Posts Tagged ‘Game’

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Chrysanthemum

Saturday, March 12th, 2011

Japan is a chrysanthemum.  Many petals.  One flower.  The meta language of the chrysanthemum is deeply rooted in Japanese history and culture.  It is the official mark of the Japanese Emperor’s family. It symbolizes happiness.

A disaster like the quake that literally shifted the planet on Friday in Japan gets us to focus on what is most important.  At times like these improvisation—a system for generating positive outcomes from unforeseen circumstances—is especially critical.

JapanQuake1I have a feeling that in the coming days, we are going to see the power of the flower.  As the Japanese people face the challenges confronting them, we will see the creative potential of the group mind, especially when a group as large and connected as the Japanese are are given a sense of purpose like the one they have now.

We will see that improvisation consists not of making it up as you go along, but of making focused and productive moves at every opportunity.  Here, for example, via our friend, Michelle James (@creatvemergence), is a list of suggestions from Time Out Tokyo, for how the Japanese people can respond to the crisis.

Already, we can see that there is structure to the process defined by TOT.  The objectives, environment, roles and rules of the game are clear.  Process is clean.  Everything is achievable and scalable. In short, the advice consists of:

Give money–being present in spirit is more important right now than being present in person;
Give blood–to be healthy is an obligation to care for the infirm;
Conserve electricity–the people are in this together.

Though it’s seldom as sudden and concentrated like it was on Friday in Japan, natural destruction is happening at all times, all over the world.   Lives end.   Rivers flood.  Mountains slide.

At the same time, nature’s creativity is expressing itself with equal energy.  Lives begin.  Rivers heal.  Mountains rise.

How can we improve the odds that our creativity will triumph over our destruction?

We can play the Chrysanthemum Game.  Find our purpose.  Believe in happiness.  Bloom as one.

Chrysanthemum1

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Posted in Creativity, Environment, Focus, Games, Group Mind, Objectives, Problem Solving | No Comments »

The Oakley Coda

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Back in October, when the 33 Chilean miners emerge from the mine where they have been trapped for 69 days, they are all wearing Oakley sunglasses.  Every journalist covering their emergence comments on it.   Every photo of every rescued miner–and how many impressions is that worldwide?  Billions? Trillions? Chillions?—shows them wearing their Oakleys.  I’ve been following the narrative for a while, and long after the rescue has ended happily, I am still curious how those sunglasses got on those 33 billboards faces for all the world to see.LosMineros_Oakleys

Three weeks ago, I contact a friend, Kurt Kochman, who used to work at Oakley (he’s now the Web Customer Experience Manager for Skechers) who puts me in touch with an executive at Oakley, who puts me in touch with a PR person from Oakley named Diane, who puts me in touch with journalist in Chile named Jonathan Franklin, who Diane says, “Knows the story better than we do.” Hmm. A non-Oakley person who knows the Oakley story better than Oakley does? This is my kind of branding. No wonder I wear Oakleys.

Jonathan Franklin

Jonathan Franklin

The Chilean miners, it turns out, come out of that mine wearing Oakleys because Jonathan Franklin works his way through school in the 1980s by selling sunglasses.  There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but that is how the thread begins. “I’ve always been a fanatic for sunglasses,” says Franklin when we speak on Skype this week. “When I was in college [at Brown University], I made my living selling sunglasses.  I had a company called All I Wear. We had ten or twelve students covering campuses up and down the East Coast. I’ve also been a street vendor of sunglasses.  Good ones. Vuarnets. Ray Bans. Oakley wasn’t on my radar yet.”

Here is what happens between Jonathan Franklin’s college years and the rescue in Chile that results in the miners wearing Oakleys:

2) Twelve years ago, Franklin moves to Chile where he works as a correspondent for The Guardian. He also freelances all over the Americas for publications like GQ, Esquire and Playboy. He embraces the Chilean culture, loves it there, gets married there, begins raising a family there.

3)  In 2003, five years after the move to Chile, while covering a story in North Carolina for GQ about the World SWAT Championships, meets Erik Poston, a sales rep for Oakley. He and Poston bond over their mutual interest in sunglasses technology. “He took time off from whatever he was doing to talk about the optics in sunglasses,” says Franklin. “Oakleys are great in the deserts or the mountains.”

(We call this mutual interest, or agreement, ‘finding the game.’  It is game that will pay off for its players seven years later.)

4)  When he arrives on the scene of the August mine accident in Copiapo, 800 km east of Santiago where he lives, Franklin is the only print journalist given a ‘rescue pass, which means he has full access to the rescue site, and regular conversations with the miners. His pass designates his job on the rescue site as ‘Writer.’

5) A few weeks after the miners get discovered still alive, Franklin sits in on a meeting at which the subject is the design of the rescue vessel [The Phoenix].  “Talk about improvisation,” he says, “there’s never been anything like this. At one point, they said they’d need sunglasses for the guys. They just kind of skipped right over it, said they’d get safety glasses or something.  They had so many things to think about that they just skipped right over the glasses.  I raised my hand and said, ‘Excuse me, I am only a journalist, and I don’t mean to be butting in, but why don’t you get the guys some Oakleys or some real sunglasses?  And they said we don’t care about that.  And I said how about if I’m in charge of sunglasses?  So they said okay, fine, one less thing for us to worry about, you’re in charge of sunglasses.”

