Archive for the ‘Agreement Principle’ Category
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 »
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
The basic building block of improvisation is ‘Yes and.’ The premise of every statement improvisers make is one of agreement and addition. Scenes move forward by ratcheting along with the ‘tool’ of yes-and like a climber finding holds on the side of a mountain…
Yes, we are here, and I see a place we can grab over there. Yes! A new crack reveals itself, and we grab it. We see another hold and we make the move. Yes, and now we’re experiencing the mountain from a new perspective. Multiple new holds appear, and one hold at a time, with each move accompanied by a thousand little calculations that are faster than conscious thought, we move up the face of the mountain.
Beginning improvisation students tend to use the phrase ‘Yes and’ literally. Skilled players discover infinite ways to ‘Yes and’ without necessarily using the words themselves. This keeps technique in the background where it belongs. A scene in which every player begins every contribution with the words ‘Yes and’ will get sing-songy in a hurry, and that’s not what we want. We want nuance. Refinement. We want technique to be second nature so that it becomes invisible to our audience, and we can pay attention fully to the realities of the environment and our fellow players. That’s gamechanging leadership.
Gamechanging is the art of doing what’s best for the scene. That means knowing a lot of different ways to yes-and. GameChangers yes-and artfully, with technique taking a backseat to the scene’s objective.
They can do it with a smile and a supporting comment. Or
A reaction and a correction. Or
With constructive criticism. Or
By giving gifts to their scene partners and making them look good. Or
By seeing and adding to the environment. Or
By joining in the shop talk of the scene. Or
By keeping the scene focused on its objective. Or
By supporting the scene from offstage. Or
By making declarative statements instead of interrogating scene partners. Or
By energizing and heightening the emotional level of the scene. Or
By emphasizing convergence on a solution when a divergence of ideas gets unwieldy. Or
By doing what our friend Kristen Parrinello calls ‘invisible work’ (@invisiblework is her Twitter handle), the little moves that are so subtle as to be invisible to the audience.
Walt Disney used to call yes-anding (and Pixar Animation has taken to calling it) ‘plussing.’ Add something to the scene, and if you don’t have anything to add, get off the stage.
Not that you shouldn’t practice yes-anding by literally using those two words. You should. Use them as a kind of warm-up or rehearsal, like you’d practice the basic forms in ballet or the scales in music. When the game is on, and you’re in the heat of a big scene, ‘Yes and’ may not literally pop up in your dialogue, but the technique will be there, invisible and inaudible, doing its work, ratcheting you and your team to the summit of whatever mountain you choose to climb.
Tags: Agreement, Ballet, Forms, Invisible Work, Kristen Parrinello, Leadership, Music, Pixar Animation, Plussing, Scales, Walt Disney, Yes And
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Creativity, Dialogue, Emotion, Environment, Fundamentals, Gifts, Leadership, Scenes | No Comments »
Monday, January 10th, 2011
The extraordinary improviser, Paul Vaillancourt, gave me a list of sayings that have been compiled and passed around the improv theater community over the years. The great teachers Mick Napier and Del Close get some of the credit, as do Viola “The Godmother” Spolin and ImprovWorks’ Sue “Pond” Walden, though the exact origins of most of these sayings would be pretty hard to trace. What’s clear to anyone who explores improvisation is that the the meaning behind the sayings originates from the same place that accounts for such profound ideas as jazz, the Dao De Jing, Johnny Appleseed and Pixar Animation. Here is the fifth in a series (quotes in bold):
Play against cliches. First, play with the cliches of your business. You all know what they are. Name them. Call them out. Have some fun with them. And then go against them. There is a lot of movement in playing against cliches. Just doing this one thing can transform your scene into something delightful.
Think of the environment as a six-sided sphere, of which the audience is a part. What a brilliant way to determine your marcomm budget! It’s 1/6 of your total operating budget. Done. Next.
