🥁 The OffBeat #89: Building a Team Quickly
Getting into a band-like flow state, fast
This is The OffBeat, where music meets leadership. I’m Allison Stadd—jazz drummer, marketing leader, and very tired/highly caffeinated mom of two—and each week I deliver a fresh take on work, creativity, and connection, like how to hire like Duke Ellington. It’s like HBR, but with better taste in music.
Every other edition of The OffBeat is a think piece structured like a jam session in jazz (naming the tune—a punchy idea; soloing—exploring different takes on a central theme; outro—a thought-provoking closer).
Opening Note | A track that captures the vibe of this edition of The OffBeat:
The musical embodiment of quiet collaboration; no one soloing, no one overpowering. A deeply layered track that depends on every member of the band playing just so.
In Laurie Woolever’s awesome restaurant industry memoir Care and Feeding, she takes us behind the scenes of her time in the chaotic kitchen of the iconic high-end NYC restaurant Babbo.
She spent years there working among like-minded people across “the wide spectrum of humanity,” functioning like an “improbable human machine.”
Here’s how she captured what it felt like to really get into the groove alongside her fellow cooks and dishwashers and servers ⤵
The passage instantly makes me think of the group flow state I’ve felt when playing in a band.
Time stops behaving like time.
It collapses in on itself, becomes a vacuum hoovering up all the seconds that would normally tick so predictably from start to finish.
The first musical notes played are like the onset of a kind of shared trance. And then inside that space, seconds lose their sharp edges. Minutes feel feather-light. We’re all just there, entirely present, our hands, our limbs, our eyes, and our instincts communicating faster and more fluidly than thought.
When you’re in group flow, time becomes sort of irrelevant. The only markers that matter are the rise and fall of energy among everyone swept into the same invisible current.
Band-like flow isn't just productive or fun, it feels sacred. It’s one of the few times in modern life, especially as a working parent, when the clock isn’t the thing bossing you around.
Even with an ensemble I hadn’t played with many times before, if the vibes were good and we all had the same aim in mind with the same amount of focus and presence, we could near-instantly click into that feeling of *something larger than any one of us could execute alone.*
As Rick Rubin put it, “Each of us has our own way of seeing this world. And this can lead to feelings of isolation. Art has an ability to connect us beyond the limitations of language.” (Doesn’t that just slay you?)
Let’s transcribe this into a workplace setting.
Sometimes, like in fast-moving startups or incubators within giant organizations, you don’t have the luxury of time to let things gel as people get to know one another and find their footing.
Sometimes you need to build a team quickly; not just hiring and assembling them in the optimal structure, but onboarding them and getting them into a collective groove, stat.
In addition, the idea of getting into flow as a team is often overlooked. Everyone talks about individual flow (cue the noise-canceling headphones and deep work calendar blocks), but when you're leading a team and you need to accelerate that cohesion and momentum, it's a whole different situation.
So let’s talk about it.
Here are 7 practical ways to get your team into a band-like flow state, quickly:
1. Set a Shared Micro-Goal
Forget the quarterly OKRs for a minute.
What can you accomplish in, say, the next 45 minutes, or by the end of the day, together?
A small, time-boxed goal gives everyone a target to aim at right now, which minimizes drift and indecision.
🎬 ACTION: Commit to something specific like drafting 10 headline options together before lunch.
2. Use Music as a Sensory Anchor
A consistent sensory environment can create an unconscious ritual, i.e. when the music’s on, we’re all in the zone together.
🎬 ACTION: Cue up a playlist (50 ideas here) and make it the team’s official soundtrack for focus.
3. Make Roles Clear
In a state of flow, people aren’t second-guessing their purpose.
So even if everyone technically knows their job, saying it aloud short-circuits ambiguity and eliminates the low-level anxiety that can kill momentum.
🎬 ACTION: For quick alignment, say out loud: “Mike’s leading visuals, Priya’s writing, I’ll edit in real time.”
4. Use a Visual Timer or Countdown
Create shared urgency to enter group flow more quickly. When the clock’s ticking, focus naturally sharpens, and it becomes a bit of a game.
🎬 ACTION: Try something like an all-hands, heads-down power hour with the clock in view (Zoom has a digital timer I’ve used).
5. Create a No-Interruption Bubble
Close Slack and email, turn phones on silent and face-down, cease random side convos. Give your team permission to go totally dark for 30–60 minutes.
🎬 ACTION: Name it—and do it yourself!—to signal: this is precious shared focus time.
6. Start With a Ritual Question
Before diving into a project or a meeting with this new crew, ask a fast, centering question that everyone answers in one sentence. It brings people mentally and emotionally into the room, and closer to one another.
🎬 ACTION: Come up with a handful of go-to ritual meeting starters, like:
“What’s one thing you want to get out of today?”
“What’s one word for how you’re showing up today?”
If you want to go broader, I’m a fan of random question roulette. I also like the
newsletter for ice breaker ideas. The idea is to make this a habitual practice so people expect it each time.7. Design for Quick Wins
Structure whatever task you guys are tackling so that the team sees progress early and often, the way getting into the groove right away makes a band instantly gel. Early momentum matters. It fosters that energy of “OK, we can do this—we are doing it.”
🎬 ACTION: Give people a quick “hell yes” moment to latch onto and build from, even if it’s just checking the simplest joint to-do off the list.
Successfully getting your group into a band-like flow state quickly is a reminder that work, at its best, can feel less like clock-watching and more like jamming.
Because flow isn't just about getting more shit done. It's about unlocking the best version of what your team can become together, as a unit.
Make flow your leadership superpower!
And watch how fast everything else falls into place.
Have a great week,
Allison
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