In troubled times, the Jazz mindset outperforms rigid orchestration. Improvisation skills make the whole difference for startups.
I am the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company. I am also an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces.
What do those two engagements have in common?
Well, more than you might think.
Act 1: Getting Out Of Mali
When I was on military duty recently, we prepared orders for a division-level defense exercise. The conventional old times are back, the enemy comes from the East, and the attack is conventional with tanks and artillery.
What do the Swiss Armed Forces do for such an exercise? They prepare lengthy orders and annexes, the way they used to do it over the last decades. Thankfully, we haven’t fought any wars in recent decades and centuries — good for the country, bad for the conciseness of orders.
Enter one of my comrades, who is a professional officer and recently returned from Mali, where he served on the UN mission. Remember, Mali is the country that kicked out the UN mission. UN military personnel had to leave the country under very difficult conditions — no air transport, no ground transport, threats and dangers everywhere.
At some point during an exercise planning conference, the Mali-experienced comrade stood up, asked us to stop talking about dozen-page-long order annexes and concepts, and told us that the order from the UN headquarters to retreat from Mali was 14 pages in total.
14 pages. To retreat an entire UN mission from a hostile country.
It opened our eyes. Sometimes less is more. My comrade finished his intermezzo with the statement: “Jazz over Orchestra.”
Act 2: Grow a Tech Company
A UN mission is a small force when compared to a full division. A startup is a small company when compared to an international corporation.
Yet in both cases, small organizations tend to copy the large organizations — with all the consequences such as lengthy orders, bloated administration, and more.
It’s not just true in organizational design, but it’s also true for tech matters. I recently had to remind my colleagues at Yonder that we will never be able to implement our product roadmap if we take the Orchestra approach. The Orchestra approach in tech is to specify each feature to death, buy enterprise licenses for every framework you need, and make every feature future-proof for 5 bn users (although you only have 25k users so far). In contrast, the Jazz approach is to get started with a simple first step, run the tech on the community edition of the relevant frameworks, and just see where the journey will take you. If you know the core tunes, you can always improvise. What’s true for music, is true for tech. Jazz over Orchestra.
Conclusion
Jazz over Orchestra isn’t an excuse for not planning things, and it isn’t a justification to do sloppy work. It’s an explanation of why Jazz musicians can play cool tunes together on their first encounter, instead of needing many Orchestra rehearsals first.
In troubled times, it’s a good idea to train your improvisation skills rather than spending too much time on complex sheets of music.
