Nobody, including Young Dillon, had to ask what this meant.

The old role model of leadership was about control.  How do I get what I want when I want it?

Leadership in a networked world is not nearly as much about control as it is about adaptability. How does a team get the resources it needs to solve the problem?

Now—-

Just because leadership is highly adaptive doesn’t mean it is without structure. In fact, it’s the opposite: Because what it means to lead can change from scene to scene, it  calls for even more structure and definition than the old models did, when one org chart covered every leadership scenario.

We call our role model the 3A Role Model. Here’s why: There are three A’s to every role: Accountability, Autonomy, and Authority. When the 3 A’s are clearly defined and understood by all the players in a scene, and when they are complementary between players, leaders will emerge organically and authentically from that team and its scene.

When the 3 A’s are muddled, overlapping or disputed, leadership can get territorial and ’status-y.’ When this happens, leadership  arises from something that’s not part of the scene—qualifiers like job titles, seniority, family ties, company politics, intimidation, scapegoating, etc.—all of which are unrelated to the problem to be solved in the scene and therefore offer only an illusion of leadership, not the real deal.

The 3A Role Model:

Accountability. We are Accountable to our team, and to the ‘game’ of solving the problem at hand. We are also Accountable to our company, to the agreement that we are engaged (one hopes) in generating something worthwhile in the world, and in caring for families, loved ones, communities, and ourselves. These are the most important aspects of Accountability, because they are intrinsic to teams and individuals. Beyond that, Accountability does, in fact, mean organizational responsibility–who reports to whom? This structure is extrinsic, though, and does not guarantee a good flow of communication. In fact, if leadership is extrinsic, scenes often produce a one-way flow of communication, which is a big no-no. Good leaders make it clear they are every bit as Accountable to their team as their team is to them. And so it flows…

Autonomy. If Accountability is the root system of an organization, nourishing and sustaining it from within, Autonomy is the leaf system, which has the potential to energize and give it life by drawing in outside resources and opportunities.  Autonomy means the freedom to decide and act on one’s own, without any other player’s approval or oversight. Nobody tells a leaf which way to turn! A company’s spirit of entrepreneurship and ability to innovate are liberated by Autonomy. Its ability to turn these energies into growth rests with Accountability and….

Authority. Authority—-which stems from a 13th-Century Old French word, autorite, meaning “a book or quotation that settles an argument”—–is the ability to empower and disempower. It governs the other two A’s. To extend the permaculture metaphor, this is the planter or designer who decides what grows where. In the parlance of IT departments and gamers (and IT departments), this is ‘god’ or ’superpower’ status.’ This ‘A’ regulates the other two ‘A’s’, by deciding, for instance, the makeup of a team. Authority also means Authorship—of strategies, plans, vision, letters to employees, and the game elements of Environment, Roles, Guidelines and Objectives. It can also mean Authorization and Authentication: Who has access to accounts? Lists? Records and reports? Facilities? Fellow employees? Who can call a meeting? End a meeting? Okay a budget?

Ultimately, leadership is the art of role-modeling. When a team’s roles are modeled artfully, its leaders will emerge when and where they are needed.

Jason Terry

Interviewed after his Dallas Mavericks’ victory tonight over the Miami Heat for the NBA championship, their star shooting guard Jason Terry was asked how they did it, and he said (I’m paraphrasing)…

“We found a home for everybody’s stories. Everybody’s story came together here. Dirk (Nowitzki’s), Jason (Kidd’s), mine, Shawn Marion’s, Stojakovich, Berea, Tyson Chandler, Deshawn Stevenson’s–all our stories, together, made this happen.”

This is a really great expression of a team concept, especially, for a pro athlete in the wake of a big victory, when the cliche is to spout cliches, thank God and sponsors, credit the opponent for a hard-fought game, and then say something about going to Disneyland. A quote about the secret to the Dallas Mavericks’ success that they that they built a narrative consisting of all their individual stories? That’s an athlete’s voicing  fresh thought. And it’s an idea that can benefit any organization.

