Cultivating a New Culture
JLP icon for Ensemble Mindset
As Greg and I prepare to head out to Sunnyvale, California next week to facilitate a Google workshop, top of mind in our preparation is our jazz principle of Ensemble Mindset. We will be working with a newly formed team with members from other sectors joining a very successful group. To this leader’s credit, he wants to co-create a new culture—not expect new members to figure out how they can function and do their best work in the old culture.
Ensemble Mindset is a perspective shift from "How do I succeed?" to "How do we succeed?" It's the recognition that individual excellence serves collective performance, and that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. It is a generative framework that balances individual contribution with collective harmony.
A fluid ecosystem of interdependence, Ensemble Mindset has these core elements:
Individual Excellence in Service of the Collective
Mutual Support in Purpose & Values
Shared Responsibility & Accountability
As such, it speaks to the quality of relationships through mind-centered purpose, soul-centered vision and values, and heart-centered intention. It’s through this lens of shared experience, mutual understanding, and collaborative creation that we can reach the harmonious attunement where we can all thrive. We consider Ensemble Mindset our “cohesion builder and trust amplifier.”
We define Ensemble Mindset as Collaborative Co-Creation Through Collective Intelligence. The ensemble mindset is a way of being that values the best that individuals and groups bring to a situation or challenge.
Collective intelligence is vital to the harmony, rhythm, and creativity of making beautiful music together on the stage or in the workplace. Each member isn’t just responsible for and accountable to themselves, but also to each other. The entire group looks out for each individual and cares about their growth and success.
A Fine-Dining Revolution
A recent CBS Sunday Morning segment told the story of the Community Kitchen restaurant in lower Manhattan. Reimagining how the food system could work, food justice advocate and writer Mark Bittman collaborated with James Beard award-winning chef Mavis-Jay Sanders to bring top-quality food, prepared from scratch, to all members of the community.
Bittman says the restaurant has three principles: support local farmers who use agroecological practices, pay workers a dignified living wage with benefits, and make good food accessible to everyone. Having worked at Michelin Star restaurants, chef Sanders says she wants people to be nourished and to “walk out feeling like a better human.”
Dinner at Community Kitchen is a 10-course feast set on a sliding scale—$15, $45, and $125 according to a person’s ability to pay—no questions asked.
Community Kitchen is a pilot program funded through mid-December by private philanthropy. Their vision is to establish a permanent restaurant in New York and then expand nationwide. They are part of a public restaurant movement which believes that “access to good food is a universal right.”
Through an ensemble ecosystem, we set each other up for success and we succeed or struggle together.
Purpose + excellence + values + responsibility—an equation that upholds dignity and respect for everyone.
