The WAYS? menu consists of 15 game-oriented activities inspired by the rescue.  A half-day WAYS? workshop will be comprised of  eight of these 15 activities, of which the client chooses six; two activities, the first and last, are ‘requirements.’  Our first WAYS? engagement is March 2 in Miami, for 120 executives from a large manufacturing company that is restructuring its processes on a global scale.

Because we had only one day to rehearse in person prior to March 2 (Franklin is currently on a worldwide book tour), we hired a coach, Sevanne Kassarjian, to guide and focus our work in New York.  Two ‘applied improvisers,’ Zohar Adner and James Tossone, along with Heather Soldania, a Masters student at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication who happened to be in NYC last weekend, joined us for part of the day.  Jonathan’s wife, father and three-year-old daughter, Zoey, also sat in for part of the day at the Ripley Grier Rehearsal Stages where we were rehearsing.  Zoey even participated in one of the activities, in which her job was baking cakes in a high-speed oven.

It was a good day.  We made huge strides toward getting the program ready.  Sevanne is terrifically focused.  She relentlessly probed and pondered the experience from every perspective.  Her work demonstrates how an improviser can play many roles in quick sequence, always through the essential truth of one’s character.  During our collaboration, she played the roles of Gentle Encourager, Stern Critic, Logistics Manager, Playful Mom, Erudite Intellectual and Fellow Improviser, to name just a few of the hats she wore.  Through it all, she was always the brilliant individual we now know as Sevanne.

Sevanne’s work is itself a microcosm of why improvisation is an essential skill for managers in a Networked World.  A job title is just that, a title.  Sevanne’s job title last week was ‘Coach.’  That title did not define the many ways in which she supported us.  Simply put, she did what was best for the scene, in each and every moment.  Given the gift of improvisation, so can you and your organization.

Play on!

Sevanne Kassarjian (Jonathan Franklin in b.g.)

Our methodology was to ask six exceptional communicators who work with all sizes of organizations in a lot of different verticals what metaphors they hear most often in their business scenes.  Those surveyed included a financial analyst, an academic, an artist, a social media director for a large tech company, a brand strategist and someone I’d describe as a ‘narratologist,’ who coaches organizations on storytelling. We limited the focus of the survey to internal communication for two reasons:

1) External communication like PR, advertising and social media, is how companies represent themselves to the rest of the world.  In this context, metaphors are frequently used as a means of persuasion, and are often more about what a company or brand wants to happen than what is actually happening. Because these metaphors serve a different purpose and have a different trajectory, they have to be analyzed separately.

2) Internal communication, by comparison, describes a company’s process, environment and character.  The metaphors used internally reflect reality, because they are used to initiate or define action.  For this reason they often represent an underlying ethos, and describe how the people in an organization go about their business.

A few of the respondents’ observations:

“Maybe this would change with a few female managers, but most men I work with are all about ‘playing offense’, ‘launching a counterattack’, ‘leading from the front’,  and ‘winning the battle but losing the war’.”

“Way heavier on war references or warlike verbs:  Insert, manage, acquire, degrade, demand, battle, launch, attack, defend…”

“I also wonder as more women get into biz if the primary metaphors change.  Meaning, less sports and war, more family and home metaphors?  Especially if this whole social thing works out? (tongue firmly in cheek)”

“Think of the top headlines, of any ‘this product is killing this product’, ‘death of X’, etc.”

“Sports also present…anything that’s zero sum and can be ‘won’ lends itself.”

“I also hear (more recently) about scientific references like ‘if you observe it, you change it’.”

‘I do hear a bit about chess and board games, typically in terms of ‘looking at the whole board’, ’sacrificing your queen’, and ‘thinking through the endgame’.

The business opportunity is clear.  Over two-thirds of all business communication relies on only two metaphors—war and sports.  Not only have we worn them out, they do not address the voracious appetite of a networked business environment for fresh narratives and new ways of relating to the world. To do that, we need fresh metaphors.  They are out there in the world, and in abundance.  Games are beginning to have their day.  And there have always been organizations that see themselves as Family.  The most upside, I believe, lies in the ‘Other’ category.  Big, expressive, thematically rich subjects—music and dance, cooking, biology, quantum mechanics, farming, to name a few—can invigorate your organizational vocabulary.  They help transform your narrative from the mundane and predictable to the artful and unexpected.  And that’s what you want in a story, any story.  So start planting, and see what grows!

