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JetBlue Scene

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Jeremy Redleaf, one of the new physicists of the narrative form and the creator of this brilliant siteOJN1initated the scene when he sent me this emailJBJeremy1

about this JetBlue adJetBlue1

which is anchored by copy that saysJBJeremy2In my role of Commentor On All Things About Improvisation in Business, I responded to Jeremy’s email with this GameChangers postJBGameChangers1in which i point out that ‘the first rule of improv’ if there even is such a thing, which itself is debatable, is not to say ‘yes’ but to say ‘yes and.’   ‘Yes’ is a state of mind.  ‘Yes and’ is action.  The most fertile ground in the world is useless until it’s planted.  ‘Yes’ is the ground.  ‘And’ is the seed.  My blog post inspired Jeremy…JBJeremy2C

Posi-ffiti!  Yes!  I love threads like this.  As usual, I’d tweeted a link to my blog post. I decided to yes-and Jeremy by calling JetBlue’s attention to its error with a Tweet.  I was able to Google their CMO, Marty St. George and find his Twitter account.  JBTweet2To Marty’s credit, he tweeted back within 15 mins.  This already puts @martysg and JetBlue way ahead of most CMOs in brand narrative game.  It also tells me that this is one vigilant, sensitive cat.  Dude’s running it like Ochocincomartysg1

here @martysg commits the improvisation error of denying.  He does this by being vague–what does “if you said ‘no quotation marks’ I might be with you” mean, anyway?–and acting as if I’d accused him of misquoting ‘John’, and seems to be saying that the mistake is not theirs, but mine, for calling them out on the wrong thing.  I responded by suggesting the ‘Posi-ffiti’ gameJBTweet3

and further suggested how to initiate the game…JBTweet11

@martysg blocks the game… martysg2By acting as if I’d said something I hadn’t–that ‘The Posi-ffiti Game’ would have to be played without ‘John’s’ permission–Marty kills the scene.  This was probably his intention.  He also implies that quoting people without their permission is MY style.  In one statement, he refuses my gift and pimps my character.  Nice.  This is classic old school management style, a familiar corporate game I call, “Parry and Thrust.”  It’s played  by stalling, and staying non-committal (”Hm…if….I might…”) and then landing a knockout blow (”Do something unethical?  Not us.  YOU maybe.  Not us.”)

Look, everybody understands that a CMO like @martysg will not alter an ad campaign because some nitpicker tweets him about the word ‘and’ in an ad.  Like I said, he gets credit for being open enough to have the conversation in the first place.  This is more responsiveness from a tweet than you’d get from 90% of all the CMOs in the world.  It is, however, short of the kind of action a person would get from an improvisational brand like Southwest Airlines.  Furthermore, what happened when @martysg did respond is precisely the point of my blog post.  The conversation didn’t go anywhere because Marty St. George ‘yessed’ and he did not ‘and.’

How might Marty have yes-anded?  Anyone who’s gone through a GameChangers workshop can give you a dozen games that would be more productive than ‘Parry and Thrust.’

The good news coming out of this exchange is that all is not lost.  Jeremy Redleaf has a new job description for OddJobNation: “Posi-ffiti Artist.”

To an improviser, Lost is just the first step on the way to Found.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Branding, Character, Communication, Dialogue, Games, Gifts, Initiations, Issues, Listening, Narrative, Scenes, story | No Comments »

GameChangers Glossary, A to G

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Adapted from GameChangers–Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, by Mike Bonifer:

Addition–Entering a scene in progress for the purpose of contributing immediately to the team’s performance; contributing to a scene; giving a gift

Agreement, The Agreement Principle–A principle of improvisation, characterized by players’ openness towards each other and an organization or communications network’s openness at its edge; the group consensus around a game or theme that informs a scene

Audience–Those within and outside of an organization whose reactions and opinions will determine the success of a scene or performance

Audience, External–People outside an organization or network, including customers (and potential customers), competitors, bloggers, users, fans, viewers, etc. whose reactions ultimately determine the value of a performance or narrative

Audience, Internal–People inside an organization or network, whose judgment acts as a kind of filter on scenes and narratives before they reach the External Audience

Blocking–A performance-related problem that occurs when players impede the progress of a scene by refusing the gifts offered them by their teammates

Callback–The act of recalling information that was stated by a player earlier in a scene or in a previous scene.

