Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category
Monday, March 8th, 2010
When I was a student at Notre Dame, Marc Maurer (pronounced MAU-er) walked the campus faster than anyone else I knew, and I don’t just mean faster than any other blind person. I mean faster than anyone, period. Like twice as fast as the next fastest person. His cane, which he used to sweep the sidewalk in front of him like a hockey player on a breakaway, was as much for our benefit as his, because he was a man on a mission, he was coming through, and it was clear even back then that nothing or no one was going to stand in his way.
Marc was, to my knowledge, the best auto mechanic on campus. He’d wheel his Low Boy under a car chassis, listen to an engine, or spider around under the hood and demonstrate that while you might have had the supposedly functional eyes, you couldn’t look at a car with the skill that he could.
He was one of the best students at Notre Dame. And a party animal. And a ladies man. He had a great sense of humor. In Sorin Hall, where Marc and I lived, nobody thought of him as handicapped. Quite the contrary. He was gifted. By comparison, most of us were lazy, ignorant slugs.
I have not stayed in touch with Marc over the years, but I have kept tabs on him.
A few years ago, for example, Disney planned to release a feature film based on the sight-impaired Mr. Magoo cartoon character. At first I heard the rumors coming out of Disney’s film marketing department. “Someone in Washington representing blind people is causing trouble.” And then I heard the name Marc Maurer, and I had to smile, because I knew it was game over, a mismatch from the get-go. Dr. Maurer, who today is President of the National Federation of the Blind, chewed up the Mouse and spit it out. Making fun at the expense of the sight-impaired is a mistake Disney will never make again.
Later this week, I will be conducting a GameChangers workshop for Executive MBA students at Notre Dame, and I intend to mention Dr. Maurer. In researching him, I came across one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. In keeping with the character of the Marc Mauer I knew at Notre Dame, the speech is by turns intelligent, inspiring, and hilarious. Take the time to listen to it.
Some of the beautiful ideas Dr. Maurer expresses in this speech:
If we let a single characteristic become the identifier of a person, it ensures that our estimate of them will be wrong. Value is measured not by a single characteristic, but by the aggregate of those possessed by each individual. Each characteristic contributes to the whole, and each may strengthen or hinder the person possessing it.
We live in a society in which blindness is thought to be a condition to be repaired. Eyes that cannot see are broken. However, it is false to say that the person who owns them is broken.
We, the blind, do not need to be fixed. We are fine the way we are. We can find our meaning and our purpose without modification or alteration.
I do not believe that blindness and helplessness are synonymous. I carry the cane because it is a tool that helps me travel. It is a tool of my independence, not a badge of my helplessness.
Learning should not be limited to what trains the mind, it should also train the spirit.
Your life belongs to you!
Note that it’s Federation OF the Blind. Not FOR the Blind. It’s not about what we can do for blind people. It’s about what blind people can do for themselves, and if we’re lucky, for us. Yeah, Dr. Marc Maurer is blind. And his vision is just fine.
Tags: Disney, Dr. Marc Maurer, Learning, Mr. Magoo, National Federation of the Blind, Notre Dame, Sight-Impaired, vision
Posted in Character, Education, Leadership, Listening | No Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
This is from a blog post by our friend, Nilofer Merchant, author of the new book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy:
The challenge with people feeling powerless is this: we don’t see how we can contribute to solve problems. We believe it is “someone else’s” to own rather than something any of us can contribute to. Powerlessness leads to apathy on global issues and disdain on local issues.
Now check out this from Mick Napier’s classic book, Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out:
Two people…staring at each other and wondering who’s going to make the first move. Two people being nice to each other and allowing the other to start doing something. In that short amount of time, two humans have created themselves as powerless…Who has time? The audience is waiting. They don’t care about your support. They care about what you do. What you do now.
These two statements, made miles and years apart, reflect the timelessness of the concept: Do something! Participate! Add to the conversation! When you’re just getting started don’t worry about what the solution will be, or where the scene will take you. No one knows, and your audience doesn’t care. The most important thing is to bring to the scene whatever you’ve got.