(A coda to this post in light of what happened yesterday in Arizona, when a mentally disturbed gunman killed six people during his attempt to assassinate Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords: The metaphors of war—and the violence they glorify—have polarized the U.S. politically to a dangerous degree. Yesterday’s events add a raw and desperate urgency to the quest for new ways of seeing and engaging with one another. The metaphors of war attract fear-driven fringe characters looking for absolutes, either-ors, and final solutions, to the problems confronting us. To these people, nothing says final like the end of a gun barrel. The narratives of war trample on the tender shoots of new ideas, and marginalize people participating in the new narratives, people like Congresswoman Giffords, who champion peaceful co-existence, believe in yes-and, and who understand that yesterday’s solutions don’t work in today’s world.)

Weinstein’s video demonstrates brilliantly how our perceptions shape our opinions.  That’s the obvious learning.

There are other, subtler ideas expressed in this video, too, which is why I really dig it.  It has lots of subtext:

The absence of knowledge makes perceptions more malleable. Because Weinstein is unknown to his subjects, slight adjustments in his appearance seem to cause wild fluctuations in perceptions (the edits themselves also shape perception, but I’ll comment only with subjects’ behavior here).  Anyone or any brand that seeks to limit knowledge?  This is why.  Manipulation of perceptions.  In a business environment where knowledge is so easily shared and transferred, limiting knowledge in order to manipulate perceptions is not good business.

Consistent character encourages learning. Weinstein’s character, a slightly bemused, inquisitive observer of human nature, seems consistent throughout.  As a storyteller, he uses this truth to get honest reactions from his subjects—that is, because he’s consistently in character, we can be pretty sure the subjects’ reactions are their own, and not something he has manipulated them into doing   Imagine if, instead, he’d played different characters in the interviews—aggressive, stupid, coy, flirty—we would not have been half as interested in or trusting of what his subjects had to say.  He and we would not have learned half as much.

Interrogation is not dialogue. The questions all go one way.  Weinstein does this to control the narrative and make a point.  Generally, however, dialogue is much more productive than interrogation.

This is what a lot of market research looks like. Like market research, Weinstein’s film is a series of snapshots.  It is an interrogation of the audience, not a dialogue.  Because of the way the interviews are conducted, the audience’s multi-faceted responses are nearly all flawed.  It doesn’t matter how much data you have if its facets are flawed and unrelated.  Many facets do not a diamond make. It is the interrelationship of the facets, their connection to one another, that illuminates the stone.

Admit your ignorance. Nearly everyone in the video is willing to guess about Weinstein’s identity, and in doing so they accept a ‘rule of the game’ that underscores their ignorance.  This is a fine storytelling device for Weinstein’s video, but it’s a toxic game in business.  For some managers, however, this is THE  game.  A conversation consists of them waiting for a ‘gotcha’ moment, when they can prove you wrong, ignorant, or both.  People pretending to know what they’re talking about are just as much to blame for this game as those who expose them.   Beware of games designed to show up anyone’s ignorance!  Admitting your ignorance is a first step toward learning.  Guessing, or faking knowledge, is not.  Ultimately, Weinstein’s video delivers the goods in the form of questions answered, but not before he demonstrates just how elusive the goods can be.

A few years ago, I was asked by a network executive to videotape interviews with the alumnae of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, including Betty White.  The show had been off the air for many years but Mary clearly maintained her star status, and the rest of the cast deferred to her as such.  I, however, only had eyes for Betty.  Then, as now, she lit up the room with those smiling, sparkling eyes, and the sincere attention she gave to those around her.  Listening, I am more convinced all the time, is the secret to relating to the world, and Betty listens with the best.  Her ego does not get in the way of her reception, and as a result, her picture is always crystal clear.  What you experience is not the illusion of a human being, it is human.  It is not a portrayal, not a role.  It is true character.

