I could give you a million reasons why Laurie Reuttimann is a gamechanger, I’ll give you one. She understands the difference between business objectives and business outcomes. So often, we muddle the two, and think they are the same thing. They are not.

Laurie’s objective with ‘The Cynical Girl game’ is to,”build a portfolio career. You should build one, too,” she writes in her last Punk Rock HR post.

The outcomes will be things like people changing their own games, finding work, passing her links around, friending and following her online, sharing an occasional smile, and using our newfound cynical outlooks to not automatically buy into the bullshit, especially our own.

Objectives are singular. Outcomes are infinite. Focus on objectives to realize outcomes.

Or don’t. The Cynical Girl doesn’t give a damn. She’s too busy babysitting cats to babysit you.

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

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 ; )

1) Nature creates freedom within structure;

2) Nature recycles everything;

3) Nature rewards cooperation;

4) Nature demands local expertise;

5) Nature curbs excesses from within.

Yet how many organizations and brands attempt to circumvent biology? The new organizational model, as we point out at GameChangers, is more biological than mechanical. Only by embracing what is natural and biological can a networked organization stay in sync and in tune with its environment. Humans, are, after all, biological organisms, and participants in the Ecosystem, Gaia, God’s Plan, The Grand Experiment, or whatever you want to call it. It is our obligation to play along. Thank you Belina!

If the whole is going to be art, the parts must strive not to be.  If we strive to make everything we do precious and perfect and just-so.  If we deliberate and debate the appropriateness of our actions.  If we measure every move.  Craft and eddit every response.  The sum of the parts of what we CrEaTeToGeThEr.  Is.  Surely.  Going.  To be.  Yes.  Oh yes most indubitably and beyond repudiating to the level of a statistical certainty will most definitely be…(Say it!)  A pompous load of crap.

Always bring a brick, not a cathedral into a scene.   We know a businessperson who had built a well-deserved reputation for dropping big ideas on meetings.  That was his thing.  People were in awe of how inspired and forward-thinking his ideas were, by the compelling scenarios he painted for them with his words and emotions.  He liked this role, and didn’t do anything about changing it.  Why would he?  People called him a genius.  A visionary.  What usually happened, though, is that his big ideas died on the vine, or failed to live up to their promise.   His ideas were so big, so singular, that people had trouble adding their own bricks to his architecture.  In our friend’s mind, the cathedral had already been built, all there was for his admirers to do was worship at his altar.  We gave the genius an ‘adjustment’.  All we said was, ‘Don’t be the guy with the big idea.  Be the guy who makes other people’s ideas big.’  This has made all the difference in the world.  He has learned that it’s more satisfying and a lot less stressful to make his scene partners look good, and to not worry so much about proving his own genius  It turns out he’s just as talented at sharing his talent as he is at showing it off, and sharing has proved to be a much more productive way for him to behave.  Today, his reputation is for getting big things done.

Make the strange familiar, the familiar strange.  This is a great philosophy for keeping your brand’s culture lively.  Every business culture benefits from a flow of ’strange’ (i.e. alien to that culture) situations, environments and characters.  Likewise, if we get too familiar with our environment, our process and our fellow players–and most tragically if we quit surprising ourselves–our performance is going to get stale.  When every day is the same we lose our sense of anticipation.  If we dont’ think we’re going find anything, we quit looking, and the flow of new ideas drys up.  It is good to introduce some outside strangness into the workaday mix; it is even more potent to rediscover the strangeness within ourselves.

Don’t prolong the agony of a scene that is slowly dying.  Infuse it with the momentum it needs to end on a positive note.  There are a lot of business scenes ’slowly dying’ these days.  Meetings with HR end in pink slips.  Start-ups lose their funding.  Towns lose their biggest employer.   Often in these situations, the only feasible move is to end the scene quickly and move on.  It makes a huge difference to the rest of your performance if the bad scene ends on a postive note instead of a downbeat one.  A town that greets the news of losing its biggest employer with some kind of community celebration is already on the road to recovery while a town that gets busy telling lots of sad stories to the news about how they got screwed is going to be staying in the doldrums for awhile.

All masks are empty until they are put on and inhabited by the actor.  The same is true with job titles.

The Lundins’ daughter, Carey, a TV and documentary producer (Citizen Kate)in Chicago, read my book recently and got in touch to tell me how many parallels she sees between her parents’ work and GameChangers.  She sent me a copy of The Healing Manager.  I’ve been reading it intermittently, and the more of it I read, the more, I am reminded of a favorite saying of, Derek Miller, one of my improv teachers.  “The story is always happening,” he says,  “before we’re here and after we’re gone.  We’re here to participate in it for awhile.”  Derek is talking about improv performances, but his words could apply to the work we do, or to life itself.  The depth of Derek’s saying really hits home when I read the The Healing Manager.

