 If 21st century business were music, executives wouldn’t be able to read from a score. It’s all improvisation, because set pieces went out with the three-martini lunch. It’s no wonder then, that jazz provides a perfect metaphor for leadership, teamwork, and creativity. Academy Fellow Michelle Buck, Director of Leadership Initiatives at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, recently invited Jazz Impact—a jazz-based business education program—to play at Kellogg. The performance wowed her executive leadership group both with music and insight. “Studying the jazz ensemble helps us to more deeply understand that leading a team successfully involves a number of different processes,” Michelle says. “For example, ensemble members need to listen to each other very carefully to be able to build upon each other’s ideas and create something new. They stay close to an original tune, or vision, but take it in new directions.” Michelle also discusses the positive aspects of risk in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article. “Effective leaders are those who enable their teams to support each other during times of risk, providing sufficient backup to enable each other to improvise and create something new.” The founder of Jazz Impact, Michael Gold, saw the jazz connection when he left a long-time academic job and entered the private sector “It was a strong right turn, but it made sense for me and my family at the time,” he told the Times-Picayune. “I was an operations manager and after a while I started to see very clear correlations between being an improvising jazz musician and what it takes to manage all the changes in the business environment. A couple of years later, a friend with a major technology company invited me to bring a jazz ensemble to his company and talk about what I do. They literally flipped out.” “I tell them, ‘Give me 60 minutes here and you will come away understanding why it is important thinking in these dimensions as a business leader.’ Everywhere I do this seminar, it resonates, whether it’s 30 top executives for a multi-national computer company or 2,000 managers for a major retailer.” In the hour-long performance, Jazz Impact highlights concepts like autonomy, passion, risk-taking, innovation and listening skills. Musicians help executives build an appreciation of the rhythm of business.  Jim Cusumano has begun publishing a multipart article on the energy/climate change crisis in Prague Leaders magazine, an English-language publication for high level decision makers in the Czech Republic. Part 1 appeared in the March 2008 issue. In this introductory article Jim reviews the overall situation, and adds some facts many people may not know:
Jim is the co-author of the new book Freedom From Mid-East Oil, which appeared late in 2007 and prescribes a solution to the conjoint problems of energy dependence and climate change, using existing technology and no new taxes.
 Nuclear power is not the answer to our climate change crisis, as Academy Founder and President Rinaldo Brutoco explained in a March 5, 2008 American Bar Association teleconference, “Nuclear Power Finance and Development in the Climate Change Era.” Nuclear power:
Download Rinaldo’s PowerPoint presentation from his ABA remarks.
 Since its beginning, 22 years ago, the World Business Academy has advocated business taking responsibility for the whole of the planet. It is gratifying, therefore, to see the venerable Conference Board holding an event about global corporate citizenship. Academy Fellow Peter Senge opened the conference on February 27. Among the many areas where business can step up, none is more urgent than global warming. Just as the Academy has published Freedom From Mid-East Oil which links climate change and oil dependency (with a concrete plan to reverse both), the Conference Board states, "Traditional corporate citizenship topics were discussed and debated over the course of the day-and-a-half long event, but both formal sessions and side conversations seemed to focus most heavily on the environment. As pressure to be “green” builds and the urgency of our carbon conundrum intensifies, the world is looking to corporations to be leaders…and corporations are looking to each other for guidance." Consistent with the body of his career's work, Dr. Senge looks at climate warming as a case of systems thinking, in this case gone awry. One of the models he uses is an animation of a bathtub with a faucet and drain, where carbon dioxide is water. It helps explain the situation the world confronts today. Click the image above to interact with the animation.
 “I recommend that anyone interested in knowing the real facts about the history of oil, what is happening in the oil industry today, and in particular the Middle East’s involvement should read Freedom from Mid-East Oil. The book is so well written it should become a mandatory text book for high schools and colleges.” C. Paul Davis Imagine a world in which America won its freedom from Mideast oil. We can build that world within 10 years with existing technology and no new taxes. Imagine a world in which America resolved to overcome the energy-climate change crisis that threatens its national security. We can build that world today with informed choices and political will. Imagine a book with a roadmap for ending America’s dangerous dependence on imported oil and the global warming that is threatening the planet. This is that book. Read more.
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Most of golf gets played in your own head, not on grass. Golf Mind: Unlocking the Real Game, the full-length DVD filmed at the Academy’s 2006 Fairways to Transformation Tournament, shows you how to detach from desired outcomes so you're free to be fully present in your golf game – and in your life. Featuring Academy Fellow Deepak Chopra, famed course designer Robert Trent Jones, Jr., golf pro and TV commentator Tina Mickelson, Esalen's Michael Murphy (Golf in the Kingdom), Dr. Joe Parent (Zen Golf), and Fred Shoemaker (Extraordinary Golf), this remarkable DVD contains the keys to unlock the transformative potential of the game of golf.