We saw this theme again seconds later when the Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, deferred to the team’s previous owner and founder, Fred Carter, by asking Mr. Carter to accept the championship trophy. When Cuban was interviewed by the TV announcer, he couldn’t get the team’s coach, Rick Carlisle, to the mike quick enough. For someone known to love the sound of his own sound bites, this ‘best supporting actor’ role is a new one for Cuban, and he wears it well.

The Miami Heat, by contrast, are a team of individual stories that have not yet found a way to co-create a championship narrative. In the wake of the season, the stories about them will be all about divisiveness, disappointment and unfulfilled promise,  about who was responsible and who should take the fall.  The team’s stories, in other words, will continue to exist independently of one another, without really benefitting the franchise brand.

Your company, your brand, your team, isn’t a single story, it is a narrative composed of all your stories, and your customers’ stories, too. Evolved leaders like Jason Terry and Mark Cuban don’t inflict their story on the organization, but rather, create an environment in which individual stories can flourish in the shared pursuit of the business objectives.

Well-said, Mr. Terry! Well-played, Mavs!

This broke today over CNN. The 33 men trapped in a Chilean copper mine have begun to assume different roles that will help them survive the time, estimated to be months, it will take rescuers to drill through 2300 feet of solid rock to rescue them.  This is brilliant.  They’re designing a game to help them get out alive without going batshit crazy while they’re waiting to be rescued.  This is going to give us all a good look at how a game works, and how it informs and inspires group strategies.  One thing is already clear:  There are some good improvisers trapped in that mine.

To review, here are the elements of a game: Environment, Roles, Rules, Objective(s).

Let’s begin with the Objective.  Simple:  ‘Get out of here alive without going crazy.’  Same as most survival strategies.

The Environment of the Trapped Chilean Miner Game could not be more starkly defined:  A pool of darkness deep beneath the surface of the earth, and the rest of the world watching up above.  The contrasts between the Down Below and the Up Above are extreme, an archetype embedded deep in every human’s subconscious.  The Well, the Fallen Rubble, the Cave, the Mine–all tap deep into our unconscious, where our memories of the womb are stored.   As my friend Richard Wynn Taylor says, “It will remind us of something we’ve never seen before.”

The Roles, as stated in the CNN story, are developing.  One of the miners has become a spiritual leader.  Another an entertainer who sings Elvis songs.  Expect that all or most of the miners will eventually define roles for themselves, some as group characters (’peacekeepers,’ ’storytellers,’ ’spokespeople,’ ‘mediators’ etc. etc.)  Some of the miners will play more than one role, depending on the scene they’re in.  Eventually some of them may trade roles, taking turns speaking to the media, for example.  What’s also interesting about the roles element of the game is that all 33 men trapped in the cave will, for the duration of their rescue, abandon the roles they were playing when they went Down Below: None of them will be playing the role of a miner.  Note also that ‘trapped miner’ is not a role.  It’s a circumstance.  Your circumstance does not define your role; it’s your behavior in your circumstance that defines your role.

Expect that in the coming weeks, we’ll be hearing about the Rules of the TCMG. These Rules will be designed to create agreement and establish ground rules for the miners’ interactions.  The rules will initially address the fundamentals such as sleeping, eating, sharing resources, communicating with Up Above etc., and then get more detailed.  The rules of a game will not be designed to create sameness or repetition, but to liberate performance, by empowering players to play their roles well.  The miners cannot afford to get weary of their roles.  It will be interesting to see how many rules will be set or influenced Up Above.

Unlike a reality TV show like Jersey Shore, where editors manipulate the juxtaposition of shots to create scenes and the sequence of events to construct a narrative, the ‘live-ness’ of this scene will demand improvisation, and that means the miners will be the primary architects of their narrative.

The intense focus on this particular scene by the world media, is going to make the elements of the game highly visible.  We will be able to track how well the trapped miners are doing by how focused and productive they are in playing their game.

