So obvious, it’s funny–no one gets to Carnegie Hall without a ton of practice. It is usually the most ‘talented’ performers who practice most diligently. The talent onstage in Carnegie Hall is, as much as anything, a talent for practicing. A love of the hard work and focus that it takes to master one’s craft.

Rob McNamara writes in Integral Life about ‘The Necessity of Practice.’ Practice, notes McNamara, is preparation. What we are seeing and hearing onstage at Carnegie Hall is a performance informed by preparation. It is the preparation that elevates and defines the quality of the performance.

Everyone has a Carnegie Hall, a place or ideal they’re trying to get to. A vision for the future. And then, quite often, something happens. We get sidetracked. Distracted. Too busy to practice. We stop off at the Carnegie DELI and call it Carnegie HALL. Our ego tells us we have arrived. That’s when the unproductive patterns–sameness, repetition, redundancy, stagnation, smugness—set in. That’s the point where our performances become cyclical, begin to repeat themselves, and our audiences get bored, and begin wondering why they paid their money.

McNamara defines the act of practicing as ‘Engagement.’ The GameChangers Orchestral Model™ identifies six practices that generate productive outcomes in the world. Engagement is one of the six. The other five are:

Heeding (listening, paying attention, observing actively). In the Orchestral Model™, this practice precedes Engagement. As the social media doyenne, Sally Falkow, (@sallyfalkow) says, “You don’t go right up to people having a conversation at a party or social event and just start talking. First you have to hear what conversation is about, and then can you be part of it, and engage with people in a meaningful way.”

Learning. What is revealed to you as a result of your interactions with others, and with your environment? How does your network inform you? How do you turn learning into solutions? All this takes practice.

Creating. How does what you do make a difference? How does it make you unique? How do channel creativity toward innovation?

Performing. What are your criteria? What is your Carnegie Hall? Is it a seven or eight digit number? A place? A whale of a client? A standard you have set for yourself, or that others have set for you? How does your performance differentiate you?

Deciding. How consistent are you? What values do you represent? How clear and shareable are your decisions? What themes are important to you? Who and what influences your behaviors? If your deciding practices are weak, Big Trouble soon come.

Performing and Deciding are what we call the core practices. If you are not good at these–if you don’t have a clear vision of where you’re going, or if you are indecisive and wishy-washy along the way—the rest of the practices will not matter, because you’ll be too busy zig-zagging toward a mirage, rendering meaningless decisions in service of illusory goals.

So call the whole thing Engagement, yes, definitely! Practice it! Be engaged! Be present! Pay attention! Notice! That’s a good first step. Then refine your practices into the six different areas of the Orchestral Model™, like an athlete working on muscle groups or a musician working through different progressions.

And when call comes from Carnegie Hall, you’ll be ready.

I was struggling with my scenes in this week’s class, then had a little breakthrough in the last scene I did (we do dozens of scenes per class). The difference came about when I began by listening instead of thinking.

“Listen, then think,” says Miles. “Don’t try to make sense of the situation. Interact with it by listening.”

Here’s what happens when you think first instead of listening first:

You begin having a conversation about what’s in your head instead of about what’s in the scene. And because neither your scene partner(s) nor your audience can hear what’s in your head, you’re having a conversation with yourself, which distances you from the scene instead of engaging in it. You’re having a conversation with yourself.

Here’s what happens when you listen before thinking:

You can use your intellect to serve the scene (by doing something smart that propels the scene and makes your partner look good) instead of letting your intellect use you (”I am the smartest person in the room and here’s proof”). You’re having a conversation with reality.

Thinking is the ego talking; Listening is the world talking.

Listen. Then Think. That is the order of the opportunity in any scene you’re in.

It does, however, get a lot more complex, and in a hurry.  Here’s why:

In selling scenes, the customer plays two roles:  Audience and Scene Partner.  You, as a seller, co-create your selling scene with your customer as your scene partner.   He or she will then, stepping into the role of your audience, pass judgment on your performance.  Thumbs up or thumbs down?  Worth the price of admission or not?  Good collaboration or rocky relationship?  Will you generate positive word of mouth or negative reviews?  Your earnings depend on how your performance is received.

