in mind it is imperative to develop new leaders who embody broadened awareness, increased empathy, and expanded consciousness with the goal of transforming society; our work cultures included.

We need to let go of old patterns of working that have collectively lead to undesirable outcomes — socially, economically and spiritually — and let come the emerging patterns that will illuminate our desired future.

In other words, the emerging paradigm requires us to practice ways of being in between because that’s where all the transformative energy resides. The in between is both between what was and what is to come as well as what the great philospher, Martin Buber would call between I and Thou, where the Other in a relationship is not separated by discrete bounds. I like to say,

Relationship is the juice.

Everything that we desire in our collective future has to do with the interrelatedness and dynamism of in between. For us to succeed we need to give language and materiality to relationship itself.

Jazz is a well-suited metaphor

This emerging paradigm requires business leaders to double down on relationship as currency and hone skills similar to those of a jazz musicians who are adept at:

Sensing and responding to what’s happening in the moment,

Leading and letting go with flow, and

Opening to the emerging sounds and energy flow of the room.

This, of course, takes practice, humility, skill development, and intentional conditioning. The thing that I love about this is that shared-leadership is embedded in the process. If we could emulate a jazz ensemble in our work environments we would create cultures of empowerment and shared responsibility where something could emerge at any moment.

Wouldn’t that be exciting?!?

Let me clarify something. This is not some anarchical way of operating where anything goes at any time, or some hippy, West Coast business version of Woodstock.

On the contrary, in order for this emerging paradigm to flourish, a common purpose and agreed upon values must exist within the organization to direct the collective movement. Furthermore, the purpose must be greater than the business itself, inclusive of an eco-system of stakeholders.

Within this framework of ever broadening circles of responsibility and cognition, people are able to fully live into their particular roles, which become more meaningful over time within the context of the purposeful organization.

Chad the nanny was on to something

Maybe Chad the nanny from Jerry Maguire was on to something when he awkwardly told Jerry,

Miles Davis and Jon Coltrane, Stockholm, 1963 — Two masters of Freedom playing at time before their art was corrupted by a zillion cocktail lounge performers who destroyed the legacy of the only true American Art form — Jazz

Chad was right, Davis and Coltrane were masters of freedom. They played Jazz as an expressive art form and were masters at improvisation, letting the music flow and become.

Dr. Charles Limb, researcher and musician, wondered how the brain works during musical improvisation — so he put jazz musicians in an fMRI to find out.

See his Ted Talk here: Charles Limb’s Ted Talk: Your Brain on Improv

His first study involved looking at the neurological activity of a musician while playing something that’s memorized vs. something that’s improvised. Limb’s hypothesis from this research study claims that:

In order to be creative you have to have a weird disassociation in your frontal lobe so that you’re not inhibited, so that your willing to make mistakes, so that you’re not constantly shutting down new generative impulses.

His second study involved looking at the neurological activity of a musician while communicating and improvising with another musician. This study showed the language areas of the brain lighting up.

These are areas of the brain thought to be involved in expressive communication.

This is quite interesting because the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the area that is quieting during musical improvisation, is the primary area of cognitive awareness.

So in order to be creative, communicative, and improvisational, we must quiet the part of the brain that over analyzes and over thinks and let generative impulses come forth.

When this happens we stop demanding or expecting. We become fully present, fully embodying ourselves and in mutual reciprocal exchange with others and our surroundings.

So how do we quiet our prefrontal cortex and enter flow states?

Flow State

Best selling author, Steven Kotler, has has been studying the optimization of consiousness through flow states for many years. He describes flow like this:

Flow is an optimal state of consciousness, a peak state where we both feel our best and perform our best.

It is a transformation available to anyone, anywhere, provided that certain conditions are met.

He says there are 17 pre-conditional triggers that lead to more flow. They come in four varieties: psychological, environmental, social, and creative. These flow triggers are circumstances that speed entrance into the flow state.

For example, a psychological trigger is immediate feedback.

As a focusing mechanism, immediate feedback is something of an extension of clear goals. Clear goals tell us what we’re doing; immediate feedback tells us how to do it better.

If we know how to improve performance in real time, the mind doesn’t go off in search for clues of betterment, we can keep ourselves fully present and fully focused, and thus much more likely to be in flow.

This is why performance reviews shouldn’t exist. They don’t work and completely undermine real time flow by creating high stress moments of direct feedback that actually cause decreased performance.

Kotler’s flow work, much of which is performed on high performing action sports athletes, has very similar neurological findings to Limbs. Kotler says:

In flow, parts of the brain aren’t becoming more hyperactive, they’re actually slowing down, shutting down. The technical term for this is transient, meaning temporary, hypo frontality. Hypo — H — Y — P — O — it’s the opposite of hyper means to slow down, to shut down, to deactivate. And frontality is the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that houses your higher cognitive functions, your sense of morality, your sense of will, your sense of self.