After we had completed our interview, Betty and I had a chance to talk, and I got to tell her the one thing I really wanted to tell her, how my mom had been a big fan of hers since the Password days, and how she celebrated the relationship between Ms. White and her dream husband, Allen Ludden.  Then, on pure impulse, I asked Betty she’d mind calling Fern on my mobile phone and saying hello.  This was a no-no for someone doing my job, a line you did not cross, it was like kitchen help taking a seat at the dinner table.  But all I could think about was how happy Fern would be to get a phone call from Betty White.  “Of course I will”  Betty said.

Fern was not home.  The call went to voice mail.   Betty didn’t miss a beat.  “Fern, this is Betty White,” she said.  “I’m standing here with a handsome young man who claims to be your son, and he tells me you’re a Password fan.  That is so sweet of you.  We had so much fun on that show, didn’t we?…”  I don’t remember the rest of what she said, but I remember that the tone of her message was as if she and Fern were old high school classmates who hadn’t seen each other in ages.  Which, in a way, they were.

A couple of days later, the network executive called and the conversation eventually came around, as I figured it would, to the subject of the call I’d asked Betty to make to Fern.  “At first, I thought what you did was okay, and later I thought it wasn’t okay,”  said the exec.  She said she had no choice but to fire me.  I could not have cared less.  The happiness in my mother’s voice when she phoned to tell me about the voice mail from her BFF, Betty, was worth a thousand gigs.

I imagine that Betty White’s life has been a series of encounters just like this one, in which she has given the gift of herself, and treated her fans as her equals, her collaborators in a joyful conversation.  (”We had fun, didn’t we, Fern?”)  This is why she is still young and her world is still unfolding at the age of 88, and she’s hosting Saturday Night Live tomorrow night.

3 AM, French Lick (Indiana) Casino

I see this same spirit in my mother, who, at the age of 82, still lives on the farm in Indiana, quilts, bowls, plays bingo, gambles in Vegas, sings in the choir, gardens, cooks amazing meals, mows the huge yard and can drink with the young folks at the Shamrock Pub until closing time.  When I talk to her on the phone, she’s usually the one who ends the conversation because, hey, she’s got things to do and has to get going.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mother!  Break a leg, Betty!  We love you both!

When Bird was 12 years old, she and her older brother, Cam, were playing with a group of children in a park at the foot of the remote mountain in Colorado where they lived.  A gang of men appeared out of nowhere and abducted Bird at gunpoint.  Cam escaped and made it back up the mountain.  Bird’s abduction was all over the news, but she could not be found, and after awhile, everyone assumed she never would be.

For three years, the gang held her hostage.  She was made to do menial labor and was raped repeatedly by men twice and three times her age.  The gang eventually sold her to a Canadian man who was in the fur business, and wanted her for his mistress while he was on business trips.  At the age of 16, she was pregnant with the Canadian’s child.

She named the baby Jay-Bee.

When Jay-Bee was six months old, Bird accompanied the Canadian to a business conference in Iowa, where he crossed paths with Bill and Lewis, managers of a real estate syndicate acquiring and developing raw land west of the Mississippi.  The Canadian could sense that Bill and Lewis were major players, connected at the highest levels of government and the intelligence community.  He also sensed that they were enamored of Bird, who it turns out had a gift for languages and knew a surprising lot about raw land west of the Rockies.  The more Bird contributed to the conversation, the better Bill and Lewis liked the Canadian.  So he let her talk.  And sure enough, they invited the Canadian to join their company.

The Canadian turned out to be a miserable employee, capricious, and ill-suited to the relentless pace of the real estate business.  On top of it, he was a raging alcoholic.  Worst of all, he abused Bird and the baby.  When Bill caught a glimpse of this behavior one day in the company parking lot,  he fired the Canadian on the spot.  Lewis, a lawyer, arranged for Bird to get a divorce.  After the divorce, she got her real estate license, whereupon, to her surprise, Bill and Lewis invited her to join the company.

