1- What would business organizations such as Kraft Foods gain from observing Orpheus in action?

There are common factors between Kraft Foods as a business and the Orpheus as an Orchestra. Kraft Foods is a traditional company that contains a usual board of directors’ chief executive officer, and it also has a host of other executives. Moreover, every officer has his own subtle role in the company. On the other hand, Orpheus also contains many musicians who are capable to participate in the decision-making process. That is to say, each musician is able to use his leadership skills by becoming the concertmaster at one point.

Kraft Foods’ leaders could take a cue on new ways of managing and leading as they allow their executive to observe how Orpheus can function without a conductor. In other words, Kraft Foods can learn to build a core group that is responsible for each project of the company, and these core groups should contain executives and ordinary employees who are going to be in charge of researching the primary plan to the company’s investors. In addition, by allowing and inviting other employees sometimes to the core groups, new ideas of managing and leading will be born.

Moreover, by being able to see the relationship between running an orchestra and running a business, Kraft Foods can gain new framework of values and approaches that can help the company to reassess their management and leadership ways. In other words, while allowing new employees to join the core group, those employees will have the opportunity to practice their decision-making and leadership skills, and that will lead into increasing their satisfaction and motivation while performing in their jobs.

2- Orpheus rotates the concertmaster position among core-group members, what is the logic of rotating the leader?

Orpheus, as an orchestra without a leader, discovered that rotating the concertmaster or the leader among core-group members is very important for many reasons: * Each leader presents different perspective to the orchestra depending on his/her musical expertise. * They experienced that it was useful that many members of the orchestra experience being leaders which will give them the opportunity to learn how to practically organize rehearsals and also to resolve conflicts and problems that might face the core-group members. * Core-group members don’t respond the same to leaders. Therefore, having a variety of leaders that rotate all the time can help to satisfy all the members. * It can bring more strength to the leadership role by not depending on only one leader for the orchestra, which reflects the rise of leadership skills within the orchestra members. * Finally, Orpheus believe that rotating the concert master position leads into taking off the pressure of members fighting for that position all the time.

3- What are some of the substitutes for permanent leadership that exist within Orpheus?

Orpheus is considered as the first chamber-music orchestra without a conductor or even a permanent concertmaster. Therefore, they had to stablish their own ideas as substitutes for the permanent leadership such as the following: * They give a big role to feedbacks that are given by the orchestra members which is, sometimes, by sitting like an audience to take notes. * They are allowing everybody’s idea to be tested out, and everyone in the orchestra participates on this process, and that provides the orchestra with a big practical experience that works as a time-consuming in the long run. * They formed the core group, and the concertmaster position which rotates among core-group members, and sometimes they even rotate the leadership during the performance.

References * Ivancevich, Konopaske Matteson: Organizational Behavior and Management. Ch. 15 * McShane, Steven L. and Glinow, Mary Ann: Organizational Behavior. Fifth edition. Ch.12: Leadership in Organizational Settings.