There’s no script for these scenes–at least not one your customer is going to be memorizing and reciting verbatim anytime soon.  You’re going to be improvising.  And this is a fact:  The best salespeople are the best improvisers.

Here are some ways in which good salespeople collaborate with customers on scenes that get a thumbs-up from those same customers:

They keep their scenes lively. They keep the dialogue moving along at a productive tempo.  They yes-and promptly.  They heighten by upping the tempo, the emotional pitch, or both.  They add useful information.  They perform with the awareness that a ‘dead spot’ in the scene now will be judged harshly by the customer-as-audience later.

They make their customer the hero of the scene. An improvisational salesperson is a Sherpa to the customer with some kind of allegorical mountain to climb.  The sales Sherpa has useful knowledge.  Charts a practical course to the summit.   Reads the weather.  Calculates the odds.  Comes well-equipped.  The sales Sherpa gives the gift of support, and in doing so, makes the customer look good.  The role of the sales Sherpa is not the same as playing a second-banana, a sidekick, a best friend, a wing man, a femme fatale or a fall guy.  These are Hollywood movie roles.   The sales Sherpa is exactly what the name defines: a Sherpa.  It’s a Himalayan thing.

They listen. Wow, do improvisers listen.  They hear things the casual listener doesn’t.  They remember the nuances, and use the throw-aways.  They know that the most important conversation of the day may happen on an elevator ride between the first and sixth floors before a sales presentation begins.  They listen with more than their ears.  They observe with all the senses.   And then, maybe then…they speak.   They understand that being silent and being mute are two completely different things, and that sometimes one sees more with one’s eyes closed than with them open.

They respect environment. In selling scenes, you, the seller, are usually a visiting performer in someone else’s theater.  In many ways, the ‘theater’ of a customer’s company is like any other theater.  Theaters have traditions and history that must be respected.  They are influenced by politics and patronage and star players with competing agendas.  They are invariably facing some kind of financial threat.  They are only as good as their last hit, and they have ridiculously high hopes for the next project.  They can be half-looney with romantic intrigue.  The improvisational salesperson sees and respects the arena in which the customer operates.  When performing at the Apollo, touch the Tree of Hope.  When visiting Ireland, kiss the Blarney Stone.

They build relationships. Relationships are the basis of all improvisation.  The relationships between players, between players and environment, and between players and audience, are all intertwined.  The best way to move toward a sale, to generate positive outcomes regardless of the circumstances, is to build and nurture these relationships.   Relationships will see you through the kinds of adversity, and capitalize on the opportunities, that no scripted sales program can predict or anticipate.

In selling scenes, the networked customer is a more potent player than ever.  He or she often knows as much about your product as you do.  Relationships with customers are frequently more sensitive, more fluid and more demanding than they were in the Industrial Age.  Customers use social media to converse frequently amongst themselves in scenes to which you, the seller, are not invited.  You can no longer impose your narrative on the customer, you’ve got to earn an invitation to participate in the customer’s narrative.

So be a Sherpa.  Know the mountain, and your customer will see that the climb is impossible without you.

A few years ago, I was asked by a network executive to videotape interviews with the alumnae of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, including Betty White.  The show had been off the air for many years but Mary clearly maintained her star status, and the rest of the cast deferred to her as such.  I, however, only had eyes for Betty.  Then, as now, she lit up the room with those smiling, sparkling eyes, and the sincere attention she gave to those around her.  Listening, I am more convinced all the time, is the secret to relating to the world, and Betty listens with the best.  Her ego does not get in the way of her reception, and as a result, her picture is always crystal clear.  What you experience is not the illusion of a human being, it is human.  It is not a portrayal, not a role.  It is true character.

