Corporate Blues

At this year's Innovation Network's annual conference, Convergence 2000, attendees got a chance to meet each other in a unique experience of writing (and singing!) the corporate blues. This fun, outrageous session, called "Face the Music: Going Beyond the Corporate Blues," was led by Mitch Ditkoff, aka Blind Willy Nilly, and his blues group.

They performed some great blues to warm us up and then showed us how to write our own business blues. We broke into small groups and wrote about topics like e-mail overload, lack of funding (when "they" want innovation and they want it on the cheap), hidden agendas, finger-pointing and a host of other corporate topics. It didn't seem to matter if we could carry a tune or not ... we just sung louder and wailed our blues.

Mitch says he came up with the idea for his corporate blues program while out with his wife one night at a blues club. He realized that the blues allow people to speak their truth and get beyond the stuff that bugs them and bogs them down ... something he'd been trying to find for corporate clients who wanted greater levels of innovation and creativity.

The response to this activity was so fun and exciting, we thought you might like to incorporate the blues into your organization ... or, if you're having a big group event, you might like to invite Mitch (for info on how to contact him, email Andrea Woodward at andrea@thinksmart.com)

We thought it also might be interesting to poll this group about how singing the corporate blues might help your organization. Here are some questions to ponder...

1. How do the unsung corporate blues hinder creativity and innovation?
2. How could singing the corporate blues actually boost creativity and innovation?
3. If you were to distill your own corporate blues down to one stanza, what would it be?

So send us your ideas to blues@thinksmart.com ... of if you want to try your hand at writing the blues, here's Mitch's guidelines: "The Bare Basics of Writing the Blues" for one, three-line stanza:

First line: Write a line that expresses how you are feeling:
Second line: just repeat line one
Third (and last line) Write a line that completes your thought and rhymes, or (almost rhymes) with the first two lines.
Example:

"My job ain't easy, seems like it never gets done,
My job ain't easy, seems like it never gets done,
· I'm juggling fifteen projects, and my boss is a son of a gun."

If you want to read some of the Convergence attendees' blues, you'll find them here http://www.thinksmart.com/conv2000/blues.html

For more information on Face the Music, call Ruth Ann Hattori at 303-604-1981 or e-mail Andrea Woodward, andrea@thinksmart.com

For more background info about Mitch and his group, you can read about Face the Music (FTM) in the newest Fast Company magazine!