This slide was presented as part of a seminar in New Orleans attended and photographed by our friend, Ray Nichols:

I love a lot of stuff coming out of New Orleans (current bad news about the oil disaster excepted), but I don’t love this slide.  Those of us who design improvisation for business spend too much time already dispelling misconceptions about what we do, and this is the single biggest misconception, that improvisation is “making it up as you go along” a.k.a. winging it, a.k.a. flying by the seat of one’s pants, a.k.a. spewing whatever comes to mind.

In fact, improvisation is specifically not ‘making it up as you go along.’  It is contrary to the idea of making it up as you go along.  It is, rather, a process for acting on one’s environment in a substantive and productive way to generate positive unforeseen outcomes.  One’s environment is not ‘made up’ as one goes along.   It is real, just as the reality of one’s scene partners is real.  They are not making stuff up.  They are dealing with reality, just like you are.   Deal with it.

There are, in fact, many other ways to “make it up”  besides “as you go along.”  There is making it up ahead of time and trying to get followers to go along.  There is making it up after the fact and hoping history goes along.  And there’s making it up in your head, and trying to get your heart to go along.   All of these are realities that must be addressed in any business narrative.

The quote by Godin suggests a divide between planning and spontaneity, between fact and fiction, when in fact business, and life itself, is a balancing act, a continuum, between the two.  Most actions in business are calculated to a fault, and rely too heavily on planning.  (Maybe that is the point of Godin’s quote.)  The purpose, however, of applying improvisation principles to business is not to say, “Forget your planning and your calculations, ignore your research and your institutional memory, because…hey,  we’re going to make this up as we go along.”  That would be disastrous on many levels.  What improvisation says is do your planning but emphasize preparation, because every plan changes, and it’s your ability to adapt to change that will determine your success.

Business improvisation liberates the unconscious mind, but does not disconnect from an awareness of history, environment or context.  It is informed by, but not totally beholden to the numbers, the data, and the rational mind.

The essential message of improvisation is this:  Don’t make it up.  Make it real.  Then act on that reality.

The theme of Farming is a strong one, especially in the context of a post-industrial city like Detroit.  It’s interesting that urban gardeners who farm quarter-acre plots of land in Detroit have come out against Hantz’s plan.  The anti-Hantzers are, according to the article, seizing on their own themes:  Racial Bias (Hantz and most of his team are white; Detroit’s population is 92% black) and Big Business vs. the Little Guy.

Comment:  We don’t have time or energy to spend on being racially or economically divided, it doesn’t matter what color the finger being pointed is or the size of the rock on the ring it’s wearing.  Themes can help us find the agreement that transcends race, religion, income level and personal history–all those things that divide us–thereby liberating new avenues for communication, learning and growth.  John Hantz and the urban gardeners of Detroit can unite around the theme of Farming to be productive and move the ‘Saving Detroit’ scene forward.

Jimmy Lifton

Lifton deserves accolades for this move because it expresses the ‘Three E’s’ of Gamechanging–Emotion, Environment and Education–and also because until we put a lens on the Unity Studios scene, there was no such thing as a ‘Three E’s of GameChanging.’ So thank you, Jimmy, for that.

Here, minty fresh, are the Three E’s, as expressed by Jimmy Lifton:

Emotion.  Nothing expresses heart any better than a person who returns home to help folks out.  You can look at It’s A Wonderful Life, when George Bailey postpones his honeymoon to stave off a bank run in his hometown of Bedford Falls; you can look at Michael Moore and the city of Flint, Michigan, in Roger and Me, the documentary that put Moore on the map; and you can look at Unity Studios, which is getting built in Allen Park outside of Detroit, where Jimmy Lifton was born and began his career as a studio musician and recording artist.

Environment.  The Unity Studios scene acts on a Wayne County, Michigan, environment that is in such a state of upheavel it is as receptive to innovation as newly-plowed earth is to plant seeds.  Real estate prices are low.  The labor pool is large, with high unemployment, which means the cost of labor is low.  The state of Michigan, its Governor, Jennifer Granholm, and the Michigan Film Commission have been very aggressive about courting film and TV production in the state, with $50 million in incentives given to producers in 2008.  The Film Commission says it expects $250 million to be spent on film and TV production in the state in 2009.  Finally, there’s the cinematic ‘abandoned factory/bombed out neighborhood’ look that characterizes much of Detroit City, making it ideal for any kind of post-apocalyptic story on Hollywood’s production schedule.  One person in our Facebook network made this semi-facetious suggestion a few weeks ago:  “The Obama administration should introduce a bill in Congress that for the next two years, all post-apocalyptic films must be shot in Detroit.”