(This is classic ‘yes-anding’ by Franklin.  Yes-anding can move a scene in an unexpectedly productive direction.  It can also, as it does here, transform a trivial detail into something important and valuable.  These little twists are the stuff great stories are made of.)

6) “God knows why, but I had saved the guy from Oakley’s business card. So I write him a letter.   I said I’m a journalist, I’m not going to make a penny off this, but if you get me the glasses, I’ll get them to the miners.”

7) Oakley responds immediately. They ask for specs. The Chilean Navy, which is tending to the miners’ health, sends the specs. Anatomical, so that debris and dirt won’t get in. And dark. 1oo% UV and UVB ratings. Research scientists at Oakley go back and forth with the Navy a few times until they get the best lenses on the most appropriate frames. They ship 35 customized pairs to the Copiapo mine.

The glasses arrive at the last minute. A Navy doctor sends them down the rescue chute. When they come back up, they are on smiling faces surrounded by more smiling faces, and the rest…is eyewear history.

IMG_0523“The Chileans were very grateful,” says Franklin. “The miners, before they were released, were very grateful.  And it was good for everyone.  I know Oakley has gotten criticized for exploiting the situation, but the CEO of Oakley, who sent me the glasses, had totally forgotten about it.  He was watching the rescue on TV, and the first miner pops up and he’s wearing Oakleys, and the CEO says to his wife, ‘How about that, he’s wearing our glasses!’  And the second miner pops up, and he’s wearing Oakleys, and the CEO said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right, we sent them some of our glasses!’  He’d totally forgotten about it.”

Lots to be learned from the Oakley Coda:

If you add something productive to every situation you’re in, outcomes take care of themselves.

Subject matter expertise is a good point of connection.

Minor roles in one scene can become major roles in the next scene.

Don’t persuade, participate. The best way to influence the game is by playing it.

Give gifts to your scene partners. Your expertise can be a gift.

Be sensitive to context. If you join a scene in progress, have a good reason why.

Meaningful connections have a long shelf life. This is relevant to network economies, where meaningful connections can be ‘parked’ indefinitely, until a scene calls for them.

Narrative trumps nationality.

Do the good thing in the moment, and the better thing will happen down the line.

Damn, I can’t think of them all! There’s a lot! Find something for yourself in this story and put it in play. Good things will happen as a result. There is a science to serendipity.

You cannot script a story like this. You cannot bake it into your media plan. You cannot buy it, for any price. No one at Oakley could have caused it to happen. If they had tried to achieve the same outcome on their own, it would have come across as rank exploitation. They would’ve never penetrated the inner circle at Copiapo. Instead, they had a conversation. Way back when, they planted a seed. When conditions were right, that seed grew and blossomed into something beautiful, something money could not buy—an incredible narrative.

If you’d like to soak up more of the Chilean miners’ story, you’ll want to pick up the book Jonathan Franklin is writing. It comes out February, 2011.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Branding, Games, Gifts, Narrative, Networked World, Problem Solving, Scenes, story | 1 Comment »

Los Mineros, Part Seven: “And…Scene!”

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

The ‘Los Mineros’ scene ended in Chile this week with a worldwide swelling of joy at the safe rescue of all 33 trapped miners.  They survived for a total of 68 days 2,300 feet under the earth’s surface, the longest anyone is known to have been trapped underground and lived to tell about it.ChileanMinerRescue1

We have been analyzing the scene here since shortly after the miners were discovered alive.  One of the most instructive aspects of the ‘Los Mineros’ scene is that it has very little spin.  The cave where they were trapped was truly a no-spin zone.  Events were not manipulated or interpreted to someone’s economic or political advantage.   There were no conspiracy theories.  No, this was as unadulterated as a media narrative can be.

During their 68 days in the darkness, the miners had time to ponder their lives in ‘the normal world,’ as Joseph Campbell would call it.  Many, if not all, seem to have been enlightened by the experience, emerging with a newfound clarity about themselves and the world they are re-entering.  “I have been with God and I have been with the devil.  I seized the hand of God,” said one, Mario Sepulveda.

“I have changed.  I am a different man,” said another, Mario Gomez.

Here is a post-by-post summary of the GameChangers series about  the ‘Los Mineros’ scene:

PART ONE:  THE TRAPPED CHILEAN MINER GAME (August 26)

Lesson: Don’t be defined by your circumstances.  Be defined by how you behave in those circumstances.

PART TWO:  LEVELS OF MEANING (August 31)

Lesson: Narratives communicate on three levels of meaning:  Cosmetic, Emotional and Meta.

PART THREE:  YONNI’S WAITING PARTY (September 2)

Lesson: Rules of the game must be known to all players.

