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.
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.
(This is a version of a piece I wrote for the Huffington Post early in 2008. The context is even more appropriate today than it was then.)
Barack Obama is an improviser. His campaign, his platform, his history, draws on a spirit kindled in the same Chicago South Side neighborhoods where modern improv was born in the 1930s.
How does Barack Obama improvise?
He says “Yes and…” Like any good improviser, President Obama understands that agreement enables a scene to progress, and new, shared realities to emerge from it. “I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all,” he writes in the preface to Dreams From My Father. As an improviser, Obama understands that erasing the lines that divide us–enabling “Your situation” and “My situation” to become “Our situation” is what makes any kind of progress possible. (more…)
Back in January of this year, Barack Obama tossed out an aside at a coffee talk with a couple dozen senior citizens in Indianapolis, an aside that was probably lost on most of the audience listening in person: If he got elected, he and his team were going to re-design the White House web site to become more of a utility for citizens. I pointed out at the time what a brilliant initiation this was, with implications related to technology, jobs creation, art and design, and citizen activism, to name a few of the themes that could be explored as a result of it. (more…)
I’m hearing it from all over these days, so it must be official–the word ‘gamechanger’ has broken into the popular idiom. Why, I remember back in the day when it was just Pontiac Motors, A. G. Lafley of P & G, a few sportscasters, and me. Six weeks ago, William Safire wrote about the etymology of ‘gamechanger’ in his NY Times column. Now it’s everywhere, especially in politics. I must have heard the words ‘game’ and ‘change’ used together a dozen times last night in relation to the presidential debate.
This morning, my friend David LaPlante (if you want to read something beautiful, see his most recent blog entry) sent me a link to a CNN story and headline:
Here’s my response:
Candidates and media use the word erroneously, as CNN does in this story, when they refer to an EVENT as a gamechanger. A gamechanger is PERSON with the ability to change the game. Like you : ) A gamechanger can also be a brand, as in the focused, networked behaviors of a group of people who share business objectives. (more…)
Video clips from GameChangers workshops at Twelve Horses Interactive and an Executive MBA Class at Notre Dame. The Twelve Horses engagements typically have from 8 to 10 people participating. The MBA class had 65 people in it.
When an idea has been ‘over-articulated’, it can take something simple or metaphorical to bring it back to its essence. Libraries have been written about this particular idea, millions of workshops, seminars, groups and rallies have addressed it from every possible angle. Here is the essence of it, written into song in 1941 by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen:
You’ve got to accentuate the Positive
Eliminate the Negative
Latch on to the Affirmative
Don’t mess with Mr. In-Between *
Accentuating the Positive is how improvisers keep their scenes productive. (more…)
I often use this scenario when I’m explaining to an audience how improvisation generates breakthrough ideas and unique value propositions for its practitioners.
Let’s say I initiate an improv theater scene as the captain of the pilgrim ship, the Mayflower. I identify myself as such to my scene partner. I am captain-like. Imperious. Big-hatted.
My scene partner, however, has a different idea, and enters the scene as an overworked employee in a modern-day flower shop.
It might have been a soft initiation on my part or poor listening by my partner, whatever the reasons, we are now in two different places playing two different characters. Are we pilgrims on our way to the New World? Or are we in a contemporary flower shop? Whose idea will prevail? (more…)
When Red Bull auditions candidates for what they call their Mobile Energy Teams, or METs (yes, when you play for Red Bull you do it in a METs uniform) the casting committee begins by observing groups of 25 candidates left alone in a room. They note which ones connect and communicate with the kind of vigor that’s synonymous with the brand. They note those who are naturally animated characters, who strike up conversations, find common ground with others, get a laugh. These are the candidates most likely to get the gig. (more…)
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.
Barack Obama is an improviser. His campaign, his platform, his history, draws on a spirit kindled in the same Chicago South Side neighborhoods where modern improv was born in the 1930s.
