Archive for the ‘Focus’ Category
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
Last Friday, at the invitation of Jonathan Taplin and Erin Reilly of USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, we conducted a 90-minute session at the 2012 Annenberg Innovation Summit on the USC campus. The objective was to summarize the thinking that came out of a day of presentations and panels with high fliers from the worlds of academia, technology, urban design, entertainment, non-profits and government. People like Henry Jenkins, Anne Balsamo, and John Seely Brown.
We used our ERGO (Environment, Roles, Guidelines, Objectives) game structure to design the session. The game involved 100 people seated at 12 tables. In 90 minutes, the group came up with 800 ideas grouped into four different themes and ranked from 13 to 1 in order of ‘impact in the next five years.’
The objective of the game was to generate and rank as many ideas as possible in the time we had, and then look at innovation as a process of identifying patterns and connections in large datasets.
Objective
As communicators, our 800+ ideas are our material the way a rock is a sculptor’s material. What we do with the material is what a sculptor does to a rock–chip away at it to reveal patterns and narrative elements concealed within the rock that are made visible through our process.
THE MYSTERY TABLE:
We noticed a really interesting outcome to Friday’s game. (Remember: Outcomes are different from Objectives, and are where most of the value of a game resides.) Of the 12 tables, one table performed better than the others. It was a table of seven women and one man. Their ages varied. And because we asked everyone to sit with people they did not know, we can assume at least some of them were new to one another. Yet their focus was better, their tempo faster, their agreements quicker, than any other table in the room, as far as we could tell.
Why? How? It is a mystery begging to be solved.
The people at that table understood our game well enough that they were able to adjust one of its guidelines without affecting the game in any way except to make it go faster. That choice probably gave them an extra 5 minutes over the duration of the game that could be spent on idea generation instead of game mechanics.Many of the other tables got bogged down in game mechanics for 10 of the 90 allotted minutes. That gave the Mystery Table a 15-minute advantage over the less agile tables. That’s 17% more productivity over the 90-minute period.
I never saw them ask for help, but I saw one of them listening whenever a nearby table asked for help. That’s one way they communicated and shared efficiently. The work at other tables would come to a complete standstill as they got an explanation from Jenkins or Balsamo. The work at the high-performing table never stopped. I want to know more more about the Mystery Table, about what made their process so efficient.
If we’d have had another half hour in our session, we could have dug into the Mystery Table’s process. What was the game like for them? What choices did they make that kept things clear and focused? How did they listen to one another? How did they yes-and? How did they sort out any confusion they might have had? How was the decision made to change one of the game’ guidelines to make their ranking process more efficient? What secrets would this Mystery Table have revealed to the rest of the participants?
I am going to follow up with at least one of the people at the Mystery Table and let you know what he or she says about their process. Stand by.
Outcome
Tags: Anne Balsamo, Annenberg, Erin Reilly, Game, Gender, Henry Jenkins, Ideation, Innovation Summit 2012, Jonathan Taplin, Objectives, Outcomes, USC
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Focus, Games, Group Mind, Innovation, Objectives, Speed | No Comments »
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
It’s too obvious not to bring it up: the global interest in the Jeremy Lin narrative underscores again how fast and dramatically the game can change…and how a player like Lin–or you—can create the change and benefit from it when it happens.
First, it’s important to point out (again) that people—not events, products, strategies or tactics—are gamechangers. Only people have the power to change the game in each and every moment. Everything else is either fantasy or history.
Here are five ways Jeremy Lin changes the game…not has changed…not will change. Changes. Now. A gamechanger is always in the now.
Emphasize preparation over planning. It’s good to have a plan, but plans are subject to a lot of forces beyond our control. Our preparation, however, is something we can control. When Lin’s chance came, because his team’s plan to have other guards playing ahead of him did not pan out—a situation entirely out of his control—he was prepared. He was in shape to play a full game, even though he’d only played a few minutes at a time prior to that. Because he had studied and practiced his coach’s offense, he was able to execute it in game conditions. Lin understood that in the NBA, the planning is the area of concern for coaches, owners, trainers, schedulers, the Commissioner, and that what a player needs to do is prepare. As the great John Wooden once counseled my son about his own basketball playing, have faith that your chance will come. In the meantime, work at being ready for when it does.
