Adrian Cho

Teaching Business With Jazz

What Can You Learn From Jazz?

How can jazz musicians that have never worked together before immediately start playing music and produce a great sounding product that is unique every time? How do they constantly improvise and innovate even while having to simultaneously adapt to changes in their environment? Why do they value "big ears" so highly? Why are passion, trust, respect and integrity so important when playing with others? How did African slaves and their descendants overcome horribly oppressive conditions to create a new form of art that continues to flourish one hundred years later? How did Duke Ellington keep his band operating for half a century, retain musicians for a lifetime, and inspire and help them to deliver great performances? How did solo artists like Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong find their unique brand identity? And what exactly is the difference between time, swing and groove?

More importantly, is any of this really relevant to people working in business, government, and non-profit organisations?

Jazz is a musical product that developed in parallel with the information age. In fact it is the development of the phonograph and radio broadcasting in the early 20th century that would herald the information age and help spread the message of jazz. It is therefore not so surprising that jazz can provide great inspiration and example for people seeking to improve their skills of leadership, teamwork, innovation and communication in today's knowledge-based economy.

The small jazz band that has existed since the birth of jazz is analogous to the small team that has clearly established itself as the unit of optimum effectiveness in everything from business to military operations. Even larger ensembles or large corporations are made up of smaller teams. One difference between a small jazz ensemble and a small classical music ensemble is that in jazz, the musicians are constantly innovating and improvising. In effect they are creating intellectual wealth. If they are able to successfully execute, they will deliver great performances every time. They do this by passionately committing themselves to the task at hand, following a set of simple rules that affords them autonomy but ensures that the music-making doesn't simply degenerate into chaotic noise, understanding their roles (which are often subject to change), constantly listening and communicating, placing trust in the other members of the team, and by taking measured risks.

Parallels Between Arts and Business

Arts-based learning is not new and neither is the concept of jazz as an analogy for various aspects of leadership, teamwork and innovation. There are however very few people who are qualified to speak on the subject. Adrian Cho is a successful freelance musician, bandleader, conductor, consultant and a technology and business manager who has worked for a wide range of companies - click here for a full bio. In the early 1990s he began studying concurrent engineering and virtual team approaches to organisation and collaboration. This led to ongoing research into how highly successful teams work together to create value and innovate and why some teams fail to execute. His unique dual-career perspective has helped him identify parallels between artistic performers and organisational teams and their respective abilities to deliver great performances, products and services.

To put his research into practice he founded the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra (IJO) in 2005. Under his leadership this unique symphonic jazz orchestra has received critical acclaim from both critics and audiences for its highly entertaining, innovative and educational presentations of seminal jazz-centric music. Adrian has attracted many of Ottawa's finest jazz and symphony orchestra musicians who come together to perform an impressively varied repertoire of historical jazz and neoclassical music. Their desire to work with the IJO is a result of Adrian's innovative and ambitious programming and a working environment that eschews egos and politics and focuses on having fun and delivering outstanding performances. Adrian's artistic efforts have also attracted some of Canada's finest jazz and classical musicians as well as a diverse range of artistic companies from other genres and disciplines. The success of these artistic partnerships are proof of the scalability of Adrian's approach to collaboration and innovation.

What Adrian Can Teach Your Business Using Jazz

Adrian has enjoyed success and developed a reputation in multiple fields as someone who can execute, innovate and lead. Drawing on his artistic experiences as a freelance musician and with the IJO, and his business experiences as an independent consultant and as a manager in companies such as IBM, he presents a talk entitled Leadership, Teamwork, Innovation and All That Jazz. Using the medium of jazz performance and jazz history, his messages will resonate with anyone who is interested in being more effective as an individual, as a leader, and as part of a team.

Adrian's presentation is interspersed with historical video footage as Adrian speaks about the lessons we can learn from the successes and failures of bandleaders and artists such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis. Adrian and his fellow musicians perform live jazz to demonstrate how they lead, collaborate and innovate; how they create and communicate great individual and collective performances; and how they adapt to changes in their environment. Other important topics discussed in a jazz performance context and then related to personal and organisational scenarios include:

Passion and having fun
Rules and when to follow and when to break them
Keeping time, swinging, and getting in the groove
Listening
Taking risks
Reading the room
Helping people give their best performances
Getting to market and capturing market-share or mind-share
Closing (and how to get a standing ovation)
Competing for attention in a crowded marketplace

Jazz is an exciting and entertaining medium that keeps audiences involved and interested. Adrian customises every presentation for the target audience and invites them to participate as a group with dialogues and simple exercises that demonstrate key concepts such as "swing" and what it can mean to them. This presentation will demystify jazz but most importantly, audiences will be inspired to work more effectively as individuals and in teams.

Before or after the talk, Adrian and his fellow musicians can give an extended jazz performance in any format from a duo to a full big band or neophonic orchestra. Music for cocktails, dinner, a concert or dancing are all possible. If you're planning an event, this is a great way to both educate and entertain with a single exciting theme.

To book Adrian for a speaking engagement, please feel free to contact him directly.