Cast–Players who share the same business objective; also called a Group or Team; can also refer to the employees of an entire division or organization (Disney, for example, refers to all employees as ‘cast members’)

Casting–The process of selecting players who will comprise a business team

Character–Traits that make a player unique as an individual and consistently valuable to his or her team

Close, Del–Credited as one of the originators of longform improvisation, and one of its most influential teachers, Close (1934-1999) created ‘Harold,’ probably the most-performed structure for group improv theater performances; his proteges include Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey; legend has it that he willed his skull to the Goodman Theater in Chicago to be used in future productions of Hamlet, in which he was to be billed as playing the role of Yorick

Coach–A person who casts a team; an objective observer and critic of a team’s performance; one who establishes game-based strategies and standards of preparation and performance in directing a team toward its objectives; manager; director

Cosmetic Communication/Meaning–The surface level of communication within a scene, primarily through spoken dialogue; data; information. (See ‘Emotional Communication/Meaning‘ and ‘Meta Communication/Meaning‘)

Crazy Town–A performance-related problem that occurs when players indulge in fantasies, magical thinking, or egoistic behavior, until the scene becomes un-moored from any actionable reality.

Denying–A form of blocking in which a player repeatedly contradicts or ignores other players, confusing the audience and fellow players; refusing to recognize another player’s reality

Edit–The action of making an entrance for the purpose of shifting the scene’s focus, or to begin a new scene; edits usually occur in concert with other players exiting the scene

Emotional Communication/Meaning–The most dynamic and meaningful level of communication in a scene. conveying its players’ passions and desires, where reactions (both positive and negative), and reinforcements/alienation are strongest

Energy–The pitch at which a player or group performs (and modulates) its performance; an umbrella term for the level of activity and intensity the audience observes in the group, and that players in the group experience in one another

Entrance–A player’s first appearance in a scene

Environment–The setting in which members of team collaborate to achieve their objective; any place where players interact; more expansively, any place where an audience experiences a brand; the overall business climate in which an organization operates, shaped by factors such as regulatory agencies, competitors, geopolitical factors and the desires, attitudes and beliefs of customers

Exit–A player’s departure from a scene

Fantasizing–A performance-related issue that occurs when players build outlandish, or wildly fictitious scenarios that do not acknowledge or act on the real world environment or the businessa; magical thinking; (see ‘Crazy Town‘ and ‘Invention‘)

Flatlining–A performance-related problem that occurs when players show no energy or life, impeding or halting a scene’s progress

Game–Rules, roles, environment and objective(s) defined; an exploration of a theme; a strategy used to achieve a business-related objective; games fall into two broad categories – productive and unproductive

GameChanger–A player who has mastered the art and practical techniques of business improvisation; a manager/coach or player with the ability to identify and support productive games and quickly change or edit unproductive ones

Gift–A move that supports the scene and the players in it; ‘giving gifts’ is one of the most powerful and effective moves a player can make

Grandstanding–A performance-related issue that occurs when a player wastes time and effort trying to contribute something ‘heroic’ to a scene; holding back for effect instead of engaging in the moment; habitually swinging for the fences or reaching for the ‘Wow Factor’; going for a home run when a single would better serve the scene

Group Mind– The tangible web of connectivity between players that achieved through a shared focus on a game and the exploration of a theme; the collective unconscious; not the same as ‘Group Think‘

Group Think–Rubber-stamping; going along to get along; consensus for its own sake; agreement that does not involve a game or theme; behavior that is not intended to achieve the objective, but rather to reinforce status; uncritical or unquestioning support for a political agenda, ideology or hierarchy

TO BE CONTINUED….

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Branding, Casting, Character, Coaching, Communication, Dialogue, Emotion, Entrances, Environment, Fundamentals, Games, Gifts, Group Mind, Issues, Narrative, Objectives, Scenes, Themes | No Comments »

The Customer’s Dual Roles

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

SunMoon1It’s easy enough to see that in a selling scene, a Customer is your Audience.  You, in your role as Seller (and make no mistake about it, everyone in this world sells something) need the customer/audience to support you at the boxoffice, the gift shop, the showroom, the supermarket, the website, or anywhere else you can translate their ‘applause’ into revenue.  This has been true since studly village smithies were putting on a good show by hammering out horseshoes under the spreading chestnut tree.  A good performance gets rewarded by the audience. Selling doesn’t get any simpler than this.

