I attend a session on Improvisation and Biomimicry conducted by Belina Raffy from the U.K. As if there’s any doubt that improvisation is the most natural thing in the world, consider these points from one of Belina’s slides:
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!
Sometimes, the way to solve a problem is to come at it from an oblique angle. In fact, it’s often helpful to look in the “opposite direction” of a problem for the keys to its solution. Paradoxically, focusing on a problem is not always the best way to solve it, especially when it’s long-term or systemic. Focusing on a game that solves the problem is often a better way to go.
A story on CNN this evening demonstrated this fundamental of gamechanging. Two years ago, Oliver Percovich an Aussue skateboard enthusiast, formed a non-profit group called Skateistan, to give some fun to children who don’t experience much of that in their war-shredded society. Later this year, the skateboarders of the “Republic of Skateistan” will begin ollying in a new 19,000-square-foot skate park and will be taking English and computer classes as part of the program.
Skateboarding is probably a hundred eighty degrees from most of the problems facing Afghanistan, which means that the Skateistan game is probably a step in the direction of solving them. Thanks to Oliver Percovich, at least the possibility has been created that one day “killing it in Kabul” will mean kickflipping and nosegrinding intead of mortar attacks and suicide bombs.
A part of my work with the World Wildlife Fund for its Earth Hour event in Los Angeles on March 28, I helped organize a group of young musicians to perform at the event. My guitar teacher, Lonnie ‘Meganut’ Marshall, put together a group of kids who played drums on recycled plastic buckets they’d painted to fit the theme ‘Funeral for Fossil Fuel’.
The Life Drum Core, as Lonnie named the group, was a big hit. They got coverage on all the local TV stations, and on the night of Earth Hour, their four-minute performance was well-received. They ended up afterward jamming with the mayor, who grabbed his own recycled bucket and began banging out a beat. (He wasn’t bad.) (more…)
I’ve noticed it, and if you’ve driven past a Home Depot lately, you’ve probably noticed it, too: A surge in the number of day laborers looking for a gig. On the occasional morning I drive past the Home Depot at Sunset and St. Andrew Street., I see 40 or 50 men waiting outside the the entrance to the parking lot, hoping to get hired for the day. One day last week, I stopped to talk to them. It was sort of an unintentionally mean trick on my part. They of course wanted me to hire them, and that was not my aim.
My aim was to learn what kind of strategies these men use to get hired. After all, what could be a more honest scene than one that has to be productive if a player wants to eat that night? When lives literally depend on one’s behavior, how does one behave? This is obviously far from scientific. I draw no firm conclusions from it, and neither should anyone else. But everything, even five minutes talking with day laborers outside a Home Depot, is a learning opportunity if you are open to it.
In my brief and chaotic encounter with the day laborers on the sidewalk in front of the Home Depot, here’s what I learned: (more…)
On the radio, the reporter is talking to a first-time high school principal of a new charter school in New Orleans…
As I’m always on the lookout for scenes that demonstrate improvisation at work, the story gets my attention. The woman is starting a job she’s never done before, yet clearly with the confidence that she is prepared for the experience. That’s an improviser talking. I turn up the volume…
The subject of the story is Channa Cook. Her age is 28. She and Kristin Leigh Moody are the co-founders of Sojourner Truth Academy in New Orleans, a new charter school that opened to its first class in August (then had to close its doors for awhile to let Hurricane Gustav blow through, but is now open again). (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.
One of the beautiful things about improv is its abundance of folk wisdom — sayings and stories handed down over the years from group to group, teacher to teacher, polished and honed in the telling and retelling until they shine with the luster of truth. Periodically I’ll post a few of these priceless gems, and why I think anybody interested in getting deeper into the improvisation of business should take note.
The following list appears in my book, GameChangers. It was handed out at the beginning of a class I took at I. O. West in Los Angeles, by our teacher, Jason Pardo. The list came to Jason by way of improv legend Mick Napier, under whom Jason had studied in Chicago. (Napier is Artistic Director of the Annoyance Theater in Chicago and author of Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out. ) The GameChangers translation of each tip appears in italics .
TIPS FOR BEING A KICKASS STUDENT AND POWERFUL PERFORMER
Coaching is absolutely vital for a team to reach its potential. It’s true in athletics. True in improv theater. True in business. The objectives for each activity might be different, but the techniques by which good coaching elicits performance are strikingly similar in all three arenas. John Wooden, who at age 97 (pictured above) is still as sharp as a backdoor bounce pass, is possibly the best basketball coach who ever lived. He’s also a GameChanger of the highest order. Wooden’s teams changed the very concept of the sport of basketball, from a polite Hoosiers-style half-court square dance, to a baseline-to-baseline rampage of disruptive defenses and extreme athleticism. And they have the championships to show for it.
There’s a lot to be learned from looking at what made Wooden’s teams successful. Wooden’s role was Coach; how he played it was as an educator who used the game of basketball as his classroom. His techniques set a high standard for coaching and teaching in any arena. Here are some parallels between Wooden’s Way and the GameChangers approach to business improvisation: (more…)
A GameChanger sees every business scenario as an opportunity for improvisation, and improvisation as the key to a successful outcome for the scenario. The current Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) has gotten lots of media play — it’s a media story, after all. It has already been sliced, chopped and processed like fois gras in Ratatouille’s kitchen. But this, right here, is the only place where players in a business story like this one get graded on their ability to improvise. It’s still early in the scene, but let’s analyze it to this point in terms of some fundamentals…sort of like scoring Kristi Yamaguchi for her compulsories…
SUGGESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE
In business, a ‘Suggestion From the Audience’ consists of data from the marketplace. The big suggestion in this scene is clear: the audience is migrating from a couple of entertainment formats to many — or to one ubiquitous web-enabled metaverse, depending on how you look at it. Either way, it ain’t just about your TV and your motion pictures any more. Money is being made elsewhere, lots of it, and both sides are angling for their slice of the new pie. (more…)
Suppose you want to learn a profession. Let’s say it’s sailing. Imagine if the way you set about learning to sail is by crewing. You do your job well and fit in smoothly with your fellow crew members. You grew up near the ocean, enjoy being on the water and welcome the drama that comes with treacherous weather. You stay fit. You love the lifestyle. You learn how to tie the hell out of many different kinds of knots. But…you don’t read the weather; that’s someone else’s job. You don’t pick the brains of other sailors for anything except bawdy stories of good times past. You don’t keep up with developments in keel and sail construction; the owners look after that. You don’t plot your course; they decide that down below and you’re a topsider. So you never really learn how to sail. You learn how to crew. (more…)
John Wooden, who at age 97 (pictured above) is still as sharp as a backdoor bounce pass, is possibly the best basketball coach who ever lived. He’s also a GameChanger of the highest order. Wooden’s teams changed the very concept of the sport of basketball, from a polite Hoosiers-style half-court square dance, to a baseline-to-baseline rampage of disruptive defenses and extreme athleticism. And they have the championships to show for it.