What’s going to hold our interest about the Chilean Miner scene will not be the drama of whether or not they make it out alive.  The objective, the ‘Will they or won’t they’ aspect of the narrative, will only carry it so far.  What will hold our interest is how the miners behave in the meantime.  How well we get to know them.  Who they are to their families, and to one another.  What kind of character traits emerge. This is true of any narrative.  If you want to hold your audience’s interest, don’t focus on how you want it to end, but on how you want it to be.

When the miners’ survival becomes imminent, their game will transform from a survival strategy to a business strategy.  To the objective of ‘Get out of here alive without going crazy,’ they will undoubtedly add, ‘Make Money.’  When the miners finally walk into the light, the game may change, but it will not end.

Buena suerte, Mineros!

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….

Vineet Nayar Leads With Modesty

Nayar’s ‘employees first, customer second’ philosophy aligns with a basic concept of improvisation:  Take care of yourself first.  Mick Napier hits this hard in his book, Improvise:  Scene from the Inside Out.  If you wait for the other people in your scenes to have an idea, to initiate, you’re making yourself powerless, and you leave your scene partners and the audience hanging.  And if the other person in your scene waits on you, you’re lost, and so is the audience.  Nayar’s point is the same:  HCL can only be as good to their customer/audience as its employees are to one another.  These behaviors cannot be separated.  You cannot be one way to your scene partners and another to the audience.  It is all part of the same space-time continuum.  And productive action can only begin with you.

Other quotes by Nayar that are consistent with improvisation, and my notes in italics:

“I did not know where I had to go, and I was projecting as if I knew. I assume that you expect me to know where I am going, and you will respect me for that, and the day I tell you both of us are in the same boat, we would fail. That was a very big learning for me.”  Pretending is not illusion  if it is a step on the path to being.

“If you see your job not as chief strategy officer and the guy who has all the ideas, but rather the guy who is obsessed with enabling employees to create value, I think you will succeed.”  Support, the giving of gifts, is the most powerful tool in the improviser’s repertoire.

“How do I communicate to employees to not look up to me, but to look within, to communicate that I’m one of you, to destroy that hierarchy? So I decided I’m going to go into this big gathering of employees dancing to a very famous Bollywood song. And I can’t dance for nuts, right? I was dancing in the aisles with these employees and making lots of noises. What happened? It completely destroyed the gap.”  When you want to communicate something important, use more than information to do it.

“The failures are far in excess of successes.”  Failure is not defeat if it is a step on the path to understanding.

“I don’t want people who are coming here and teaching me something or teaching the organization something. I don’t want teachers. I want people who are not only charged up because they like it, but because they will learn from this experience. I’m looking for people who see experience as a continuum and not as an end in and of itself.”  Improvisers are not teachers.  We are builders of  environments in which communication, learning and transformation can happen.

IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE!

When we tried linking to the HCL URL with Mozilla Firefox 5.0, we got this message:

We noted this ‘FAIL’ in the post.  Within minutes of publishing the post, an HCL employee, Aruj Kapoor, wrote to say he was sorry they’d been down, that they’d fixed the bug and the site was restored.  And not only that, he ‘yes-anded’ by asking what specific information we were seeking when the site went down.  Aruj’s awareness of what my experience must’ve been when I hit the dead link–frustration, confusion, puzzlement–led him to offer his support to the scene I’d initiated with HCL. Be sensitive to your environment and it will tell you what you need to know. By yes-anding, Aruj converted a mistake into an opportunity to extend the dialogue between the HCL brand and me.  Nice move.  Every mistake is an opportunity to do something useful.

In the Networked World businesspeople not only need the ability to improvise well, the environment demands systems and processes to replace the tired and increasingly ineffective methodologies of the Industrial Age,  systems and processes that bring discipline, structure and consistent performance to the googly dynamics of networks.

One such process, which GameChangers is currently using in a modified version to help a client develop new applications for the healthcare industry, is Scrum Methodology.  It is a framework designed for the rapid iteration and agile development made possible by the cloud computing environment.

One of my improv teachers, Scot Robinson, a thoughtful, insightful instructor as well as a legend in the world of improv, posed this question to our class one day:  “Do you prefer starting with no structure and discovering structure within a performance, or do you like to begin with structure so that you’re liberated to perform freely within it?”  This was a Socratic question on Scott’s part, designed to provoke conversation.  When it comes to performing in the theater, there is no right answer.  Either approach is valid, and can be productive.