After we had completed our interview, Betty and I had a chance to talk, and I got to tell her the one thing I really wanted to tell her, how my mom had been a big fan of hers since the Password days, and how she celebrated the relationship between Ms. White and her dream husband, Allen Ludden.  Then, on pure impulse, I asked Betty she’d mind calling Fern on my mobile phone and saying hello.  This was a no-no for someone doing my job, a line you did not cross, it was like kitchen help taking a seat at the dinner table.  But all I could think about was how happy Fern would be to get a phone call from Betty White.  “Of course I will”  Betty said.

Fern was not home.  The call went to voice mail.   Betty didn’t miss a beat.  “Fern, this is Betty White,” she said.  “I’m standing here with a handsome young man who claims to be your son, and he tells me you’re a Password fan.  That is so sweet of you.  We had so much fun on that show, didn’t we?…”  I don’t remember the rest of what she said, but I remember that the tone of her message was as if she and Fern were old high school classmates who hadn’t seen each other in ages.  Which, in a way, they were.

A couple of days later, the network executive called and the conversation eventually came around, as I figured it would, to the subject of the call I’d asked Betty to make to Fern.  “At first, I thought what you did was okay, and later I thought it wasn’t okay,”  said the exec.  She said she had no choice but to fire me.  I could not have cared less.  The happiness in my mother’s voice when she phoned to tell me about the voice mail from her BFF, Betty, was worth a thousand gigs.

I imagine that Betty White’s life has been a series of encounters just like this one, in which she has given the gift of herself, and treated her fans as her equals, her collaborators in a joyful conversation.  (”We had fun, didn’t we, Fern?”)  This is why she is still young and her world is still unfolding at the age of 88, and she’s hosting Saturday Night Live tomorrow night.

3 AM, French Lick (Indiana) Casino

I see this same spirit in my mother, who, at the age of 82, still lives on the farm in Indiana, quilts, bowls, plays bingo, gambles in Vegas, sings in the choir, gardens, cooks amazing meals, mows the huge yard and can drink with the young folks at the Shamrock Pub until closing time.  When I talk to her on the phone, she’s usually the one who ends the conversation because, hey, she’s got things to do and has to get going.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mother!  Break a leg, Betty!  We love you both!

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.)

A week before the event, the ten kids in the Drum Core got covered by three local TV stations as they rehearsed downtown at L.A. LIVE.  While we were waiting for the TV crews to arrive, one of the dads pointed out USC football coach, Pete Carroll, sitting on a bench near the entrance to the Nokia Theater.  He was with a couple of young assistants, texting on a Blackberry. I walked over to Pete and asked if he’d mind saying hi to the Life Drum Core.  “Sure.  Give me a minute,” he said, and went back to his Blackberry.

In a minute, he came over, talked with the kids, and got his picture taken with them.

And then Pete Carroll said something he did not have to say.  He said, “Have them come out to football practice one day and play on the sidelines.  Call my office and we’ll make it happen.”

We made it happen.  Last Saturday, Lonnie and five of the Drum Core kids attended a USC football scrimmage at the Coliseum and played on the sidelines while the USC football team practiced.  It was a good day for everyone involved.

You’d expect a successful coach like Pete Carroll to be solid on the fundamentals.  He is.  Let’s break it down like a football coach would break down a well-run play:

Understanding the game.  Carroll quickly picked up on the Life Drum Core game.  These are students who don’t have music or arts programs in their schools.  Professional artists and musicians like Lonnie donate their time to give the students art and music instruction. It is project-based learning.   Carroll immediately understood the game and the players involved.  He got the concept that these are students who don’t have a school to schedule performances for them.  Their performances are, in a word, improvised.  This understanding of the game informed everything that happened afterward.

Teamwork.  Improvisation is not designed as a solo act or soliloquy.  It is most effective and teaches us the most when performed in groups.  Carroll, in effect, put the Life Drum Core ‘on the team’ for an afternoon.  While at the Coliseum, they were treated like members of the family.

Additions.   Because the group was formed to perform at Earth Hour, and would normally have disbanded after the event, Coach Carroll’s invitation made it possible for the scene, and the group, to continue playing for a surprising new reason.  Additions to a scene are great if they move the scene forward like this one did.  The Life Drum Core’s performance was, likewise, an addition to practice, a kind of gift from Carroll to his players.  More than one player came up to the kids and Lonnie afterward and thanked them.  “It really got me pumped up,”  offensive lineman Garrett Nolan told them.