PART FOUR:  ESPERANZA! (September 17)

Lesson: Additions can heighten a scene emotionally.

PART FIVE:  SUPPORT FROM THE WINGS (September 28)

Lesson: Additions are generative.

PART SIX:  ACT THREE BEGINS (October 10)

Lesson: End energetically.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Character, Emotion, Environment, Games, Narrative, Objectives, Problem Solving, Scenes | No Comments »

Los Mineros Part Six: Act Three Begins

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

ONE IN A SERIES…LosMineros1C

One of the ways GameChangers defines a ‘Scene’—no matter what its duration, could be minutes, could be months—is with a classic three-act structure.  We label these acts Connect, Adapt and Deliver.  Continuing with our analysis of ‘Los Mineros,‘ the Trapped Chilean Miners scene, we can clearly see that the scene is entering its third act. The drill boring through the 2,300 feet of solid rock to the hollow where they are trapped has just made it through to them. That’s a clear signal for the heightening of energy and emotion, increasing tempo and sharpening focus that typically indicate the beginning of Act Three of any scene.

Here’s how the three-act structure has defined Los Mineros to date.

Act One:  Connect.  This is where we first heard about this story.  We were introduced to the main characters.  The conditions of their life-threatening predicament were explained to us.  With the news that it was going to take a long time to reach them, a kind of ticking clock was set in motion.  The clock was not life-or-death, but it helped us frame the scene in our minds.  The ‘Game’ —defined by Objective, Environment, Roles and Rules—came into focus.   A lot of the meaning associated with this act was cosmetic—that is, strongly oriented toward data, raw information, clinical analysis.  A mythic theme, one you might call, ‘Trapped in a Cave,’ got defined.   All of this earned the audience’s attention on a global scale.  Clearly, this was going to be a story that many, may people could relate to.

Act Two:  Adapt.  In this act, complications were introduced to the scene, and communication began to turn toward the Emotional level of meaning, as emotions like Urgency, Fear, Jealousy, Camaraderie, Patience, Frustration and Surprise colored the events during this stage.  We began to learn more about the main characters, and new characterss–wives, mistresses, politicians, drillers, NASA scientists and a newborn baby—entered the scene to interact with the main characters and make the scene deeper, richer, more complex.   This is where the scene often takes unexpected turns, hence the need for the characters to adapt.  Three drill bits were tried before one worked.  Original plans were discarded in favor of new ones.  A miner’s wife and mistress both showed up at the rescue site on the same day.  The newborn baby’s name got changed from what its parents originally intended—to Esperanza, the Spanish word for ‘hope.’   In other words, everyone involved rolled with the ever-unfolding reality.  They had to improvise.  There was no script for this.

And now…

Act Three:  Deliver. Typically, the third act is shorter than the first two.  This has the effect of compressing time, as does the increasing tempo of entrances and exits, and the steady release ‘new news’ by the world’s media.  We are building toward a 24-hour news cycle in a couple of days in which Los Mineros will dominate current events. It is during this cycle that the scene will reach its emotional apex, and the audience will feel more pull and lean forward more than it has at any other time in the scene.  There will be a lot of postscripts added after this climactic 24-hour cycle, but in terms of the three-act structure, this scene will have ended, and new scenes (you can think of them as ’sequel’ or ’spin-off’ scenes) will begin.

For business communicators, the three-act structure is a really useful framework.  It gives players and audience alike a sense of where you are in your scene, and helps you organize the many narrative elements that are part of it.   It will give you the ability to put the emphasis where it belongs, when it belongs there.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Communication, Emotion, Entrances, Environment, Games, Narrative, Objectives, Scenes, Speed, Themes, story | No Comments »

JetBlue Scene

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Jeremy Redleaf, one of the new physicists of the narrative form and the creator of this brilliant siteOJN1initated the scene when he sent me this emailJBJeremy1

about this JetBlue adJetBlue1

which is anchored by copy that saysJBJeremy2In my role of Commentor On All Things About Improvisation in Business, I responded to Jeremy’s email with this GameChangers postJBGameChangers1in which i point out that ‘the first rule of improv’ if there even is such a thing, which itself is debatable, is not to say ‘yes’ but to say ‘yes and.’   ‘Yes’ is a state of mind.  ‘Yes and’ is action.  The most fertile ground in the world is useless until it’s planted.  ‘Yes’ is the ground.  ‘And’ is the seed.  My blog post inspired Jeremy…JBJeremy2C

