Group Genius: The Science Behind High-Performing Teams with Keith Sawyer

What separates a high-performing team from a group of talented individuals who consistently underperform? According to Dr Keith Sawyer, the answer lies in group flow — a state of peak collective experience that goes far beyond individual performance.

Dr Sawyer is the Morgan Distinguished Professor of Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one of the world’s leading researchers on creativity, collaboration, and innovation. A jazz pianist who has performed with Chicago improvisational theater groups, he has spent decades studying how peak creative performance emerges not inside a single mind, but between minds.

In this episode, Mark Blackwell and Keith Sawyer explore the ten conditions for group flow, why improvisation is always a balance between structure and freedom, how problem-finding is fundamentally different from problem-solving and why that distinction matters for business teams, the Goldilocks quality that runs through every one of the ten conditions, why groupthink and group flow are two sides of the same coin, and what jazz and improv theater can teach organisations about building teams that consistently outperform.

Building on previous Arkaro Insights conversations with Roni Reiter-Palmon on creative problem solving and Hilary Scarlett on the neuroscience of collaboration, this episode adds a compelling new layer: the social and improvisational dynamics that allow groups to achieve something greater than the sum of their parts.

Keith’s book Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration is available at https://a.co/d/0aBHbJ0p. His podcast The Science of Creativity is at sawyerpodcast.com and his Substack newsletter at keithsawyer.substack.com.

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Transcript

The Myth Of The Lone Genius

Mark Blackwell 0:50

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Arkaro Insights podcast. I'm your host, Mark Blackwell. In our journey to help B2B executives thrive in a complex adaptive world, we've spent a lot of time deconstructing the myths of modern business. We've challenged the idea that strategy is a linear five-year plan, and we've explored how our brains are really still running on savannah software while running 21st century boardrooms. Today we're tackling one of the most persistent myths of all, the myth of the lone genius of creativity. We've seen the Hollywood movies where there's a solitary inventor working late at night, suddenly having the aha moment in a garage. But our guest today argues that this image is not only wrong, it's actually a real barrier to organizational performance. Dr. Keith Sawyer is the Morgan Distinguished Professor of Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina. He's a world-renowned expert on the science of creativity and author of Group Genius. As a jazz pianist himself, Keith has spent decades studying how peak performance does not happen inside a single mind, but between minds in a state which he calls group flow. Building on our previous conversations with experts like Roni Reiter Palman on team problem solving and Hilary Scarlet on the neuro science of collaboration. Today we're going to have a deep dive onto the ten conditions that allow a team to move past group think and into group genius. Keith, welcome to the show.

Keith Sawyer 2:37

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Mark Blackwell 2:40

One of the greatest mentors in your career, who's he's well known, and if I would say well known, perhaps by podcast hosts as giving nervous as need reading out his name, but Mihai Chicksent was famous for identifying the conditions of individual flow in his book. I think for me, four factors, which are important. You know, you've got to manage challenge, which you're capable of, not too hard, not too difficult. The Goldilocks, as I thought about it. Clear goals, good feedback against performance, and really concentration on it on achieving the goal to get into a state of flow. What does when you're thinking about group flow? How do we build on that? Is it different? Where do we start?