It does, however, get a lot more complex, and in a hurry.  Here’s why:

In selling scenes, the customer plays two roles:  Audience and Scene Partner.  You, as a seller, co-create your selling scene with your customer as your scene partner.   He or she will then, stepping into the role of your audience, pass judgment on your performance.  Thumbs up or thumbs down?  Worth the price of admission or not?  Good collaboration or rocky relationship?  Will you generate positive word of mouth or negative reviews?  Your earnings depend on how your performance is received.

There’s no script for these scenes–at least not one your customer is going to be memorizing and reciting verbatim anytime soon.  You’re going to be improvising.  And this is a fact:  The best salespeople are the best improvisers.

Here are some ways in which good salespeople collaborate with customers on scenes that get a thumbs-up from those same customers:

They keep their scenes lively. They keep the dialogue moving along at a productive tempo.  They yes-and promptly.  They heighten by upping the tempo, the emotional pitch, or both.  They add useful information.  They perform with the awareness that a ‘dead spot’ in the scene now will be judged harshly by the customer-as-audience later.

They make their customer the hero of the scene. An improvisational salesperson is a Sherpa to the customer with some kind of allegorical mountain to climb.  The sales Sherpa has useful knowledge.  Charts a practical course to the summit.   Reads the weather.  Calculates the odds.  Comes well-equipped.  The sales Sherpa gives the gift of support, and in doing so, makes the customer look good.  The role of the sales Sherpa is not the same as playing a second-banana, a sidekick, a best friend, a wing man, a femme fatale or a fall guy.  These are Hollywood movie roles.   The sales Sherpa is exactly what the name defines: a Sherpa.  It’s a Himalayan thing.

They listen. Wow, do improvisers listen.  They hear things the casual listener doesn’t.  They remember the nuances, and use the throw-aways.  They know that the most important conversation of the day may happen on an elevator ride between the first and sixth floors before a sales presentation begins.  They listen with more than their ears.  They observe with all the senses.   And then, maybe then…they speak.   They understand that being silent and being mute are two completely different things, and that sometimes one sees more with one’s eyes closed than with them open.

They respect environment. In selling scenes, you, the seller, are usually a visiting performer in someone else’s theater.  In many ways, the ‘theater’ of a customer’s company is like any other theater.  Theaters have traditions and history that must be respected.  They are influenced by politics and patronage and star players with competing agendas.  They are invariably facing some kind of financial threat.  They are only as good as their last hit, and they have ridiculously high hopes for the next project.  They can be half-looney with romantic intrigue.  The improvisational salesperson sees and respects the arena in which the customer operates.  When performing at the Apollo, touch the Tree of Hope.  When visiting Ireland, kiss the Blarney Stone.

They build relationships. Relationships are the basis of all improvisation.  The relationships between players, between players and environment, and between players and audience, are all intertwined.  The best way to move toward a sale, to generate positive outcomes regardless of the circumstances, is to build and nurture these relationships.   Relationships will see you through the kinds of adversity, and capitalize on the opportunities, that no scripted sales program can predict or anticipate.

In selling scenes, the networked customer is a more potent player than ever.  He or she often knows as much about your product as you do.  Relationships with customers are frequently more sensitive, more fluid and more demanding than they were in the Industrial Age.  Customers use social media to converse frequently amongst themselves in scenes to which you, the seller, are not invited.  You can no longer impose your narrative on the customer, you’ve got to earn an invitation to participate in the customer’s narrative.

So be a Sherpa.  Know the mountain, and your customer will see that the climb is impossible without you.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Dialogue, Emotion, Environment, Gifts, Listening, Narrative, Networked World, Relationships, Sales, Scenes, Speed | 2 Comments »

Stengel’s Storyboard Ban

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Back in 2002, when he was still the CMO for Procter & Gamble, Jim Stengel was pictured on the cover of an Advertising Age reprint that I happened to pick up while in the office of a client in Atlanta.

Jim Stengel

Jim Stengel

Before there was a GameChangers LLC, before one word of the book had been written, I read in that Ad Age article how Stengel had made what we know today as a GameChanger move: He banned all storyboards from first meetings with ad agencies on new campaigns. What a gift!  Storyboards in a kickoff meeting, presume way too much. They hijack the process, and take it down a one-way, one-lane street. They imply a client/vendor relationship that prematurely assigns status and roles to the players and is therefore toxic to a truly organic process.

I give Jim Stengel a lot of credit for indicating that there is a need for improvisation in business. His storyboard ban created a vacuum that, by design I’m sure, required improvisation to fill.