She brought Jay-Bee to work with her every day, and he soon became the company pet.  Bill, who at that time had no children of his own, took a particular shine to the boy, and nicknamed him ‘Pompous.”  She never told anyone about her life before the Canadian.  She couldn’t.  She had no memory of it.  Somewhere, during the time she’d been held hostage by her abductors, she had perfected her ability to forget.

A number of years later, Bill and Lewis asked Bird to join them on a business trip.  They didn’t tell her where they were going.  They took the Gulfstream, landed on a private field at night, got into a waiting limo and checked into their hotel.  In the morning, when Bird looked out the window of her hotel, her heart fluttered like it had wings.  There, in front of her, like a childhood dream remembered, was the mountain where she had grown up.

Still numb, Bird went with Bill and Lewis to a meeting of local officials, and at the meeting, representing his town council, was her brother, Cam.

It took them a second to recognize each other, but the instant they did, she flew across the room to him and they  hugged and cried.  The meeting wasn’t much of a meeting after that.  It was, instead, a celebration that didn’t end for two days, a big dance around a brother and sister and members of their clan who couldn’t stop crying and smiling at the same time.  Bird’s memories of her happy childhood came back to her during those two days.  She remembered that when she was a child, her very favorite thing was to look at a flower, a bird, anything beautiful, and ask of it, “Who made you?”, and that this is what she had been doing when she wandered off from the other children on the day she got abducted from the park.

Bill and Lewis made a killing on their real estate deals, of course, and Bird played an important role in their success.  Lewis went on to become governor of Louisiana and Bill and his wife, Julia, moved to Washington, where he held a number of high-ranking positions in government.  My suspicion is that Bird and Bill were in love.  We will never know for sure.  What we know is this:

We know that Bird gave away whatever money she’d made to charities that supported the poor rural community on the mountain where she had grown up.

We know that on the ten-year anniversary of its founding, Bill invited everyone who’d ever worked for their real estate company  to join him in Washington, D.C. for a big party.

We know that Lewis, driving alone from Louisiana to D.C. for the anniversary party, stopped at a motel in Tennessee, put a gun to his head and killed himself.

We know that Bird, who was living in Iowa at the time, brought Jay-Bee, who was twelve years old, with her to D.C. for the anniversary party.

We know that during this bittersweet trip, Bird visited Bill and Julia at their large home on the Potomac and ask them to let Jay-Bee live with them and their son, Lewis (named after Bill’s partner) and take care of his education.  We know that Bill and his wife raised Jay-Bee as their own son, and that Jay-Bee himself became a prominent player in Washington, advocating for his mother’s causes.

We do not know for sure what happened to Bird.  Some stories say she died of a broken heart soon after returning from D.C..  Some say she died an old alcoholic, alone, broke, and on the streets.  Some say she lived to an old age, doing social work for her community until the end of her days.

We know that today she is commemorated on a gold American one-dollar coin and that her given name was Sacagawea.

And we know that whoever made the flowers and the birds and anything in beautiful in nature, made her, too.

Carroll with the Life Drum Core (and a copy of GameChangers) after a USC football practice

GameChangers do not confine themselves to one scene or one role.  Nobody knows this better than Pete Carroll. He probably could have stayed at USC until he was ready to retire. In a showbiz town, he is a star, adored by fans, and lavished with perks and money. He has done a ton of good here, too, in the form of community work through his A Better Life LA foundation. Here’s what the L.A. Times had to say about him in 2008:

Few know that about twice a month Carroll leaves his comfy digs at USC, hops in the back of a beaten Camry driven by a former gang member and heads to South L.A. neighborhoods where the snap of gunfire and the anguish of death occur with the steady regularity of a metronome.

These are not recruiting visits. He’s trying to save lives.

Most often, he arrives near midnight and walks shadowy streets with that familiar, electric strut, surrounded by little boys, grandparents, crack heads and gang toughs. He empathizes, listens, encourages, laughs. He talks about jobs and kids and marriage, about perspective and courage, about how difficult it must be to be caught in the madness of the streets.

He realizes that some might think he’s a fool, that some might say he should pay no mind to gang members. Naysayers do not stop him.

