thinkfetti

I have many dangerous thoughts. Furious, critical, deeply questioning. But I haven’t been posting them here.

Insofar as time exists, or seems to, beyond a fundamental Buddhist idea of the all-pervading present, there is no such thing as “going back.” And regardless of which version of time I am holding, it’s healthy and stress reducing to think that even if I return to a place I have been before, it must be a “going forward.”

Anxiety comes and is hard. It is a comfort, though soft-spoken, that all movement is forward, that there is change.

A few years ago, the theme of the New Mexico State Women’s Studies Conference was “Water in the Desert.” After moving to central New Mexico in 1997 from Los Angeles (and from Chicago and the Bay Area before that), I learned quickly how precious water is and, at least as importantly, how hard it is for a group of people to deal with scarcity.

Last week, my wife and I spent a few days in Scottsdale, Arizona because my stepdaughter was there for a two-week residency for her master’s program. Scottsdale, Arizona is pretty much Phoenix, Arizona, at least as far as weather, and we knew it would be hot. It averaged about 108 to 110, so that qualifies as hot.

I was struck by the use of water in Scottsdale. The monetary wealth of the area is obvious, but the water isn’t from there. Scottsdale is a desert. So why water huge expanses of turf with sprinklers at noon in 110 degrees? Why all the “water features” and misters? Is it a “use it or lose it” thing with the Colorado River? Ignorance? Or is there a good, positive reason to use all this water, one that I’m not aware of?

This week, I am delighted to report that I am no longer the chair of the Humanities Department. At the end-of-year department party, I borrowed the key to the building directory from the department secretary and gleefully moved the letters C-H-A-I-R from beside my name to the name above mine.

In the process, the H split in two, but I managed to prop the pieces next to each other in the board when I set them back in. Friends of mine had suggested a chair breaking ceremony as part of the transfer of power, so I guess this H incident will fill in for that on a somewhat more abstract level.

I feel invigorated by the negative reinforcement, and I’m very much looking forward to getting to work (and to play) now that I have the time and mental space to do so.

I was teaching a music appreciation course this morning, and we found ourselves talking about syncopation. Syncopation in music is a delightful, playful rhythmic effect where a note is emphasized by being played “off the beat.” It’s kind of a springboard effect: the diving board went down “on the beat” and now bounds up after the beat. The note that gets its pizzazz launching from the rebounding board is described as “syncopated.”

But just being “off the beat” doesn’t itself make a note syncopated; there has to be some emphasis on the note that is caused by its spring-like relationship to the beat. There are plenty of ways to play notes between beats so that they aren’t syncopated.

One interesting aspect of syncopation is that the effect requires a beat in order to exist, even though the syncopated note is necessarily not sounding together with the beat. No beat, no syncopation. Now the beat can be overt, as with an accompanying drumset, or it can be implied, something constructed real-time in the mind of the listener by imagining what beat could be present, given all the other notes. But if there is only rhythmic mush, with no beat either overt or implied, then there is no possibility for syncopation. There may be emphasis, accent, but it would not be the special kind of emphasis that draws its power from the surrounding structure by being playfully off.

And this brought me to consider adapting these concepts to management, specifically to a couple types of problematic management:

If there is a structure but no room for difference then syncopation will be absent. Having everything happening on the same beat removes the opportunity for the special enhancement of an idea that bounces up off the beat.

But equally stifling is management without a structuring beat, either an overt one with clear and consistent stated policies and procedures, or an implied structure that organizational members can construct and understand themselves by observing all the notes. Without any beat, there is no way to syncopate, to express the positive and playful energy that can be generated by being off the beat.

It’s been a busy time at Chez Fetti, not that this is a good enough excuse for the posting lacuna. Conducting concerts in New Mexico and California, teaching a distance-education course in problem solving, moving to the big (bigger) city, arranging my leave of absence from my institution…all of these will provide plenty of material for the upcoming posts.

Welcome to spring 2008!