Posi-ffiti!  Yes!  I love threads like this.  As usual, I’d tweeted a link to my blog post. I decided to yes-and Jeremy by calling JetBlue’s attention to its error with a Tweet.  I was able to Google their CMO, Marty St. George and find his Twitter account.  JBTweet2To Marty’s credit, he tweeted back within 15 mins.  This already puts @martysg and JetBlue way ahead of most CMOs in brand narrative game.  It also tells me that this is one vigilant, sensitive cat.  Dude’s running it like Ochocincomartysg1

here @martysg commits the improvisation error of denying.  He does this by being vague–what does “if you said ‘no quotation marks’ I might be with you” mean, anyway?–and acting as if I’d accused him of misquoting ‘John’, and seems to be saying that the mistake is not theirs, but mine, for calling them out on the wrong thing.  I responded by suggesting the ‘Posi-ffiti’ gameJBTweet3

and further suggested how to initiate the game…JBTweet11

@martysg blocks the game… martysg2By acting as if I’d said something I hadn’t–that ‘The Posi-ffiti Game’ would have to be played without ‘John’s’ permission–Marty kills the scene.  This was probably his intention.  He also implies that quoting people without their permission is MY style.  In one statement, he refuses my gift and pimps my character.  Nice.  This is classic old school management style, a familiar corporate game I call, “Parry and Thrust.”  It’s played  by stalling, and staying non-committal (”Hm…if….I might…”) and then landing a knockout blow (”Do something unethical?  Not us.  YOU maybe.  Not us.”)

Look, everybody understands that a CMO like @martysg will not alter an ad campaign because some nitpicker tweets him about the word ‘and’ in an ad.  Like I said, he gets credit for being open enough to have the conversation in the first place.  This is more responsiveness from a tweet than you’d get from 90% of all the CMOs in the world.  It is, however, short of the kind of action a person would get from an improvisational brand like Southwest Airlines.  Furthermore, what happened when @martysg did respond is precisely the point of my blog post.  The conversation didn’t go anywhere because Marty St. George ‘yessed’ and he did not ‘and.’

How might Marty have yes-anded?  Anyone who’s gone through a GameChangers workshop can give you a dozen games that would be more productive than ‘Parry and Thrust.’

The good news coming out of this exchange is that all is not lost.  Jeremy Redleaf has a new job description for OddJobNation: “Posi-ffiti Artist.”

To an improviser, Lost is just the first step on the way to Found.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Branding, Character, Communication, Dialogue, Games, Gifts, Initiations, Issues, Listening, Narrative, Scenes, story | No Comments »

The Trapped Chilean Miner Game

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Several years ago, in a Level One improv class at I.O. West, I did a scene with Parvesh Cheena where he and I were given the situation of being trapped together in an elevator.   I immediately began McGuyvering my way out of the situation.   (”You got a paper clip?  We’ll pick the lock on that panel and…blah blah blah.”)  Big rookie mistake.  Our teacher, Sarah Gee, said to me, “If you get out of the elevator the scene’s over.  Show us who you are to one another while you’re trapped!”

TrappedMiners1This broke today over CNN. The 33 men trapped in a Chilean copper mine have begun to assume different roles that will help them survive the time, estimated to be months, it will take rescuers to drill through 2300 feet of solid rock to rescue them.  This is brilliant.  They’re designing a game to help them get out alive without going batshit crazy while they’re waiting to be rescued.  This is going to give us all a good look at how a game works, and how it informs and inspires group strategies.  One thing is already clear:  There are some good improvisers trapped in that mine.

To review, here are the elements of a game: Environment, Roles, Rules, Objective(s).

Let’s begin with the Objective.  Simple:  ‘Get out of here alive without going crazy.’  Same as most survival strategies.

The Environment of the Trapped Chilean Miner Game could not be more starkly defined:  A pool of darkness deep beneath the surface of the earth, and the rest of the world watching up above.  The contrasts between the Down Below and the Up Above are extreme, an archetype embedded deep in every human’s subconscious.  The Well, the Fallen Rubble, the Cave, the Mine–all tap deep into our unconscious, where our memories of the womb are stored.   As my friend Richard Wynn Taylor says, “It will remind us of something we’ve never seen before.”

The Roles, as stated in the CNN story, are developing.  One of the miners has become a spiritual leader.  Another an entertainer who sings Elvis songs.  Expect that all or most of the miners will eventually define roles for themselves, some as group characters (’peacekeepers,’ ’storytellers,’ ’spokespeople,’ ‘mediators’ etc. etc.)  Some of the miners will play more than one role, depending on the scene they’re in.  Eventually some of them may trade roles, taking turns speaking to the media, for example.  What’s also interesting about the roles element of the game is that all 33 men trapped in the cave will, for the duration of their rescue, abandon the roles they were playing when they went Down Below: None of them will be playing the role of a miner.  Note also that ‘trapped miner’ is not a role.  It’s a circumstance.  Your circumstance does not define your role; it’s your behavior in your circumstance that defines your role.

Expect that in the coming weeks, we’ll be hearing about the Rules of the TCMG. These Rules will be designed to create agreement and establish ground rules for the miners’ interactions.  The rules will initially address the fundamentals such as sleeping, eating, sharing resources, communicating with Up Above etc., and then get more detailed.  The rules of a game will not be designed to create sameness or repetition, but to liberate performance, by empowering players to play their roles well.  The miners cannot afford to get weary of their roles.  It will be interesting to see how many rules will be set or influenced Up Above.

Unlike a reality TV show like Jersey Shore, where editors manipulate the juxtaposition of shots to create scenes and the sequence of events to construct a narrative, the ‘live-ness’ of this scene will demand improvisation, and that means the miners will be the primary architects of their narrative.

