Blue ocean under iraqi skies

Blue Ocean under Iraqi Skies

11 hours ago

01/02/16 10:04

Blue Ocean under Iraqi Skies 1. THE SULEYMANIYAH WORKSHOP

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Back in 2009, the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq met for the first time in Suleymaniyah, for a brutally intense two-week summer camp, led by myself and seven tutors. As well as rehearsing for a concert at the end, we had to develop a strategy for the next five years based on the players' needs and dreams from that first year. It wasn't easy. We were working in English, Arabic and Kurdish through translation.

One evening in the second week, I gathered the orchestra together in the hotel breakfast room. We'd asked a local facilitator from the Iraqi Peace Foundation to lead a workshop on values in Arabic and Kurdish. This laid down the groundwork for my own 45 minute session. Everyone in the room sat at tables with four piles of paper in front of them in yellow, green, red an blue. They were to take a piece of paper in each colour, fold it into three, and answer one question on the top third, anonymously, in their own language.

What follows is an in-depth explanation of the process, and how these answers became our five year strategy. If this is not for you, here are two recent articles which briefly explain the process: Blue Ocean Under Iraqi Sky - Innovators Magazine [http://www.innovatorsmag.com/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-sky/] The Bravest Orchestra in the World - Blue Ocean Strategy [https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/blog/the-bravestorchestra-in-the-world/]

Still with me? OK. Here goes. The four questions were:

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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1. What are your personal values?

2. What do you value about music?

3. What values should the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq have?

4. If you ran your own orchestra, what values would it have?

These were adapted from Collins and Porras Core Values Framework [http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/vision/] .

At the end of 45 minutes, we had about 140 pieces of paper that looked like this:

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The top third of the page is the original Iraqi Arabic, translated after the workshop into the other two course languages, Sorani Kurdish and English, which we then taped all round the rehearsal room walls for the remainder of the week. This gave everyone the chance to really examine and absorb each others' hopes and dreams.

2. BACK IN COLOGNE Back home in Germany, I used the Ashridge Mission Model to formulate what we believed in from those pieces http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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of paper. The model is a diamond, shown below, where each corner relates directly to the corner opposite, and all four interact to develop a mission statement. Here is the model:

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3. VALUES Counting the number of times key words appeared on the pieces of paper produced by the orchestra back in Iraq, I could form three core values that were most expressed: Love, Commitment and Respect. The words that appeared less frequently, but which tied into these core values, I listed on each side of the triangle, the related values. These fine-tuned our intentions.

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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4. BEHAVIOURS So far so good. I needed to benchmark against other National Youth Orchestras, and here I knew Sophia Welz, the Director of the South African National Youth Orchestra. They've developed a practice of reconciliation and excellence over many years. She told me their Key Success Factors to benchmark against what our pieces of paper were telling me:

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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5. STRATEGIC GOALS Finally, I could summarise what the orchestra in 2009 wanted from future summer courses, and these became our strategic goals over the next five years:

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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6. BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY Enter Blue Ocean Strategy, by Kim and Mauborgne (2005). This innovative strategy suited the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq for four reasons: 1. The players were in a very isolated and resource deprived country, allowing us to invent something completely new. Thus we had many antagonistic assets.

2. We had weaknesses of player technique, teaching in Iraq and quality of instruments which meant we could never complete fully with other, more established, better provided for national youth orchestras.

3. We were in a culture with many unknown musical traditions which we wanted to bring to the public's attention.

4. We had a great story of young post-war musicians who wanted to rebuild their country's culture.

Blue Ocean Strategy is so named because of its aversion to traditional shark-infested blood-red market spaces, which were already full with Western youth orchestras. Blue Ocean is about clearing a new space for oneself that takes the heat out of competing, and provides a unique offer to the market.

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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7. BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY CANVAS Around this time, we had very generously been granted co-operating membership of the European Association of National Youth Orchestras, which meant I could get up close to big players. National Youth Orchestras from France, Italy, Spain (here labelled generically as NYO X) etc. all had strengths where we had weaknesses:

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European Orchestra Strengths Accessible: they all ran numerous courses in and around Europe throughout the year, where we could only run one in Iraq.

Available: concert goers could easily get to them Euro-Centric: repertoire was based on classical orchestral repertoire from the European tradition, which they played brilliantly, often better than adult professional orchestras in their countries. http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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Big Names: they could afford world class conductors and soloists, we generally couldn't.

Shared Strengths Youthful: even though our age range was 14-29, and an average national youth orchestra would perhaps be 1221, we all presented the best young players in the countries we represented National Identity: Obviously, we each represented the diversity of our respective lands, and played repertoire from our national tradition. As good Iraqi compositions and composers were thin on the ground, being largely isolated from the Western musical tradition, we commissioned a Kurdish and Arab Iraqi composer to write new work for us in each summer course. This gave me the advantage of stating the boundaries of our limited orchestration and vetoing any writing that was impractical for our players. As our auditions were by video online, I could show composers the standard of each player in a private YouTube audition account, for them to grasp who exactly they were writing for.

Our Strengths Exotic: This was easy. We were exotic to Iraqis as an orchestra, and exotic to Westerners as an Iraqi ensemble.

That we were not a sea of white middle class kids from mostly privileged backgrounds, whose photos on Facebook and repertoire could be interchanged from one orchestra to another without anyone noticing, became our powerful brand advantage. Our colourful mix of orchestral repertoire and new Iraqi work kept people engaged in our message and unique value.