In business, it’s a different story.  Business needs structure.  Structure defines roles, sets  standards of performance, and produces the consistent results that provide financial stability.  For the improvisational company, structure also, as Scott Robinson pointed out, liberates players to perform freely within it.  This ‘liberated performance’ is the upside to the formal process.  It is where growth comes from, and innovation, and how an agile organization pounces on and profits from serendipity.

Scrum Methodology is named after the ’scrum’ in rugby, where teammates lock arms in tight formation and butt heads with the opposition in an attempt to gain control of the ball and move it downfield toward the goal.  The process came into use during the dotcom era, 1995-2000, and has since gained many converts in application development and other business scenarios where products are designed, developed and/or brought to market.

Scrum Methodology serves the same purpose in application development as the ‘Harold’ form does in improv theater.  A Harold is a structure for long-form improvisations that can run anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour.  The structure of a Harold goes like this:

- Opening

- Act One:  Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3

- Game #1

- Act Two:  Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3

- Game #2

- Act Three:  Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3

Scrum Methodology has a structure that involves two-week ‘Sprints’ by a team of developers.  These Sprints are the equivalent of ‘Acts’ in the Harold form.

The beginning of a Sprint cycle is marked by a Planning Meeting, which has many of the characteristics of an Opening in longform improv.

Every working day of a Scrum project begins with the ‘Daily Stand-Up’ meeting, which lasts a maximum of  fifteen minutes and allows the team to make any mid-Sprint adjustments.  These Daily Stand-Ups and the work that gets done on a given day correspond to ‘Scenes’ in improvisation.  You could say that Scrums consist of two-week Acts, each with a dozen or so Scenes.

A Scrum team typically consists of five to nine developers.  This is also the ideal size for a Harold team.

The Scrum allows players to choose the role they want to play.  Improvisers, likewise, define their roles during a performance, not before.

Scrum participants are classified as either ‘Pigs’ or ‘Chickens’.  Pigs are the people doing the work.  Chickens are stakeholders (investors, managers, et al), who can observe the process but cannot comment on it during the Sprints.  In improvisation, Pigs are the performers; the Chickens equate to an ‘internal audience.’  In terms of improv, think theater managers, friends, publicists, mentors, et al.  They have a rooting interest in the outcome, but they themselves are not responsible for the outcome.

A ‘Scrummaster,’ what you might call a ‘Pig of Pigs’ is the equivalent of the Coach every improv team has.

A ‘Product Owner’ represents the customer, or ‘paying audience’ for the performance.

At the end of a Sprint, all the players take time to re-align in meetings called Reviews and Retrospectives.  These equates to the Games in improvisation, which are designed to ‘restate the themes’ of a performance.

Scrums are a totally transparent process.  So is improvisation.  If you know improvisation, you can see the techniques being used (and opportunities seized or missed) by performers up on the stage.  It might surprise you that knowing how improvisation works doesn’t detract from the audience experience, in fact it adds to it.  There are no bigger appreciators and fans of improvisation than other improvisers.  Transparency fosters a deep appreciation for the skill of the players and their performance.  True in theater, just as true in business.

My aim was to learn what kind of strategies these men use to get hired.  After all, what could be a more honest scene than one that has to be productive if a player wants to eat that night?  When lives literally depend on one’s behavior, how does one behave?  This is obviously far from scientific.  I draw no firm conclusions from it, and neither should anyone else.  But everything, even five minutes talking with day laborers outside a Home Depot, is a learning opportunity if you are open to it.

In my brief and chaotic encounter with the day laborers on the sidewalk in front of the Home Depot, here’s what I learned:

The loudest and most aggressive get the attention first, but the best communicators get the attention that lasts.  Communication that day begins with a surge of attention and energy coming my way in a ragged five-foot-six sweatshirted and baseball capped wave.  The wave has no shape, it’s pure cacophony as nearly every one of the 40 guys on the sidewalk clamors for attention.  The wave breaks and dissipates when I begin asking questions most of them don’t understand, and it becomes clear I’m not there to hire.   The multi-lingual players move front and center and focus fiercely on understanding what the tall gringo in the black fedora wants.

