So obvious, it’s funny–no one gets to Carnegie Hall without a ton of practice. It is usually the most ‘talented’ performers who practice most diligently. The talent onstage in Carnegie Hall is, as much as anything, a talent for practicing. A love of the hard work and focus that it takes to master one’s craft.

Rob McNamara writes in Integral Life about ‘The Necessity of Practice.’ Practice, notes McNamara, is preparation. What we are seeing and hearing onstage at Carnegie Hall is a performance informed by preparation. It is the preparation that elevates and defines the quality of the performance.

Everyone has a Carnegie Hall, a place or ideal they’re trying to get to. A vision for the future. And then, quite often, something happens. We get sidetracked. Distracted. Too busy to practice. We stop off at the Carnegie DELI and call it Carnegie HALL. Our ego tells us we have arrived. That’s when the unproductive patterns–sameness, repetition, redundancy, stagnation, smugness—set in. That’s the point where our performances become cyclical, begin to repeat themselves, and our audiences get bored, and begin wondering why they paid their money.

McNamara defines the act of practicing as ‘Engagement.’ The GameChangers Orchestral Model™ identifies six practices that generate productive outcomes in the world. Engagement is one of the six. The other five are:

Heeding (listening, paying attention, observing actively). In the Orchestral Model™, this practice precedes Engagement. As the social media doyenne, Sally Falkow, (@sallyfalkow) says, “You don’t go right up to people having a conversation at a party or social event and just start talking. First you have to hear what conversation is about, and then can you be part of it, and engage with people in a meaningful way.”

Learning. What is revealed to you as a result of your interactions with others, and with your environment? How does your network inform you? How do you turn learning into solutions? All this takes practice.

Creating. How does what you do make a difference? How does it make you unique? How do channel creativity toward innovation?

Performing. What are your criteria? What is your Carnegie Hall? Is it a seven or eight digit number? A place? A whale of a client? A standard you have set for yourself, or that others have set for you? How does your performance differentiate you?

Deciding. How consistent are you? What values do you represent? How clear and shareable are your decisions? What themes are important to you? Who and what influences your behaviors? If your deciding practices are weak, Big Trouble soon come.

Performing and Deciding are what we call the core practices. If you are not good at these–if you don’t have a clear vision of where you’re going, or if you are indecisive and wishy-washy along the way—the rest of the practices will not matter, because you’ll be too busy zig-zagging toward a mirage, rendering meaningless decisions in service of illusory goals.

So call the whole thing Engagement, yes, definitely! Practice it! Be engaged! Be present! Pay attention! Notice! That’s a good first step. Then refine your practices into the six different areas of the Orchestral Model™, like an athlete working on muscle groups or a musician working through different progressions.

And when call comes from Carnegie Hall, you’ll be ready.

In a business environment that changes at the speed of thought, there are lots of issues with this leadership model. Specifically, it’s too slow. it does not let an organization act quickly enough on opportunities or adapt cost-effectively to changing market conditions.

In networked organizations, by contrast, leadership is organic, it grows out of the structure of the scene and its problem-solving process, and not from a presumed hierarchy.

Visibly good leadership is essential to attract employees and customers to a brand and keep them engaged in its narrative, but that visibility can come from anywhere. Sure, it can and should still come from the ‘top.’ It can also come through the side door, from behind, the center, the edge, from out of left field, up from the ashes, or out from the shadows. It can be bombastic, it can be imperceptible, or any dynamic in between.

In networked organizations, leadership is everyone’s responsibility, and there is no single context for it, or one accepted style of leading. It is the scene that determines what leadership looks like, and what purpose it serves.

Further, being a leader is no bigger or lesser a deal than being a follower (i.e. team player). Just as everyone in a networked organization ix expected to be a leader, everyone is also expected to be a follower. A player’s leadership (or followship) status is a condition of the scene and the game, not necessarily a condition of his or her rank in the organization.

Among the questions addressed, on a scene-by-scene basis, in a gamechanging leadership model:

-Whose subject matter expertise, perspective, or professional experience is most important to the scene?

