Music Lessons for Organization Design & Development

The Met Orchestra conducting a sound check at the Paris Philharmonie (Photo: Julian Chender)

What happens when you see the same concert four times in four countries in the span of two weeks? You hear things – differently.

Two summers ago I went on tour with the Met Orchestra as they performed Act IV of Verdi’s Otello with Angel Blue and Russell Thomas and selections of Berlioz’s Les Troyens with Joyce DiDonato, among other pieces. I saw them at Carnegie Hall in New York, the Paris Philharmonie, London’s Barbican Centre, and Festpielhaus in Baden-Baden, Germany.

I did not expect to learn anything about Organization Design and Development while on tour. But it was while traversing Western Europe that I developed an embodied understanding of the central theory of social psychology – that behavior is a function of the person and environment, represented as B=f(P,E).

Environmental impacts on behavior

I first experienced Kurt Lewin’s 1936 theory during the soundcheck at the Paris Philharmonie. I found a seat in the fifth row of a beautiful, empty hall just before the conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, strode the podium. The orchestra started. And he immediately stopped them. He spoke about the difference in their sound here in Paris. They had played Carnegie Hall in New York a few days before and had not rehearsed since. But he could hear a difference in their sound.

Carnegie Hall was built in 1891; the Paris Philharmonie in 2015. Different aesthetic and acoustic design meant different sounds for the same orchestra. In Carnegie Hall, they had to push to get the sound to resonate. In Paris, it was booming, almost too much. The same orchestra in a different environment produced different aural experience. Just as any one person in a new environment produces different behavior. The same adjustments would have to be made for the unique environments of the Barbican and Festpielhaus.

Lessons for client engagement

It was in Paris that Nézet-Séguin taught me how to engage in my Organization Design and Development work. In the booming nature of the Philharmonie, he suggested the musicians “let the hall finish the notes.” Rather than producing a complete package, he encouraged them to be in conversation with their surroundings, to play with the environment rather than for it.

This had me reflecting on how I engage my clients in the dynamic co-creation of organizational outcomes. Every client system is a different concert hall in which I, the orchestra, must adjust how I play. What works in one space will be too much somewhere else. My ability to recognize this, just as Nézet-Séguin did at the beginning of the Philharmonie sound check, and adapt, is the key to a successful engagement. This is how we as consultants use ourselves as the instruments of change.

Conclusion

Since I have returned, orchestras are showing up in my work. In one strategic planning workshop, we did an exercise in which the client developed an “Organizing Image” – the visual metaphor around which to design the organization. With no prompting form me, they talked about an orchestra and how it represents coherence (unified sound), role clarity (instrument), pace (tempo), and dynamic orchestration – how much one plays (i.e., works) on a certain passage (project). My experience on tour with the Met Orchestra helped me fully appreciate what they were suggesting, and how difficult it is to really “work like an orchestra.”

A portion of my recent client's "Organizing Image" showing an orchestra and audience