“Why do people hire you?  Who is the best at getting hired?  Why?  What do you tell people that gets you the job?  Do you work alone or in teams?”

A few of the men, younger than most of them, comprehend.  At this point, a minute in, the scene centers on three or four people, with the rest of the guys either walking away or lurking nearby to see where this is going.   Skill sets come up.  Yes, the young men in front say, knowing how to do many jobs is a plus.  They begin to recite all the skills they have…painting, dry wall, concrete, plumbing, floors, landscaping…”

One of them, name of Jose, stands out.  He is the most articulate and the one most capable of engaging in a dialogue.  He says that to get work it helps to speak English and Spanish, do many jobs well, and have friends who will bring you along when groups get hired.  And a business card, he says.  Here is my card.  He is the only one with a card.

I slip Jose twenty dollars and tell him to buy breakfast for an old guy standing near us, who looks like he’d be the last one out of this big group to get hired for the day.  Which means he has almost no chance of getting hired.

Getting hired for a day by a contractor to plaster walls in Echo Park has more in common than most of us would like to believe with finding work in the Networked World.   In a swirling, shifting job market, employment opportunities move like empty vans into a Home Depot parking lot.  The vans are not empty long.  We’d better be ready to attract a contractor’s attention, and when we have it, hold it.  A player needs a strategy, and a player must be prepared to improvise.

Here’s what I learned (or was reminded of) that day:

It helps to throw off a lot of energy at first, but that doesn’t last long.  Okay, so you made a big entrance, or delivered a killer initiation for the scene.  Now what?  Once you have an audience’s attention, what are you going to do with it?   What skills do you have that will expand and heighten the scene, and captivate your audience?  In a Home Depot parking lot and in the Networked World, it helps to have many skills.  If you’re in media, can you write, produce, direct, shoot and edit?  If you’re in law, can you arbitrate, negotiate, adjudicate, argue, defend, file…and market yourself?  If you’re in HR, are you versed in psychology, human sexuality, labor law, hiring practices?  If you’re working a staff job you hate can you navigate into doing something you love without missing a beat?

It helps to speak many languages, and I don’t necessarily mean spoken languages, though that certainly helps, especially if it’s Chinese.  (Chinese students are learning English at a way faster rate than American students are learning Chinese.  It cannot help but expand their opportunities for employment in the next 10-12 years.)  Humor is a language.  Programming obviously includes many languages.  Cloud Computing has its own lexicon, as does Sustainability, and almost every industry.  Golf can be a language you and a potential employer speak.  Or gaming.  Or travel.  Food.  Music.  The point is, always be adding to your vocabulary.  It will give you a broader audience.  It will help you engage in more productive dialogues with more potential employers.

In To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway wrote, ‘A man alone ain’t got no bloody fucking chance.’  I think the boys in the Home Depot lot would understand that, and so should you.  When you’re part of a team, a tribe, an emotionally-bonded group (with the Home Depot boys it’s probably their hometowns in Guatemala, Nicaragua or Mexico that bind and define them), your opportunities are increased exponentially.  When your homie makes a connection with a contractor who ‘needs four for drywall,’ homes will bring you along on the job, and vice versa.  Your team gives you an opportunity to be of service to others.  In life, in work, in improvisation, supporting others is the strongest move you can make.

Lifelong employment with one company has pretty much dodo birded, which is to say it’s kaput, gone, extinct.  Work in the Networked World will be more project-based or brand-based than it was in the Industrial Age.  These days, a person can have five or six, or ten or twelve ‘careers’ in their working lives.  Nothing wrong with that.  It can lead to rich and rewarding experiences.  It can also be hugely disruptive, especially when young families are caught up in it.  The people who navigate these swirling waters best, those who are captains of their own destiny,  communicate best.  And they never stop learning.

