Archive for the ‘Agreement Principle’ 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 »
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
Drew Coolidge
Most of the credit for this post goes to Drew Coolidge, an exquisitely gifted improviser I’ve had the fun of watching many times in action with his group Cartel, and before that in a group called Spank Drew (draw your own conclusions about what that team thought of him). On USSRocknRoll.com he writes about his three favorite improv teachers, and the gifts each of them gave him.
Here’s a summary of Drew’s post and my take on its applications to business:
From Eric Hunnicutt, he learned how to deal with fear. “Just be present. It’s not about getting rid of fear, if you’re present, fear has no room to exist.” Hunnicutt taught him.
When it comes to business, or life in general for that matter, who among us doesn’t have fears? A speech. A parent. A spider. A client. Hunnicutt’s advice to Drew about performing onstage is just as legit in any other context: don’t work at being fearless. That’s like treating fear as some kind of virus and yourself a victim in need of medication. Don’t go there with your energy. Instead, practice being present. If you’re completely absent, begin by focusing on your breathing. Your senses, all of them, and the space around you, all of it. Go from there. By giving 100% of your attention to everyone and everything around you, fear ceases to become a factor in your performance.
(The basketball legend, Larry Bird, once said about playing in an NBA championship game against the Houston Rockets that, while running a fast break, was he aware not only of where all ten players were on the court, he was aware of every fan in the first 20 rows of the arena. If someone was sitting down with a box of popcorn, or leaving their seat, Bird saw it while sprinting down the floor. We normally think of players confining their awareness to the court, but when our senses are 100% engaged, a line painted on a floor is just one more thing we notice. It does not define the limits of our awareness.)
From Dave Hill, Coolidge got insight into what improvisers call the group mind. The group mind is when all the players on a team tap into and share the flow of a performance. They are all on the same page, they are one organism, evolving in realtime right before our eyes. “It’s the product of individuals making strong choices and completely supporting the moves of the other players,” is how Drew boils down Hill’s gift. It naturally follows Hunnicut’s note. If you’re present, you can do this.
In business, everyone talks about teamwork, but dishearteningly few understand what Dave Hill taught Drew: Every player on a team can make the strongest, boldest, ballsiest individual move she or he is capable of making, and support those moves by their fellow players, and have all of it be consistent with good teamwork. (Oh, and group mind is not the same thing as groupthink. The two concepts are completely at odds with one another.) Agree on the game your team is playing and you’re on the way toward discovering the group mind.
From David Pasquesi, Drew received this gem: “The scene is already occurring, it’s our job to allow the scene to reveal itself to us. The tools for doing that are: 1. Listening (or Paying Attention) 2. There is no two.”
We call Lstening (or Paying Attention) ‘Heeding.’ In business, we can get so focused on the desired resolution to our ‘scene,’ that we forget to heed what’s happening in the moment, which is the only chance we have to improve our odds of success. Heeding results in opportunity recognition. Forget to heed, fail to recognize opportunity.
I’ve evolved the headline from Drew’s post a bit. He made it go, I heeded, and that’s how we up along. Spanks, Drew!
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Coaching, Communication, Education, Environment, Games, Gifts, Group Mind, Issues, Listening, Objectives, Scenes | No Comments »
Monday, March 12th, 2012
Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes! Are they not the businessperson’s biggest bogey? A misstated phrase in an email that blows up into a huge misunderstanding. A mis-labeled file that causes vital information to get dis- or mis-placed. A mistaken brand strategy or pricing position for which the market shows no mercy. The ever-present and infinite range of possibilities for making mistakes have managers hitting the Maalox like macaws hitting a mango tree.
There is a different approach, one used by improvisers. It’s also an approach that will be familiar to agile developers. In improvisation, every ‘mistake’ is received, instead, as an opportunity. An opportunity for what? Depends on the ‘mistake.’ It could be an opportunity to learn. To upgrade a system. Improve a relationship. Refine a process. Eliminate a defect. Correct a mis-perception. Could be anything.