The intense focus on this particular scene by the world media, is going to make the elements of the game highly visible.  We will be able to track how well the trapped miners are doing by how focused and productive they are in playing their game.

What’s going to hold our interest about the Chilean Miner scene will not be the drama of whether or not they make it out alive.  The objective, the ‘Will they or won’t they’ aspect of the narrative, will only carry it so far.  What will hold our interest is how the miners behave in the meantime.  How well we get to know them.  Who they are to their families, and to one another.  What kind of character traits emerge. This is true of any narrative.  If you want to hold your audience’s interest, don’t focus on how you want it to end, but on how you want it to be.

When the miners’ survival becomes imminent, their game will transform from a survival strategy to a business strategy.  To the objective of ‘Get out of here alive without going crazy,’ they will undoubtedly add, ‘Make Money.’  When the miners finally walk into the light, the game may change, but it will not end.

Buena suerte, Mineros!

ChileanMiners2

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Posted in Agreement Principle, Casting, Character, Environment, Focus, Fundamentals, Games, Group Mind, Narrative, Objectives, Scenes, story | 3 Comments »

Fools With Rules

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

This one’s for the golfers…

I used to joke with our neighbor back in Indiana, Euline Kieffner, that the reason she and I loved golf so much was that there was nothing more alluring to folks who’d grown up on farms like we had than a mown field with no manure in it.  Until four or five years ago, I was enchanted by the game of golf, and literally could not get enough of it.  I played and practiced it religiously, at one point working my way all the way down to a four-handicap, which is pretty damn good.  I could play.

Golf is a great game that can teach a person a lot about patience, persistence, imagination, focus, character, and the difference between trying to force positive outcomes and letting positive outcomes emanate from an open mind.  As my business focus has changed, so has my relationship with the game.  Today, I play rarely, maybe two or three times a year, and only on social occasions.   The romance is gone.  Occasionally, my Taylor-Mades and I stare wistfully at one another across a crowded garage, and remember how it used to be between us.

What fascinates me most about the sport of golf today, sad to say, is the wreckage to its most visible brand experience–the PGA Tour.  We’re talking multi-vehicle pile-up. Its shiningest star has lost most of his luster and its TV ratings have tanked in tandem with the Tiger brand.  The Tour’s newcomers have apparently had no life experiences to differentiate them from one another–all they know is golf.  Its core demographic is aging.  Its most interesting personalities have retired.

Last Sunday, while I did a little work in the office, more out of habit than anything, I had the PGA Championship—the last of the four ‘majors’ of the season—on the TV in the background. It held no inherent interest for me. And then, all of a sudden, it did.  Several of the game’s young lions—Rory McElroy from Scotland(?), a long-hitting lefthander with high follow-through named Bubba, a cool German named Kaymer I’d never heard of before, and Dustin Johnson, who hits it insanely long, were all fighting for the lead, along with a caddyshacker named Wen-Chong from China, who learned to play on that country’s first golf course, which was built only 20 years ago.  All of a sudden, it was a story worth following.

DustinJohnson1Over the last five or six holes the tournament’s drama became palpable.  None of the young guys were holding back, no one was playing not to lose, they were all winding up, letting it rip, and playing for the win, and it was riveting.  The tournament came down to a tie between two players, Bubba and the German, Kaymer, with Johnson playing the final hole of the tournament with a chance to win it.  He missed his par putt to win.  We were looking at a three-player, three-hole playoff for the championship.

And then, all of a sudden, we weren’t.  A PGA Tournament official pulled Johnson aside as he walked off the 18th green and told him that he had violated a rule by grounding his club in a hazard along the 18th fairway, one of the 1000+ sand bunkers that lined the course.

I’m not going to get into the specifics here, except to say that technically the officials were correct—Johnson had, in fact, let his club touch the sand prior to making his second shot.  Narratively, however, the PGA people blew it like I’ve never seen a call blown in a lifetime of watching sports.  There was no possible way for Johnson to know that the spot where his ball sat—a spot that had been trampled by tens of thousands of people during the tournament, and was tightly framed by hundreds in the gallery as he made his swing—was a hazard.  Besides that, if there had once been a border to the sand bunker, that border had been erased by the week’s crowds to the point where it no longer existed.  Given this, there was no way for the PGA officials to know for sure from looking at a replay whether the ball was ‘in’ a bunker or not.

This wasn’t some snap judgment in the heat of the moment by a referee or ump.  This was a deliberation.  A review.  A consideration.  And then, a horrible decision that took all the life out of the story.  Johnson was penalized two strokes, and eliminated from the playoff.

The tragedy of this decision goes way beyond any personal setback to Mr. Johnson.  The PGA brand desperately needed this story, needed the drama to keep building with the playoff between three of its new stars.  They had it.  It was happening.  The audience was engaged.  There was real enthusiasm from the broadcasters.  It was turning into the most interesting finish to a tournament in years.  All the PGA officials had to do was stay out of its way.  Instead, they committed the golfer’s most grievous mistake: they over-thought the shot.  And then they shanked it.

