Leader-less Orchestration

Management gurus including Peter Drucker used the conductor as a metaphor for managing change and sustained superior performance. Apart from waving their hands in the air, what do conductors really do? Is there a program that will allow our organizational pilots (leaders and project managers of large scale projects) to derive lessons of leadership from orchestrating processes?

Look at the process of creating vision. A vision is a response to what the situation is calling for? To a conductor, this means deciding whether to play Vivaldi or Mozart with a given 60 or 120 ensemble orchestra. This is not an easy one. The conductor needs to calculate what the ensemble can do and match that with what would make the audience respond. Ecstatically, if possible! Once done, the conductor should effectively transfer this vision to the ensemble.

A series of rehearsals would allow for an implicit contract between the conductor and the orchestra to evolve. Both discover that when interesting ideas derived via participative dialogues blends with powerful music create an extremely strong emotional learning experience.

This joint experience eventually leads to the element of trust. Conductors also rely on trust. Trust is a vital part of their ability to lead. The musicians trust the conductor to lead them to a successful completion of the piece. Without a leader there is no trust, with no trust performance falters. Trust is transformed into passion as the ownership of the ideas on how to improve performance deepens.

Consider this video as an orchestration case study. This short clip can show us valuable lessons in what to do and what not to do in leading and orchestrating large scale change via effective project management. What can facilitators learn from this case?