From Individual Flow To Group Flow

Improvisation Needs Goals And Feedback

Keith Sawyer 3:22

Mihai Chick sent Mihai was the originator of the concept of flow. In 1990, he published the book called Flow. And that was the same year I started graduate school and took my first graduate class with him. That was called the psychology of creativity. He asked his graduate students to call him Mike because he knew his name was hard to pronounce. I'll say Chick sent me high, chick sent me high. So yes, I learned how to say it. But group flow being a group uh comparison, I suppose, to the individual state of flow being an optimal experience is what he called it. And a lot of people think of it as a peak experience, like if you're an athlete, uh like an Olympic athlete, that you're going to be uh running the fastest, you'll complete the marathon faster than you've ever completed it before, or if you're a chess player, you're going to beat the most competitive grandmaster than you've ever competed before. But for Mike, flow was not only peak performance, it was also a subjective state, a fulfilling experience. And he called it intrinsic motivation. The experience was so fulfilling. It's such a peak experience internally that people want to do the task just for the experience of doing it. So you keep coming back and doing it over and over again because it's so fulfilling. That's how he started his book. He started his book saying, what is the most fulfilling thing that humans can do? What is happiness, really? In 1990, we didn't have psychologists studying happiness. We didn't have positive psychology. So is happiness sitting on a couch with a full stomach and watching television? Mike had been doing research on this since the 1970s, and he said, no, he's done empirical scientific research, and that's not when people feel happy and fulfilled. They feel happy and fulfilled when they're challenged, but when they're challenged in a certain kind of way, and exactly those characteristics you just described. If you're challenged too much, then you just get anxious and frustrated. If you're challenged not enough, then you just get bored, like you're sitting on the couch. So it's that match between the challenges of what you're doing and the skills that you bring to the task. And what drives you forward is that as the challenges of the task advance, then you want to increase your skills because that state of flow is so fulfilling that you want to stay in the state of flow. So it drives you to increase your skills not because you want to keep getting A's or not because you want your time to go down in the marathon, but because you want that intrinsically motivating state. So you raise your skills because you want to stay in flow and you seek out greater challenges if your skills get higher because you want to stay. So Mike called it the flow channel. And he there's a chart in his book where you can see this diagonal going up to the to the right where your skills go up and the challenges go up. So in group flow, what I've studied in my career and started with jazz ensembles and improvisational theater groups, which I think is the perfect example, the best example of group flow, because it happens most in improvisational groups. It's the same where the group collectively has that kind of optimal experience where it's so fulfilling for the people in the group that they keep coming back and they keep doing it. It's a kind of experience you can't have by yourself because it's the other members of the group giving you things back that you're not expecting. The surprises that come from them, which, if you don't have the skills to participate in the group, say a jazz ensemble, if you don't know how to play jazz, the other musicians are doing things you're not expecting. You're just uh freaked out. You're gonna have a horrible experience and you're you're not gonna come back. Playing jazz requires a lot of expertise. But when you get to that level, then you seek out the other musicians doing those things because you know it's going to make you a better player. So when you're participating in a group that's in group flow, it increases the fulfillment of the experience for each of the individuals in the group. So all of the individuals are experiencing that optimal experience as individual flow. But I talk about the group experience collectively as a kind of group flow.

Mark Blackwell 8:05

So I one of the things I noted was obviously your jazz musician, I'm not. But on the individual flow, there was a sense of goal being there. My limited understanding of jazz was that it's not all about a goal, it's feeding off each other. So am I missing something? Do you need a goal for have good group flow?

Keith Sawyer 8:26

The key to me in my research is improvisation or improvisationality, to be more academic. That if it's scripted, if it's structured and you know exactly where you're going, then no, you're not gonna have that experience of group flow. And to some extent, I think it's the same way with individual flow. So when Mike Chick sent me high, said for individual flow that you have a clear goal, you're not gonna get in flow if the path to that goal is linear and predictable step by step. So one of the second characteristics of flow is that you get feedback at every moment along the way. It doesn't mean you get a grade at the end of the semester. That's not feedback. You have to get feedback every day, every second, to be in the flow state, because the flow state is an experience, subjective experience that's continuous. And if you know exactly what's going to happen every second, then you know that's not an experience. You know what's going to happen. So there has to be an improvisationality, even in individual flow. So for a group, that improvisationality is expanded because the other performers, and if it's a business setting, it's the same way. The other people in the group are doing things that you can't predict. So, yes, you have a clear goal collectively, but if the goal is so specific, and if everyone has a script and a plan and an agenda where everybody's doing exactly the same thing and it's all predictable, and you're doing this on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, and everybody we're meeting on Friday. And did you do what you said you would do on Friday? I would say that's not going to be a group flow experience because it doesn't have that unpredictability and improvisationality. Now, a lot of business challenges, you want that predictability. A lot of business tasks really do have to have structure to them. But at least in what I've studied in the types of organizations and the histories of inventions, if you need invention and if you need innovation, and if you have a really complicated, wicked problem, you need that kind of improvisationality. You need that unpredictability because you don't know what the path is going to be forward. So for that kind of, I call it problem-finding challenge, I think you need the group flow type of innovation experience.