Innovative: By auditioning through YoutTube, teaching and project managing through Skype and reinventing the concept of the National Youth Orchestra from scratch, we kept ahead of other youth orchestras who were more risk averse and conservative.

Intercultural: At the beginning, the orchestra fulfilled the basic plan of any National Youth Orchestra. We auditioned young musicians from one country, Iraq, brought the best together in one town, intensively rehearsed, put on a concert and went home. Within that, we were reconciling and uniting Iraqi Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians and Armenians, some of whom couldn't speak each other's language. That annual auditions only ever took the best musicians from that given year meant diversity stayed natural, not contrived or political, and the focus stayed on making music, to teach, perform, and communicate with.

Message of Hope: The world's first national youth orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, first performed in 1947. This new concept showcased young musicians from a Europe coming out of war, a symbol of hope, excellence and unity for the future. And so it was for us too. But the intercultural exchange became exponentially powerful when we called on other youth orchestras to spend a couple of weeks with us, learning their ways, education, culture and personalities. This blew everyone's mind, as many players had never had the chance to leave Iraq before. Our summer courses in Bonn, Edinburgh and Aix-en-Provence gave everyone a new "normal", and sent the players home with new ideas and energy to implement in Iraq. The European players, young as they were, learnt Servant Leadership. [https://www.greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/]

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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8. THE ERRC GRID The next Blue Ocean tool analysed which factors we could manipulate to differentiate ourselves from other orchestras. With the Eliminate section, below, I chose to make the orchestra the focus, rather than me or any soloists, in order to keep costs down. This sometimes worked, though we were incredibly privileged to play alongside Julian Lloyd Webber and Arabella Steinbacher in 2011 and '12. Other soloists, far less famous but perfect for us, included Iraqi oud player, Khyam Allami, Kurdish singer and harpist, Tara Jaff and two of our wonderful tutors, Angelia Cho on violin and David Edmonds on cello.

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9. FOCUS, DIVERGENCE, COMPELLING TAGLINE So, by this time, I'd boiled down our distinctive competence.

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10. BRAND STRATEGY Finally leaving Blue Ocean Strategy, this part of the analysis became important when we needed a logo and a consistent identity to Iraqis and the rest of the world. This was a huge problem, as Iraqi branding reflects very different values from the West. Colours, fonts, words, shapes all have different meanings, creating a real headache for a single message both in Iraq and internationally.

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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At this time the brand audit was completely in the red, which one would expect at the very beginning of an organisation's life.

NYOI ORGANISATION: the British Council and Iraqi team in Baghdad worked together to set up a registered charity in Baghdad, an NGO, to interact with the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and ask for support. Meanwhile, in 2010, the German Friends of NYOI set themselves up in Cologne with a working bank account and board. After 5 years of effort, the Baghdad NGO finally came into being on 29th September, 2013.

DISTRIBUTORS: We would test our generous partners over the years on their long term commitment to funding and helping organise the orchestra. In year one, our budget was 77,000 pounds. By the time we reached year five, paid for entirely by the French, we cost â‚Ź311,000. Some partners, such as the British Council, stayed with us for the first four years, whilst others, such as Beethovenfest in Bonn, gave us a massive, one-off commitment in 2011.

CONSUMERS: These were the players who were consuming the service of our teaching and rehearsing, the individuals and organisations who supported us in a toxic political and sectarian climate, the audiences who http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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turned up and applauded, as well as journalists who would communicate our clear brand message to the world.

COMPETITORS: obviously, we were not really competing with other youth orchestras, being a very special case with a remarkable back story, but nevertheless, our growth depended on ideas and collaborations with them.

This was nowhere better demonstrated when Bundesjugendorchester, Edinburgh Youth Orchestra and Orchestre Francais des Jeunes played side by side with us for two weeks to build our sound for public performance in Europe.

MACRO ENVIRONMENT: Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental and Political factors in Iraq were very unstable in 2009, though the window between the end of the war in 2008 and the invasion of ISIL in 2014 provided enough growth and stability for the players to improve over time and for the orchestra to undertake ever more ambitious summer courses. The 10% growth of the Iraqi economy during this time symbolically correlated with our growth as an orchestra, as the players became more empowered, educated, healed and confident in themselves. I knew that the macro environment would remain unpredictable, so it became imperative early on to stabilise the orchestra's growth by leaving Iraq altogether.

11. MISSION

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y0jWM9ftaIw/Vq5pj8UKoTI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/25dcgMQS0LY/s1600/Slide11.jpg] http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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By the end of my analysis, I had a mission statement to share with the Iraqi team and the British Council.

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More importantly, I had a clear mandate from the players which became my inspiration through the months of tough, brutal project management that kept our flame of hope alive year after year.

12. CONCLUSION Back in 2009, I concluded:

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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Another conductor would have done it differently, but this was my way of dealing with an exceptionally complex and taxing challenge, which kept us focussed over 5 years. I'm aware of individuals and organisations who have seen this analysis from 2009, and riled against its complexity. But really, that's their problem, not mine. The point is, it worked.

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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You can read about the blow by blow story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, warts-and-all, in my book, coming out in August 2016.

http://21stcenturyconductor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/blue-ocean-under-iraqi-skies.html

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Posted 11 hours ago by Paul MacAlindin Labels: ashridge, blue ocean strategy, branding, innovation, iraq, macalindin, mauborgne, mission, orchestra, strategy, values 0

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