Listening.  It was Carroll’s good listening skills that let him absorb what the Life Drum Core is all about, and act quickly and intuitively on that information. He could have gone into ‘pep talk mode’ and given the kids big-ups and left it at that.  Letting the kids and Lonnie do a lot of the talking gave Carroll his opportunity to add to the scene.

Environment.   Carroll had a ‘business objective’ in inviting the Life Drum Core to practice.  Their presence added to the environment he builds during scrimmages to simulate game conditions where sound is concerned.  As the team runs its plays, speakers on the sidelines are cranked up to deafening volume with crowd noise. Drummers pounding drums on the sidelines made the ‘hostile crowd’ simulation more realistic.

Working with Status.  As with just about every scene he’s in, Pete Carroll was high status in this one.  (Meaning he has more resources at his command, more prominence in the world than his fellow players.)  Now, high status players, whether it’s an arrogant athlete or a pompous CEO, can often be condescending.  Much of their focus goes to maintaining their status, and behaving in ways that call their status to other players’ and the audience’s attention.  (If you’re a football fan, think Terrell Owens.  If you’re in business, think every other manager you’ve ever had.)  As Pete Carroll showed, this does not have to be the case.  By listening and giving gifts as Carroll did, a high status player can confer status on other players in the scene.   This is not always productive for improv comedy where the objective is to make fun of arrogant atheletes and pompous CEOs, but in business and in life, it is always a powerful and productive move.  It’s the move Pete Carroll made.  He used his status to elevate the other players in the scene. (Speaking of which, note the book he’s holding in his right hand.  Thank you, Pete!)

In 2005, while getting his Masters Degree in Business Finance at Boston University, Patel discovered that information about solar power and equipment was not easy for potential users to come by.  He launched GoGreenSolar solely with the intention of providing useful information to his audience.  When the audience for this information grew, he added an e-commerce component.  By the time he got his graduate degree he was one of the solar industry’s most authoritative voices and had developed a brand that will sell over a million dollars of solar equipment online in 2009.

Patel is quick to point out that he launched GoGreenSolar.com with a) no intention of selling anything on the site;  and b) with full commitment to educating the market (and himself) about solar.

Deep Patel’s number one obligation to his brand (and the move that he ties most closely to its success in the marketplace) is to add information.  “I blog seven days a week,”  he says. “No matter what.”

An ‘Adding Information Strategy’ like this produces all kinds of positive outcomes.

It keeps the brand customer-focused.  There’s no better way to keep an audience engaged in your performance than telling them something they didn’t know.

It’s low-overhead.  Adding information costs less than just about anything else you can boost a brand’s performance in the marketplace.

Adding information also keeps the brand narrative fresh.   It is an evergreen move.  The currency of the information added, a relatively easy standard to achieve in a fast-growing industry like solar, ensures that the brand  is ‘alive’ in the minds of its audience.

It expresses confidence.  In an emerging field like solar energy, there’s naturally a lot of uncertainty and ignorance in the marketplace that can be exploited by ‘first in’ players.  Because its strategy is one of educating, not hyping, its, GoGreenSolar stays ‘manufacturer agnostic’, which makes the voice of the brand credible.   This credibility translates into customer confidence in what is being sold on the site.

It demonstrates the importance of conversations.  Deep talks to a lot of people, inside and outside his industry.  Those conversations bring perspective and insight to the information he adds.  Who is saying something (and where and when and why) are every bit as important as what is being said.

Conversations require good listening.  Listening yields suggestions from the audience that can be woven into the brand’s themes.

Adding information creates context.  That’s huge.  By adding information, Patel dimensionalizes the products on GoGreenSolar, until they are more than products, they are essential elements in a larger brand narrative.  In the Networked World where content is ubiquitous, context is king.  It is our ability to make sense of information, to add emotional and meta meaning to cosmetic data, to find patterns in the complex tapestries of life and the marketplace, that set our brands apart and distinguish us as communicators and as human beings.