Here’s the flip: Don’t focus on eliminating the bad. Focus on creating the good. 
The key to the flip is using the Activity Formerly Known as a Mistake as a kind of fulcrum for fast action. Don’t waste time dwelling on it or assigning blame. And especially don’t let your fear of making another so-called mistake limit your range of options in the future. If this is your M.O., it won’t be long before you are giving yourself no range of options whatsoever, and will only engage in activities that are perceived as ‘risk free.’ That’s when you stop learning. When you stop learning you stop evolving. And when you stop evolving, you lose touch with the marketplace, which is evolving, with you or without you.
A mentor of mine, Art Swerdloff, used to have a saying that had been handed down to him by his mentor, the legendary film editor and former Dean of the USC Cinema School, Slavko Vorkapich: “There are no mistakes, only effects.” Vorkapich and Art were talking about film editing, but they could have been talking about any kind of communication process. According to their approach, it was impossible to make a film edit that was ‘wrong.’ Looking at their process like this let Vorkapich and Swerdloff perceive their work as a direct interaction with their audience. No edit is a mistake. Every edit produces an effect on the audience. Does it confuse them or underscore an emotion? Reinforce or change the flow of the story? Is the edit a jarring experience for the viewer? Does it surprise? Build or resolve tension? Add or shift perspective?
This approach transcended craft, and let them build a dialogue with their many collaborators—directors, cinematographers, composers, sound editors, et al—built on a vocabulary of effectiveness. If their discussion with their collaborators had focused, instead, on mistakes, it would not have been long before they’d get getting into one another’s business, and critiquing another person’s area of expertise. By focusing, not on the edit itself, but on the effect produced by the edit, they were able to their share their objective with their collaborators, and pursue it with a shared sense of purpose, with each collaborator working at the height of his or her craft.
Say it once more, maybe even say it out loud. There are no mistakes, only effects!
Then don’t let anything get between you and your effectiveness.
Tags: Agile Development, Agile Manifesto, Art Swerdloff, Blame, collaboration, Communication, Editing, Effects, Mistakes, Objectives, Opportunities, Outcomes, Slavko Vorkapich
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Communication, Issues, Narrative, Objectives, Problem Solving, story | 2 Comments »
Thursday, January 12th, 2012
Not long ago, I observed a scene in a retail store where a manager requested something from a busy employee. This request was obviously unexpected. An ambush of sorts. The employee was doing something else at the time. We have all been part of a scene like this, in one role or the other.
“And when do you need this done?” sighed the already-dubious employee.
“Yesterday!” said the manager, pivoting abruptly and walking away.
The employee shook her head almost imperceptibly and said to no one in particular, “What am I supposed to do with that?”
Exactly.
‘Yesterday’ is not an answer. It’s an attitude. And a cliche on top of it. The ‘I need it yesterday’ attitude says to the employee:
“You are now guaranteed to fail. I’m going to be unhappy with you no matter what. You should have thought of this yourself. Do I have to think of everything?” That’s lot of attitude for one word.
And like the employee said, what is a person supposed to do with it?
Give the people in your scenes information they can put to use! Information that will shed light and bring clarity to the problem at hand. Don’t muck up the scene with your imperious attitude and your unrealistic expectations.
Richard Saul Wurman holds court at USC school of Architecture, 01.10.12
On Tuesday, I went to see Richard Saul Wurman speak to an audience of architecture students and faculty at USC. Afterward he held court outside the classroom for half a dozen students who stayed around and asked him questions. One student asked, “What do you think of urban planning?”
Wurman sized up the student for half a beat then shook his head. “That’s a terrible question,” he scolded. (He pulls no punches.) “It’s too general, too broad. How can I even begin to answer it? It’s like asking a doctor what he or she thinks of medicine, or asking an oceanographer what he or she thinks of water!”
See, there’s learning in the ‘Yesterday’ scene for both players. The employee had an attitude, too. “When do you need this done?” made scheduling the task the manager’s problem. It was therefore not a very useful response to the manager’s request.