“I don’t go to judge . . . just to show that someone cares,” he said. “Just go to give people here a little hope. . . . Get folks to step back and think. Hopefully, get them to change.”

Five years ago, moved by news of murders near USC’s campus, Carroll formed a foundation called A Better LA, dedicated to ending inner-city violence. He hoped to use the self-improvement thinking he’s long leaned on in coaching to help people in poor and dangerous neighborhoods.

We play many roles in life, but always through the essential truth of who we are.   Seattle will be getting a new coach, and who knows how he’ll play the role, or how he’ll do there?  Carroll failed with the New York Jets when he coached before in the pros.  What the Seahawks can count on is getting a man who will compete hard on the field and contribute to the community in which he lives.

When things get too comfortable, a GameChanger consciously changes the game.  I don’t know Carroll’s mind, but it seems to me that a coach whose motto is “Always Compete,” needed a new challenge to keep his competitive edge.  He probably didn’t enjoy coaching against his protege, Steve Sarkisian, at Washington, to whom USC lost this year in an upset.  With his children grown, maybe the time is right for Carroll and his wife to move on.  As the writer and radio star Garrison Keillor once told me before deciding to leave Minneapolis to live in New York City for a few years, “If you do something for someone, they expect you to keep on doing it.  But a person has a right to do something else for a change.”

The Pete Carroll story will be analyzed to death, but on the meta level it’s simple.  In order to compete at the top of his game, a competitor like Pete Carroll needs a challenge.

A GameChanger does not seek success, but growth.  Success is a plateau we’ve reached.  Growth is a mountain we must climb.

It is evident from reading the story in the L.A. Times that Gutierrez is the kind of player anyone would want on their team.  It was not the loss of a teacher that stirred the students to action, as much as it was the threat of losing someone who genuinely cares about them.  Biblarz felt extra heartache when he heard Gutierrez was getting laid off (because she lacked seniority).  When his younger sister, Veronica, was out of school for two months with an illness, Miss G made sure she got her homework assignments, and that she was all caught up when she returned to the classroom.  “She just actually cares,” Veronica Biblarz says in the Times article. “Not like the fake pretending to care. . . . She takes it seriously.”

Interesting, isn’t it, that the student calls out ‘fake pretend caring?’   A fact of which every brand should be aware: the b.s. detectors of the networked audience are fine-tuned.  And there is no substitute for authenticity.

One of my improvisation teachers, Scot Robinson, said one day in class, “I hate people who generalize.” He delivered it with such deadpan perfect timing that it got a laugh, but getting a laugh was not the point, the point was this:   Give the gift of specificity. Don’t be a generalizer generalizing.  To hold your audience’s interest, be unique, be remarkable, buck stereotypes.  You cannot accomplish this if you are ‘general’ about your role, your character, or your game.   You cannot accomplish it if you limit yourself to what’s in the script, the employee manual or the teacher’s guide.  If the people in your audience feel they already know you, you will fail to hold their attention.  It’s when they do not know you, but rather, want to know more about you, that you win them over.  It is when they see the the world a little differently because of you, that you create value, and make a difference in their lives.

Dr. Aaron Blackledge opened his San Franscisco clinic, CarePractice, in 2008.  Today it is the fastest-growing primary care practice in the Bay Area.   We have ideas about how the new community-based, patient-centered models will do more than any legislation to define the future of health care in the U.S., but we cannot express it any better than Aaron Blackledge can.  In his own words, he describes what he did to change the game:

“In the beginning I told my employee–at the beginning there was only one–that if he had friends or family that needed to be seen that he had the authority to set the price on his own without asking me for permission depending on how much they could afford or how much of a deal he wanted to give them.  This may seem crazy to some people, but I think I benefited in so many ways from this practice and feel lucky I came up with at the beginning of Care Practice. It really helped to empower my staff and bring in clients that loved Care Practice.  It reminds me now that since we have grown so much in the past 3 months I am not sure if all the new staff are aware of this ‘policy.’  I will have to remember to tell people about this tomorrow.