Some of the clean-up work is so vast in scope, the banking industry shitstorm that shows so sign of abating , for example, or our crippling dependence on fossil fuels, that nothing short of a federal government strategy can begin to dig us out of it.

Every one of us, however, can find ways to support the clean-up work on a personal and practical level.  Cleaning house presents us with opportunities.   A chance to evaluate inventory, and eliminate waste.  It can be the impetus for a much-needed remodeling.

Here’s a GameChangers checklist for what to Toss and what to Keep as we clean up and remodel an economy that has been Skulled and Boned into the pathetic shape it’s in today:

TOSS:  Status games.  Business meetings and processes that are all about establishing who’s boss, who’s the Decider, about who has the last word or about stroking someone’s ego, should be sent to the dumpster.

KEEP:  Teamwork.  Meetings and processes that focus on ideas and objectives, in which players support one another and seek agreement instead of dominance, are needed across the business spectrum to rebuild this mess.

TOSS:   Cosmetic transactions.  When money is made by slicing up and repackaging debt without anything tangible getting produced in the process, the product is bad meat that would make even Bluto Blutarsky sick to eat it.  Get rid of the notion that manipulating data is a contribution to your community.  It’s not.

KEEP:  Emotional transactions.   Transactions that connect data to meaningful, emotionally resonant activity like education, energy independence, health care, or even getting people to sing or laugh, belong back up on the mantle.

TOSS:  Excess Consumption.  Having something may be a symbol of achievement, but it is no achievement.  Lots of people have things they did not earn.  Lots of people take more than they need.  Lots of people eat too much.   It’s time to take our focus elsewhere.

KEEP:  Production.  What one builds with what one has is a far better measurement of achievement than what one has.  What you build, not what you own, is how you make your mark in this new world.

TOSS:  Specific outcomes.  Locking into a specific outcome for a process will deny you and your team all the possibilities afforded by the endless matrices of the Networked World.  Burn your expectations and assumptions before they burn you.

KEEP:  Predictable results.  Business success demands a reliable, consistent performance in the marketplace, just as it always has.  the difference is that brands built for the new economy will focus on getting results, not outcomes.  Focusing on results instead of outcomes gives you and your brand exponentially more opportunities for success.

TOSS:  Preaching.  This housecleaning exposes the crooked preachers, biased pundits and smiling Ponzi schemers of the world.  Their word is not gospel, and the gospel is not their word.  Word.

KEEP:  Conversation.  Conversations, especially with people who see a situation from a different perspective than our own, result in the kinds of new ideas it will take to fix the new problems we face together.  From juicy conversations, juicy possibilities flow.

TOSS:  Rigidity.   How could we have kept it around so long?   It’s so ugly.  So poorly designed.  So stiff and uncomfortable.  Get rid of it!

KEEP:  Fluidity.  Ahh.  It fits every situation so perfectly.  It’s relaxing.  We’re so free to move.  Can’t live without it!

TOSS:  Scripting.  The script, along with the hoary concept of the scripted brand narrative, ran out of gas with the  ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ and ‘Mission Accomplished’ scenarios scripted by the Bush-Cheney team.  No script can keep pace with the fast flow of events in the Networked economy.

KEEP:  Improvisation.  In the Networked economy successful brand strategies don’t stick to a script, they align with themes.  By inviting players and audience alike to improvise (e.g. act entrepreneurially) on those themes, brands can build a consistently compelling narrative.

TOSS:  Dogma.  Believing that’s there’s only one way to look at a situation or solve a problem, or insisting that everyone on your team see the world the way you do, is deadly to the process and eliminates a lot of the potential for solving the problem.

KEEP:  Faith.  Every scene you’re in has the potential for greatness.  Believe it.  See it.  Live it.

