Jazz and Jobs

In a large, bureaucratic organization (like a university), it is easy to become frustrated with the slow pace of change or the seemingly random way in which things get done. This is particularly true if you are coming in as an outsider, either from a smaller, more responsive organization or from a place that used different processes for similar tasks. It is easy to assume that people are either incompetent or lazy, have no vision, and that things would go much more smoothly if everyone would just learn to "do their jobs" better.

This will be a strange analogy, but I remember having a conversation about music with someone a number of years ago. At some point in the conversation, they said something like the following: "Playing classical music is difficult because you have to follow the score, but jazz is easy because you're just making it up as you play." As a person who enjoys listening to jazz, I was flabbergasted by that statement. When improvising over a tune, a good jazz player is simultaneously selecting appropriate notes to play over the chord changes (including on-the-fly substitutions to the original harmony), using those notes to create a melodic line (whether it be smooth and pleasing or intentionally jagged and dissonant), listening and responding to what the other musicians are playing, and, hopefully, propelling the music forward by making it "swing" --  all in real-time. Even playing jazz at an amateur level can take years of practice.

In other words, without knowing the details, context, and background of what people are doing and why they are doing it, it is easy to unfairly assume simplicity, incompetence or laziness. This is usually counterproductive, however. Without evidence to the contrary, it is prudent to assume that people are intelligent, skilled, generally work hard, and try to do a good job given the circumstances. What may look like "just making it up" to you could be the result of years of effort.

Lest I be misunderstood, I am not saying that one should never question the status quo, that maximum efficiency is the natural state of organizations (i.e., things are as good as they can be), that all positions are filled by perfect candidates, or that every single person in the organization has a stellar work ethic. This is obviously not the case. Some folks are lazy, some processes are inefficient, some people ended up in positions that probably don't match their skill set, and there usually really are better ways of doing things. Just don't fall into the trap of believing that you are the first or only person who recognizes this, otherwise you run the risk of alienating potential allies who may have been working for years to make things better.