“I went to Sarah Lawrence for my undergrad degree.  I was a dance major.  My background is artistic as well as medical.  I have taken many improv classes.  My artistic background helps me look at medicine as a design, a feeling, an experience, that the current medical establishment so horribly lacks.  I know Jay (Parkinson of HelloHealth) is a very accomplished photographer.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence.  Artists are used to facing the unknown, the blank canvas or the empty stage.  We’ve done the same with the medical profession.  What we’re doing didn’t exist before we did it.

“I come from a social activist background.  I never desired to be an entrepreneur.  Never desired to own my own company.  I left my last job and was canvassing for Obama in California.  I heard that Super Tuesday speech, where he said,  I’m paraphasing, ‘Be the change you seek.’  And I thought why isn’t anyone doing this?  And I finally realized you know what, this is my moment, this is my time.  And if I’m going to do it, I’m not going to do it partially.

“I tapped into my altruistic desires, into what it meant, and then I risked everything.  Every dollar I owned, or that I’d ever saved, and put it all into this.  If I needed to spend money on something to make this happen, I spent it.

“All my friends thought I was absolutely crazy.  They couldn’t believe it.  Some of them thought it was going to be some raggedy little space, not the big facility that we have.  Everyone else is closing up shop and joining Kaiser.  And they’re like, ‘What, you’re opening a clinic?!  What are you thinking?!  But I looked at it like this:  There’s no access to care in this city.  There are vice presidents of companies that can’t get in to see a doctor for like a week.  If do it transparent, intuitive, and don’t charge a lot…and I really wanted to show that the future of networking and connecting with patients was through social media.

“I put it in a place where there were lots of young people who’d talk about it.  Mention it on their Facebook, on their Twitter, on their Yelp.  I chose the neighborhood I’m in, Mission Dolores, specifically for that purpose.  I’d heard the story about Tommy Hilfiger opening stores in urban areas and basically letting people shoplift from him, and that was sort of my thinking.  Everything has to exceed expectations.  It’s not what you come in with that matters, it’s about what you walk out with.  We’re building CarePractice as an entity that resonates in the community.  Giving free care to the busboy at the little restaurant who cuts his hand…taking care of one of the guys at the bike shop who has an eye infection.  I wanted to express the view that taking care of people is about more than money, and that is how we’ve grown.

“My place looks kind of fancy, but it’s equipment and furniture I’ve bought from doctors closing their practices, CraigsList, Ikea and eBay.  Everything I have is used.  I put the money into the space, because I wanted that experience.  People don’t even know why it is that it’s different, but it is powerful.  The people who designed it (Indicate Design Groupe) design a lot of restaurants and retail spaces.  They’re used to saying to their clients, ‘Okay this is definitely going to be popular, people are going to come here, you focus on the food.’  And that’s the way we think about CarePractice.  They said to me, ‘You take good care of your patients, because we’re going to bring the people.’  So we focused on the roll-out like a restaurant opening.  People identify with that.   We are like a favorite restaurant.  People point us out as their clinic.

“I want to give you real examples of neighborhood care.  Basically it usually involves simple things for people with little money or struggling that we know through the neighborhood.  The Latino laborers of the contractor who helped to build Care Practice always come to me for their bumps and illnesses and I see them for free.  There is also a shop right next to us and I see a lot of the employees for simple stuff for free or significantly reduced prices and they always tell me if my car is chalked or run up to my car when it is about to get ticketed and pretend like it is their car when the DPT comes.   They are always ready to help me carry in supplies when I need help, which is often.  Another example is the security door guy at a neighborhood shop who I always talk to on the street.  He wanted to quit smoking and asked me to get him some Chantix so I ordered him some at cost and he just yelled out to me a week ago when I walked by that it had been 5 months since his last cigarette.  I didn’t charge him anything besides the cost of the meds. When you create that type of sentiment in a neighborhood it is a powerful component to branding a business.

“You (i.e. GameChangers) talk about the beginner’s mind, improvisation, and not being afraid to feel like a dumbass and make mistakes the first time around.  That’s the way I look at it, too.  Build a company that serves patients first.  I want every one of my employees to see that we’re generous.  Every interaction is an opportunity to show your character.  And in an age of social media, it is magnified by ten.