The saying in improvisation is ‘take care of yourself first.’ This is not the same as being selfish. It is, rather, the recognition that making the first move, even if we are not always the one to make it, is always our responsibility.
Tags: Audience, Global, Improvisation: Scene from the Inside Out, Innovation, Local, Mick Napier, Nilofer Merchant, Power, Powerless, Powerlessness, Problem Solving, Support, Sustainability, Take Care of Yourself First, The New How
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Entrepreneurship, Initiations, Innovation, Leadership, Relationships | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
One of the characteristics of networks is their flexibility. What our communication channels looked like yesterday may not be what they look like today. This, of course, can be an asset or a liability. The net that allows us to build new relationships, discover markets and expand our potential for taking productive action is the same one that swallows channels and markets like a singularity sucking down solar systems in nanoseconds. The global financial system, guaranteed, is right now teetering on the edge of such a debt-and-greed-spun vortex. Call it The Bank Hole.
In our crazy race to escape these kinds of vortexes, we can turn direction-blind. We pick a course of action, or someone picks a course for us, and in our all-out effort to escape a certain fate, we go heads down as hard as we can for as long as we can in that direction, like barn-sour horses galloping toward a distant barn. A strategy, as Umair Haque points out in his latest HBR post, can be just as bad as a locked-in direction, because it can confine or limit one’s options instead of liberating them.
What Haque advocates, and what we could not agree with more, is adopting a set of behaviors (he calls these behaviors ‘Wisdom’) that foster liberation of the ideas and the ethical actions that can deliver us from the Goldman-Sachs Singularity, and whatever else sucks. These behaviors have no time frame, because they are timeless. They cannot be quantified, because they are potentially limitless in number.
One of these behaviors (me, adding to Haque’s list) is to Envision. And by that I don’t mean Ayn Rand’s old Burt Lancaster-as-One-Of-A-Kind-Genius concept of vision but what I call ‘Viola Vision’, which consists of ’seeing and sharing what we see.’ This kind of envisioning expands our horizons, and gives us infinitely more options for escaping what sucks. So in your quest for solutions, don’t forget to:
Look over. It’s how you get perspective on a problem.
Look under. Play with the dynamic of concealment and revelation. Respect roots. Dig deep.
Look sideways. My friend, the animation director John Musker, talks about stories as ‘taking an unexpected left turn.’ A sideways move can shake up your narrative in a way that keeps you on your toes and your audience engaged.
Look down. Who needs help? Some days, this the only question worth answering.
Tags: Ayn Rand, Bank Hole, Banking, Channels, Communication, Financial Crisis, Flexibility, Goldman Sachs, Innovation, Issues, Markets, Networked World, Networks, Over Under Sideways Down, Perspective, Problem Solving, Umair Haque, Viola Spolin, vision
Posted in Communication, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Fundamentals, Games, Innovation, Issues, Leadership, Movement, Narrative, Networked World, Relationships, Scenes | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 15th, 2010
Thanks to our friend, Nilofer Merchant, founder of Rubicon Consulting in San Francisco and author of the insightful new book, The New How, for fanning this New York Times interview with Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies. HCL is a 54,000-person IT services company based outside Delhi with 2009 revenues of $2.3 billion.
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.
Tags: Delhi, Education, Employees First, HCL Technologies, Inverted Pyramid, Leadership, Learning, Mick Napier, Nilofer Merchant, The New How, Vineet Nayar
Posted in Casting, Coaching, Communication, Education, Environment, Gifts, Initiations, Leadership, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
There’s a great tradition in British government that, if you’ve never seen it, you ought to. It’s called The Prime Minister’s Question Time, and it is wonderful political theater. Watch some of this.
And then compare this.
Quite a difference.
The first is improvised.
The second is scripted.
Improvisation is active. It is alive. Members of Parliament are energetically engaged in the conversation about the matter at hand, supportive of, but not bogged down by, their various ideologies and positions. Their actions and reactions are immediate, emotional and visceral. This honors the problem. American politicians dishonor a problem, and obfuscate it, when they use it as a foil for politicking, which is how almost every problem faced by the federal government is regarded now. An excuse for campaigning.