Here is Jose’s business card.  If you’re in the L.A. area and need someone to do Painting–or Drywall or Taping or Linoleum or Roofing or Gardening or Plaster or Sprinklers or Stucco or Block or Hardwood Flooring or Cement or Ceramic Tile–give him a call.

His and his team’s ability to improvise their way to an election victory against rivals who were, initially, much better funded, more networked and more familiar brand names proved beyond any doubt how skillful improvisation can change the game. Obama is the epitome of what it means to be a gamechanger.

Because they improvised instead of slaving themselves to a script, Obama and team were quicker to act on opportunity. They consistently made better, faster and more authentic decisions than their rivals. It is one thing to be smart, but what difference does it make if you don’t act smart? Obama and team showed how improvisation marries intellect with action. This resulted in breakthrough processes for organizing and raising money, and creative solutions to whatever problems they faced along the campaign trail.

It is no coincidence, to me, that Obama lives in the same Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago where modern improvisation was born in the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression. In Chicago, improvisation isn’t just some thing the artsy-fartsy folks do, it’s a way of life, a fixture in the cultural firmament. A lot of people taking improv classes in Chicago at Second City or I.O. or Comedy Sportz treat it like night school, almost like it’s getting an extra degree that will help them in whatever their walk of life. Obama is one of the best examples ever of how improvisation works outside the confines of theater comedy–how it improves job performance, and has the power to transform the status quo.

Obama listens and communicates on multiple levels, which makes his message extra resonant for his audience. He changes status depending on the scene he’s in without ever losing his essential character, what makes Barack Obama Barack Obama. When he’s with generals he’s leaderly, when he’s with children he’s fatherly, when he’s on the court he’s lefty, and it’s always through the truth of who he is. He’s not posing, acting, or going for effect, or a photo op, or a big move. He’s doing the best he can with what the scene has to offer. That’s improvisation.

He acts on the reality of the scene he’s in, not on some fantasy scenario he’s trying to make come true (see ‘Mission Accomplished’). When, on a blistering summer day in North Carolina during the presidential race, a woman in the audience fainted from the heat during one of his speeches, Obama took one look at what was happening, stopped his speech, and with no hesitation called it to the security team’s attention then reached into his podium for his water bottle and tossed it to the crowd to give to the woman. “They’ll be okay,” he said, in a reassuring voice. It was the most genuine, most helpful thing anyone in his position could have done in that situation. It was not a big deal. It was just the best possible move at that particular moment. That’s is how an improviser rolls. It is not a big deal. It is a lot of little deals, done consistently, with 100% focus and commitment. And these have the potential to add up to a big deal. A really big deal in the case of Obama’s election.

During his campaign he staked out huge and momentous themes–Hope, Change, Equality–and then liberated his team and the voters themselves to explore those themes in as many ways as possible. This meant that Brand Obama could deliver a much livelier narrative than the McCain Brand, which lurched from one lame scripted event (Palin) to another (ride to the rescue on the bailout plan), confusing the audience and the candidate alike.

After January 21, the Obama administration’s ability to riff on big themes will continue to liberate good ideas and innovative thinking to the benefit and betterment of the U.S. and the world. Economic transformation on the massive scale it’s needed cannot be scripted like some Olympic Opening Ceremony. It must be improvised.

They are off to a banging good start in naming people to his team, a ‘team of rivals’, it has been called, echoing what Lincoln said about his own cabinet. The cluckers are already clucking about how hard it will be for Obama to ‘manage’ such strong and independent personalities. To an improviser, it is the most natural thing in the world. Synthesizing different, often radically different, points of view to achieve an objective is what improvisers do.

There is a saying in improvisation, Follow the Follower. This is what Obama means when he says to voters that he’s representing their will, embodying their energy, pursuing their happiness. Pundits have described this as a new kind of leadership, but I believe it’s more accurate to say that Obama’s got outrageously good listening skills. Sometimes it’s necessary to lead, but the best improvisers, like Obama, are the best at following. They raise the level of their own game by raising the level of everyone’s.