The environment also has an outside and an inside. This is a good way of thinking about how your brand’s environment travels with the communication that represents it in the networked world. Think of your network as a place. What is that place like? Who is walking the halls? How is it lit? What kind of art hangs in its offices? What does it sound like? All these concepts should be consistent and play off one another in virtual space and in reality. A friendly atmosphere in the office extends to the social graph. Artfulness will be apparent in reality and in virtual space. Clutter is as clutter does. Etc. etc.
You don’t have to try to be funny, laughter will happen just by being human. Being human is funny enough. A common misconception we battle all the time at GameChangers is that improvisation is all about being funny. So not true! Improvisation is about communication, learning, and transformation. It is only by a quirk of genetic fate—Viola Spolin’s son, Paul Sills, brought all the games Viola had conceived with him when he and Bernie Sahlins co-founded Second City—that we in the U.S. associate improvisation so strongly with comedy. Comedy is just a sliver of the output improvisation is capabl of generating. It’s like saying all ice cream Praline Pecan. Taint so.
Playful, direct, co-developed ideas, informations, and dreams will always be far hipper than one person’s alone. This is just a basic human algorithm. The best ideas of eight people will always be better than the best ideas of one person. Spare us your genius, and bring us something else. Your work ethic. Your brain. Your smile. Your song. Your sense of smell. Your experience. But spare us your genius. Because, you know…our stuff will always be far hipper than yours alone ; )
Tags: Additions and Edits, Behavior, brand, culture, Del Close, Gifts, job titles, Mick Napier, Paul Vaillancourt, reputation, Sayings, Scenes, Sue Walden, Vaillancourt's List, Viola Spolin, vision, Wisdom
Posted in Agreement Principle, Coaching, Communication, Education, Environment, Fundamentals, Movement, Networked World | No Comments »
Monday, November 29th, 2010
“Getting to yes” is a popular phrase among business managers. (It is the title of a 1981 book by Harvard professors, Roger Fisher and William Ury. A 1991 re-issue added an author’s credit for the original editor, Bruce Patton—apparently it took the authors ten years to get to Yes). The book dealt with negotiating tactics, and spent a record number of weeks on the Business Week best-seller list. Over the past 30 years, the book’s title has taken on a lot of meta meaning among managers: Close the deal. Don’t take “no” an answer. Get ‘er done. Reach agreement. Earn eyeballs. Satisfy the customer.
In a networked environment, it’s easy to get to Yes. Anyone can say Yes to anything. One could make a pretty good case that in large networks, especially when it comes to innovation, there’s an epidemic of ‘yessing,’ paralleled by an equally virulent epidemic of doing nothing about it. This is a kind of safe harbor, an advantageous position for piggybacking on successes (”A big fan from the start.”) and distancing oneself from failure (”Not taking the hit for that mess.”)
As a description of a particular point in time, “Getting to yes” is fine (and the 1981 book has still-relevant advice for negotiations and sales). “Yes” does not, however, describe a process. It’s a status: Thumbs up. Good to go. Roger that. A big 10-4. As a status it is, by definition, static. And “static,” in a dynamic environment like the one in which business operates today, is death.
By contrast, “Yes and,” a basic building block of improvisation, describes a process, an obligation by every player in the game to contribute, and actively build on the reality of the moment. In terms of process, “Yes” is the icing. “And” is the cake. “Yes” may get all the credit, but “and” does the work. “Getting to and” invokes participation. It demands collaboration. It results in extension of ability and expansion of possibility. “And” moves the narrative. It unlocks the adaptive processes demanded by a networked world. Adaptation means movement. And movement is life.
To live, to grow, to seize the potential of the moment, don’t make things good. Make them better.
Tags: And, Better, Bureaucracy, C-Level, Fundamentals, GameChangers, Good, Improvisation, Leadership, Management, Networked World, yes, Yes And
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Communication, Environment, Fundamentals, Games, Movement | No Comments »