Education.  Unity Studios will include the Lifton Institute for Media Skills.  This qualifies the new facility for federal and state education funds for retraining people from the automotive sector who need to find new lines of work.  By including the LIMS in the design for Unity Studios, Lifton supports the idea that learning is the gateway to transformation.  Always has been.  Always will be.  Nothing is more certain to improve one’s scenes than the introduction of new and useful information.

Lesley Stahl did a report last night on 60 Minutes about the development of electric cars in Silicon Valley and by the American auto industry in Detroit. That was the cosmetic level of the story.

On the more meaningful, emotional and meta levels of communication, Stahl’s piece depicts a clash between two mighty cultures, and ultimately between two different ways of conducting one’s business. One of them is highly improvisational. The other is rigid, scripted, dogmatic. Over the past 30 years, Silicon Valley’s ability to improvise has enabled it to lead the world in the development of new technologies and the markets for them. The heavily-scripted and stage-managed Detroit performance has for the most part been a multi-car pile-up on the Interstate, like a series of scenes from Gone in Sixty Seconds.

Here are some of the ways Stahl’s story depicted, on emotional and meta levels, the clash between Silicon Valley and Detroit, and how the former improvises to good effect while the latter welds itself to a script that limits returns on its investment.

Detroit is characterized by Stahl as old (but not particularly wise). The main Detroit character is Bob Lutz, who’s ‘in charge of developing GM’s new products’ including GM’s electric car, the Volt. Lutz is a very tan, white haired gent with a gravelly voice. His claim to fame is that he’s the guy who championed the Hummer. The name ‘Bob Lutz’ sounds like an ice skating move Dorothy Hamill invented back in ‘76.

Silicon Valley is young (and growing). The main Silicon Valley character is Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, who’s in his thirties, and looks like he’s having a lot of fun in his life, a software winner who’s doubling down on the electric car. Elon Musk is a name you don’t hear every day. It’s exotic. It sounds like the name of the fragrance all the club kids are wearing.

Silicon Valley is about entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship means having some of your own skin in the game. Elon Musk tells Stahl he’s put $55 million of his own money into his Tesla electric car. Kleiner-Perkins, the legendary Silicon Valley VC, has invested in three electric car technologies.

Lutz’s mandate is to preserve what’s left of GM’s position and reputation in the auto industry. Do you think he’ll be putting his own money into GM’s electric car venture? I guarantee you it’s not in his script.

Furthermore, Lutz personally owns two helicopters and two planes. He probably has a fleet of gas-powered cars and other vehicles at his beck and call, and arrived at his 60 Minutes interview in a limo. His carbon footprint makes him a kind of hypocrite for championing electric vehicles.

Musk is shown driving his electric car. It’s cool. It’s expensive ($109K). George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger have ordered theirs. I wish I could afford one of my own. Maybe someday I can. There is a kind of honest magnetism to his pitch that draws the audience into his brand’s narrative.

In Stahl’s story, she depicts Detroit as arrogant. Bob Lutz claims that Silicon Valley cannot do what Detroit does. He regards the upstarts like Tesla as naive. He calls man-made global warming bullshit.

Silicon Valley, by contrast, comes off as confident, and more realistic than naive about its chances of success in the car market. It is focused on what can be done with the electric car scene in the moment, and not getting hung up on expectations about where the scene might go. Tesla is hiring exiles from the auto industry. There is no shame, and a lot of wisdom, in recognizing what you don’t know (but need to) and going about acquiring that knowledge. Lutz, clearly one of those characters who’s ‘in it to win it,’ shows no curiosity or gives to credence to Silicon Valley.

Detroit buries its failures, as it did with the EV-1 electric cars manufactured by GM in the 1990s. Interestingly, Lutz views the junkyarding of all of GMs EV-1s more as a PR mistake thanas a symbol of a shortcoming in GM’s culture.

Silicon Valley, by comparison, honors its failures because it knows how much can be learned from them. Entrepreneurs who have failed nobly are given the capital to have another go at their dreams. “A good entrepreneur that fails, we will pick that person up, fund them again to do something new if it’s a good idea,” says Ray Lane of the Silicon Valley VC firm, Kleiner-Perkins.

In Detroit–where one bad move can wreck a career, a brand, maybe even an entire company–who can afford to make a move? A player need colossal consensus. In the time it takes to build the colossal consensus, not only will the essence of the original idea have been compromised like a bill that’s made it through Congress, the window of opportunity in the marketplace has probably closed.

The hierarchical, heavily scripted processes of Detroit’s automakers have not been keeping pace with the Networked World. This causes a radical gap between what is promised (i.e. advertising and communications) and what is delivered, creating lots of cognitive dissonance (i.e. customer uncertainty) in the marketplace.

Silicon Valley companies, less encumbered by the historical narratives that burden Detroit auto companies, can react more nimbly and quickly to the market. Their history is one of fast, agile development. Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs were born with their hearts beating in tempo to Moore’s Law. There is no script for what they envision. They know that the future will be improvised.