Mark Blackwell 10:52

One of the things I like about this podcast is different ideas from different sources come to merge to connect with each other. So one, for example, in our podcast with P. Compo, we talked about the myth of the five-year business plan, which is like that. No business can rigidly plan every step for five years. You can have a goal or an aspiration. But getting there in a complex adaptive world is probe, sense, responds. Do something, sense how it impacts a system from an experimentation, and then react accordingly. Which is to me exactly what you're describing in the in the jazz ensemble, as I interpret that, you're playing off each other to work out how to get to the final goal with no preconceived plan at all. So that's that's nice. But the one thing that does come across, and we've had this as not just from Pete Compo, but from Catherine L. Tromp and many others, is when you're in this sort of complex adaptive system trying to move towards your goal, more constraints is better. Does that is there any analogy to that in your 10 factors for group flow?

Keith Sawyer 11:59

There's a misconception about improvisation that it means that anything goes. And anyone who performs jazz knows that there are lots and lots of constraints and structures, but it's a it's a funny term because I think jazz musicians wouldn't say there are constraints.

Mark Blackwell 12:16

Yeah.

Constraints That Make Creativity Possible

Keith Sawyer 12:17

You know, music you're playing in a key, it's B flat. That's not a constraint, that's just music. You're playing a blues, a blues has 12 bar song form, and that's not a constraint, that's just music. B flat has an F7th, the dominant seventh chord. That's not a constraint, that's just the way the music is. But that's the nature of improvisation. It has that structure to it, and that structure enhances and enables the improvisation. So that's what I mean when I say improvisation is always a balance between structure and freedom. And that's the nature of group flow as well. And it's tied to that question you asked me earlier about the goal. So there's always this tension uh between the script and the improvisation, or between the structure and the constraints that you find in a group flow situation. Now, if it is completely structured, like you say, like, what are the five-year business plan or the policies, or you know, here's your what you're gonna do the next five days, and I'm gonna check in with you on Friday. So those structures, you know, for certain kinds of business tasks, yes, you need that kind of structure. So it's a matter of having your process aligned with your business goal. Now, in my research, I've chosen to study extreme improvisationality. So I study jazz ensembles, I study improvisational theater groups, and I actually have performed as a pianist with Chicago improvisational theater groups. To some extent, those are easier to apply to business settings because they're actually on stage talking to each other. So we can transcribe what they're saying, we can analyze the conversation, and we can now we can go look at a business meeting and we can analyze that conversation. It's very hard to transfer the musical notation on a page to a business meeting. But I do actually find very similar interaction dynamics, but in group flow for music and for theater. But that tension between structure and improvisation, that if you have the right structures, it can actually enhance and enable the success of the improvisationality or the fulfillment of the experience of group flow.

Mark Blackwell 14:36

We've talked about the risks of being too linear. And then that's not what you want to do. The idea we should test and improvise and feedback off each other. The other great fear of business leaders is that uh they go, okay, just we're under pressure, just go in solution mode, get the problem solved. And I want to test another idea to see how it composes your research, and that came from Roni Writer-Pallman, which shows that if teams invest time thinking about problems, the more time they invest in in actually thinking about the problem, defining the problem, the better the solution becomes. Does that work in any way relate to what it means to be in a state of group flow and and productive group flow?

Problem Finding And The Power Of Listening

Keith Sawyer 15:19

Absolutely, yes. What she's talking about is this uh famous contrast in creativity research between problem solving creativity and problem-finding creativity. So you think about problem solving where you know what the problem is, and you know that you might need some creativity to solve the problem. It's not a straightforward path to a solution, but you know what the problem is. Now think about another type of situation where you're not quite sure what the problem is. You're in a complicated situation. Some people call them wicked problems, or uh you've got to formulate a problem. You've got to ask the question. You're not really sure what the question is. So creativity researchers started calling that problem finding. That was actually Mihai, Chick Sent Mihai's term, 1976 book. I wrote an article about that last month. That book has been out of print and lost to history, but that term problem finding has lived on in creativity research. Problem finding creativity is an improvisational path because you have to explore uh a very large problem space because you don't know where the problem is. You don't know what the question is, you don't know what language you're going to need, you don't know what tools, so you don't know what methods you're going to have to use to solve it. You don't know what the structure of the solution is going to look like. So that kind of search path and search space is very much improvisational. And if you have a group dynamic, then the group is better at exploring that kind of space. And that's where group flow, the improvisationality of group flow it really has a benefit over the sort of structures and scripts of I don't know, I'd say the policy and the scheduled dynamic.