“I think the health care system is so ready for change, and people are so unhappy, and the amount of money being spent is so huge that I think can happen very quickly, and not necessarily through legislation, but through individual action.  Ten thousand doctors getting up and walking out of the room and saying we’re not going to do it that way any more, we’re going to do it differently, can change it.  That is my goal.

“People often ask me about health care reform, ‘What if we have single payer?  What if we have this or that?’  My response is that I don’t care.  I can turn on a dime.  I can turn the entire practice around and move in a different direction, and I can do it in a day.  If we went to a Canadian style health care model, pfff, I don’t care, I’d change overnight.”

Because have I history in the entertainment business, I have witnessed a lot of (and produced my share of) cosmetic excitement, and I have built up a kind of immunity to hyperbole.  How could this Hurd character possibly live up to the reputation that preceded him?  After all, the bigger they come the harder they fall.  “Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy,” is how F. Scott Fitzgerald described the inevitable drowning of our ideals in the immutable tide of our humanity.  “It is never a good idea to meet your heroes.  Earl Monroe and Groucho Marx are the only two I’ve met who didn’t disappoint me,” says Woody Allen.

That Brian Hurd made such a good impression is all the more amazing in this light.

Impression:  He did not assume his role.   In other words, he was unassuming.   Our ‘lunch scene’ dictated what his role would be.  This created a wider range of possibilities for what could be communicated and learned in the course of our conversation than if he had insisted on playing the role of, let’s say, ‘The King of Solar.’  We talked very little about anything that had to do with his high status in the solar industry, and barely touched on any of the data points on his web site.    No talk about  the employment opportunities he’s created, the curricula he’s designed, the news he’s made.  Secretary Solis’ name didn’t come up once.  The role that he defined for himself during our lunch scene is one you could call ‘Education Booster.’

Impression:  He gives gifts.  Deep Patel and I are collaborating with a team of talented community activists on Solar The Sign, a movement to ithe world-famous Hollywood Sign with solar power the night of the 20111 Academy Awards.  Brian is a big fan of the project.  “If you can solar the Sign, you can solar anything,” is how he puts it.  Before we’d been served our food, Brian had given us ten good ideas for how to move the project along.  In addressing the problems to be solved, his ideas came at us from all kinds of angles and perspectives, he is a high-powered generator of ideas.  Political!  Technical!  Environmental!  Community!  Workforce!  Education!  Deep and I did not have to ask for these gifts, and they were not imposed on us.  They combusted spontaneously from the conversation.

Impression:  He adds information to the discussion.  Facts, figures and numbers about sustainability pour out of Brian Hurd like a second language.  The average size of an home solar installation (3200 watts).  The trees saved yearly by that installation (1 acre).   The yearly carbon displacement of that installation (198,000 lbs.)  A good online resource for straw bale construction (The Canelo Project).  How strawbale houses are cooled (water channeled through ridged concrete under floorboards).  An experiment that restored the grouper population to a one-square mile area of the Gulf of Mexico (his marine biologist brother-in-law, Chris Koenig’s experiment, that’s whose).   I should have used a dictaphone, because I was scribbling notes so fast I could barely read my writing afterward.

Impression:   He is an educator.  He made it clear that while the Obama administration’s heart is in the right place about creating jobs in the renewable energy sector, it cannot happen without aggressive funding for education and jobs training.  Transformation, as Hurd expresses passionately, begins with education.  “There’s a lot of money for sustainability in the Stimulus bill, but they’re shotgunning it out, and hoping it does some good,” he explains.  “That’s not going to work.  We need more players in the game, and that can’t happen without education!”

Impression:  Despite the dismaying stats leaking from the economy these days like crude oil from a grounded tanker, he is an optimist.   He understands that before we can do it, we have to believe it.   He has faith that sustainable industries can become the economic engine to turn things around, and that the city and people of Los Angeles can become pivotal players in the turnaround.    “Anything,” says Brian Hurd, “is possible in Los Angeles.”