Our November GameChanger of the Month selection was a slam dunk. Barack Obama is going to be America’s first baller president, and he’s going to be its first Improviser-in-Chief.
His and his team’s ability to improvise their way to an election victory against rivals who were, initially, much better funded, more networked and more familiar brand names proved beyond any doubt how skillful improvisation can change the game. Obama is the epitome of what it means to be a gamechanger. (more…)
Farming on a small family farm can be a very cyclical way of life. A ten-minute hailstorm can wipe out a year’s worth of work. Cycles are 12-18 months, and can stretch into a 24-30 month downturn with two years of bad weather in a row. I draw the analogy to the current economic downturn as this–it’s the weather. In bad-weather scenarios, the wisest path can often be to dress and act accordingly.
In my experience, farmers (I include my mom, Fern, who’s 82 and still living on my family’s farm back in Indiana, still going at a pace that would be considered ‘active’ for someone half her age) are some of the most improvisational people you’ll ever meet. Here are three ways that family farmers typically deal with or hedge against the down cycles: (more…)
I can’t possibly grasp the nuances of the current crisis and the bailout bill. There is so much data, so many opinions, so many experts weighing in. The problem of credit derivatives unleashed into the global markets by mad mathematicians is so complex it will take legions of sane mathematicians years to unravel and set right.
So I look at it like this:
The crisis is an Elephant, and everyone wrestling with it–you, me, Hank Paulson and Barney Frank–is a Blind Man of Hindustan. How we describe it depends on which part of it we’re feeling. And no matter how we describe it, it doesn’t help us figure out what to do with the Elephant. It’s just a very large animal standing there while blind people disagree about it.
So six blind men of Hindustan
disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
exceeding stiff and strong;
Though each was partly in the right,
they all were in the wrong! – John Godfrey Saxe
One of the benefits of improvisation in business is that it provides a lens, and a common language, through which we can see and learn from performance. This triangulates the problem and gives us common ground for solving it. Barney Frank sees the Wall Street problem from a Massachusetts legislator’s perspective. I see it from a small businessperson’s perspective. As a person the cameras are pointed at, Barney is probably feeling the tusk, so he describes the Elephant as being ‘like a spear.’ From my perspective, the Elephant ‘feels very like a wall’ between me and capital. If all we’re going to do is debate our differences, we’re never going to get anywhere.
But if Barney and I both speak improvisation…aha. We can find agreement in that language. Our disagreement about what the Elephant looks like is no longer important because now our dialogue can be about what to do with the Elephant!
Here’s an analysis of the ‘Bailout Scene’ seen through the lens of improvisation: (more…)
To introduce her students to the concept of improvisation, Viola Spolin, the godmother of modern improv, used to summon half a dozen students onto the rehearsal stage, and then say nothing to them. Literally nothing. No direction. No reason for them to be there.
Nothing.
Nothing…
Still nothing… (more…)
At lunch the other day at a new sushi restaurant called Sugarfish, my friend, Josh Rose, a creative director at Deutsch Advertising, told me about watching the legendary improviser Christopher Guest (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, et al) essentially rip up the script Deutsch had given him for a series of DirecTV spots, and tell its creative team he and his cast were going to improvise everything instead. Guest promised the agency team they’d get ten usable spots worth of material, far more than their contract called for.
He delivered, to excellent effect. The series of commercials starring Guest, who also directed, memorably distinguish DirecTV’s product from that of a fictional blowhard cable company.
Josh took the position that, well, yes, you can get away with something like that if you’re Christopher Guest. And if you’re not Christopher Guest, maybe improvisation isn’t going to be so beneficial.
