New Research: How to find your organisation’s groove

New Research: How to find your organisation’s groove

The former drummer for Johnny Clegg’s band is now helping businesses find their groove. Drawing on a 30-year-long career in the music industry, Barry van Zyl has teamed up with Henley Business School to develop a unique business strategic framework that has caught the eye – and ear – of blue-chip organisations around the world.

Believe it or not, your business has a rhythm; or at least it should. If all its components are aligned, and in sync, a business can operate efficiently and is more able to adapt and respond to change. If something – a division, department, or a key staff member – is out of sync, however, it can be a distraction that causes an organisation and its people to flounder and become rigid and reactionary.

This is what creative strategist and educator Barry van Zyl explains in a new white paper: From rigidity to resonance launched by Henley Business School Africa this week.

A world-renowned drummer, van Zyl draws on a remarkable skillset to make his point. For over 30 years, he recorded and toured with the Johnny Clegg Band and other major musical acts including Annie Lennox, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Peter Gabriel and Arno Carstens. As the man with the sticks, he was the anchor of each artist’s and group’s rhythm section, helping them stay, as he says, in the groove – a deep musical state of resonance. More recently, he has added an MBA from Henley Business School to his repertoire and is now helping businesses, too, to find their groove.

In his new white paper, Van Zyl introduces his trademark ICE Framework. Comprising three interlinked layers: Individual, Community, and Environment, the framework provides a system of thinking to help business leaders find the alignment at each of these levels – and across all three – in order to build resonance within their organisations.

“The ICE Framework”, says van Zyl, “is best envisaged by looking down on a cymbal that, when struck, vibrates across the centre, the midway, and the edge of the instrument. A perfect strike radiates a sound that resonates within us at a deep and primal level, what some might call a ‘gut feel’. The ICE framework in many ways provides the missing link between intuitive knowing and strategic intent.”

Van Zyl explains that at an individual layer people need first be in harmony with themselves, for example, by working at a time of day they operate at their best and building self-awareness. The community groove level is achieved by developing effective engagement with others while the outermost layer, the environmental groove, zooms us out to the point where everyone is seen as an essential part of a complex and well-coordinated system continually influenced by changing global cycles, largely outside of our direct control.

How people engage at each of these levels is a deliberate choice that has profound implications for our productivity, creativity, wellness, and state of mind, says van Zyl. “People can learn to be fluid and adaptable, just like water or they can be rigid and unmovable like a piece of iron – a state of resistance or rigidity. The one extreme builds anxiety and blinkered thinking, while the other – resonance – promotes curiosity, open-mindedness, and innovation.”

The ICE framework has its roots in van Zyl’s Henley MBA experience, and specifically the personal development module (on which he now teaches), and has been refined through numerous practical engagements with organisations around the world over the past eight years. The fact that it has received such widespread interest, van Zyl believes, is because it offers a unique way of looking at the wealth of existing theories and insights into self-development in the spheres of rhythm, neuroscience, physics, and sociology, while also countering the limiting effect of resistance to change or rigidity.

“Resonance is a lived approach that heightens self-awareness in an uncertain world by applying a fresh lens that taps into nature, universal rhythm, and innate human behaviour,” he explains.

“By implementing the ICE Framework, individuals and organisations can develop a systems-based approach to resonance that encourages personal mastery and development with the same consistency as it seeks to improve team dynamics. Ultimately, this can lead to better communication, a sense of well-being, open-mindedness, improved creativity, responsiveness, and enhanced intrinsic motivation levels. All of which serve to build stronger and more resilient organisations more capable of engaging proactively with the changes impacting our world.”

Download a copy of the white paper From rigidity to resonance here.