With each passing week, we hear more about the application of improvisation to business. American companies, from core to edge, from the C-suite to the street, are becoming more conscious of the need to be agile in a networked business environment, and that means learning how to improvise better. These companies (excluding the already-agile Silicon Valley/tech and financial sectors) are coming to the realization that in a networked world, it is impossible to script for every scenario we encounter. There’s too much too much choice, change and transacting in the marketplace. In this environment, improvisation is the most fundamental business skill there is. At GameChangers™, we call it a system for producing positive outcomes from unforeseen circumstances.
The anecdotal evidence–what we’re seeing and experiencing over the past three months:
- A study in the magazine Science co-authored by MIT scientists cites a 30-40% improvement in performance in groups that apply collective intelligence to problem-solving. This is another perfectly legit definition for what improvisation is: The conscious application of collective intelligence to the solving of problems.
- A major airline hires GameChangers™ to improve its customer relations for its sales staff. In 3 months, offices that institute the GameChangers™system show a 90% reduction in customer complaints.
- Oakley yes-ands the 33 Trapped Chilean Miners by giving them all a pair of their grooviest sunglasses to wear when they exit the mine, demonstrating that improvised branding has a huge ROI advantage over traditional media models.
- Legendary improvisation-trained actor Alan Alda establishes a program with science writer KC Cole to teach scientists how to communicate better using improvisation. Alda’s program is co-located at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism, and Stony Brook U. in New York. I’m honored to continue the program in a workshop exploring biomimicry (in which we riff on exercises taught to me by the brilliant Belina Raffy in the U.K.) as part of Social Media Week in L.A..
- The ‘Old Spice Man’ viral video campaign, partly designed by a social media manager who attended several GameChangers® workshops and a copywriter who plays jazz trumpet, boosts Old Spice sales by 1200% in three months. This suggests that brands must begin to measure ROI not by platform, but by narrative.
- The Applied Improvisation Network holds its annual meeting in Amsterdam in September. Success stories abound!
- Renowned London-based organizational expert, Peter Robertson, is adapting the AEM-cube™ analysis tool created by his group, Human Insight Ltd., to include metrics for how well large organizations, and their employees individually, improvise.
- We hear that two divisions of a large global consulting firm, unbeknownst to one another, hire improvisers to conduct workshops for their managers in two different U.S. cities. The company’s training staff, hearing of this, requests a proposal from one of its vendors for a company-wide program for more than 12,000 employees that is based on improvisation.
- The Spirit of Football®, an improvised narrative that explores the theme, “One Ball, One World,” has already signed its first two sponsors for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, putting them exactly three years ahead of the pace they were on for this year’s World Cup.
- A Harvard Business Review article on Pixar University and its director, Randy Nelson, cites ‘plussing,’ which is an old term Walt Disney used, as an essential part of its culture. Plussing is another word for ‘yes-and,’ a basic concept of improvisation.
This is just a partial tip of one iceberg, the one we see from our little boat at GameChangers™. There are a lot more icebergs in the ocean than what we can see, and let’s be honest, there are a lot more icebergs in the ocean than there have ever been before.
Consequently, there has never been a better time, no matter what profession you’re in, to be an improviser. Play on!
