The business breakthrough you need is a meeting you’ve never heard of

In music, a jam session is a sacred space of unfettered creativity — a space where anything goes. It’s often the space where new things happen. New beats, new lyrics, new concepts.

There are too many iconic songs to count that came out of the unstructured, primordial ooze of a great jam session. It’s when musicians are at their most free. Creativity is celebrated, ideas are explored, serendipity is welcomed. Isn’t this why musicians play in the first place?

Jam sessions in business are no different.

OK, they’re a little different — we’ll get into that in just a moment. But conceptually, a jam session for a brand, a team, or an entrepreneur borrows heavily from these musical roots: It is a sacred space for unfettered creativity.

I offer jam sessions to my consulting clients for this exact reason. Businesses usually don’t have dedicated time carved out for this kind of work in their day-to-day operations. And “offsites” — the typical corporate approach to getting out of the comfort zone — are often too structured to accommodate it, because stakeholders and their event planners are focused on maximizing the perceived productivity of a day spent in a Marriott ballroom.

I wish I could give you a formula for conducting or participating in a perfect jam session, but by their nature, that’s not really how they work.

What I can tell you is this:

• Expectations are mandatory. This goes for both the consultant and the client, and it’s one way business jam sessions can diverge from musical ones. Clients are spending good money with me to make breakthroughs in their business or brand, and they’re entitled to understand what they’ll take away from our time together. An intake call leads to a creative brief. We’re not writing out our sheet music, but the genre we’ll be playing in and output we’re going for is super clear. Agreed-upon creative constraints are mandatory for productive play.
• Phones down. It’s possible to run incredible jam sessions in a hybrid or remote environment, but when possible, face-to-face interaction is preferred with technology kept to a minimum. Seemingly little things like Zoom latency or the momentary distraction of a text message ding can delay or completely derail a breakthrough.
• Don’t kill the groove. We’ve all been there: an hour-long meeting feels like watching a dripping faucet for the first 58 minutes, and then suddenly — BAM! Sparks are flying, everyone is building off of one another, magic is happening before your very eyes. Then, at the top of the hour, a chorus of “sorry, I have to drop for the next meeting.” The groove dies before it ever has a chance to flourish. Don’t run your jam session this way. Again, expectations are important, but you can’t let structure become the enemy of productive creativity. If you’ve got two hours allocated for expressing your startup’s purpose and the momentum is building with five minutes to go, don’t you dare pull the plug at the two-hour mark!
• Take breaks with intention. Look, some breaks are just about using the restroom, I get it. But not every break needs to be, “See you back here in 15 minutes.” I hold jam sessions at The Land of Make+Believe in part because I want my clients to be able to incorporate the spirit and beauty of this place into their mindset as we spin gold together. Guide your clients on walks, introduce them to new experiences, feed them unusual and amazing snacks. New ideas require synapses to fire in new ways. Have fun with it!

A great business jam session is about so much more than meeting in a novel setting: it’s an intentional environment designed for leveling up, guided by someone who knows how to unlock and activate the best parts of you. It’s play that produces results. And in my world, that’s a magical note to end on.

Want to jam with me? I have a few openings left for 2023. Book a free 20-minute discovery call to learn what a jam session can do for you.

Anita Stubenrauch is the author of Apple’s Credo. She’s also the founder of Cause:Effect Creative, an agency that helps brands express visionary ideas with poetic power, and the host of the Hyperactive Imagination podcast, a high-voltage channel for creativity. Learn more about what Anita’s up to and find her contact info here.