What I find extremely fascinating is this statement:

As flow produces one of the most potent neurochemical cocktails around, the state has a massive impact on our ability to acquire new skills and knowledge.

This is particularly important as we consider our environment of rapid and accelerating change.

Flow Science provides us with a neurological understanding of what’s required of us to thrive in this emerging business paradigm. Adapting quickly and gaining new skills and knowledge is paramount.

Create a culture of improvisation

As I mentioned earlier, Jazz is not first on my Spotify playlist. It’s certainly not anywhere on Billboards Hot 100, and I don’t expect it ever will be.

When I get my ten minutes alone in the car on my way to Trader Joes for the second time in a week, I want a quick fix of feel good. I want Adele to set fire to the Seattle rain and boost my soul!

This is not going to change anytime soon either. I promise!

However, learning to listen Jazz, from its complex chord structures to its improvisational framework, has expanded my understanding and apprecation for an evolutionary way of being.

Jazz presents a very good example for designing working conditions that create flow, more-so than pop music.

I see Jazz as a practice, something that is constantly worked on, always evolving. There is no resolution or closure. However, when it’s embodied, it creates freedom and flow, both of which are desirable and necessary to flourish in the emerging business paradigm.

I see pop as a milestone moment, something that is achieved. It has a verse, a chorus, and a bridge that pierce the heart strings and create sonic magic in three and a half minutes or less.

As a songwriter who writes mostly pop rock songs, I know how difficult it is to create those milestones. When I do have a moment of inspiration and clarity and a new song comes forth, it is more often than not when I have been practicing like jazz…long enough to quiet my prefrontal cortex and get into a flow state. Having a glass of red wine often assists in the process as well.

Jazz gives us an improvisational framework that we can emulate in our work lives that will help us thrive in spite of our inner discontentment caused by a lack of closure and a hyper-focus on outcomes.

By creating a culure of improvisation we will allow others to bring forth their own unique gifts instead of demanding immediate results.

The hit song (or business) may or may not come, but it’s not the point. The point is being present, open and willing to allow the desired future to emerge.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Related Links:

http://www.stevenkotler.com/create-a-work-environment-that-fosters-flow/

Video of Miles Davis and Jon Coltrane’s 1960 Stockholm Concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_z221y8TOs

Bono

Do You Depend on Others?

Life is much more about inter-relatedness than independence.  We need others to show us different kinds of love, joy, suffering and pain.  The more we increase our capacity to experience and FEEL these things, the more alive we become.

In the Western world we place an extremely high and inappropriate value on independence.  In fact, dependance on others can be seen as weakness.  This encourages us to mask our feelings, suppress our vulnerabilities, and hide any kind of dependance on others.  

Until we realize that dependence on others (this includes the natural world) is foundational to being alive, we will continue to limit our capabilities, our growth, and our experience in everything we do.  We will be too numb to recognize that we are not only numbing our own capacity to deepen every moment with others, but we are also limiting (and likely hurting) others in the process.

All life is inter-related.  Once we begin moving through the world with this in mind, we start waking up to a spectrum of color and emotions working together in an evolving and emerging dance in which we all have a role to play.  

In any setting, work, home, or play, our dependence on others is integral to our role as co-creators.

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Natural Cycle of Creativity

The season of fall is often associated with death. The leaves die and fall to the ground, and the ground turns cold as the sun shines fewer hours. It is a season when the land lies fallow, and it's not the image that we would necessarily jump to when thinking of creativity.

With innovation and creativity being talked about so much these days, we could easily keep our calendars full of conferences and events related to helping our businesses and teams becoming more creative and discovering more frequent "aha moments." 

The season of fall teaches us a lot about finding these moments as it is actually the beginning of a natural cycle of creativity. Fall is the time of propagation, when the seeds fall to the ground and do the work of penetrating the cold ground in order to bring forth new life come spring.

The seeds are patient and lie beneath the earth's frozen surface as they wait out the winter.

The creative process is messy and beautiful, and it always begins with the necessary process of creating space. We shed our metaphorical leaves, whether it's an old mindset or a way of working, in order to do the work of propagating. 

In all cases it requires patience. So for now, enjoy the fall season not as a season of death but as a new cycle of creativity. Create space for new growth, work your way through the cold ground this winter, and wait patiently for your "aha moment" come spring.

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Moving from Ego-Centric to Eco-Centric

"The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego.  The second half is going inward and letting go of it."  -Carl Jung

Organizations are no different. The early years focus on identity, differentiation, and getting noticed.      These are very important to getting established. However, for organizations to experience long-term success, they need to grow up and move from an ego-centric identity to an eco-centric identity.