This was not the behavior of people concerned about what’s best for the game of golf, about supporting their brand’s narrative, or about nurturing the next generation of golfers.  This was vainglorious meddling by middle-aged men desperate for attention and fearing nothing as much as their own impotence.

Oh yeah, Kaymer won the playoff, but who cared?  Nobody outside of Kaymer’s girlfriend is talking about it.  All the fan conversation is about the idiotic ruling.

We see this a lot in business.  A compelling narrative begins to unfold, or an idea seems to be gathering momentum, and then, from out of nowhere, an expressionless manager with a rule book derails it.  It sucks for everyone involved except the person with the rule book.

If the rules don’t support your brand’s narrative, don’t change the narrative, change the rules.  If your managers, like those PGA officials, aren’t nuanced enough to understand what it takes to support your narrative, change managers.  This is what the PGA needs to do, pronto, to get its ailing game back on track.

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Posted in Branding, Character, Focus, Games, Issues, Narrative, story | No Comments »

GameChangers for Sales

Monday, March 29th, 2010

WorldsGreatestSales1Every business conversation that’s unscripted–and that’s about 99% of them–is an improvised scene.  How ably we improvise usually determines the success of the scene.  In sales, the audience for the scene is the customer, and the ultimate ‘applause’ is a sale. Furthermore, in sales scenes, the customer is not just the audience, her or she is also a player in the scene.  This is important for salespeople to understand, because it means you are asking the customer to judge their own performance in your scene together.  If they they give their performance in your scene a thumbs-up, chances are you’ve got yourself a sale.

Big Note:  The customer judges his or her performance, not yours, in the context of the scene you co-create.

The implications of this are huge.  Here are a few:

1.  Learn the script, then throw it away. The single biggest mistake salespeople make is trying to follow a script.  The customer doesn’t know your script!  In trying to stick to a script known only to you, you’re putting your customer in the worst possible position–that of a performer who doesn’t know his or her lines.  The playwright Christopher Durang built an entire play, The Actor’s Nightmare, around this premise.  You following your script and trying to get your scene partner to play along with it is The Customer’s Nightmare.

1A.  Don’t show your script to the customer. If the customer does know your script, because, let’s say, you’ve sent them your PowerPoint deck in advance of your presentation, you cause a whole other set of problems.  For one, you’re not giving them anything new.  You are, in essence, asking them to play a role you have written for them, which fosters a kind of built-in resentment.  Another problem with showing your hand ahead of time is that it burdens the audience with expectations.  By knowing ahead of time where you’re going, they will be measuring the scene against what they imagine it will be–good or bad.  Thanks to the internet, the customer already has access to plenty of data about your product.  Save something for your sales scene!

2.  Your number-one concern is getting your customer to feel good about your scene. You do this by helping them look good.  You help them look good by ‘giving gifts,’ to use the parlance of improvisation. There are unlimited ways to give gifts in a sales scene, ranging from sharing a dinner at a great restaurant to enlightening a customer with knowledge, to conferring status on them by having them enlighten you with knowledge.  Whether they ‘applaud’ your scene by making a down-payment on a timeshare, driving off your lot in a new car, or by clicking to buy a better mousetrap, chances are they’ll be doing it because they felt good about the interaction with your and your brand.

3.  A scene is not a soliloquy. You are sharing the stage with the customer.  It’s a dialogue.  Give and take.  OgilvyOne recently announced a contest to find the World’s Greatest Salesperson.  They’re asking contestants to ’sell’ a commonplace item, a red brick, using YouTube.  The winning video will not be the best soliloquy, but the one that’s best at generating and sustaining a dialogue with its audience–via YouTube comments, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms.

4.  Begin by listening. As with longform improvisation, a good way to get things rolling is to take a ’suggestion from the audience.’  When you begin your scene by listening instead of speaking, you give your audience/customer the opportunity to invest themselves in the scene.  Their satisfaction at seeing an idea they’ve given you turn into action will earn their applause.

5.  Build and heighten.  A scene should be designed to expand, its energy elevate, its theme evolve.  Surpass where you started.  Never end up back where you began.  Don’t be afraid to start your scene with the seed of an idea and let it grow.  Be afraid of starting with a grand vision that diminishes during the course of the scene.

6.  Agree on the game. What you’re looking for in your scene is quick identification and agreement on what we call ‘the underlying game.’  We define a game as:  Roles, Rules, Environment and Objective.  The sooner you can define these, the sooner you can agree on them, and the sooner you agree on them, the more likely you are to close the sale.  ‘Yes-anding’ the customer is the single best sales technique there is.

6A. The customer’s objective is not a sale. The customer isn’t in the scene to help you hit your quota or earn a commission.  A sale may be your objective but it’s not theirs.  Theirs may be to prove their love, earn the respect of their peers, look good to a boss, save money, gain status with their neighbors, or ensure the birth of a healthy baby.  Your objective is to help them achieve their objective.