This is the big point President Obama underlined yesterday in his meeting with the Republicans. That 66-minute conversation may be the best thing that’s happened in American politics since the Watergate hearings. Obama changed the game by calling out the current political game for what it is. Let’s call the current game “Our Way or No Way.” It is played by Democrats and Republicans alike, with equal vigor. This game is toxic. Limiting. Stultifying. Divisive. And ultimately it’s unproductive. This is not about blaming one party or the other. The bad game is to blame.
Yesterday, Obama not only called out the current game for the quicksand pit it is, he suggested a better, more liberating, more productive game. You might call the game he’s proposing, ‘Part of a Pie is Better Than None.’ In other words, the invitation to the Republicans (Dems, you’re next!) is to find an area of agreement and agree on it. Do it knowing that some, but not all, and probably not not 80% of what you’ve got scripted, will come to pass. Don’t be greedy. Be generous instead. Don’t place blame. Accept responsibility. Don’t point fingers. Shake hands. And then come out fighting. Let’s relish the good fight, one where we fight together to solve the problem, not the bad fight, where we fight over who’s right and who’s wrong about how to solve it. Let’s pick battles we can win instead of battles we can make the other guy lose.
Cheers to the GameChanger in Chief for changing the game once again. Our political discourse needs more of the kind of energetic, intelligent, articulate, performances that the Brits demonstrate in their ‘Question Time With the Prime Minister” and Obama and the Republicans staged yesterday. It will be a healthy transformation. And it’ll make great TV. Nothing we Yanks like better than that!
Do not get locked into your script for success. Be prepared, instead, to improvise your way there. Remember that other people have scripts, too. As I can tell you from working in the entertainment business, when all we do is fight over whose script we’re going to follow, the show does not go on.
Tags: Agreement, British Parliament, Democrats, Game, GameChanger in Chief, Issues, Obama, Politics, President's Question Time, Prime Minister, Republicans, Tony Blair
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Fundamentals, Games, Issues, Leadership, Narrative, Scenes | 2 Comments »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
Carroll with the Life Drum Core (and a copy of GameChangers) after a USC football practice
GameChangers do not confine themselves to one scene or one role. Nobody knows this better than Pete Carroll. He probably could have stayed at USC until he was ready to retire. In a showbiz town, he is a star, adored by fans, and lavished with perks and money. He has done a ton of good here, too, in the form of community work through his A Better Life LA foundation. Here’s what the L.A. Times had to say about him in 2008:
Few know that about twice a month Carroll leaves his comfy digs at USC, hops in the back of a beaten Camry driven by a former gang member and heads to South L.A. neighborhoods where the snap of gunfire and the anguish of death occur with the steady regularity of a metronome.
These are not recruiting visits. He’s trying to save lives.
Most often, he arrives near midnight and walks shadowy streets with that familiar, electric strut, surrounded by little boys, grandparents, crack heads and gang toughs. He empathizes, listens, encourages, laughs. He talks about jobs and kids and marriage, about perspective and courage, about how difficult it must be to be caught in the madness of the streets.
He realizes that some might think he’s a fool, that some might say he should pay no mind to gang members. Naysayers do not stop him.
“I don’t go to judge . . . just to show that someone cares,” he said. “Just go to give people here a little hope. . . . Get folks to step back and think. Hopefully, get them to change.”
Five years ago, moved by news of murders near USC’s campus, Carroll formed a foundation called A Better LA, dedicated to ending inner-city violence. He hoped to use the self-improvement thinking he’s long leaned on in coaching to help people in poor and dangerous neighborhoods.
We play many roles in life, but always through the essential truth of who we are. Seattle will be getting a new coach, and who knows how he’ll play the role, or how he’ll do there? Carroll failed with the New York Jets when he coached before in the pros. What the Seahawks can count on is getting a man who will compete hard on the field and contribute to the community in which he lives.
When things get too comfortable, a GameChanger consciously changes the game. I don’t know Carroll’s mind, but it seems to me that a coach whose motto is “Always Compete,” needed a new challenge to keep his competitive edge. He probably didn’t enjoy coaching against his protege, Steve Sarkisian, at Washington, to whom USC lost this year in an upset. With his children grown, maybe the time is right for Carroll and his wife to move on. As the writer and radio star Garrison Keillor once told me before deciding to leave Minneapolis to live in New York City for a few years, “If you do something for someone, they expect you to keep on doing it. But a person has a right to do something else for a change.”
