Playing in Pairs

Carrying on with the music theme. I went to a concert that my daughter was playing in on the weekend. What I found fascinating was not just the music but the way that the people in the orchestra played together.

If you have watched before you will note that there is this thing called the music sheet. It is really easy to play if the piece only takes up two pages. But what do you do as a player if the piece is a symphony ? Well if you are solo you have to stop playing, turn the page, find your place and start playing again. So in the orchestra they play in pairs. For example the 1st and 2nd violin work as a pair. The 2nd is covering the 1st and ensuring that the page is turned at the right time. It’s a nice piece of team work where the goal is beautiful music for the audience.

Again I see strong parallels between this and day to day project delivery. The essentials however are dedication, the focus on a common goal and the desire to work as a team, not just a collection of individuals.

Unfortunately not everyone wants to play in pairs. If that is the case I suggest you take up tennis singles.

Teacher, Pupil, Participant

Two of my daughters are learning to play the violin. They have a great teacher that really has a good mix of encouraging young people to “get it right” in a nice way.

Another daughter that I have plays the flute and is participating in a youth orchestra. The violin teacher, who teaches my two other daughters, is also a lead (teacher) in this youth orchestra for the string section. As a playing member of the orchestra she is also a participant and under the control of the conductor a pupil in overall composition and delivery.

Reflecting on this I began to think about roles and functions and skill. In any ECM project there is not the one person that does it all. There is a team of professionals that bring skill to the project and during its life act out the roles and functions that are required to ensure successful delivery.

What I have realised through music is that  during the life of any project the opportunity for each and every person to play out the role of teacher, pupil or participant in the delivery of the final production is real and available, we just need to recognise that all roles are valid and useful and be mindful when to play the right one.

“Post Event” definition disorder

Well this is going to be a left field post fitting into the “other loosely related” category.

I was reading some Q & A of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, and the answer to the question to question three got me thinking about explanations. The question heading on the website was;

In what way are our explanations of success “crude”?

Well this got me thinking about how an explanation is formed. Often after (post ) an event ,we as individuals, or collectively as a a group, try to make sense of the event through a definition of what happened and how it happened, from this definition then comes the explanation of the “what” or the “how”.

Now the really intriguing question I have is this? Does the definition and therefore the explanation based on this definition bear any relationship or have in it any correlation to what actually happened ?

In some cases, Yes. In others the explanation is based on a definition assumed, therefore is just that, an assumption.

Now what is that assumption based on. Is it culture, upbringing, past experience, our personal world view, religious belief, in fact it could be all or some of the of the above.

So thinking on this further I thought that is the explanation of a defined or perceived or assumed definition is not based on hard and quantifiable facts that are sterile from assumptions and the nuances of personal belief, then do we have a “definition disorder” that can affect either the individual or the group as a whole.

Try a debate on a controversial topic some time post an event and see where people are at, they will tend to polarise, interesting!

But then again, maybe my definition and explanation is a manifestation of the disorder itself.

;-)