Ideas about working together collaboratively, of setting ego aside for the good of the community, of honoring everyone’s contributions and developing ‘quality relationships’ with one another–these are nothing new.  They’ve existed since the first six cave dwellers gave themselves a team name (Sabre Teeth?  Fire Monkeys?  Uggtopuss?) and assigned themselves roles and rules for hunting together.

Human beings have always known how to communicate on the emotional level the Lundins describe in The Healing Manager and that I write about in GameChangers.  Our most ancient ancestors had it in them to share important information with honest emotions–the beauty of cave wall drawings, the shamed slouch of a homo erectus shunned by the tribe, the alarmed howl of a sentry announcing an unwanted visitor.

And so I am given this great gift by Carey Lundin, an eloquent reminder written by her parents that we are forever seeking the same truths.  Following the same instincts.  Living the same story.  And that our obligation as human beings is to seek and express the best aspects of what we can be, and to make happiness always a possibility, even in the midst of the sadness we must inevitably encounter along the way.

Words from The Healing Manager by William and Kathleen Lundin:

“Ever since the industrial revolution employees and managers have been compelled to live a cultural myth that says emotions and feelings should not exist at work.”

“People change.  They find capacities they didn’t know they had.  They find their voices.  They look and sound brighter.  They begin to believe that values such as affection, mutual trust, and support have an important role to play at work.”

“While the big conflicts make headlines, the little, scratchy ones make the difference between profit and loss.”

“The ground rules (of the Lundins’ TQR sessions, my note) do not recognize status levels, and all employees are intermixed.  That’s the going-in bargain.  Confidentiality is agreed upon.  What people see or hear is no one else’s business.  No one can do or say anything that is judged to be wrong or stupid.  The sessions are so outlandishly different–breaking many of the usual taboos of work relationships–that they become hyper-reality.  They are powerful workplace theater.” (their itals)

“Trust is based upon discovery, of which there are two kinds.  There is the discovery of new ideas and feelings about oneself and there is the discovery of favorable attributes about others.  Employees will trust only those events of which they are part, not hearsay”

“There is potential for chaos as cultures change.  There is also potential for personal and corporate growth.  Know that culture change is a dynamic event, not always smooth.  Some former heroes will prove to be shams.  Some previously unnoticed people will become the new heroes.”

Other books by the Lundins:

When Smart People Work for Dumb Bosses

 Working with Difficult People

What are some of the worst things a person can say in a work setting?

All the Very Best,
Lalita Amos
Total Team Solutions

Setting aside the volumes of sexually graphic or suggestive, offensive, uncouth, uninteresting, drunken, gossipy, charmless, and downright stupid things people are capable of saying in a work setting…there are volumes more composed of statements made every day in workplaces the world over that masquerade as helpful but are actually unproductive or counter-productive. These constitute their own category of ‘Bad’. Here are three of the more insidious that come to mind:

“That’s not how we do things around here.” This implies that “we all do things the same way.’ In today’s workplace, it is the uniqueness of our contribution that creates differentiation, innovation and ultimately, wealth. You don’t want behaviors so different that they become un-moored from the company’s culture — wearing pajama tops to a law firm is behavior you’ll only see on Boston Legal. But it is good to remember that digressive or disruptive or novel behavior can often be productive behavior.

“If it were up to me, we’d do it, but it’s not up to me.” This is the favorite line of the non-supporter who wants to appear supportive. “I’m behind you but not when it counts.” “I believe in you as long as it doesn’t cost me anything.” That’s what you’re really saying. Our ability and willingness to support the ideas and initiatives of others is a large measure of our value as employees. When we are not, or cannot be, supportive, we can be more productive by dealing with the reality of that (”I don’t think this will fly and here’s why…”) than with some theoretical situation (”If I were in charge around here…”).that does not exist.

“Yes.” Saying yes without adding action (i.e. saying “Yes and…”) is the equivalent of saying nothing. It does not move the scene forward. It is acquiescing without participating. It can also constitute judging or rubber-stamping — neither of which is a productive behavior. For a business scene to be as productive as it can potentially be, it is not enough for the participants to say “Yes” without adding something to the dialogue. It is the “and” that makes the difference, keeps the scene alive, collaborative, and moving toward its objective. Saying “yes” a lot may get you a reputation as a positive person, but it does not get the job done.

Thanks for asking the question, Lalita.

Mike