The Pete Carroll story will be analyzed to death, but on the meta level it’s simple. In order to compete at the top of his game, a competitor like Pete Carroll needs a challenge.
A GameChanger does not seek success, but growth. Success is a plateau we’ve reached. Growth is a mountain we must climb.
Tags: A Better Life LA, Character, Coaching, Leadership, Pete Carroll, Role, Seattle, USC
Posted in Character, Coaching, Environment, Leadership | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
The GameChanger of the Month for November goes to Jimmy Biblarz, Mimi Rodriguez, David Kamins and Maya Festinger of Hamilton High School and the teacher, Christina Gutierrez, whose job they saved. By organizing a campaign that included (administration approved) student protests, stories in the media, a letter-writing campaign, and a formal presentation to the School Board, they were able to keep ‘Miss G’ at their school.
It is evident from reading the story in the L.A. Times that Gutierrez is the kind of player anyone would want on their team. It was not the loss of a teacher that stirred the students to action, as much as it was the threat of losing someone who genuinely cares about them. Biblarz felt extra heartache when he heard Gutierrez was getting laid off (because she lacked seniority). When his younger sister, Veronica, was out of school for two months with an illness, Miss G made sure she got her homework assignments, and that she was all caught up when she returned to the classroom. “She just actually cares,” Veronica Biblarz says in the Times article. “Not like the fake pretending to care. . . . She takes it seriously.”
Interesting, isn’t it, that the student calls out ‘fake pretend caring?’ A fact of which every brand should be aware: the b.s. detectors of the networked audience are fine-tuned. And there is no substitute for authenticity.
One of my improvisation teachers, Scot Robinson, said one day in class, “I hate people who generalize.” He delivered it with such deadpan perfect timing that it got a laugh, but getting a laugh was not the point, the point was this: Give the gift of specificity. Don’t be a generalizer generalizing. To hold your audience’s interest, be unique, be remarkable, buck stereotypes. You cannot accomplish this if you are ‘general’ about your role, your character, or your game. You cannot accomplish it if you limit yourself to what’s in the script, the employee manual or the teacher’s guide. If the people in your audience feel they already know you, you will fail to hold their attention. It’s when they do not know you, but rather, want to know more about you, that you win them over. It is when they see the the world a little differently because of you, that you create value, and make a difference in their lives.
Tags: Character, Christina Gutierrez, David Kamins, GameChanger of the Month November 2009, Hamilton High School, I. O. West, Jimmy Bilboz, Job, Los Angeles, Maya Festinger, Mimi Rodriguez, Miss G, Scot Robinson, Student Protest, Teaching
Posted in Character, Education, Gifts, Leadership, Networked World, Relationships | No Comments »
Friday, December 4th, 2009
Last in a series…
Gary Schwartz
While at the Applied Improvisation Conference, I drank beer one afternoon with Gary Schwartz, of Spolin.com. Gary is Viola (pronounced vy-OH-la) )Spolin’s protégé, keeper and practitioner of what is, in my opinion, the mother lode of improvisation, the practice built by the grand dame of the craft, the godmother of the game. Hearing stories about Spolin and her teaching was in itself worth the trip.
Schwartz, who before meeting Spolin had studied to become a mime, described for me how Viola taught (no nonsense, all about interaction, no note-taking allowed). How she coached (get out of your head!) How he happened to become her assistant (a random act of kindness on his part). How long it took him for a real breakthrough to happen (a long time).
He said that Viola was profoundly influenced by a book entitled The Tao of Physics, which is now at the top of my reading list.
Viola Spolin did profound work that that relates improvisation to all human endeavors, and has particular relevance for business in the Networked World. She said things like:
“Information is a very weak form of communication.” (GameChangers translation: Meaning lies beneath the surface of things, hidden behind the facade, the artifice, the mask, it is found primarily in the emotions and in the meta symbolism lurking behind the cosmetic layer of information.)