In animation, where films are largely worked out on storyboards, presenting scenes that have been depicted on storyboards is called ‘getting the story on its feet.’ Stengel recognized that getting anything on its feet that was going to have legs needed to fall a time or two first.

Today, Stengel teaches at the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and from his website it seems that he’s still got a unique perspective on the practices and processes of marketing brands.   I hope he’s telling the future captains of industry about his P & G storyboard rule.  It’s a good one.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Creativity, Dialogue, Gifts, Initiations, Listening, Scenes | No Comments »

The Unsung Hero of the Game

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

We cannot emphasize enough how often the origins of the productive game rest not with actions of the first person to act, but with the person who defines the game by supporting and adding to what the first person is doing.  The second person is the unsung hero of the game.

Ethan Bauley sent me a link that’s a perfect depiction of the ‘Unsung Hero’ idea. Take a look at this video shot at the recent Sasquatch Music Festival outside Vancouver:

The first dancer, Collin Wynter from Calgary, deserves credit for initiating well. He’s having fun, and he’s high energy, connecting with the music and the rest of his environment and not at all caught up in his own little world. He is acting on his environment (the hillside and the soft grass and the music) and as a consequence, the environment ‘acts on him’ as his dancing becomes infectious. But it doesn’t become a scene, it doesn’t find its game, until the second dancer joins. The second dancer adds and heightens, and from that point on, there’s no stopping this scene. First, he learns the second dancer learns the ‘rules of the dance’ from the first dancer, then he makes the dance even more playful by falling to the ground and crawling through the first dancer’s legs. It is the second person who embraces the rules of the game and plays the game in a way that others cannot resist joining. After the third person joins, the joining becomes a wave that lasts until the music ends. (And maybe beyond, that’s where the video cuts.)This same dynamic is characteristic of any productive game. A game played alone has finite potential, while a game that invites joining has unlimited upside. It is the second person to play who signals to the crowd that your game is worth joining.

It is worth noting that this article in the Calgary Herald celebrates Collin Wynter as being some kind of hero, but does not mention the second dancer, or even the existence of the unsung hero of the game.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Games, Initiations, Movement, Scenes | 1 Comment »

The Life Drum Core and Pete Carroll

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

A part of my work with the World Wildlife Fund for its Earth Hour event in Los Angeles on March 28, I helped organize a group of young musicians to perform at the event.  My guitar teacher, Lonnie ‘Meganut’ Marshall, put together a group of kids who played drums on recycled plastic buckets they’d painted to fit the theme ‘Funeral for Fossil Fuel’.

LDC1

The Life Drum Core, as Lonnie named the group, was a big hit.  They got coverage on all the local TV stations, and on the night of Earth Hour, their four-minute performance was well-received.  They ended up afterward jamming with the mayor, who grabbed his own recycled bucket and began banging out a beat.  (He wasn’t bad.) (more…)

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Environment, Fundamentals, Games, Listening | No Comments »

Lot o’ Love

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

LynnLove1A

Nothing.  And that is the precisely the point.  When you want to change the game, one way to do it is change your environment.

The April 7 CBS Evening News with Katie Couric reported the story of Lynn Love, who for 22 years owned and operated a used car lot in Tampa.  When the economic downturn hit the car business, Love liquidated his inventory and, with the last of his savings, bought a catering truck and began serving meals in his empty used car lot.  He didn’t know anything about cooking, but he learned quickly (giving yourself problems to solve is a great way to learn) and the inexpensive, simple meals on his menu have been a hit with his customers, some of whom formerly bought cars from him. (more…)

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Character, Entrepreneurship, Environment | 1 Comment »

Deep Information

Monday, March 9th, 2009

GGS1Deep Patel, and the company he founded GoGreenSolar, prove that adding information is one sure way to heighten scenes and improve performance.

In 2005, while getting his Masters Degree in Business Finance at Boston University, Patel discovered that information about solar power and equipment was not easy for potential users to come by.  He launched GoGreenSolar solely with the intention of providing useful information to his audience.  When the audience for this information grew, he added an e-commerce component.  By the time he got his graduate degree he was one of the solar industry’s most authoritative voices and had developed a brand that will sell over a million dollars of solar equipment online in 2009.

Patel is quick to point out that he launched GoGreenSolar.com with a) no intention of selling anything on the site;  and b) with full commitment to educating the market (and himself) about solar.