Instead of a question that made scheduling the task the manager’s problem (and setting herself up to be a victim) a question or statement that engaged the manager in the scheduling process would have been better:
“I’ve got five to-do’s on my list ahead of your request. Help me prioritize.”
“I can have it done in 48 hours.”
“Rate the urgency from 1 to 5, with 5 being an emergency where I have to drop everything and do it now.”
Whatever you do, whatever role you’re playing, give your scene partners information they can act on, not an attitude that makes it more difficult or even impossible for them to solve the problem of the scene.
Tags: Agreement, collaboration, Communication, Conversation, Declarative Statements, Dialogue, Employee, Information, Manager, Problem Solving, Productivity, Questions, Richard Saul Wurman, Scene, Scheduling, Yes And, Yesterday
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Leadership, Problem Solving, Roles, Scenes | No Comments »
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 »
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
She sold her HuffPost to AOL for $315M, and didn’t offer as much as a thank you note, forget about any money, to the people who, like myself, had posted most of the content that created the value behind her brand.
Today, the HuffPost ran this headline:
GameChangers LLC owns the trademark ‘GameChangers’ in 17 different trade categories, including business education, seminars, improvisation for business, training, etc. I’m not going to say that HuffPost’s repeated use of the phrase ‘Game Changers’ in its editorial violates our trademark (though I implied it in a snarky comment on her story today). And I don’t know for sure, the difference, litigationally speaking, between ‘GameChangers’ and ‘Game Changers’ with the words spaced. We don’t own the phrase, didn’t coin it, and lots of people use it–including every sports announcer who ever lived, and the Bloomberg Network, which DOES for sure tromp on our trademark (but how are we going to sue or even slow down a billionaire politician’s billion-dollar company in the legal arena? If you’ve got ideas, let me know.)
I do know that last year my HuffPost producer, Willow Bay, brought up to Arianna the HuffPost’s use of the ‘Game Changers’ branding and proposed a conversation between the two of us about a possible collaboration. Nothing. Zippo. We shouted into the maw and got nary and echo.
In improvisation, we honor taking. You’ve got to take strongly, and politeness has nothing to do with it. Be aggressive. Play hard. Go for it. Claim turf. ‘Take care of yourself first,’ in the words of the legendary teacher, Mick Napier.
The thing is, we honor giving, too, and if anything, we honor it more. Yes-and. Connect. Make others look good. Share the narrative. Give gifts. Politeness, the consideration of others, has a lot to do with it.
One without the other makes you only half a player.
This is just my experience speaking, it does not represent any kind of larger dataset, for all I know Arianna has given $314M to Sloan-Kettering Hospital since February. It is pretty direct experience, though, so it must mean something. What it means to me is that Arianna is Half a Player. She’s fantastic at taking, and needs to work on her giving.
Posted in Agreement Principle, Branding, Character, Education, Entrepreneurship, Gifts, Issues, Leadership, Narrative, Press | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
Before yesterday, I’d never, to my recollection, heard the phrase ‘burning platform’ used in a business conversation. Yesterday I heard it used multiple times in two different conversations, with teams in two different businesses, in two different parts of the U.S., to refer to issues they are addressing.
A pattern defines a game.
This is what a burning platform looks like:
What’s the story here? Well, let’s see…it’s an environmental disaster…lives are no doubt endangered (many have already escaped in lifeboats, jumped or been killed (e.g. ‘fired’)…the focus is on containment instead of productivity…the PR spinning is beginning…a hundred lawyers are circling…Wall Street is manipulating markets based on shareholder emotions…the media is fanning the fear…the government is organizing committees that will haunt and impede productivity for years to come…cities, states and municipalities are seeking reparations. Whatever good can emerge from this mess will be years, maybe a generation, in coming.
Metaphors like ‘burning platform’ represent a level of meaning that accompanies all communication, the Meta level. (The other two are Cosmetic and Emotional). The Meta level contains metaphor, symbolism, allegory, parable, analogies, etc. Meta meaning is powerful stuff and should be chosen with great care. It’s why brands work so hard, at such great expense, on their identity. Those symbols mean a lot.