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Posted in Agreement Principle, Dialogue, Games, Gifts, Issues, Listening, Sales, Scenes, Themes | No Comments »

‘The President’s Question Time’ Scene

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

There’s a great tradition in British government that, if you’ve never seen it, you ought to.  It’s called The Prime Minister’s Question Time, and it is wonderful political theater.  Watch some of this.

And then compare this.

Quite a difference.

The first is improvised.

The second is scripted.

Improvisation is active.  It is alive.  Members of Parliament are energetically engaged in the conversation about the matter at hand, supportive of, but not bogged down by, their various ideologies and positions.  Their actions and reactions are immediate, emotional and visceral.  This honors the problem.  American politicians dishonor a problem, and obfuscate it, when they use it as a foil for politicking, which is how almost every problem faced by the federal government is regarded now.  An excuse for campaigning.

ObamaRepubs1This is the big point President Obama underlined yesterday in his meeting with the Republicans.  That 66-minute conversation may be the best thing that’s happened in American politics since the Watergate hearings.  Obama changed the game by calling out the current political game for what it is.   Let’s call the current game “Our Way or No Way.”  It is played by Democrats and Republicans alike, with equal vigor.  This game is toxic.  Limiting.  Stultifying.  Divisive.  And ultimately it’s unproductive.  This is not about blaming one party or the other.  The bad game is to blame.

Yesterday, Obama not only called out the current game for the quicksand pit it is, he suggested a better, more liberating, more productive game.  You might call the game he’s proposing, ‘Part of a Pie is Better Than None.’  In other words, the invitation to the Republicans (Dems, you’re next!) is to find an area of agreement and agree on it.  Do it knowing that some, but not all, and probably not not 80% of what you’ve got scripted, will come to pass.  Don’t be greedy.  Be generous instead.  Don’t place blame.  Accept responsibility.  Don’t point fingers.  Shake hands.  And then come out fighting.  Let’s relish the good fight, one where we fight together to solve the problem, not the bad fight, where we fight over who’s right and who’s wrong about how to solve it.  Let’s pick battles we can win instead of battles we can make the other guy lose.

Cheers to the GameChanger in Chief for changing the game once again.  Our political discourse needs more of the kind of energetic, intelligent, articulate, performances that the Brits demonstrate in their ‘Question Time With the Prime Minister” and Obama and the Republicans staged yesterday.  It will be a healthy transformation.  And it’ll make great TV.  Nothing we Yanks like better than that!

Do not get locked into your script for success.  Be prepared, instead, to improvise your way there.  Remember that other people have scripts, too.  As I can tell you from working in the entertainment business, when all we do is fight over whose script we’re going to follow, the show does not go on.

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Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Fundamentals, Games, Issues, Leadership, Narrative, Scenes | 2 Comments »

Tiger’s Unplayable Lie

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Six years ago, after playing hooky from work on a Friday to watch The Best Golfer in the World play nine holes at Riviera Country Club, I wrote this about him for my company’s blog:

Tiger hit one shot that I will remember for a long time, one of the best I’ve ever seen.   220 yards from the green after an errant drive, out of deep rough, he hit a high draw inches to the right of a big tree ten yards in front of him, inches to the left of two bigger trees 30 yards farther up, a couple of feet over a bunker fronting the green, to within ten feet of the pin.  People in the gallery ooohed and aaahed and applauded, then gathered around the divot he made in the rough like so many TV cops peering down at a murder victim.   “Look at how long it is,” they muttered of the divot.  “Look how wide he took his swing path.”  “Did you see how hard he went down after it?  Damn!”

And…

His focus is the most intimidating thing about his game.  There is an unshakeable calmness to him that you don’t see in the other pros.  Earl named him well, because he plays golf like a big cat stalking its prey.   The confidence he has in the inevitability of his success is absolute.

And…

And yet…and yet…it’s strange to stand near another human being and not sense any more humanity in him than you would in a thoroughbred in the paddock at Santa Anita.   What makes us vital—all that brawling, longing, laughing, crying, hurting and loving—all that bitching and moaning and mucking around most of us do on a daily basis–is bad for a person’s golf game.  And so none of it seems to be part of Tiger’s make-up.  He is, on the golf course anyway, inhuman.

The Scripted Narrative

The Scripted Narrative

Today, the Eldrick “Tiger” Woods story, scripted for him by his father, Earl, since before he was born, is falling apart quicker than a 20-handicapper’s swing on the back nine of the club championship.  In two weeks, Tiger has gone from paragon to pariah, and has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a brand can no longer script the humanity out of its narrative and expect the world to play along.  In the billion-channel cosmos of the Networked World, sooner or later reality will outflank any brand’s ability to script and control its story the way brands could when there were three TV networks and a couple of major newspapers to be reckoned with, and story material was limited to what happened inside the ropes at Riviera.

As this is written, the Tiger Woods brand burns out of control like a California wildfire, and embers from Tiger’s Inferno have landed on the roofs of Nike, Gatorade, Gillette and Accenture, and they’re in flames, too.  Buick’s house of straw (did anybody ever really believe Tiger drove a Buick?) is probably burned beyond salvaging.

