From Lisa Kimball, founder of Group Jazz:
I'd love to share some of what I'm passionate about that inspired the formation of Group Jazz.
The bottom line is that I believe
that great groups make great things happen.
When I think about the
times when I have felt most creative, most alive, most energized
I think about times when I've connected with other people. A lot
of times it's when I've been in a group that is in the zone. That zone is sometimes called high
performance, excellence, or high productivty. I bet
everyone can think of experiences you've had with groups like
this.
I've always been fascinated by the dynamics of these great groups. What is it about the relationships, the context, the environment, the task, the leadership, the facilitation, and all the other factors that makes the difference? What if we could live and work like this more of the time? What can we do as a member of any group we're in to turn up the dial on the energy, passion, and fun? What do people with sponsorship, leadership, and other key roles need to do to create the conditions for these groups to grow and thrive?
I've been
doing research and interviewing (the basis of a book I'm writing)
some of the great groups I think of as exemplars of being highly
creative and succeeding in a level of collaboration that makes
the group really a lot more than the sum of its parts. Groups
I've looked at include groups with a wide variety of purposes -
Cirque du Soleil, the U.S. Women's Olympic softball team, Emily's
List (a political group in the US), Sting's world music ensemble,
and others. I'm looking for themes and principles that we could
apply to any group - work team, community, learning cohort,
organization - to make it better. For me, "better"
is both about outcomes (productivity, quality, performance) and
about the member's experience (learning, inspiration, satifsying
relationships, growth).
I've always loved JAZZ as a metaphor for collaboration. To me, it represents a system that is purposeful and structured yet provides a lot of degrees of freedom for individual creativity and room for surprise as it's never the same twice. The relationship of members of a jazz ensemble is interesting to me because, on the one hand, it is very much a group of peers .. yet, on the other hand, individuals have responsibility at different times for taking leadership, allowing their own talent and creativity to come forward, and determining the direction and flow of the performance.
I think that creating the
conditions for great group exprience and performance is more and
more challenging as the members of groups are distributed across
boundaries of time, organization, culture, and other differences. So
that's the field in which we want to make a difference. Group
Jazz works as a production company to support the work of
purposeful groups - teams, communities, task forces,
organizations - whether they meet face-to-face or 
online or
both. We're bringing together the best tools, technologies,
media, consultants, cast members and practitioners to create
great group experiences that support action. We do this by
designing and implementing f-t-f and virtual (and combo)
strategies for events and ongoing work environments. We also
provide training and coaching for people in a wide range of key
roles vis-a-vis teams. We're able to leverage a unique
combination of interests and skills which spans the face-to-face
and virtual worlds.
If our organizations are going to grow and thrive, it will require high levels of engagement and energy from the people in them. And if we're all going to have more fulfilling lives, I believe that the quality of our relationships and experiences at work need to be more meaninful and delightful and ...well ... more FUN! I hope Group Jazz will be able to make a contribution to that goal (and we intend to have a lot of fun doing it! <g>)