On discovering one's voice

Have been chewing my fingernails quite a bit since last night. A paper, which I have been writing with Eero Vaara, my most important teacher after finishing my PhD, is what we hope to be the final stage in its process of being published in one of the leading scientific journals of our field. The process has taken, depending on how you count, either three years (we started writing the paper in 2004), or six-seven years (the data the paper is based on was produced in 2000-2001). The amount of work that goes into these things is incredible.

One of the intriguing features of submitting papers to scientific journals these days are the online submission systems. You can see the status of your paper online, as it moves from “assigning editor”, to “assigning reviewers”, to “under review” (this stage takes the longest time as this is the real double-blind reviewing stage where the reviewers get the paper, read it and comment on it), to “awaiting editorial decision”, and finally to “awaiting decision confirmation”, and of course the actual decision the journal makes about the paper (e.g., reject/major revision/minor revision/conditional acceptance/acceptance).

Our paper, after two rounds of major revisions and one minor one is in a stage, where it could really get accepted. Anyway, after experiencing this process and a few other ones during my post-doc days, that is, being in the stage where I am starting to see my research finally getting published in respectable outlets, I find my viewpoint regarding my work changing. While being incredibly stressful, the first struggles with the journal review processes is also kind of a sheltered one – your focus is really pretty much on how to meet with the criteria set by your much wiser colleagues who review the paper, as well as of course the editor who makes the ultimate decisions. Too much time is not spent worrying about what you want to express.

Journal revision processes, while designed to root our and develop knowledge fit to be called ‘scientific’, are also incredible educational processes. They transform the way one thinks and writes. I have been particularly impressed at how many A-level journal editors take the time to sit down and think about ways the junior colleague could develop his or her work, even if they are going to reject the submission. I wonder how these very busy people find the motivation and drive to put in the work involved.

After I have come to the concluding stages of a few long revision processes, I notice that an additional layer to my work is starting to emerge. In a negative voice, I am starting to wonder if I am ever going to get to the level of some of my heroes in their writing. When I read the research published by really experienced and profound writers in organization studies, like Karl Weick, Henry Mintzberg and Richard Whittington, and the kind of impact they make to the way I think about our phenomenon of study, I find myself doubting if the research I am starting to see published can even be discussed on the same day with theirs.

If I force myself into a more positive mode, I think I am starting to reach the stage in my career where the need to find my own voice is starting to emerge. I think the realms of art and science are rather similar in this respect. In music, there is an incredibly long stage where a student learns the craft of managing his or her instrument as well as the breadth of musical tools and genres. The teacher’s challenge is to maintain the nucleus of individuality, the “personal voice” within the developing musician, while he or she jumps through the various hoops. To crush this voice is to fail as a teacher, as the student becomes a clerk or looses interest, to fail to guide the student to develop the discipline of a musician is to rob him or her of the possibility of using his or her voice. In a recent entry in his blog, (guitar master) Robert Fripp defended the discipline aspect:

“We only have a certain amount of time available in which to achieve an aim. A completed aim is a process and, as with any process, comprises several stages. Each stage is allotted a period of time, within which that stage must necessarily be reached. If we fail to reach the required stage within the allotted period, the process goes off-course; it will not complete. If the aim is our life aim, the result is a tragedy.”

Charles Mingus, on the other hand, reminds us of not losing ourselves to the siren song of facility (a Downbeat T shirt I got in a mail, quotes Downbeat, August 21, 1960):

“Once you achieve technical facility, you’re either a musician or you’re not. You’re either a creative person or a stenographer.”

I observe this duality in the way Outi teaches her students, pushing them towards new boundaries, still trying to maintain their personality. She is teaching one of her professional Kantele students in the next room as I’m writing this, and I can observe the duality in her teaching practice in this very moment.

It’s funny how the topic of individual voice has been popping up lately. I have been seeking solace and tranquillity during evenings by looking at landscape photography books. Getting into this new art form during my adult days is has been an enriching experience, in particular because I am something of an interested outsider: while I do not have the time and probably the temperament to develop my personal craft as a photographer even beyond the basics, I enjoy learning to appreciate the pictures of others. While browsing a book that just arrived in the mail, Working the Light, which showcases the work of three British masters of landscape photography, I noticed a piece of reflection about how to become a photographer by one of these three masters, Charlie Waite:

“Skill and invention

A question I am often asked is whether the artist is possessed with a gift that is only available to the few. I believe that through practice and great familiarity with the entire process of image making and all its ramifications, one can improve; but to improve in what respect? After a while, there emerges a ‘signature’ of sorts, a ‘way’ of proceeding. This can be based on a series of shapes within the landscape that continue to attract us. Each time we recognize these shapes and forms, we decide to make another image. Many will regard such an approach as a formulaic one which leads to a repetitive style. This may be so, but it does not diminish the pleasure that the artist receives. I believe that continuing along familiar lines in some way reaffirms things for the artist and that it is a significant and important process for those who create images, or indeed for anyone who work in any field of artistic [Saku’s note: or, indeed, scientific] endeavor. Perhaps the voice you have is the only voice you need?” – Charlie Waite, page 81 in Working the Light (Cornish, Waite, Ward and Ephraums).

I think Waite’s reflection is a profound contribution to any discourse on learning. What strikes me the most is the profound sympathy Waite has for the learning subject and the hardships one must endure to learn, and the kind of salvation offered through the last suggestion: Perhaps the voice you have is the only voice you need?

Some people seem to be able to maintain their unique voice throughout the process where they are learning the ropes. One example is my friend and colleague Arne Carlsen, who had a unique talent for writing even when we were both rookie PhD students. His work is published in top outlets nowadays and the impressive voice they are written is essentially the same voice he had back then.