What’s fueling this fire isn’t the the commonplace tabloid fodder of marital infidelity, it’s not about whether you side with a justly aggrieved wife or forgive a superstar his transgressions.  This story is much bigger than that.  It is a story as old as Achilles, the story of a hero’s fall from grace.

It’s in our nature to want to see a story completed.  Tiger’s story will hold the audience’s attention at least until the downfall is assured, the disgrace complete.  The light at the end of Tiger’s tunnel—and the hope for any brand that has lost its way—is that the journey does not have to not end with the fall from grace.  It may be impossible for the audience to turn away from a tragedy, but what the audience turns to of its own volition, and embraces more fervently than anything, is the hero’s return.  As Joseph Campbell chronicles in Hero With A Thousand Faces, ‘falling to the Temptress(es)’ is one of many twists in the journey toward true heroism.  Tiger Woods can redeem himself in the eyes of his audience, but he’s got to want to be an authentic hero, not one playing a role that has been scripted for him.

The Networked World Defies the Script

The Networked World Defies the Script

Here are five productive moves he (or any other burning brand) can make in that direction:

1.  Accept the Unplayable Lie.

For you non-golfers, a Lie is Unplayable when the ball is in a position where not even Tiger Woods can take a productive swing at it.  At that point, you’ve just got to accept the penalty and play on.  This is the situation in which Tiger finds himself today.  There is no excuse that will satisfy.  No spin that can put the scandal to rest.  He’s got no swing at this one.  He’s got to cop to being a pig and a dog and apologize with more than words for whatever hurt his family, and get on with whatever’s next.  Too many brands waste time talking about how or whether to play the unplayable lie, instead of quickly agreeing that it’s unplayable.  They will consult with caddies and seek ruling from judges.  They will pull different clubs out of the bag.  They will check the wind.  They will roll up their pants legs and walk into the hazard.  Sometimes, they will even go all Van De Velde (for you golf fans) and take a stupid swing at the ball and make things much, much worse.   And all along, the best thing would’ve been to simply accept the penalty and play on.

2.   Be entrepreneurial.

I always thought Tiger missed an opportunity when he signed with Nike for so much of his gear.   Nothing against signing with Nike for the clubs, shoes and whatever, but giving them the clothing line, too, turned him into their mannequin.  Nike dresses him like a second grader in a private school.  His golf clothes are billboards with swooshes.  He could be wearing clothes designed by people like Bill Johnson’s Transient label in D.C., or eco-friendly brands like Nau or Vital Hemptations. Small businesses of all kinds need help these days, and Tiger is just the guy to give it to them.  He can help take a small minority-owned solar energy company national.  He can sign with up-and-coming companies as sponsors, and not charge them a dime.   Instead, he can own equity in them.   This will have the added benefit of re-energizing the fan base, as pulling for Tiger will mean that you are pulling for a host of deserving upstart companies, too.  The hero’s journey requires allies along the way.

3.   Embrace your Cablinasianism.

Tiger has made a big deal about being what the brand calls ‘Cablinasian.’  Caucasian-Black-Indian-Asian.  Okay cool.  But the scripted Tiger only explores a very narrow strand of that, the strand that is privileged, plays a lot of golf, owns a yacht and apparently hits on anyone carrying a cocktail tray.   All brands can tap creative energy by exploring their multiculturalism.   Tiger’s ethnic makeup is one thing besides being a great golfer that can differentiate the brand, but he has to show the audience what Cablinasian means beyond the clever cosmetic of a made-up word.

4.   Be a supporting player for a change.

From the time he was born, Tiger Woods has seldom been in a scene in which he was not the star.  His father basically abandoned his other children to focus on young Eldrick.  By age two, Tiger was on national television hitting golf balls.  When he was a junior, he played with the grown-ups, when he was in college, he played with the pros, as a pro, he plays against the history of the game itself.   That is a pretty lonely path.  He needs to focus on sharing the narrative with others for awhile.  This does not mean going into hiding.  It means consciously taking a backseat in someone else’s scene.  Raise your children.  Work with your charities.  Find a protégé to coach.  In the Networked World, we are measured every bit as much by what we contribute to others as by what we amass for ourselves.  No brand is an island.

5.   Get better at something you’re bad at.

We all develop go-to moves.  If you are good at something, and receive a ton of approval and money for doing it, what is your motivation for doing anything else?   Here is your motivation:  In the Networked World, the narrative is not only multi-channel, it is multi-dimensional.  Relying on your go-to move has the effect of limiting your brand’s value, because it limits the dimensions of the brand that have the potential to improve and grow.  When you have won the Masters by 12 strokes and the U.S. Open by 15 and are probably The Greatest Golfer Who Ever Lived, golf is not an area of growth.  It is a flat line at best.  The growth areas are the dimensions of the brand that have not yet been explored.   For Tiger Woods, this could probably mean just about anything other than playing golf and getting girls’ numbers.  What does it mean to you?

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