Be willing to change your role and your status from scene to scene. Lin has changed his role to fit the needs of his team, both situationally within a game, and from game to game. In Lin’s first games as a starter, the Knicks needed scoring, so he played the role of a scorer. When they needed a change in momentum or tempo, he created it. When the team got too passive, he got aggressive. Now that the team’s acknowledged stars, Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, have returned to the lineup, we see Lin changing his game to accommodate and include them. He understands that changing one’s role or status within the game does not change the essential nature of one’s character. He is same person today, in the glare of the global spotlight, as he was when he was sleeping on his brother’s couch, before the spotlight hit. He will be the same player whether he’s scoring 31 points in a game, or scoring three points, with 14 assists.
Embrace your mistakes. That doesn’t mean making more of them, it means seeing them as an opportunity to improve your game. Accept mistakes as pointing the way toward an improved standard of performance. Lin made too many turnovers in several of his early games as a starter. He made it a point of focus and his performance has since improved in this area.
Add vocabulary. Before I’d ever seen him bounce a basketball, I saw this clip of Lin and Knicks teammate Landry Fields doing an elaborate pre-game handshake. I call it the You’ve Got the Yin I’ve Got the Yang Dust Off Confucius 3-Point Binocular Pocket Shake. In the history of sports handshaking, this was a new one. It was the first indication that we were looking at a gamechanger. This isn’t the kind of handshake a person makes up on the spot. This is a move Lin and Fields had to have worked up before Lin got any playing time. It wasn’t a response to celebrity, a personal signature, or a religious statement. It was a couple of smart people (Lin a Harvard grad and Fields a Stanford grad) adding vocabulary to the lexicon of their profession.
Make your teammates look good. Giving support is the highest form of gamechanging. At first, I thought Stoudemire and Anthony, who have been in the spotlight for most of their careers, would resent the attention Lin was getting. Now I’m thinking this won’t be an issue, because they see that Lin is going to help the stars of the team shine brighter, not dim them. No matter what game you’re playing, making your teammates look good is always a winning way. And a recipe for happiness.
Tags: Amare Stoudemire, basketball, Carmelo Anthony, GameChanger, gamechanging, Giving Gifts, Intelligence, Jeremy Lin, John Wooden, Landry Fields, Learning, Mistakes, New York Knicks, Performance, Planning, Preparation, Role, Status, Strategy, Support
Posted in Character, Coaching, Focus, Fundamentals, Games, Gifts, Leadership, Narrative, Roles, Status | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
I take improv classes when I can, always from top-flight teachers. It helps me keep my edge by putting my performance under scrutiny and review that’s much more intense than what you or I experience in a workplace environment. And it keeps me in a learning mode. You’ve probably never heard the name of my current teacher, Miles Stroth, but Miles is a legend in the improv community. He has influenced the art of improvisation as a performer and teacher, performed thousands of shows, taught thousands of students and changed the way they play the game.
I was struggling with my scenes in this week’s class, then had a little breakthrough in the last scene I did (we do dozens of scenes per class). The difference came about when I began by listening instead of thinking.
“Listen, then think,” says Miles. “Don’t try to make sense of the situation. Interact with it by listening.”
Here’s what happens when you think first instead of listening first:
You begin having a conversation about what’s in your head instead of about what’s in the scene. And because neither your scene partner(s) nor your audience can hear what’s in your head, you’re having a conversation with yourself, which distances you from the scene instead of engaging in it. You’re having a conversation with yourself.
Here’s what happens when you listen before thinking:
You can use your intellect to serve the scene (by doing something smart that propels the scene and makes your partner look good) instead of letting your intellect use you (“I am the smartest person in the room and here’s proof”). You’re having a conversation with reality.
Thinking is the ego talking; Listening is the world talking.
Listen. Then Think. That is the order of the opportunity in any scene you’re in.
Tags: Ego, Improv Comedy, Intellect, Issues, Listening, Miles Stroth, opportunity, Thinking
Posted in Coaching, Communication, Dialogue, Entrances, Focus, Fundamentals, Games, Initiations, Listening, Relationships, Scenes | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 21st, 2011
Katehi
The old games are exactly that. Old. And like anything old, they lack sap, spine, vigor. In many ways, the Occupy Wall Street movement calls this out. Saturday’s Silent Protest against the UC Davis Chancellor, Linda Katehi, is one of the best ways yet of #OWS demonstrating the impotency of old games.