I wish I had responded by holding the albacore sushi drizzled with ponzu sauce between my chopsticks and said to him with a Kung Fu master’s equanimity, “Yes and Christopher Guest is no Chef Nozawa.” That would’ve been deep. I didn’t. I took the more mundane position that there is improvisation in every business process, and that, while its place in the process may vary–most TV commercial shoots, for example, cannot withstand the amount of improvising that a Christopher Guest brings to a set–there is always an opportunity somewhere in every business process where improvisation is possible, and in most cases, required. As long as you’re going to do it anyway, why not do it well? And as far as the fuss Guest stirred up, who ever said birthing originality was easy?
Josh chewed on his yellowtail for a sec, and I wish I could say he nodded like an eager Chef Nozawa apprentice, accepting every word I said as doctrine. He did not. He told me that he is a ‘plug-n-play’ guy, meaning he carefully measures the opportunity afforded, and calibrates performance to it. Improvisation, he said, can feel too loose and unpredictable.
Maybe that’s when I should have stood and slapped him across the face and and told him to wake up and smell the wasabi. I did not. Instead, I calmly explained that recognition of an opportunity for what it is, and responding accordingly, is good improvisation. The Networked World, I explained, is filled with new opportunities. New plugs that require new plays. This continually-evolving business environment demands improvisation. (more…)
CNN ran a good story this week, part of its Real Simple series, about the benefits of improvisation in our personal and work lives. We, of course, could not be more in ageement.
As CNN says, improvisation in based on a few simple concepts. And as the story also points out, the idea that improvisation can change your game in a few easy-to-follow tips, belies the complexity involved. Practice is required. (more…)
Our friend Ethan Bauley , who has an undergrad degree in Finance (University of Virginia) and a Masters in Improvisational Percussion (CalArts), naturally understands why improvisation is an essential business skill in the Networked World. His work developing social apps and exploring edge economies on behalf of clients like Cisco and Warner Bros. lays the groundwork for what we call the improvised brand narrative. Yes, scripting your brand’s activities in the marketplace is OUT, and improvisation is IN. We know it. Ethan knows it. Soon it will be a truth everyone acknowledges. Today, he sent us this photo (of the book without the jacket):
It was taken on the beach in Tulum, Mexico, while he and his wife, Shannon, were on their honeymoon. (Talk about a COMPLIMENT!)
Thanks, Ethan (& Shannon), and Congrats!
Scene #1: Bad Games in the U.K. According to the BBC, criminal fraud cases in the U.K. are up by 14% in 2008 over 2007. The top crooked games are boiler room scams, credit card fraud, tax cheating and identify theft. The Beeb says the total yearly cost to victims is over 504 billion Euro. Analysis: First of all, it’s a statistic, so there are several ways it can be read. Maybe cheating is up, but it’s just as likely prosecution is up 14% while crime remained steady. Or maybe crime has dropped by 5% but prosecution is up 19%. And this is the crime we know about. Maybe the crime we don’t know about is up 200%. Who can tell? We don’t know about it. My guess, just from what we’re learning daily about the games the financial industry has been playing, is that crime we don’t know about is hockey-sticking. (more…)
Much of what I learned about improvisation in business came from my father, “Cowboy Bob” a farmer, entrepreneur and incorrigible dreamer from Ireland, Indiana by way of Louisville, Kentucky.
As my friend, the screenwriter Christopher Lofton, describes my early relationship with Cowboy Bob: “He was a teacher who didn’t know what he was teaching and you were a student who didn’t know what you were learning.” But teach and learn we did, and today I gladly share what I learned with my own sons, and with anyone else who’s interested. All you have to do is ask. (more…)
If Viola Spolin is the godmother of modern improvisation, that makes her son, Paul Sills, its Michael Corleone — the heir to the family business. Sills, who assisted his mom with her children’s theater workshops in the 1940s, enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1948. There, he directed many student productions and in the process met David Shepherd, with whom, in 1955, he organized the Compass Players, the first improvisational theater company in the U.S. In 1959, Sills and Bernie Sahlins formed Chicago’s Second City Theater, where he was director until 1965. All of Sills’ work in comedy theater, and in fact his life itself, was influenced by the theory and practice of improvisation. (more…)