The Jazz Process: Collaboration, Innovation, and Agility

"An insider’s guide to translating the creative techniques of jazz to the business world.”

Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation

 

What Can Your Team Learn From Jazz Musicians?

 

Experienced jazz musicians apply specific principles to collaborate, execute, and manage change in real time--delivering extraordinary innovation in the face of non-stop pressure and risk. Now, jazz musician and collaboration expert Adrian Cho shows how you can use the same principles to dramatically improve any team’s performance.

 

Cho systematically introduces the Jazz Process and demonstrates how it can help cross-functional teams improve teamwork, innovation, and execution. You’ll learn new ways to encourage and integrate strong individual contributions from passionate and committed practitioners, and give them maximum autonomy while making sure your project’s “music” never degenerates into chaotic “noise.”

 

Through multiple case studies, Cho shows you how high-performance teams achieve their success.

 

• Master five core principles of working in teams: use just enough rules, employ top talent, put the team first, build trust and respect, and commit with passion

• Establish a realistic framework for effective, continuous execution

• Collaborate more effectively with team members, consumers, customers, partners, and suppliers

• Master the essentials of team execution: listening for change, leading on demand, acting transparently, and making every contribution count

• Reduce the “friction” associated with collaboration--and increase the synergy

• Use form, tempo, pulse, and groove to maintain constructive momentum

• Learn about the importance of healthy projects and teams

• Innovate by exchanging ideas and taking the right measured risks

• For every practitioner, leader, and manager interested in getting better results

 

Adrian Cho is exceptionally well-qualified to draw parallels between the worlds of jazz, business, and software. As a bassist and conductor, he leads the critically acclaimed symphonic jazz ensemble, Impressions in Jazz Orchestra. At IBM, he manages development of IBM® Rational® Team Concert™, the first product built on IBM's Jazz® team collaboration platform, as well as Rational's Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management project. As a manager of intellectual property, Adrian has played a key role in the Eclipse and Jazz initiatives of open innovation.