Mark Blackwell 17:12

You say that, you know, tackling it when you don't know what the problem is. I think equally, possibly even more importantly so, is people jump into situations believing that they know what the problem is.

Keith Sawyer 17:24

Yes. Right. So you're trying to solve the wrong problem. Yeah, that's classic in the history of invention. But there are successful stories of invention where you're trying to solve a problem that turns out to be the wrong problem. And then if you are uh carefully listening, especially to users, then this term, the pivot or pivoting, which often gets used in entrepreneurship or in design thinking, is you discover the problem while you're trying to solve the wrong problem. So it doesn't mean you're doomed to fail, but you have to be closely listening. Actually, that leads me to another one of the 10 conditions of group flow, is now think about the improvisational ensemble again. And I mentioned one of the powerful benefits of group interaction and group flow is that you get ideas from other people, and they're going to be surprising ideas because you can't predict what the other people are going to do. They're all improvising as well as you, and it's going to surprise you. And it's terrifying if you don't know what you're doing. It's actually terrifying even for expert improvisers, Chicago professional improvisers will say it's terrifying, but we love it. It's terrifying, but we love it. But it doesn't benefit you unless you're listening, unless you're paying attention. If you, if your head is somewhere else, if you if your head is focused on what am I going to say next, I have this brilliant idea in mind about the dog over there is going to shit on the man's foot. Um, and then your partner says something about a lottery ticket as a winning number, and that's going to go right over your head because you're not listening to it. So you have to have that kind of close listening. That's one of the 10 conditions of group flow, because if you're not closely listening, then you're not going to accept that gift and then use that to build on it. If you're not building on it, then you're missing the power of group flow.

Mistakes Reframed Through Team Trust

Mark Blackwell 19:36

Yeah, uh as you uh I was looking at the uh the your list of 10, I did find it a bit like the Goldilocks moment, you know, not too much, not too little that was in the original Nihai thinking. So, for example, I'm sure you'd agree that psychological safety is as a key factor for group flow. Yet at the same time, you noted that jazz ensemblers often don't really crack it when they're in practice mode. They really need that fear of failure together. So it's it seemed to me all about finding the right balance between the two extremes.

Keith Sawyer 20:12

I think that's right. All all ten of the conditions you're skating on the boundary of uh, so for example, is it failure, is it making a mistake? Um, and in a successful improvising group, I think one reason that performers feel comfortable with the possibility that they might make a mistake is that the other members of the ensemble become very talented at taking whatever you do and building a context around it so that it sounds good. So that even if you played something that you weren't intending to play, what happens next can turn it into something that wasn't a mistake. And maybe the thing that you thought was going to be a mistake actually becomes reinterpreted as something valuable. So the concept of mistake in a group that's in flow kind of, you know, it takes on a different meaning. You know, there are things that are unalloyed mistakes, but in a professional people who are really good at this, you know, they are more comfortable with really putting themselves out there and trying wild and crazy ideas.

Mark Blackwell 21:26

So it sounds like to me that if you you need to feed back off each other and have confidence to build on someone's mistake as well as good improv, then you need to know each other pretty well. Is that is that a key feedback?