So what is the difference?

"Ego" is defined as "self-important"  

"Eco" is defined as "combining form."

The personal ego that Carl Jung was famous for discovering is not all bad.  In fact without ego, we wouldn't get anything done.  The ego helps us execute and "reality test" like the definition describes.  However, if the ego is given too much authority to grow, it will dominate in a self-serving way and leave a path of destruction in its wake, much like our modern businesses have done without regard to it's effect on human development or the Earth. 

MOVING FROM EGO-CENTRIC

Ego-centric companies embody a mindset that operates primarily from the left-side of the brain.  This is the half that analyzes, controls, and sees a linear future.  It thrives off of rational, reductionistic thinking.  It's a binary, either or world.  Either your in or your out.  Either it works or it doesn't.  It is very mechanistic and grew in popularity in the recent industrial age.

Ego-centric organizations experience trouble in primarily in two ways:

1. Increased Rigidity - when the ego goes unchecked, organizations grasp tightly to past patterns of success in light of evolving industry changes.  They begin a slow and insidious process of rigidity much like a corpse.  When the blood stops flowing, the body dies, and then stiffens.

2. Myopic Vision - control is good to an extent, but when organizations let the control dominate the culture and decision-making, they lose relevancy, stifle relationships, and lack a broader vision that is beneficial beyond the company's interests.

Example - Blockbuster Video experienced unprecedented growth with it's video store model.  It was a household name and a destination for many families.  I remember the Blockbuster stores being packed on Friday night.  But, as all life shows us, the world evolves, and in order to thrive, you must adapt.  When the DVD world began migrating to digital streaming, Blockbuster hung on too tightly to it's successful store model and failed to innovate with the changes.  Meanwhile Netflix started gaining market share with it's DVD-shipping model and created a customer base that was ready to move to digital streaming when broadband became speedy enough.  Netflix is now worth approximately $10 billion.  Blockbuster went bankrupt.  Blockbuster was operating in an ego-centric, too-big-to-fail mindset.  It was this rigidity and myopic "brick-and-morter" vision that ultimately lead to its demise.

MOVING TO ECO-CENTRIC

Eco-centric companies operate from a mindset that includes both sides of the brain as well as a broader ability to sense and respond to ever-changing externalities.  

Eco-centric companies lean more heavily on the use of right brain thinking, which tends to be more creative, inclusive, and collaborative.  However, they don't eliminate the left brain logic altogether, but rather use both simultaneously and embrace the natural paradox and tension that occurs by acknowledging both.  

Furthermore, eco-centric organizations recognize that thriving in uncertainty requires a move from mechanistic thinking to living systems thinking.  The machine-like logic of the industrial age has permeated our culture in both our way of operating and our way of thinking.  The ego thrives off of this linear logic because it provides very clear processes and ways to measure and grow.  However, it has lead to massive destruction of the natural world with its hyper-competitive consumptive logic and created depressing work cultures that suppress human development and growth.

FROM BREAKDOWN TO BREAKTHROUGH

Moving from ego-centric to eco-centric is shifting to a mindset that is a more inclusive, less partial way of moving through the world.  All living things teach us how to operate harmoniously in diversity.  How to grow and adapt.  How to collaborate and co-create.  How to move through seasons with grace.

If we see ourselves and our organizations as "combining-form" we can begin to recognize opportunity in times of disturbance.  We can let go of the iron grasp of control and focus on the here and now.  

The companies that I work with that are moving in a direction of eco-centricity are experiencing a rare form of empowerment in their workplaces that is also spilling over into their home lives.  They are dissolving the unconcious wall between their workplace personas and their home-life personas.  There is a rare integration that is occurring that is not only visible, but felt.

Like Carl Jung stated, these companies are "going inward and letting go."

This shift in logic requires bravery to let go and breakdown old patterns and create new eco-centric ones.  The good news is that much like the natural world and our current fall season teaches us, following the breakdown there is always a breakthrough.

The Bottom Line: Regenerative Businesses Perform Better

I often encounter the question, "How does becoming a regenerative business effect the bottom line?"

The irony of this question is that it is birthed from linear logic, a place of driving business that starts and stops with the numbers.  Decisions are siloed in the books.  Unfortunately this is the inculturated way of doing business and has led us into a mess of problems socio-economically, environmentally, and psychically that we collectively and unconsciously agree is simply how the world works.  

A healthier question might be, "How can becoming a regenerative business improve the overall quality of life of the people who work here, the people we work with, have a net positive social and environmental impact, be more resilient and adaptable to change...and grow a profit.  

The good news is that practicing Regeneration addresses all of these issues at once AND grows profit by a wide margin in comparison to non-regenerative businesses.  

Sound too good to be true?  Let's start with the bottom line. 

