On 3/22/2011 several dozen of us sat on stage at CenterStage’s Carpenter Theatre alongside and among the Richmond Symphony Orchestra.  The day’s mission was straightforward: understand the Symphony’s business of working together to make great music, and make it analogous to our own workplace.

I confess that I signed up for this mostly for other reasons, and I happily report that “The Music Paradigm” (the name of the event) brought to Richmond by Floricane and the Richmond Symphony did work its magic on me. The strings and horns and baton et al presented an all-too-clear mirror of my own work arena. “O wad some power the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us!” reads that elusive passage from Robert Burns.

I hope The Music Paradigm will return. It did for me what the best arts and culture often do: provide us with fresh and poignant insights about ourselves and our world.