Familiarity Balanced With Cognitive Diversity

Keith Sawyer 21:40

Yes, absolutely. And yeah, that is one of the 10 conditions of group flow that is, again, a tension is that you need to have some familiarity with each other. It's very hard to get into group flow. And again, I'm thinking of stage performers, it's very hard to get into group flow if you don't know each other at all, if you never played together before. So, yeah, some familiarity. But if you know each other too well, let's say if you've never played with anybody else for two years and you've played with only these people, then you know each other too well and the others aren't going to surprise you. You've heard all their licks, so there's no surprise there. So having some what psychologists call cognitive diversity, what cognitive diversity means is that they're giving you things that are surprises to you that you haven't heard before. So if it's all new stuff, if you don't know anything about what they're going to do, then you don't have any shared language. There's no overlap. So having some familiarity, yes, it is important to group flow, but being completely identical. So what you find in performing ensembles is that They actually do configure themselves over time in this manner. So groups will form and reform in a particular city, for example. So they'll have groups of musicians that will play together, and then one musician will leave and start performing with another group, and another musician will come in. Groups tend not to stay exactly the same for five years in a row. They will just shift around. And I'm thinking, say, in the jazz scene, improv theater scene. And this is a reason why groups improvise. So when I was in improv theater groups in Chicago, we would always rehearse to get ready for an improvised show. We would have maybe uh four weeks of rehearsals and our rehearsals would all be improvised. We'd be improvising in rehearsals. And I'd be telling my friends, hey, I've got to go to my rehearsal for this improvisation show. And they would make jokes about it. They'd say, ha ha ha, you're you're why are you rehearsing for an improvisation show? And they were kind of implying that we weren't really improvising and we were faking it once we got on stage. But they didn't get it. They didn't get it that you have to rehearse at improvisation to actually be good at improvisation. Like I said a few minutes ago, it doesn't mean anything goes. So what you're building up there is you're building up that shared language, you're building up that ability to understand each other and communicate, but it doesn't mean you're rehearsing a script. You're developing an ability to talk to each other.

Mark Blackwell 24:18

So what does that mean for building business teams in the workplace then? What guidance or what have you learned from the data, if any, about you know what organizations are good at this and what organizations are not good at this in terms of allowing and supporting group flow in the workplace?

Keith Sawyer 24:34

You know, I just had a flash to these team building exercises that everyone makes fun of. Yeah. You go you go to the ropes course or whatever. So I actually haven't thought about that in the context of group flow. Now I'm I don't have an opinion on that.

Mark Blackwell 24:48

Well, I mean I'm I just noticed there's a lot of people who read the book Flow, and I you referenced businesses that change their approach after doing so. I think Ericsson was one that came to mind. I think there's a couple of other companies that and and very successful companies as a result that allowed encouraged individual flow. But I wonder if there, you know, there'd be good lessons for companies in terms of rotating staff, but keeping some balancing the rotation of staff with keeping the the group relatively consistent so that they know each other and there's no hierarchy.

unknown 25:27

Yeah.

Uncertainty, Psychological Safety, And Training

Keith Sawyer 25:27

Absolutely, yeah. So that's a pretty straightforward lesson that you would keep members of the group. And in my case, the group flow research of of mine tends to be small groups because I'm studying the jazz ensembles and improvisational theater groups and small business teams. But yeah, so you would have, say, five to ten member groups, and you would want, let's say, at least half of them to stay the same for, let's say, six to twelve months, and then you'd have other ones rotate. So you wouldn't have exactly the same members for more than six to twelve months. Yeah. So you'd have them rotating in and out. And what you'd have is you'd have that um, well, there's this term knowledge management, right? Which is a pretty exciting area of research and business context. So you have those people that are moving around are carrying uh the implicit tacit knowledge from one team to another. And it is very much like the jazz ensemble where the sax player is going from one city to another and taking new ways of playing uh 12 bar blues. Absolutely. Yes, uh business organizations could certainly adapt principles like that from group flow.

Mark Blackwell 26:36

Yeah. I was just seeing if anything I could pick up which might be the same or different from Hillary Scarlet. She has a model called the Spaces model, which is provides an acronym to think about what are the things we need to do from a neuroscience perspective to help us collaborate. So spaces, the first one is that there's gonna be self-esteem, and so that which is very much connected to her and other idea of equity so that you feel balanced within the group, there's no sense of hierarchy, and that your role is recognized. Now, in the jazz ensemble, I definitely get this role that you're actively listening out for everyone else, that's gonna give you the self-esteem. Purpose that talks about having a goal, autonomy, the group has to be free to do whatever it needs to be doing. Social connection, that's the final S. That that's obviously very important for what we're saying. I suppose the one thing that stands out may be a bit different is certainty. Our brain craves certainty. But interestingly, I think the build that you're maybe suggesting is we've got to try to fight that and push ourselves to get out of our comfort mode to really get into a state of group flow after we've started collaborating. Is that a fair reader?