One thing I always notice when I’m in a scene with Mark Johnson–the founder and President of JiffyGas and HConverters, complementary brands in the business of converting internal combustion engines to run on alt energy (hydrogen, nat gas, biofuels)–is how observant he is.  He notices everything.  When you’re speaking, he watches your hands, he glances at your feet, he looks you in the eye, he focuses on your thoughts even as they’re still taking shape in your mind.  When he speaks, he speaks with much more than the words coming out of his mouth.  Mark Johnson’s kind of communicating transcends spoken language.  Yes, words communicate, but only on the Cosmetic level.  It’s what accompanies those words on the Emotional and Meta levels that has the power to change the game.

When Mark visited Los Angeles last month, and I got to watch Edwin and Armando, the whiz-bang mechanics he’d flown in from Colombia, convert a six-year-old Lexus to run on hydrogen, spoken language was maybe the least effective communications tool they used during the two days it took to do the conversion.   There were four languages being spoken in that shop in Alhambra–English, Spanish, Chinese, and Italian if you count the Italian narration on a DVD promo for the converter kit that Edwin ran for us on one of his computers.  Sure, some spoken language was required.  But what made the scene go–what got the team on the same page–in improvisation terms, what created the Group Mind–were the elements of communication that transcended words.   Here’s where Johnson’s genius as a communicator was clearly in evidence.

He uses humor.  Johnson  knew what his team would find funny and didn’t hold back from expressing it.   Let’s just say that the humor was ’street-level’, and Johnson was fluent.  Edwin and Armando had never seen an American businessman pantomime some of the things Johnson pantomimed that day, and it kept the mood lively and productive.

Johnson engages all the senses.  How things feel, how they look (”This is grandma’s secret recipe, keeps the metal in the engine from embrittling.”), how they smell (”Let’s move away from here, they’re starting to run the smog check”), what they sound like (”Sounds the same when it’s running as a gasoline engine.”) are important.  He made a point of pointing out how good the coffee was.  Someone else in the garage got into the spirit, went next door and brought back a box of cream puffs.  They were delicious.  The dainty pastries in the grungy garage literally added flavor to the scene.

He speaks with actions.  Johnson did not stand still, nor did he retreat from the scene into his Blackberry or laptop, or confine his communication to the most language-friendly of the team.  He lugged hydrogen canisters.  Poked around under the hood of the Lexus.  Asked questions.  Viewed schematics with the mechanics.  He was fully present, and physically involved. “I don’t even care what you do.  Do something,” he says of the lagging progress in the U.S. toward alt fuels for transportation.  Exactly.  Do something.  It’s way more effective than just saying something.

He uses meta language.  This is the symbolism supporting your scene.   The hydrogen conversion scene in Alhambra was part of a much bigger cosmos of sustainable energy for transportation, and Johnson constantly reminded his team of that.  He knows what percentage of cars in the U.S. run on alt fuels now.  What percentage of cars do so in Colombia and Brazil, and Europe.  He knows the tax incentives for alt fuel investments.  Knows the manufacturers who make conversion kits, who’s moving petrodollars toward sustainable ventures, and where all the major car companies stand on alt fuel development.  This sense of participating in the greater movement, of being part of a larger community, gives meaning to the scene, and elevates its importance.

He listens.  When it comes to making a scene productive, nothing beats good listening.  It makes collaboration possible.  It honors your scene partners’ contributions.  It turns trivial details into significant opportunities.   Johnson’s talent for observation that I described above?  That’s good listening.

Most importantly, he communicates with emotion.   Johnson is anything but a blank canvas.  He paints pictures with emotions.  Every gesture conveys emotion.  He can be patient, excited, optimistic, indignant, generous, or whatever conveys the most meaning at any given moment. At one point, he turned to me and whispered, “Edwin and Armando would do anything to live in America.  They see this (JiffyGas) as their ticket.”  Emotions don’t run any deeper than that.  And communication does not get any more meaningful.

Mind you that none of this is performed theatrically.  It’s not done for the purpose of showing off, or to feed his ego by making himself the center of attention.  In general, Johnson presents a steadying, supportive presence.  Most of it what he communicates is subtle, or even understated.  But it’s always there, and it’s always working to move the scene forward.  (Johnson says his ‘recipe for success’ is “Curiosity, intuition and heads-down hard work.”)