Here’s the scene breakdown:
A day after the notorious on-campus pepper-spraying incident, the UC Davis protesters have the idea of creating dialogue with Katehi, by forming a stage between the Administration Building and her car. (Note that no one is out front taking credit for this idea, it doesn’t belong to anyone. Ownable ideas are typical of an old game; shareable ideas are typical of a new game.) The stage is a hundred yards long, a catwalk extending the length of the theater, lined by hundreds of students sitting on the ground in order to effectively elevate the stage.
In forming this stage, the protesters change roles, from ‘Quad Occupiers’ to ‘Silent Audience.’ It doesn’t take them much time to do this. There’s no ‘spin’ of a story being told or sold, no research to back it up, no ‘official position,’ only a simple intuitive agreement to keep their mouths shut for the duration of the scene. Game on. ‘Silent Protest’ is the name you can give the game. The reality of the scene emerges from the focus on this game, this agreement. It is the absence of protest that will make the protest so dramatic.
After 3 hours of what must have been a lot of hemming, hawing and phone-calling by her team about ‘how to handle it,’ the scene finally begins when the Chancellor enters, accompanied by a couple of non-speaking ‘extras.’ She is lit dramatically by the glow of cameras—-eyes of the world—-tracking her across the stage. Her delaying has made this a nighttime scene, which is even more dramatic, the darkness creating a heavier silence. By taking the stage without a script, i.e. nothing in her head, Katehi is exposed as someone with nothing in her heart. She’s got nothing. Because —-
The script won’t be ready until tomorrow!
The silence of the audience is remarkable. Its discipline is impressive. No one breaks. The silence is marred by a few unable-to-resist journos whose subdued questions as the Chancellor nears her car only underline the otherwise-completeness of the silence.
Here is what gets revealed by the scene: The Chancellor cannot speak for herself. Her heart is closed, her emotions as frozen as the mask of solicitude frozen on her face. She is afraid of saying the wrong thing. Her institution’s students intimidate her. There is no dialogue between player and audience, between administration and student, between authority and autonomy. No dialogue. Just an old game, getting called out for what it is. Empty.
The protesters didn’t have to say a thing. All they had to do was create an environment in which the old game of ‘script and control’ would be displayed in all its inadequacy for the world to see.
Tags: Agreement, Emotion, Environment, Focus, Game, Heart, Linda Katehi, Occupy Wall Street, Old Game, Protest, Students, UC Davis Pepper Spraying
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Education, Emotion, Entrances, Environment, Focus, Games, Initiations, Issues, Leadership, Listening, Scenes | No Comments »
Friday, September 16th, 2011
Yesterday, a friend who designs sustainability strategies for large municipal groups passed along this classic text exchange he had a couple of weeks ago with a buddy who was attending a seminar in Los Angeles. 
The endorsement is clear enoug. That’s not the ‘business end’ of the text, though. The business end is explicit in the last two lines. What you did was great. What is that you do?
Defining GameChangers value proposition so that we can arrive at a fair trade with our clients has been one of our biggest challenges, because our process morphs around whatever problems we are hired to help solve. The problems themselves are wide-ranging and often, at the beginning of the process, can be deeply rooted in the client’s culture, which can make our process fluid, because we have wander a bit to discover a direction. Sometimes what we are given by our clients are symptoms, not causes. To solve their problems, we have to discover why things are the way they are. That takes some exploration. Only then can we co-create a process that addresses the problem.
Last year, for example, we were asked by a manufacturer to help with its innovation process. “We are weak in that area, help us get better,” is essentially what we were told by the company’s leadership. It was only through a series of improvisation exercises and activities that we began to see a pattern…the company culture was one of impatience, and the most impatient people in the company were in Operations. Time and again, we would see members of the Operations team express their impatience. They didn’t listen. They scripted outcomes. They judged others while remaining oblivious to their own (often sub-par) performance.
It turned out that the Operations team was so good at their jobs, and their personalities so forceful, that the entire organization (20,000+ employees globally) was essentially moving at their tempo, and wheeling around their processes. This meant different things to different divisions, most of it related to missed opportunities to innovate. Because to the Operations team the only ‘better’ was ‘faster and cheaper,’ that became the organizational definition of innovation. The company’s problem wasn’t, as its managers said, that it was weak in innovation. The problem was that it was defining (i.e. allowing its Operations team to define) innovation in a way that weakened the company and made it less competitive, its brands less marketable.
