And We’re Gonna Be Alright

I recently collaborated with a colleague to co-author a submission for a journal article about about dynamic capabilities. It was based on a project we had done a few years earlier for our doctoral program, and at that time we had concluded that even though dynamic capabilities are highly desirable, they are very difficult, to nearly impossible, for individuals or organizations to develop without some kind of significant and sustained, intervening, transformative event, which then, we thought was a fairly rare occurrence.

We decided to revisit this work in light of the Covid-19 crisis, first because of how the crisis will test the dynamic capabilities of both individuals and organizations and second for how the crisis has created the kind of perspective transforming event that we had previously concluded was a rare occurrence. We asked the question; what if we we were all collectively experiencing a sudden and rapid perspective transformation? What should organizations do?

My co-author and I are both experienced in playing jazz music. And in the article, we propose a model for developing dynamic capabilities based upon a jazz mindset — a commitment to a culture, practices, structures, and a leadership framework that is very similar to what it takes to foster dynamic capabilities in organizations. Jazz embraces things like being flexible, adaptable, responsive to the environment and minimal hierarchies. These are all things that have become relevant to organizations adapting to a post-Covid-19 world.

But maybe the most important aspect of the jazz mindset for a post-Covid world is its affirmative worldview. This view holds a positive image of what others are capable of, a belief that a solution exists, and that something positive will emerge. It is in stark contrast to the skeptical, even pessimistic worldview found in some traditional management mindsets.

This affirmative worldview was demonstrated recently in a 60 Minutes interview with the preeminent jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Wynton was talking about his father, Ellis Marsalis, the beloved jazz pianist and educator, who only days earlier had died from complications of Covid-19. He said his father used music to embrace a larger humanity; that’s what he always taught – “not just in words, that’s how he was”. He talked about his father having the kind of dedication that we’re seeing now all over the world in what health care workers are doing — how they function on belief.

When asked about what his father would have said about the Covid-19 crisis, Wynton said that Ellis would say; “there’s nothing wrong with being scared. There’s nothing wrong with struggling. But we’re going to come out of this. We’re not going to be the same as before we came into it. Some of us are not going to make it. That’s a fact of the world turning around. But we have to take the best of who we have, and the best of who we are. And we’ve got to reach for it and put it together. And we’re going to come out of it because we come out of stuff. And we’re gonna be alright.”

I can’t imagine a better expression of how this affirmative mindset so deeply embedded in the jazz tradition can help individuals and organizations survive the Covid-19 crisis. We’re going to come out of it because we come out of stuff.  And we’re gonna be alright.