At GameChangers, we practice what I call the science of narrative. This science requires specific, deliberate and objective choices about what metaphors we put into play.
The Center for Public Policy and Administration defined the phrase ‘burning platform’ in 2005. ‘Burning platform’ according to the CPPA, came into meaning when a driller on a burning offshore oil-drilling platform calculated that his best chance of survival was a 150-foot jump that he’d never make under normal conditions. A burning platform came to mean an ‘urgent condition requiring bold choices.’ All good, and useful. Context is huge, however, and after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the context for this phrase changed and, along with it, its meaning. Now it means ‘unmitigated disaster.’
Look at the photo again. That’s the image of a burning platform most of your audience will conjure when this phrase is used. Whatever changes come about because of the pictured scenario promise to be painful, litigious, lengthy and costly. This is not what we want when we change the game. We want change that is productive, agreeable, fast and inexpensive to implement.
Clearly, we need a new metaphor to capture this meaning.
It’s like that old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon intro, where Bullwinkle pulls a monster out of a hat and says “No doubt about it, I’ve gotta get another hat.”
We’ve gotta get another hat.
Tags: BP, Burning Platforms, Change, Cosmetic, Deepwater Horizon, Emotional, Meaning, Meta, Metaphor, Rocky and Bullwinkle
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Environment, Levels of Meaning, Metaphor, Narrative, Photos & Videos, Problem Solving, Scenes, Speed, story | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
Over the past three and a half years at GameChangers, we have gone through Cirque du Soleil-like contortions to explain improvsiation and its value to business in the Networked World.
We have defined it as “A process for producing consistently positive outcomes from unforeseen circumstances.” We call it “serendipity by design.” “A game, a theme, and an exploration.” “Collaborative problem solving.” “Acting on environment and letting environment act on you.” Listening, Learning and Transformation.” “Agility + Ability.” “Freedom within Structure.” “Creating a cosmos out of chaos.” “Openness to opportunity.” “The Big Yes-And.” “Flexible Vision.” “How Tina and Amy Got Their Grooves,” and “Not comedy.” Among others.
Leave it to Steve Jobs, interviewed in The Pixar Story, Leslie Iwerks’ 2007 feature documentary, to phrase it with the assured elegance of an Apple design.”Unplanned collaboration” is the phrase he uses.
“We wanted a place that would encourage unplanned collaboration,” said Jobs in describing the design of Pixar’s new studio. He repeatedly cites this this as the architecture’s objective.
He didn’t connect this phrase to improvisation, per se, but it’s as good a definition as we’ve heard. Improvisation is unplanned collaboration. And even though it’s unplanned, it’s all part of the design. In the architecture of improvisation, you fully expect to run into someone unexpectedly. When you do, you are prepared to exchange information, find an agreement, and build a scene together or continue one that had begun earlier. You expect that others might jump into this scene with you, and you are prepared for anything they might add. Through this process, in thousands upon thousands of such unplanned increments, each filled with its own unique potential to be productive, you move your narrative forward.
It’s hard to imagine a better case study for the value of improvisational design than Pixar’s studio, or a better model of what it means to be a GameChanger than Steve Jobs.
Jobs also said it took ten years for Pixar to make any money. We’re just going to ignore that one. Play on.
Tags: Animation, Architecture, Improvisation, John Lasseter, Pixar, Pixar Studios, Preparation, Serendipity, Steve Jobs, Unplanned Collaboration
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Communication, Environment, Listening, Narrative, Networked World, Objectives, Problem Solving, Scenes, Social Media | No Comments »
Sunday, June 12th, 2011
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!
Tags: Dallas Mavericks, Environment, Jason Terry, Leadership, Mark Cuban, Narrative, NBA Championship, Objective, story, Storytelling
Posted in Agreement Principle, Casting, Coaching, Environment, Leadership, Narrative, Objectives, story | 3 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 »