Had we defined GameChangers as an ‘innovation company,’ I’m not sure we would’ve gotten to the problem (and the subsequent solutions) the way we did. I don’t know if the Operations people would have even been in the room.
Our value proposition boils down to this: We are a communication company. We use improvisation to help clients improve communication. Improved communication results in:
-better collaboration and alignment;
-faster solutions;
-meaningful innovation;
-more opportunity recognition and activation;
-deeper audience engagement and customer co-creation.
How’s that?
Tags: disruption, Endorsement, GameChangers, Text, Text Exchange
Posted in Branding, Dialogue, Focus, Scenes | No Comments »
Saturday, July 30th, 2011
Van Halen famously had an item in their concert contracts that required brown M&Ms removed from the rest of the M&Ms in their dressing room and backstage. “No brown M&Ms’ has been often re-interpreted by pop psychology as narcissistic indulgence or obsessive control. It is remembered as a demand associated with rockstar vanity.
In reality, it was no such thing.
In reality, as David Lee Roth describes in his 1998 autobiography Crazy from the Heat (first edition paperback selling for $123.41 on Amazon?!), and Ira Glass documented in a story that first aired July 24, 2009, on This American Life, the fine print about the M&Ms was a game designed by Van Halen to make sure every part of its contract was read and observed by the local promoter and crew, especially the details of stage and stadium safety. Early in the stadium concert era of the 1970s, there was a lot of variance in stadium electrical systems and construction, and the supergroup, who traveled with 9 semi-trailers of equipment, wanted to make certain their concerns about safety were addressed with the same focus and attention to detail that goes into separating the brown M&Ms from the rest.
In the words of Jeff Bartsch on Editmentor.com:
“If the band rolled up to the next venue and found brown M&Ms in the backstage candy bowl, they immediately demanded a full line-item review of the entire rider contract. Eddie Van Halen specifically buried the M&M Clause, because concert promoters who don’t pay attention to one part of a contract usually don’t pay attention to the rest of it, and resulting technical issues could be disastrous, even deadly.”
In a 2010 Fast Company article, the Heath Bros. describe the brown M&Ms as a ‘canary in a coal mine.’ They interpret it as a kind of red flag used by David Lee Roth to catch careless oversights of details in their contract.
We see it as a game.
The brown M&Ms were the anomaly that defined a game, a game whose objective was to eliminate brown M&Ms, and whose result was safety.
Note that there’s a big difference between the objective of a game and the results achieved by playing it! For example, the objective of chess is to checkmate the opponent’s king. The results of playing it are strategies and counter-strategies, study, focus and the testing and extension of one’s abilities.
A canary in a coal mine doesn’t really define a game, because the results are, for the most part, binary. The canary lives, or the canary dies. The canary in the coal mine tests only one thing—the presence of lethal gas. No fresh dialogue results from it, no unexpected discoveries, the processes following either outcome have already been scripted. The Heaths’ analogy is weak, because a productive game like ‘Brown M&Ms’ has a nearly infinite number of possible outcomes.
Variations of this game can work for any team involved in QA, Safety, Compliance, Supply Chain, Facilities Management, Engineering, etc., where there’s little or no tolerance for error. It’s not a game you can play too often. Played too often, your ‘brown M&Ms’ will no longer be an anomaly, and the game will lose its bite.
The advantage of playing a game like this is that it brings every imaginable detail into play, not just those you and your legal team can stipulate in a contract or manual. When you call attention to the ‘brown M&Ms,’ you initiate a dialogue about the details of your working relationship that holds far more possibilities for problem-solving in real time than the necessary, but inevitably frozen-in-time terms of a contract.
Tags: Anomaly, Attention to Detail, Brown M&Ms, Compliance, Concerts, Contract, Details, Dialogue, ERGO, Focus, Games, Guidelines, Initiations, Ira Glass, Music Business, Problem Solving, QA, Relationships, This American Life, Van Halen
Posted in Dialogue, Focus, Games, Initiations, Objectives, Problem Solving, Relationships | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
This morning at breakfast, Barb Groth, founder of the ultra-good experiential design company, Big Buddha Baba, told me a story: A few years ago, a client of hers called a meeting, the purpose of which was to cut twenty thousand dollars out of a budget for a project that was nearing completion, when resources were tight. Barb got to the meeting, looked at the eight or so executives in the room and said, “Let’s end the meeting now. That’ll save, what?, ten or fifteen thousand dollars? Then cancel the next meeting. There, we saved twenty thousand dollars.”
