Tom Morley
Teams that have been restructured, hybridised and reorganised often look functional on paper and feel disconnected in practice. Trust, candour and shared rhythm do not reappear because a leader announces them. Something has to happen in the room.
Tom Morley is a founding member of Scritti Politti and the founder of Instant Teamwork, who uses live drumming and call-and-response to rebuild trust, energy and coordination inside corporate teams.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tom Morley
- A participatory format that gets reserved, senior or fatigued audiences playing, listening and coordinating with each other inside ten minutes, not after a day of icebreakers.
- Twenty-five years of delivery for Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson across New York, Moscow, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Paris and London.
- A working artist’s read of group energy, drawn from a career on stage with Scritti Politti and studio work with David Bowie and Madness, applied to the dynamics inside a leadership offsite.
- A facilitation method, the 7-Step REMIX Process, that translates the in-room experience into language teams can use back at their desks the following week.
Biography highlights
- Founder member and original drummer of Scritti Politti, the DIY-to-pop band of the 1980s.
- Studio and live collaborator with David Bowie and Madness.
- Founder of Instant Teamwork (1999), an arts-based team-building company operating internationally.
- Corporate clients include Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson.
- Author of the 7-Step REMIX Process, a personal development framework adapted from the “More To Life” programme.
- Charitable work for Teenage Cancer Trust, Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital, MENCAP, Save the Children, UN Women UK and Peace One Day.
Biography
A power-cut hit the stage during a Scritti Politti show in Berlin. Morley kept the beat going and started a vocal call-and-response with the audience. That moment, in which a room of strangers held a groove together without any technology, became the seed for Instant Teamwork, the arts-based team-building company he founded in 1999.
The premise is straightforward. Trust, candour and coordination cannot be lectured into a team. They have to be experienced first, then named. Morley uses live drumming and call-and-response to put a group into a shared rhythm fast, then debriefs what just happened in terms the room can take back to work.
The musical credibility is real. He was a founder member of Scritti Politti, recorded with David Bowie and performed live with Madness. The corporate work has had time to develop a method. Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson have used Instant Teamwork sessions in New York, Moscow, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Paris and London over more than two decades.
Around the facilitation sits the 7-Step REMIX Process, adapted from his work with Dr K. Bradford Brown of the “More To Life” programme. It is the language Morley uses to make a participatory session repeatable for teams once the drums are gone.
Key speaking topics
- Team cohesion and group energy
- Engagement and participation in hybrid teams
- Creativity and improvisation under pressure
- Communication and call-and-response as a team behaviour
- Motivation and collective performance
- Risk-taking and breaking hierarchical silos
Ideal for
- Annual conferences and leadership offsites that need a high-energy participatory anchor
- HR and culture leads rebuilding engagement after restructure or remote-working fatigue
- Sales kick-offs and reward events looking for a shared experience rather than a panel
- Senior leadership groups doing trust and communication work as part of an away-day
Audience outcomes
- An experience of collective rhythm and coordination that members of the room produced together
- A felt sense of how quickly a reserved group can become participatory when the format invites it
- A shared reference point, the session itself, that the team can call back to in meetings afterwards
- Language from the REMIX framework for talking about creative risk and group communication
- A reset on the relationship between energy in the room and decisions made later
Talks
A participatory keynote that uses live drumming and call-and-response to rebuild candour, coordination and trust inside a corporate team.
Key takeaways:
- How a group establishes shared rhythm without rehearsal or hierarchy
- Why participation beats persuasion in shifting team behaviour
- How to carry the energy of a live moment back into operating routines
A keynote and workshop format on creative risk, improvisation and getting unstuck, drawn from forty years on stage and twenty-five years inside corporate rooms.
Key takeaways:
- The role of the first move in unlocking group action
- Discipline, surrender and mischief as a working creative posture
- How leaders signal it is safe for a team to take a creative risk