Keith Sawyer 27:47

Well, she's right, the brain craves certainty. One of the most foundational psychological findings is that people really don't like uncertainty. It leads to anxiety. We seek out, we try to reduce uncertainty. And that's a challenge of improvisationality. But I will say group flow does require some uncertainty. And that is where I think if you're trying to introduce this in a business setting, that is where some training or development would be necessary. There's a necessary ambiguity and uncertainty. And it's also difficult for professional improvisers. I mean, uh, you know, if you talk to improvisational theater actors, they will tell you it's terrifying. The first time I did it, it was terrifying. Sometimes I've been doing it for five years. Sometimes it's still terrifying when I go out in front of an audience. So it's, you know, it's human nature. It's going to be terrifying. But so yes, but I don't I don't think you can get rid of the uncertainty and still get into the group flow state. So maybe I would disagree with the spasis model there. If you put us in a room together, I think we would, I think we would be able to come to an agreement about because we're both scientists, right? Um, but so how which but you still have to manage that somehow. And that's where psychological safety comes in. And so, yeah, so a lot of psychologists, including me, will say if you're going to put people in a situation where they have to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, then you have to give them that psychological safety. And that requires a certain kind of group dynamic and a certain sort of uh development of the team. And yeah, you're not going to be in group flow without that.

Mark Blackwell 29:30

It's a fascinating reflection. One of the activities I have in my commercial life is doing an experiential learning situation with groups in a room that compete against each other, and they've got manufacturers and customers, and we set up the game to help them understand about sales and operations planning. One of the key ingredients for the rule is deliberately not provide enough time for them to know all the rules of the game. Because it creates that difficulty, that frustration, that nervousness, which is part of it just edging people ready. Having to do that, didn't that you what's maybe even suggesting that's a essential ingredient for the group flow is having this fear of failure because they don't fully understand what's going on. So that's that was a reflection for me.

Keith Sawyer 30:14

Right, right. Yeah, I'm not sure if I would advocate fear of failure. Okay. Maybe expectation of failure. Expectation welcoming. How about celebration?

Why Smart Groups Make Bad Decisions

Mark Blackwell 30:28

But more really, I think if I re rephrase it, the possibility of failure because well possibility, possibility, which is like the possibility of being in front of an audience and someone doesn't get the feed off another and the improv goes all wrong. It's it just heightens your your nervous state and to be more alert to get into a flow. I think I think that's what I was probably aiming for, the potential, not the fear. I just I just wonder one finally as we close, I'm getting a feel on what we need of the 10 factors. We're not gonna have time to go through them all. One question that came to me, obviously, is I get group flow as possible, but more and more we hear about group think and the failures of political decisions or whatever, as people get a room who know each other, who've got individually they have the talent. I'm also reminded of soccer teams that have got huge budgets and they buy all the best players they can in the world and put the teams together, and they don't the sum is less than the parts, not greater than the parts. Can you give me one or two drivers and why do we make such bad decisions sometimes when groups or perform so bad?

Keith Sawyer 31:34

Two things that can interfere with group flow that you mentioned, and one is the drive for an individual to focus only on their own individual flow experience. So you think about the football team or the soccer team where um an individual player is trying to do their best and they're to get into their own individual flow state. So they're not focused on the group and they're not doing the close listening and they're not improvising with the group, they're not trying to benefit from what the other members of the group are giving them. So not only they might be getting an individual flow, but they're not contributing to group flow. So in a team sport, I think coaches are very familiar with this phenomenon. Uh, and in my book, Group Genius, uh, chapter three is called group flow, and then chapter four, right after that, is is about groupthink.

Mark Blackwell 32:24

Right.

Keith Sawyer 32:25

It's a about the voluminous research showing that in many cases groups are dumber than the same number of individuals working alone. That research goes back to the 1960s. So absolutely. So there is a lot of research on how you can avoid that groupthink. And the way I interpret all of that research is that the way to avoid groupthink is to bring people together and to have them improvisationally interacting so that each member of the group is contributing information to the other members, and that each member is listening to that information coming from the other members, so that that communication dynamic, and communication is one of the 10 conditions of group flow, so that that communication dynamic is happening on a moment-to-moment basis. When that happens, you have something greater than the sum of the parts emerging from that interaction. When you have this group think, you don't have that kind of interaction happening on a continuous basis. And that means you don't get the benefits, the potential benefits of group flow. You gotta have that moment-to-moment interaction in an improvisational context, and that gives you the emergence, and that's the power of group flow.