-How well-articulated and shareable is the vision?

-Is your scene’s narrative (and its possible outcomes) scripted ahead of time, or co-created by your team as a result of its problem-solving process?

-Are your team’s roles complementary and supportive, lacking expertise to solve the problem, or overlapping and in conflict?

-What is the balance, and who does the balancing, between listening and speaking? Between information and intuition? Deconstruction and construction? Postmortem and Premortem? Questions and declarations?

-How does a team stay focused on the problem at hand, while at the same time honoring historical and future organizational narratives?

-Who decides? How?

-What’s the game? When is it time to change the game or edit the scene?

And while there’s no one style or way of behaving that defines effective leadership, two things are true of all gamechanging leaders:

1) They listen first. 2) They do not script outcomes.

They understand that there are many ways to solve a problem, and that most of those ways will not be their own. This leadership model is the only way to act quickly enough on market opportunities and adapt cost-effectively enough to changes in the environment to stay competitive in the networked world.

NEXT: How we define Roles

Being extraordinary became a way of life for our friend. To this day, it doesn’t matter what scene he’s in, it doesn’t have to be world-shaking, it can be as simple as taking a walk in a park, he will find a way to make that walk unlike any other walk through any other park. Today, he and his family live in a beautiful home on Mullholland Drive overlooking Los Angeles, he is a millionaire many times over, and a philanthropist with a giving heart, especially for people who get pounded by life.

Earlier this year, I met the Oldest Boy, now a middle-aged man who still lives in the Midwest, who struggles to keep their old family business alive, and exudes disappointment and alcohol. He told me a story about the Middle Child:

“My parents and I went to visit him after he’d moved to Los Angeles,” said the Oldest Boy, “He and [his wife] had no money. They pretty much didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. He didn’t even have a decent pair of shoes to wear. So my parents said, ‘Let’s go get you a pair of shoes anyway,’ and we took him to a shoe store and let him pick out a pair of shoes, and he picked out a pair of red shoes! Red shoes! The guy’s going to have one good pair of shoes and he picks out red ones?!’ The Oldest Boy laughed at this as if the Middle Child had done something incredibly stupid, something that was still worth teasing him about, maybe even pounding him for.

Back when it could have changed his life, the truth was right there in front of the Oldest Boy, and he missed it. What he missed was his younger brother’s knack for doing things that were out of the ordinary. Our success comes from consistently making extraordinary choices. Those choices do not have to change the world to be extraordinary, they only have to change the game. When you can only pick one pair of shoes, pick the red ones.

As you go about your business today, wielding a sword forged by your your authority, your education, your responsibility, your intelligence and experience, don’t think of this sword as a severing device that you use to slice, dice, and eviscerate. Don’t go medieval on anyone’s ass, or be chopping off  heads to generate fear among the populace. Instead, think of this sword of yours as a de-severing device, a weapon of compassion, one that joins–

the fire of purpose with the steel of structured action;

the art of entrepreneurship with the craft of leadership;

the genius of others with your own;

your history and your future;

your intuition and your intellect;

your character and your role;

your brand and your customers.

A weapon of choice isn’t the same thing as a choice of weapons. How you choose to use your weapon is way more important than what weapon you choose to use.

“You’ve got to do a lot of different things,” she said.

“There’s a lot of fear in business. Most people are held back from their creativity by their fear. They focus on the most insignificant things. It’s such a waste.”

“The answers aren’t found in technology.”

The talk with Betsy was a reminder that creativity has no natural boundaries. We build the barriers around it ourselves. The limits of our creative potential are all self-constructed. The good news is that if we built the barriers, we can also break them down. So give yourself the Baytos Test: Confront your fear. Quiet your ego. Kick your subjectivity and self-consciousness in the ass. Embrace your eccentricity…and dance! Doors will open, and you won’t even have to knock.

Rome and his radio production team recently played a 20-show game they dubbed “The Rex Game.’ One of his producers noticed one day that they’d had someone named Rex on three consecutive shows. An improviser, seeing such a pattern, has one response: Do more! That’s what Rome and Team did, they kept interviewing Rex’s.

