But at lunch, Dr. Scheer performed an extended set in front of press, analysts, and customers, and then talked of the parallels between playing jazz with managing an organization and embedding robust business process. And as a jazz lover ourselves, we especially appreciated his guiding metaphor: you can’t have creativity or innovation without underlying structure, and vice versa.

He spelled it out as “APRIL.”

“A” stood for “Autonomy.” The Jazz idiom is unique because it prominently features improvisation. Soloists are granted autonomy to invent new patterns of notes that float above the tune and reinforce, or deliberately contrast, to the harmonies. It is assembling a new solution on the fly to captivate the demand at the moment, which for jazz, is presenting compelling music. Scheer drew parallels with SOA, which in a sense involves similar improvisations as we compose processes while we dynamically orchestrate services,. There are also parallels with mass customization, where you provide teams or set business rules that provide the business unit the autonomy to configure to order on the fly. But all this does not happen in a vacuum. Autonomy only succeeds when you keep it within context, which in the case of jazz involves some sort of relationship with the melody and/or rhythm, and in the enterprise, means that autonomy is exercised in support of business goals and in compliance with organizational (or regulatory) compliance mandates.

“P” stood for “Passion.” In jazz, as in any art form, a successful performance is not only one that is technically proficient, but one that is inspired. The same applies to running a business – your staff will only be effective, creative, resourceful, and act with agility when they have internalized the mission and have a passion for executing to it.