Getting in the Groove

Jazz and the Music of the Improvised Life

April
29

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

Winston Churchill
So are bores!

Our lives are comprised of a constant flow of improvised encounters with others where we pursue our interests while accommodating, one way or another; graciously or not, the interests of others. Life as a negotiated give-and-take. In our day-to-day lives we get along reasonably well by being selectively obedient to the laws of the land and a collection of informal rules that we store in a file called “common sense”. Think of them as a kind of standard repertoire of tunes that we play for any number of recurring social and business transactions that we conduct with our fellow citizens.

Previous Blog Posts

March
10

Mosaics, Diversity and What to Make of it All

I had something quite different in mind for the March edition of Random Riffs, but CBC changed all that. Last week the Metro Morning radio program ran a series entitled "Toronto's Mosaic: A Reality Check." It began as follows: "Integration has it's challenges. As the population of Toronto becomes increasingly diverse, so too do the ways the cultures interact - but it's interaction that clearly comes with challenges." It doesn't take much to get me sidetracked!

February
04

The Musical Conversation: Jazz and the Learning Organization

I have a friend who would listen patiently as I nattered on at length about how the improvising jazz ensemble wasn’t a metaphor for organizations that have to figure out things as they go along, but rather as a real example of such an organization. It is, after all, made up of real people performing with something in mind. That's no metaphor; that’s the real thing. It is, in William O’Brien’s terms, an organization that has figured out how to disperse power without producing chaos. Improvising isn’t winging it! My friend, an admirer of Peter Senge, suggested that many of the things he’d heard me say about jazz I’d likely find in Senge and his work on the learning organization. So I read “The Fifth Discipline” and decided it might be a fun exercise to use the five disciplines as a framework for capturing some of the things I knew to be true about jazz. This is the result of these musings.

January
09

Beyond Clever: Leadership in a Different Key

Despite our efforts at definitional packaging, something remains elusive about the notion of leadership; something that's left over; something unaccounted for when we're done with behavioural and competency profiling. It is that something, I suspect, that made Jim Collins, the author of "Good to Great", hesitate when asked if he thought it possible to train people to be Level 5 leaders who he describes as possessing a paradoxical combination of powerful will and personal humility.

What We Do

“I used to think, how could jazz musicians pick notes out of thin air? I had no idea of the knowledge it took. It was like magic to me.”
Calvin Hill, bassist

Getting in the Groove is a unique entertainment and learning experience that explores the knowledge and discipline behind the magic of jazz improvisation and its implications for the disciplined enhancement of organizational performance.

The program has two major components:

1) The Magic: an audience experience of a jazz performance that demonstrates the art of collective improvisation.

2) The Knowledge: an exploration of the conditions needed for creative and innovative performance.

Participants in the program will learn how jazz musicians address such issues as: the “rules-of-play” for collective improvisation, the role of leadership, creating and sustaining a shared vision, assessing the potential and compatibility of personnel, establishing and promoting culture and values, managing conflict, assessing audience interests and expectations.

What They're Saying

"Getting in the Groove brought an innovative program of jazz and dialogue to our professional development programs. The idea of using jazz to demonstrate to our consultants the skills for successful teamwork was an unusual concept. With music and facilitated discussion, Brian encouraged our audiences to observe and identify what was taking place among the musicians.

His many years as a jazz musician and combined with long experience in corporate and consulting environments allow him to get audiences and musicians in tune with each other. He understands and relates both the world of business and the world of music. Seeing the skills of a jazz performance in practice was extremely effective.

In the words of one participant, it brought together in two hours all the theories of teamwork he'd ever been taught. Through this unique offering of jazz and dialogue, we were able to show our consultants a brillian example of successful teamwork."

Karyn O'Neill, Chief Human Resource Officer, Mercer HR Consulting