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.

I imagine Christopher Guest could have walked into Sugarfish at that instant, looked our way when he overheard us use the words ‘improvisation’ and ‘DirectTV’ in the same sentence, and, having heard, come over to our table to support my argument. He did not.
My lunch with Josh Rose did not result in a decisive win for the art of improvisation in business. Josh is an intelligent and reflective person, with his own well-honed ways of working. He sells way more than he buys. He was not in any hurry to introduce Deutsch to what they’d no doubt perceive as more headaches like the ones Christopher Guest gave them. That would not be the plug-n-play thing for Josh to do.

Our debate about the merits of improvisation in business was the agreed-to game. The objective was to reconnect after not having seen each other in a couple of years. The result was a productive lunch scene, at which Josh and I discussed business, families, photography, the evolution of journalism in the Networked World, the role of social networking on behalf of brands, Dr. Pepper, Big Red soda, Costa Rica, the Great Apes (Josh’s dad is a primatologist who lectures all over the world), Chef Nozawa’s sushi, gonzo multimedia – and Christopher Guest’s DirectTV work.

It was not the lunch that might have been. It was the lunch that was. Likewise, none of us are the players we might have been. We are the players we are. We all – Christopher Guest, Chef Nozawa, Josh Rose, you, me – have the potential to realize our own particular form of greatness. To realize it, we have to travel our own paths, accepting and acting on the gifts we are given along the way.

Knowing how to improvise is like having an experienced Sherpa along on your climb, versus following a map and seeking advice from random climbers down at base camp. For the best chance at reaching the summit, especially if the climb is challenging (and whose isn’t?) gather all the information you can and retain the Sherpa.