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.
Tags: Barb Groth, Big Buddha Baba, Communication, Creativity, Cut the Budget, Game, Kissing Ass, Meetings, Poor Game, PowerPoint, Problem Solving, Rich Game, Rules
Posted in Communication, Creativity, Focus, Games, Leadership, Objectives, Problem Solving | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
The first time I experienced demand for new system architectures was when we had eight ‘information architects’ on the staff of our internet company, iXL, from 1997-2000, and they were booked solid for most of that time. We all loved working with them. It was the ultimate white board exercise. They were the first people in the history of the world to have this particular job, and so, with absolutely no standards to which they had to be held, they excelled. People like Josh Galban (today, a product designer at MatchCraft), Ben Bratton (an urban architecture professor and writer-in-residence at UCSD) and Anuradha Sachdev (an experience designer at iCrossing) were among the infonauts who guided us toward those early user experiences. Because there was no ‘stock’ of knowledge about their nascent profession, they had no choice but to learn, and what they learned has been enriching them, their co-workers and their employers ever since.
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)
Tags: Anuradha Sachdev, Ben Bratton, Creativity, ERGO, Execution, Games, iCrossing, Ideas, Information Architecture, iXL, Josh Galban, MatchCraft, UCSD
Posted in Branding, Creativity, Emotion, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Focus, Fundamentals, Games, Innovation, Movement, Networked World | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Toby Daniels (@tobyd), co-founder of Social Media Week, passed along this video this morning. It’s hilarious, and as the title of Charna Halpern and Kim Howard Johnson’s famous book goes, there’s a lot of Truth in Comedy.
Here’s the Truth in this scene: With the coming of the cloud, there’s going to be so much new information coming online all the time that the invitation is to stay comfortably lost in it all, rambling on about our own stuff without really listening. Ever. We’re full of it. Just like these guys. Truth.
So what are we listening for? For the game we can play together. From a productive game will come a narrative that makes sense of it all. But only after the the game has been played.
Later, when people ask, we can look back and say, “That was our strategy.”
Meanwhile, I sort of agree with the caption on the video: ‘The best strategy is one you don’t understand.’ Funny. True.
Tags: Agreement, Charna Halpern, CollegeHumor.com, Discovery, Game, Humor, Kim Howard Johnson, Narrative, Productive Game, Strategy, Truth in Comedy
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Focus, Games, Listening, Narrative, Sales, Scenes | No Comments »
Saturday, March 12th, 2011
Japan is a chrysanthemum. Many petals. One flower. The meta language of the chrysanthemum is deeply rooted in Japanese history and culture. It is the official mark of the Japanese Emperor’s family. It symbolizes happiness.
A disaster like the quake that literally shifted the planet on Friday in Japan gets us to focus on what is most important. At times like these improvisation—a system for generating positive outcomes from unforeseen circumstances—is especially critical.
I have a feeling that in the coming days, we are going to see the power of the flower. As the Japanese people face the challenges confronting them, we will see the creative potential of the group mind, especially when a group as large and connected as the Japanese are are given a sense of purpose like the one they have now.
We will see that improvisation consists not of making it up as you go along, but of making focused and productive moves at every opportunity. Here, for example, via our friend, Michelle James (@creatvemergence), is a list of suggestions from Time Out Tokyo, for how the Japanese people can respond to the crisis.
Already, we can see that there is structure to the process defined by TOT. The objectives, environment, roles and rules of the game are clear. Process is clean. Everything is achievable and scalable. In short, the advice consists of:
Give money–being present in spirit is more important right now than being present in person;
Give blood–to be healthy is an obligation to care for the infirm;
Conserve electricity–the people are in this together.
Though it’s seldom as sudden and concentrated like it was on Friday in Japan, natural destruction is happening at all times, all over the world. Lives end. Rivers flood. Mountains slide.
At the same time, nature’s creativity is expressing itself with equal energy. Lives begin. Rivers heal. Mountains rise.
How can we improve the odds that our creativity will triumph over our destruction?
We can play the Chrysanthemum Game. Find our purpose. Believe in happiness. Bloom as one.
Tags: Chrysanthemum, Creativity, Disaster, Earthquake in Japan, Focus, Game, Group Mind, Happiness, Japan, Japanese, Sendai Earthquake
Posted in Creativity, Environment, Focus, Games, Group Mind, Objectives, Problem Solving | No Comments »