On the emotional and meta levels, the levels of communication that matter most, there was only one campaign promise made by Barack Obama. It was not a plank in his platform, but it was implicit in everything the campaign said and did. It was a promise that Americans will all become a little better, a little stronger, a little more improvisational in our own ways for having him as President. We believe it has already happened, is happening, and will continue to happen on an ever-broadening scale, as more and more people — not only in the U.S. but all over the world — get attuned to the new game and start playing along.

Back in January of this year, Barack Obama tossed out an aside at a coffee talk with a couple dozen senior citizens in Indianapolis, an aside that was probably lost on most of the audience listening in person: If he got elected, he and his team were going to re-design the White House web site to become more of a utility for citizens. I pointed out at the time what a brilliant initiation this was, with implications related to technology, jobs creation, art and design, and citizen activism, to name a few of the themes that could be explored as a result of it.

In yet another example of how the Obama administration will use the internet to put the principles of improvisation into play, the people that brought us a truly gamechanging campaign site (and are no doubt already hard at work on the White House web site re-design) have rolled out www.change.gov, a utility that connects people with government in new and productive ways.

Improvisation principles at play in Change.Gov.

ENVIRONMENT. As Viola Spolin used to say, if you act on the environment, the environment will act on you. The ‘environment’ for Change.Gov is much friendlier and more inviting than a typical government site. Which means that people are more likely to engage with it (’the environmment acting on’ its authors) The clean, cogent, artful design of the site presents a huge contrast with a typical government web site. Take a look…

SMALL IS SIGNIFICANT. Improvisers learn not to over-reach for big moves or big jokes, but to let their performance evolve from the events that occur organically in the scene. A particularly potent move can be to elevate a little idea or aside to prominence, like the little robot Wall-E becoming the most animated character on the planet Earth. The air bag sensors in automobiles that are sensitive to passenger weight, for example, came from a castoff little experiment at the MIT Media Lab whose only commercial application, until it was spotted and adapted by Honda engineers, was as part of a prop in a Penn & Teller magic show. In the improvisational sense, it is significant that Change.Gov’s stated mission is to make things ‘a little bit better’ for our children. This is not only more realistic and achievable, it honors all contributions, all ideas, and acknowledges their importance to the mission. Stopping global warming? That’s an overwhelming, daunting, super-human task requiring super-human effort, and you’ve got company coming over for dinner. But making things a little bit better? Everyone can do that. A little less gravy on those potatoes? Good move.
AGREEMENT. In casting its ensemble, the new administration has been ultra-quick to send signals that there are no vendettas in play–that loyalties to a shared objective transcend personal or political loyalty. Joe Lieberman keeps his chairmanship. Hillary Clinton looks like she’s coming aboard. Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner is apparently more conservative than Obama on economic issues. It is, as Lincoln described his own cabinet, a team of rivals. Obama understands that his job is not to sway or strong-arm other folks into his way of seeing things, but to synthesize two distinct points of view into a third, shared point of view, which then paves the way for productive action. Finding agreements that bridge disparate viewpoints and desires which may seem, on a cosmetic level, to be at odds with one another, is the improviser’s job.

LISTEN! Improvisers use suggestions from the audience to kick off a performance, and so does the Obama team. Listening, to the Obama team, is not just lip-service, and it is not just about reading poll numbers. It extends beyond cosmetic data, to the more emotional and meta levels of communication that come about through conversations and the sharing of stories. From conversations and stories come themes that inspire and inform the performance. The ability to listen is one of Obama gifts as a politician, and if Change.Gov is any indicator, it will be one of the many gifts he and his band of able improvisers bring to his administration.

Lesley Stahl did a report last night on 60 Minutes about the development of electric cars in Silicon Valley and by the American auto industry in Detroit. That was the cosmetic level of the story.

On the more meaningful, emotional and meta levels of communication, Stahl’s piece depicts a clash between two mighty cultures, and ultimately between two different ways of conducting one’s business. One of them is highly improvisational. The other is rigid, scripted, dogmatic. Over the past 30 years, Silicon Valley’s ability to improvise has enabled it to lead the world in the development of new technologies and the markets for them. The heavily-scripted and stage-managed Detroit performance has for the most part been a multi-car pile-up on the Interstate, like a series of scenes from Gone in Sixty Seconds.