Practical Habits To Build Group Flow

Mark Blackwell 33:48

Got it. I'm not sure if we've covered them all. I mean, I've got a list in front of me. We've got having a shared goal, we've talked about that. Listening, you've really definitely got that. Having complete concentration, being in control or having autonomy. Blending egos. So I'm thinking about the all-star football team again. No one's trying to become the biggest all-star. Oh, that that's uh uh and and equality. Knowing each other, but knowing not each other too too well, because that can make teams stale, giving good feedback, and that's why I think you know having psychological safety is so key because you've got to be able to comfortable you know, g give people feedback on where they are going well and and no forth, so we can just look at each other with both verbal and non-verbal communication, recognizing that there is a goal to achieve, so constantly having a an indication, are we getting closer towards it, having progress, and having some rules that is gonna come up again this idea of the right balance of structure. So we don't want a rigid pathway, but we wanna, you know, we don't want to like it's a linear preset plan, but on the other hand, we've gotta know that jazz plays in B flat or whatever we are. We've got to have some constraints on on the rules of the game, which helps us become creative, and you know, that's been a big theme of the podcast. So I think that's it. It's uh but it's uh something to practice. If you've got any advice to anyone listening to this what they should do in the workplace to try to encourage more group flow in their organization next week.

Keith Sawyer 35:25

There was an art there was an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about research showing that people are losing their ability to engage in everyday conversation, just small talk or just uh talking to people and some actual empirical scientific research. And I thought, oh, this is so sad because that's exactly what we're talking about. That is the the foundation of group flow. What we're talking about is basic human ability. I've been talking about jazz and improvisational theater. These are highly talented professionals, but it's a fundamental part of being human, is this ability to interact with other people improvisationally. That's conversation. Every time we sit down and talk to each other, we're saying things no one's ever said before. And we're having a an exchange with each other that's two or three different people. And yeah, it's gonna be very similar to other conversations that three other people had over beers before, but it's gonna be a little bit different, and that's the way jazz is. A lot of people have played a 12 bar blues before in B flat, but this time it's a little bit different. So, you know, it's a fundamental human ability, it's uh it's not something that only jazz musicians can do. So I would say we need to make sure we don't lose that fundamental human ability. We need to get out there and just talk to people. Uh, just you know, if you're a dog walker, I see dog walkers talking to other dog walkers. So maybe, maybe get a dog. I don't know. Um, just uh have some small talk with people, put your phone down when you're waiting for the bus. You know, just don't lose that basic human ability to engage in conversation.

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Mark Blackwell 37:11

You're so right, as the Americans are so fond of saying the water cooler moment, definitely so. I mean, I could start another conversation straight away, but I think what you're saying is so much more important than might immediately peace to be. I've read a very similar article in MIT this week, which is you know, AI is great at interpolation, you know, connecting pre-existing patterns. What makes us special and truly special as human is extrapolation, creating these bizarre connections that have not been created before, even if it's just a simple conversation. Yeah, I really get it. Thank you. Very good advice, Keith. So tell me, uh, where what books are should people read if they've been inspired by this podcast?

Keith Sawyer 37:52

My book, Group Genius, The Creative Power of Collaboration. Uh I have a chapter in that book called Group Flow, and that's uh where I have the ten conditions. So that's called Group Genius uh 2017. I'm working on a new book now that it is called Group Flow. And then there's my podcast, The Science of Creativity, with several episodes about flow and group flow, and my Substack newsletter.

Mark Blackwell 38:19

Thank you very much, Keith. I've listened to a couple of your podcasts already, and I will be listening to more of them for sure. Thank you very much. Thank you for a great introduction to Group Flow. Please be sure to subscribe. We've got some great guests coming up. Again, thank you very much, Keith Sawyer. Great conversation on on Group Flow. Goodbye. Goodbye, Keith.

Keith Sawyer 38:37

Goodbye.