To introduce her students to the concept of improvisation, Viola Spolin, the godmother of modern improv, used to summon half a dozen students onto the rehearsal stage, and then say nothing to them. Literally nothing. No direction. No reason for them to be there.
Nothing.
Nothing…
Still nothing…
Nothing yet…
Nothing…
Maybe now?
Nope.
Nothing…
Even more nothing…
Nothing…
Nothing…
Not a thing…
Silence.
Followed by silence.
Followed by silence.
And then…
Nothing…
Followed by nothing…
Followed by nothing…
And more nothing…
Until –
– the people standing onstage and those in the audience would get uncomfortable, they’d giggle and stew in self-consciousness. When she had everyone squirming, Spolin would finally give the people onstage a simple task to perform, like counting the floorboards. This would break the tension. Given something to do, the group would find focus. The audience, meanwhile, had something to watch, and hold its attention.
Spolin would then note the change.
For the group onstage, the game (’Count the Floorboards’) defined the objective and created focus. It made the difference between productive behavior and wasted time. Given a game to play, the group would go from aimless, nervous and unfocused to focused, purposeful, confident.
For the audience, the activity generated by the game provided multiple points of interest, posed and answered dramatic questions, and helped define the characters of the people on the stage.
This is the simplest explanation I know for how improvisation works: A game focuses a group’s otherwise aimless energy on the objective, and gets the audience involved.
Last year, early in the existence of GameChangers, the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) of Reno-Tahoe generously (the teaching at that time was as raw as green strawberries) invited me to conduct a GameChangers workshop for 40 of its members in the plush auditorium of the Reno Arts Museum
To introduce the workshop, I used the Spolin exercise described above, and something very revealing happened because of it. Within 30 seconds, the six entrepreneurs I’d invited to take the stage began lining themselves up according to height. Then they reversed the line. Then they re-aligned according to age. In other words, they created their own game!
I was writing my book at the time, and the event in Reno inspired me to polish passages like this that were already in draft form:
The future…belongs to the flexible, the free-spirited, the open-minded, the entrepreneurial. It belongs to people with heightened powers of observation, who excel in teamwork and creativity; to people who can adapt in a changing business environment. To people who don’t plan as much as they prepare. Who don’t cling, they let go.
Entrepreneurs improvise. They start their own engines. They do not wait for directions or for permission before they take action.
Waiting for directions, or for approval up and down a chain of command, or for permission from a committee, and even that old standard called Biding Your Time Until Someone Else Makes a Decision for You (After Which You Can Blame Them When Things Go Bad), are all behaviors calibrated to the rigid, hierarchical, mechanized structures of Industrial Age organizations.
In the fluid, networked, neo-biological business environment of the global economy, these behaviors from a bygone era can sap a brand like Colony Collapse Disorder can disappear a hive of honeybees.
Networked organizations thrive on entrepreneurship at every level. They invite personal initiative, objective coaching by management, productive games with clear rules, distinctive voices harmonizing as the ’sound of the brand’, and spontaneous yet informed decision-making aligned with agreed-to themes, values and mission.
In a word…
Improvisation.
Tags: Biology, Entrepreneurship, GameChangers, Games, Global Economy, Hierarchy, Improvisation, Industrial Age, Networked Organizations, Networked World
Entrepreneurial improvisation for me captures the essence of being able to play along, to listen and pile on. It’s all about “Yes, and…”, the flexibility of thought and direction that demonstrates the ability to listen and adapt to the immediate real world.