Changing the game from the United States’ petroleum dependence to widespread use of alt fuels will take communication skills that transcend languages, cultures and geographic boundaries. On that day in Alhambra, I got a glimpse of what it will take.  The Meta name of the new game is ‘Mark Johnson’.

Barack Obama is an improviser.  His campaign, his platform, his history, draws on a spirit kindled in the same Chicago South Side neighborhoods where modern improv was born in the 1930s.

How does Barack Obama improvise?

He says “Yes and…” Like any good improviser, President Obama understands that agreement enables a scene to progress, and new, shared realities to emerge from it.  “I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all,” he writes in the preface to Dreams From My Father.   As an improviser, Obama understands that erasing the lines that divide us–enabling “Your situation” and “My situation” to  become “Our situation”  is what makes any kind of progress possible.

He Listens.  Every politician claims to listen to the voters, but what they mean is that they listen to what their pollsters tell them voters are saying, and script accordingly.  “I listened to people talk about their jobs, their businesses, the local school; their anger at Bush and their anger at Democrats; their dogs, their back pain, their war service, and the things they remembered from childhood,” Obama writes in The Audacity of Hope.  “Most of them were too busy with work or their kids to pay much attention to politics, and they spoke instead of what they saw before them: a plant closed, a promotion, a high heating bill, a parent in a nursing home, a child’s first step.”  An improviser listens and responds not only to the literal meaning of what is being said, but to the emotional meaning and metaphorical significance as well.  To the pollster and the scripted campaign, “a child’s first step” means child care legislation.  To Obama, it means starting down a new path, and whatever that first step down the new path means to you.  And me.

He explores themes.  By exploring themes instead of sticking to a script Obama runs a much more nimble, energetic and responsive operation than the scripted and toxic narratives of the Bush-Cheney years.  This ability to respond quickly and instinctively while remaining true to one’s themes is a quality we need in the President of the United States.  More important than that, it is a quality we need to discover and nurture in ourselves.

He performs with integrity.  Like all politicians, President Obama will be expected to play many roles.  A President plays a different role in front of the Joint Chiefs of Staff than he does in front of an auditorium full of children.  A skilled improviser like Obama has the ability to play these different roles, but always informed and supported by his authentic self, faults and all.  He has a sense of who he is, and how that’s different from who other people might want him to be, and even how it’s different from the person he himself might want to be.  “If you are paying attention,” writes Obama in The Audacity of Hope, “each successive year will make you more intimately acquainted with all of your flaws–the blind spots, the recurring habits of thought that may be genetic or may be environmental, but that will almost certainly worsen with time, as surely as the hitch in your walk turns to pain in your hip.  In me, one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me. It’s a flaw that is endemic to modern life, I think–endemic, too, in the American character–and one that is nowhere more evident than in the field of politics.”  This can only have been written by an improviser.  You acknowledge the bad with the good, your strengths and your weaknesses, and you bring it all with you, to every performance.

He sees himself as part of an Ensemble.  The narrative form defines who the star players are, and who plays the supporting roles.  It identifies heroes and villains.  Improvisation, by contrast, calls for an ensemble, in which everyone has the potential to be a star or a supporting player, depending on the situation.  In the ensemble, our fate is shared, we succeed or fail together.  Obama’s ability to see himself as part of a vast ensemble of Americans qualifies him in yet another way as a stellar improviser.  “For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we are all connected as one people,” he said in his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.  “If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief– it is that fundamental belief–I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sisters’ keeper–that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: ‘E pluribus unum,’ out of many, one.”

We elected Barack Obama for the same reasons that believers in equality and liberty voted for Lincoln; for the same reasons immigrant families sided for Franklin Roosevelt, for the same reasons dreamers voted for John F. Kennedy and marched with Martin Luther King; because he describes a future we believe in.  A future that makes things better for succeeding generations.  A future where opportunity outwits defeatism, and hope overwhelms despair.

President Obama understands that no one script, no single narrative, can carry us there. If there is one idea that will guide this administration, one neverending avenue for productive behavior, it’s the understanding that the future we share will, as always, be improvised.

