Sebastian Fiedler comments on Blogging as jazz
What a coincidence. I have just read through a German paper (pdf) about a change project in learning culture in which the authors make heavy use of the Jazz Band metaphor. Burow and Hinz suggest a “Jazz Band Model of leadership” for the intended change of learning culture in an educational institution. These are the characteristics they are focusing on:
- people are getting together who are experts on a particular instrument
- they choose a common theme (in a meaningful context)
- they offer each other an ‘open space’
- to create something together they need to listen to each other (dialogue and participation)
- if one takes the lead the others step back and support her/him
- not everybody has to be able to do everything, but individual skills need to be integrated into the composition
- everybody has to be open for new creations
- participation can also mean that one remains silent, takes a break, and leaves room for a solo
- the band does not need instructions or a conductor
- instead it needs a set of shared, internalized rules
- bands often emerge around a “point of crystallization”; a person who is able to articulate a shared vision and to support its realization
Burow and Hinz go one step further and extract “basic principles for self-organized team learning” from this description:
- bands emerge through self-organization
- bands need a manageable size
- bands emerge through a time-consuming process of self-selection
- bands create a “community spirit”
- bands are based on division of labour and shared rewards
- bands function through mutual challenge and stimulation
- bands are based on win-win-games: everybody profits
The more I think about it the clearer become the parallels to what I see happening in niches of the personal Webpublishing and Weblogging community. It’s not a bad methaphor, is it?
Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/04/10.html#a531; comments are here.Tags: learning, metaphors
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