Living Assets Vs. Non-Living Capital Assets

Jay Bragdon, a money manager, started studying the linkages between stewardship and profitability back in 1972.  In the early 1990s his research approach was transformed from the linear thinking processes of traditional corporate analysis to the non-linear (holistic) processes of systems thinking. To assess the viability of this new approach, in 1996 he created a learning lab of corporate LAS exemplars, which later became the Global LAMP Index®.

The Global LAMP Index® (Living Asset Management Performance), tracks bottom line performance of 60 companies that are mimicking nature and place a higher value on living assets (people and Nature) than they do on non-living capital assets.  These companies are the LAMP60.

Living Assets Outperform

Over a 20-year period the LAMP60 outperformed by wide margins three commonly used global equity benchmarks: the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) World Index; the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) World Index; and the S&P Global 100 Index.

Jay says, "When you step back and think of this approach, it makes sense. Companies are inherently living systems – communities of people with shared goals – living and working at the intersection of biosphere and society. And here is the rub. Within this web of life there resides enormous intelligence, much of which remains untapped. '

Life-mimicking companies tap into this intelligence in two key ways:

1. Through mimicking natural processes in the ways they produce goods and services (via industrial ecology); and
2. By awakening the spiritual intelligence of employees, which resides in the interconnected neurology of their hearts, brains and guts.

Spiritual intelligence (SQ) is our highest intelligence because it guides our IQ and emotional intelligence (EQ) by investing them with meaning and purpose."

Regenerative Business

What Jay calls "Life-mimicking companies" has now evolved into a practice called "Regenerative Business."  A regenerative business takes a holistic, living systems approach to the way it thinks and operates and places the highest value on people and Nature.  

The Global LAMP Index showed that when businesses invest in regenerativity, the outcome is increased profit and resilience.  Furthermore, there is a wide margin between companies operating from a traditional linear, "bottom-line" perspective than with regenerative companies, which experienced the largest long-term profit margin growth.

The Bottom Line

The Limen Method™ approaches regenerativity by breaking old patterns of logic and inspiring a new capacity for a regenerative logic.  By elevating the collective SQ, businesses co-create a new and expansive brand culture that honors the human being holistically.  Additionally, by applying a living systems worldview to business, natural processes are embedded into the business products and services thereby creating more harmony with people and Nature.  

The bottom line is a more conscious, resilient, and profitable business.

With accelerated advancements in technology combined with increasingly complex global problems, businesses need to loosen their grasp on linear, command and control methods of operating and start investing in becoming regenerative.  This way forward not only equips businesses for challenging times, but it also improves the bottom line.  

What does "Limen" mean?

In Latin, limen means a threshold or a beginning place.  It is a root word for the phrase liminal space.

When we are in a liminal space we are experiencing deep time, when past, present, and future can be held at once and become universal.  It is in this space when our minds become less fragmented and more whole and we see more clearly and expansively.  In short, it's a transformational moment.

My goal is to help create liminal space for people and entities at their work place.  So many businesses have become disjointed and fragmented from humanity and the earth and completely miss the opportunity for realizing potential.

Limen is a moment of readiness with clarity and unity that we strive for.  When businesses experience limen and integrate it in their culture, they become uniquely positioned for discovery, insight, and meaning.  Beyond the threshold is where the expansiveness resides and where people become alive.  Limen is where you start.

Beyond the 3-ring Binder

You know the drill.  You decide internally that you need external help to figure out your internal issues that are hindering your external persona.  So you hire a consultant and agree to 100% transparency and authenticity both internally and externally.

You engage the consultant and go through the motions.  You answer the consultant's questions  and hope not to get fired by being too transparent.

A few weeks later the consultant shows up with a 3-ring binder with all of the lessons learned and hidden insights that have been fully revealed through the process.  Everyone is both excited and nervous.  Excited because they are being distracted from their work with a little glimpse of a better future.  Nervous because we all have something to hide that may have been squeezed out in the interviews.

Thank God, everyone is inspired.  

And you have a new brand bible that has all the answers to all of your problems...for eternity.  Life couldn't be better.

Then your boss finds a space on the bookshelf for the binder and proceeds to thank and tell everyone that the branding process has come to a close and that everyone should take these new ideas back to their desks with them...right now.

This begs the question.  Do you need another 3-ring binder?  Do you want one?  

Didn't think so.  Branding needs to be considered a holistic, living endeavor that is embodied and believed in both internally and externally.

Are you telling yourselves the same story that your are telling your customers?" 

It is a revelatory question and one that needs to be answered with a resounding, "YES!" if you plan to be in business for a while.

LIMEN won't give you a three-ring binder with advice that will be collecting dust within seconds.  

We will give your brand new life and stick around to live it with you.