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.

Because they improvised instead of slaving themselves to a script, Obama and team were quicker to act on opportunity. They consistently made better, faster and more authentic decisions than their rivals. It is one thing to be smart, but what difference does it make if you don’t act smart? Obama and team showed how improvisation marries intellect with action. This resulted in breakthrough processes for organizing and raising money, and creative solutions to whatever problems they faced along the campaign trail.

It is no coincidence, to me, that Obama lives in the same Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago where modern improvisation was born in the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression. In Chicago, improvisation isn’t just some thing the artsy-fartsy folks do, it’s a way of life, a fixture in the cultural firmament. A lot of people taking improv classes in Chicago at Second City or I.O. or Comedy Sportz treat it like night school, almost like it’s getting an extra degree that will help them in whatever their walk of life. Obama is one of the best examples ever of how improvisation works outside the confines of theater comedy–how it improves job performance, and has the power to transform the status quo.

Obama listens and communicates on multiple levels, which makes his message extra resonant for his audience. He changes status depending on the scene he’s in without ever losing his essential character, what makes Barack Obama Barack Obama. When he’s with generals he’s leaderly, when he’s with children he’s fatherly, when he’s on the court he’s lefty, and it’s always through the truth of who he is. He’s not posing, acting, or going for effect, or a photo op, or a big move. He’s doing the best he can with what the scene has to offer. That’s improvisation.

He acts on the reality of the scene he’s in, not on some fantasy scenario he’s trying to make come true (see ‘Mission Accomplished’). When, on a blistering summer day in North Carolina during the presidential race, a woman in the audience fainted from the heat during one of his speeches, Obama took one look at what was happening, stopped his speech, and with no hesitation called it to the security team’s attention then reached into his podium for his water bottle and tossed it to the crowd to give to the woman. “They’ll be okay,” he said, in a reassuring voice. It was the most genuine, most helpful thing anyone in his position could have done in that situation. It was not a big deal. It was just the best possible move at that particular moment. That’s is how an improviser rolls. It is not a big deal. It is a lot of little deals, done consistently, with 100% focus and commitment. And these have the potential to add up to a big deal. A really big deal in the case of Obama’s election.

During his campaign he staked out huge and momentous themes–Hope, Change, Equality–and then liberated his team and the voters themselves to explore those themes in as many ways as possible. This meant that Brand Obama could deliver a much livelier narrative than the McCain Brand, which lurched from one lame scripted event (Palin) to another (ride to the rescue on the bailout plan), confusing the audience and the candidate alike.

After January 21, the Obama administration’s ability to riff on big themes will continue to liberate good ideas and innovative thinking to the benefit and betterment of the U.S. and the world. Economic transformation on the massive scale it’s needed cannot be scripted like some Olympic Opening Ceremony. It must be improvised.

They are off to a banging good start in naming people to his team, a ‘team of rivals’, it has been called, echoing what Lincoln said about his own cabinet. The cluckers are already clucking about how hard it will be for Obama to ‘manage’ such strong and independent personalities. To an improviser, it is the most natural thing in the world. Synthesizing different, often radically different, points of view to achieve an objective is what improvisers do.

There is a saying in improvisation, Follow the Follower. This is what Obama means when he says to voters that he’s representing their will, embodying their energy, pursuing their happiness. Pundits have described this as a new kind of leadership, but I believe it’s more accurate to say that Obama’s got outrageously good listening skills. Sometimes it’s necessary to lead, but the best improvisers, like Obama, are the best at following. They raise the level of their own game by raising the level of everyone’s.

On the emotional and meta levels, the levels of communication that matter most, there was only one campaign promise made by Barack Obama. It was not a plank in his platform, but it was implicit in everything the campaign said and did. It was a promise that Americans will all become a little better, a little stronger, a little more improvisational in our own ways for having him as President. We believe it has already happened, is happening, and will continue to happen on an ever-broadening scale, as more and more people — not only in the U.S. but all over the world — get attuned to the new game and start playing along.