And –
“Creativity is not the clever rearranging of the known.” (GameChangers translation: Creativity is daring by design, a plunge into the unknown, into the collective unconscious, and into one’s own subconscious. It is not rearrangement. It is newness. It is radical juxtaposition. Ultimately it is transformation.)
And –
“Talent or lack of talent have nothing to do with it.” (GameChangers translation: The individual’s ability to interact with, and be transformed by, environment, has everything to do with it.) “Act on environment, Spolin said, “and environment will act on you.”
And –
“Don’t thank me! It’s not me! It’s not ME. It’s the WORK!” (GameChangers translation: Stay humble, stay focused, and don’t be an asshole.)
Schwartz quoted Spolin as saying of improvisation, “You can’t write about it, it can’t be described that way. You have to experience it. When you do it, it’s in your bones.”
At Spolin’s suggestion, I’ll quit writing now, and show you pictures–which I’m sure Spolin would’ve had said is no substitute for the experience either–of improvisers having the experience at Edgefield. Good name for it, Edgefield. We like that about it. At the edge of the field, the transformation begins.
Tags: AIN, Applied Improvisation, Coaching, Games, Gary Schwartz, Godmother, Part Seven, spolin.com, Teaching, Viola Spolin
Posted in Coaching, Education, Fundamentals, Games, Leadership | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Nick Owen is one of those people you feel as if you know even though you know you’ve never met him before. I think it’s because he’s in touch with his environment, and this allows him to make immediate connections with people who share that environment. The honesty with which he speaks and his desire to do some good in the world are palpable. Visible.
His keynote presentation, “Touching the Heart,” is seemingly so in tune with its environment that whenever a phone rings or a plane flies overhead, it is with perfect timing. With the addition of these ‘rimshots’ ordinary statements become punch lines, a lesson for sure in how humor works. Timing is………………everything. Nick: “Understand what causes the arrow to find its mark.” (Pause) Phone RINGS. Audience LAUGHS.
Nick draws on philosophy, world culture, storytelling and improvisation to describe the expressions of the heart that connect us.
Nick Owen
He tells a story about a girl riding a camel through a desert who resolves a dispute amongst three brothers fighting over their inheritance–which consists of camels. He tells another story about a legendary Chinese archer and an old monk. I am a sucker for archery stories. Shoot an arrow into the air, and I will definitely stick around to see where it lands. The ‘ka-’ always demands a ‘-thunk!’
As part of his address, Nick conducts a couple of exercises. One of them builds a five-line story about who we are. What may, to a non-improviser seem narcissistic or self-interested, we regard as essential to the scene. First be certain of what brought you here, and what you’re here for, and where you’re headed. Take care of yourself first, and you are free to take care of your scene partners.
In small groups, we read these stories to one another, these five-line reminders of how we define ourselves in the world. The stories are poetic and moving. We dry a tear off Caitlin McClure’s cheek. The tear speaks for all of us.
Tags: Applied Improvisation, Camel, Chinese Archer, Emotion, Girl, Keynote, Meaning, Monk, Nick Owens, Storytelling, Touching the Heart
Posted in Emotion, Leadership, Narrative | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 20th, 2009
From David Brooks’ column in today’s NY Times:
…you would also have to say that Geithner, like many top members of the Obama economic team, is extremely context-sensitive. He’s less defined by any preset political doctrine than by the situation he happens to find himself in.
‘Sensitivity to one’s situation’ is a quality you find in any good improviser. Dogma (e.g. “political doctrine”) by contrast, doesn’t do much to move a scene forward; instead, it usually results in one of two less-than-desirable outcomes: 1) a groupthink decision by people who let their dogma do their talking; or 2) the scene bogs down in a circular debate about how to move the scene forward.
The only thing that will move a scene forward is moving the scene forward. You can’t talk about it. You can’t write a prescription for it. You just have to do it.
Woody Allen once said, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.” Woody was 55.55% right. Fifty percent of life is showing up. The other fifty percent is what you do when you get there. And the only way to know what to do when you get there is to be sensitive to the context of your scene.
Mr. Context Sensitive
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Leadership, Listening, Scenes | No Comments »