Here are some of the ways Stahl’s story depicted, on emotional and meta levels, the clash between Silicon Valley and Detroit, and how the former improvises to good effect while the latter welds itself to a script that limits returns on its investment.

Detroit is characterized by Stahl as old (but not particularly wise). The main Detroit character is Bob Lutz, who’s ‘in charge of developing GM’s new products’ including GM’s electric car, the Volt. Lutz is a very tan, white haired gent with a gravelly voice. His claim to fame is that he’s the guy who championed the Hummer. The name ‘Bob Lutz’ sounds like an ice skating move Dorothy Hamill invented back in ‘76.

Silicon Valley is young (and growing). The main Silicon Valley character is Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, who’s in his thirties, and looks like he’s having a lot of fun in his life, a software winner who’s doubling down on the electric car. Elon Musk is a name you don’t hear every day. It’s exotic. It sounds like the name of the fragrance all the club kids are wearing.

Silicon Valley is about entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship means having some of your own skin in the game. Elon Musk tells Stahl he’s put $55 million of his own money into his Tesla electric car. Kleiner-Perkins, the legendary Silicon Valley VC, has invested in three electric car technologies.

Lutz’s mandate is to preserve what’s left of GM’s position and reputation in the auto industry. Do you think he’ll be putting his own money into GM’s electric car venture? I guarantee you it’s not in his script.

Furthermore, Lutz personally owns two helicopters and two planes. He probably has a fleet of gas-powered cars and other vehicles at his beck and call, and arrived at his 60 Minutes interview in a limo. His carbon footprint makes him a kind of hypocrite for championing electric vehicles.

Musk is shown driving his electric car. It’s cool. It’s expensive ($109K). George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger have ordered theirs. I wish I could afford one of my own. Maybe someday I can. There is a kind of honest magnetism to his pitch that draws the audience into his brand’s narrative.

In Stahl’s story, she depicts Detroit as arrogant. Bob Lutz claims that Silicon Valley cannot do what Detroit does. He regards the upstarts like Tesla as naive. He calls man-made global warming bullshit.

Silicon Valley, by contrast, comes off as confident, and more realistic than naive about its chances of success in the car market. It is focused on what can be done with the electric car scene in the moment, and not getting hung up on expectations about where the scene might go. Tesla is hiring exiles from the auto industry. There is no shame, and a lot of wisdom, in recognizing what you don’t know (but need to) and going about acquiring that knowledge. Lutz, clearly one of those characters who’s ‘in it to win it,’ shows no curiosity or gives to credence to Silicon Valley.

Detroit buries its failures, as it did with the EV-1 electric cars manufactured by GM in the 1990s. Interestingly, Lutz views the junkyarding of all of GMs EV-1s more as a PR mistake thanas a symbol of a shortcoming in GM’s culture.

Silicon Valley, by comparison, honors its failures because it knows how much can be learned from them. Entrepreneurs who have failed nobly are given the capital to have another go at their dreams. “A good entrepreneur that fails, we will pick that person up, fund them again to do something new if it’s a good idea,” says Ray Lane of the Silicon Valley VC firm, Kleiner-Perkins.

In Detroit–where one bad move can wreck a career, a brand, maybe even an entire company–who can afford to make a move? A player need colossal consensus. In the time it takes to build the colossal consensus, not only will the essence of the original idea have been compromised like a bill that’s made it through Congress, the window of opportunity in the marketplace has probably closed.

The hierarchical, heavily scripted processes of Detroit’s automakers have not been keeping pace with the Networked World. This causes a radical gap between what is promised (i.e. advertising and communications) and what is delivered, creating lots of cognitive dissonance (i.e. customer uncertainty) in the marketplace.

Silicon Valley companies, less encumbered by the historical narratives that burden Detroit auto companies, can react more nimbly and quickly to the market. Their history is one of fast, agile development. Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs were born with their hearts beating in tempo to Moore’s Law. There is no script for what they envision. They know that the future will be improvised.