For 20 consecutive shows, they interviewed someone named Rex. Imagine how much bullshit a game like this cuts through in production meetings. How it swept subjectivity, judging, opinionating, credit-claiming and ego out of the room like the Red Sox do the Yankees at Fenway. “We have a guest.” “Who?” “Rex.” “Book it.”

How easy is that? compared to, let’s say…

“We have a guest.” “Who.” “A soccer player. She’s interesting.” “How interesting?” “Real interesting.” “To you she’s interesting because she’s hot. But this is radio. Does she have a take?.”  “She has a take.” “What kind of a take?” “A good take.” “How good?” Etc. etc. etc.

Rome summed up the benefits of the Rex Game like this: “You don’t get to 20 Rexes without stretching a little bit.”

Exactly. Extension is what you want out of a game. Doing something you’ve never done before in order to get where you’ve never gone before. That’s what improvisation is all about.

Interestingly, when Rome got requests from callers and his producers for him to play another similar game, say a Derek Game, Rome riffed on it for a bit, “Derek Jeter, Derek Harper, Derek Coleman, Derek and the Dominoes…” and then quickly decided against it. This is an excellent example of a clean edit, something else Rome does exceptionally well. His transitions are clear. He never meanders.

UPDATE: Though Rome decided against the Derek Game, he and his team are playing a Kyle Game, interviewing someone named Kyle for as many days in a row as they can. Just more proof of how much game the Rome team has. As the great improviser, Craig Cackowski, says, “Don’t look for the game. Look for a game.”

The Jungle is full of game  You can always let go of one vine and grab another. Just make sure you have a take when you do, because the Jungle can be a cruel place when you don’t.

Themes are Big Ideas. That’s part of it, but only part of it–because ideas can get too big, and, like a balloon so large it cannot be inflated, they will never find their definition, nor serve their purpose.

‘Stardom’ is a Big Idea. So is ‘Food.’ They are not themes. They are un-inflatable balloons, weighted down with so much meaning we can never get them off the ground. What makes a Big Idea buoyant? What gives it definition and gets it off the ground? Explorability.

The Big Idea must be Explorable (by at least two people at any one time). When a theme is Explorable, we can map to it. It can help guide us, and give us our bearings. At any given time, we can assess our position with regards to it. Themes, by virtue of their Explorability, suggest action. We can do something about them, through them, with them.

‘Reality Show Stardom’ is a theme. ‘Food of Love’ is a theme. (’Love of Food’ is another theme altogether.) When a Big Idea is Explorable, we can tell, and others can tell, objectively, whether we are engaged with the Big Idea or not. If we are studying dance at Sarah Lawrence, we are, in all probability, not exploring the theme of ‘Reality Show Stardom.’ It’s easy, by contrast, to imagine a hundred moves that do explore that theme. If we propose marriage over dinner, we’re sailing in the ‘Food of Love’ balloon. If we’re eating Cheerios and checking the box scores from last night’s game, we’re in a different balloon. Explorability gives Big Idea shape and definition, and carries us into new territory.

Which brings us to the business purpose of a theme:

The exploration of a Theme transports us. That, by itself, would be enough to make the exploration of a theme a valuable exercise. The buoyancy inherent in a Big Explorable Idea gives wings to our actions and adds to our sense of purpose. If a theme is strong, rather than get lost in the exploration of an idea,we have the potential to discover ourselves it it.

There’s a second big reason that Themes are important to business and brands: Themes are the glue that bind your brand to your customers. They are common ground that you explore together. Social media are the mechanisms, a garage full of vehicles, so to speak. Themes define the conceptual, physical and virtual territory you and your customers can explore together.

The narrative belongs to the customer. By exploring Themes that are authentic to your brand and relevant to your customers, you increase the probability that your product will play a meaningful role in their lives.

All photos in this post are from http://www.slc.edu/graduate/programs/dance/

I love this story because it shows how what stifles our ability to solve a problem is less often about the nature or scope of the problem than it is about the quality of the problem-solving process.