Deep Patel’s number one obligation to his brand (and the move that he ties most closely to its success in the marketplace) is to add information.  “I blog seven days a week,”  he says. “No matter what.”

An ‘Adding Information Strategy’ like this produces all kinds of positive outcomes.

It keeps the brand customer-focused.  There’s no better way to keep an audience engaged in your performance than telling them something they didn’t know.

It’s low-overhead.  Adding information costs less than just about anything else you can boost a brand’s performance in the marketplace.

Adding information also keeps the brand narrative fresh.   It is an evergreen move.  The currency of the information added, a relatively easy standard to achieve in a fast-growing industry like solar, ensures that the brand  is ‘alive’ in the minds of its audience.

It expresses confidence.  In an emerging field like solar energy, there’s naturally a lot of uncertainty and ignorance in the marketplace that can be exploited by ‘first in’ players.  Because its strategy is one of educating, not hyping, its, GoGreenSolar stays ‘manufacturer agnostic’, which makes the voice of the brand credible.   This credibility translates into customer confidence in what is being sold on the site.

It demonstrates the importance of conversations.  Deep talks to a lot of people, inside and outside his industry.  Those conversations bring perspective and insight to the information he adds.  Who is saying something (and where and when and why) are every bit as important as what is being said.

Conversations require good listening.  Listening yields suggestions from the audience that can be woven into the brand’s themes.

Adding information creates context.  That’s huge.  By adding information, Patel dimensionalizes the products on GoGreenSolar, until they are more than products, they are essential elements in a larger brand narrative.  In the Networked World where content is ubiquitous, context is king.  It is our ability to make sense of information, to add emotional and meta meaning to cosmetic data, to find patterns in the complex tapestries of life and the marketplace, that set our brands apart and distinguish us as communicators and as human beings.

DeepPatel1A

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Branding, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Listening, Narrative, Networked World | No Comments »

GameChangers of the Month – February 2009

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

For the first time, we have two winners of the coveted Gamey in the same month.  They are Ty’Sheoma Bethea, an eighth-grader from South Carolina and Leonard Abess, a banker from Florida, both of whom were recognized by President Obama in his state of the nation address last month.

GCMonthFeb09

Bethea wrote a letter.  It was what she could do and she did it.  In that letter, she maintained of she and her classmates, “We are not quitters!”  And that letter changed the game.

Abess had $60,000,000 in the bank, proceeds from the sale of his company.  He gave it away to 471 employees and former employees who’d supported him over the years.  That gift changed the game, too.

She gave a small gift that became something big.  With that one letter, she opened a thousand doors that would have not been open to her otherwise.

He gave a big gift that got bigger.  The number ‘60,000,000′ didn’t change, but the potential for that ‘60,000,000′ to make things happen in the world increased overnight by a factor of 471.

We honor Ty’Sheoma and Leonard because they bookend three important elements of gamechanging.

Big gifts and small gifts are equally important to our scenes.   That’s the first piece of what these gamechangers teach us.  All gifts have the potential to inspire profound scenes.

Here is the second piece:   Action flows from character.  Beathea and Abess didn’t just wake up one day and shazaam!—in a puff of genie smoke, suddenly turn into the people with game.

She is a young woman who wants to learn, and doesn’t want to be held back from it.  She is a writer of letters, and a righter of injustice.  She is not a quitter.

He is a friend who values friendships that go all the way back to grammar school, a manager with employee relationships that extend beyond current staff, a player who recognizes that he owes much of his success to others on his team.  He is not greedy.

They took actions that were consistent with their characters.

And here’s the third piece:   We can never know for sure how the game will change.  But if we bring what we can to our scenes…if we are consistent in character and action…we can trust that, as Ty’Sheoma Bethea and Leonard Abess showed us, the game will change, as  unforeseen opportunities bloom into new and fruitful realities.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Character, Gifts | No Comments »

Vaillancourt’s List 4.0

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

PaulV2The extraordinary improviser, Paul Vaillancourt, gave me a list of sayings that have been compiled and passed around the improv theater community over the years. The legendary teachers, Mick Napier and Del Close, get some of the credit, though the exact origins of most of these are as hazy as the roots of any folk wisdom. Here is the fourth in a series of sayings from Vallaincourt’s List, with my notes following.  As you go about your business, keep these concepts in play: (more…)

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Branding, Communication, Emotion, Environment, Gifts, Issues | No Comments »

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