Too often, we invest in poor communication practices and processes, characterized by unproductive games like ‘Eight Axes, One Budget,’ that no one enjoys playing, never mind that they are not designed to solve our particular problem in the first place. I call these poor games. ‘Poor’ because they don’t have much ‘play’ in them, either in the sense that they are a happy experience, or that they are flexible. No, they’re grim and rigid, like the dead. Their ROI is poor because the probability of getting to a solution quickly is low. Because they frequently lack focus and energy, they waste time.

There are thousands of characteristics of poor games, and thousands of poor games played in business every second of every working day. ‘Reading Your PowerPoint Deck to Your Audience’ is a poor game. ‘Kissing Ass’ is almost always a poor game. The ‘Eight Axes, One Budget’ game Barb Groth walked into was a poor game. She saw it, and suggested an adjustment. That’s what gamechangers do.

All it took for her to transform the game was changing its objective–from ‘Cut $20K’ to ‘Save $20K.’ One word. A tiny shift in perspective on the problem. Suddenly, the opinionating, negotiating, status-seeking, bragging, positioning, arguing, joking, backstabbing, politicking, gossiping and justifying that plague poor games, were not getting in the way of solving the problem. The new game got played, the problem solved, in the time it takes to Rochambeau.

Barb’s gamechange freed time that could be better invested in activities with more business upside, or in personal time. Any game that lets you swap an hour of arguing about whose budget gets cut for an hour playing with your kids or helping them with their homework?  That’s a rich game.

I think there is a similar need for game designers in business today.

Networked structures and systems are as different from Industrial Age systems as a jellyfish is from a jetty. Networked companies must adapt. Continually differentiate their brands. Quickly recognize and act on opportunity in a constantly-morphing business environment.

Networked companies absorb and ride change like seagulls adjust to the wind.

Continuing our trip to the beach…a rigid, hierarchical approach to business has about as much chance in this environment as a sand castle does at high tide. The flow of change is that strong, that tidal. The new structures must be fluid, like the roiling environment they navigate every day. Fortunately for us human beings, we are 90% water. Fluidity is in our nature. It’s there. All we have to do is recognize and embrace it.

Games are among the most dynamic and productive structures that can be introduced to a system. They legitimize authority, lend themselves to accountability and encourage autonomy–energies that must work in concert for a networked organization to succeed.

At GameChangers, we design improvisation games to help clients achieve their business objectives. Our definition of a game is E-R-G-O. Environment, Roles, Guidelines and Objective(s). If you can define those, game on.

Ideas are cheap; execution is hard. Games require execution. An idea is like a game that’s never been played. We never consider an idea–for either ourselves or our clients–without looking at it through the ERGO lens. Whether an idea is any good or not is a a subjective discussion. The experience of playing a game, by contrast, can be analyzed objectively.

In a networked world, the power of an idea, its ultimate meaning, resides in ‘how much game’ it’s got. How much ‘play’ it generates. Games create focus. Elevate performance. Stir emotions. Reward innovation. They result in great stories. The value proposition is the size of Monstro the Whale.

(NEXT: POOR GAME, RICH GAME)

I’m doing a photo essay on Western Avenue for a client of ours. In walking Western yesterday, I had all kinds of rewarding encounters. A street poet named Ron shared a poem he wrote, called Shine that was amazing; a restaurant owner grilling chicken on the sidewalk shared stories of his adventures in the real estate biz; a beauty shop owner opened the door after hours to pose for a photo; a kid showed me his python; another kid getting a tattoo showed me his cool shoes–PF Flyers, a brand I used to wear when I was a kid!; a clothing entrepreneur named Prince confided his strategy for pumping up slow sales; a dude named Noon and I had a half-hour discussion on privacy issues, the school system, the prison system, and the relations between the police and the people of South Central–all because he wouldn’t let me take his picture.

No matter how deeply we dive into virtual worlds and other dimensions of reality, walking around and having conversations with folks is still the best way to learn something you didn’t know.

As Viola Spolin said, “Act on environment, and environment will act on you.”