Posts Tagged ‘Scenes’
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011
Last week, Forbes ran a column by Glenn Llopis that poses the question, ‘Is Leadership Irrelevant?’ The unwritten follow-up question probed though not fully answered in Llopis column, is, ‘If leadership is irrelevant, what can take its place?’ This is an issue that comes up all the time in conversations with executives. People understand that their model of leadership is broken, yet they don’t really know what can take its place.
'A Captain of Industry' by Graham McKean
I don’t think it’s a matter of anything ‘taking leadership’s place.’ What are we going to do, remove the word from the dictionary? Are we all going to wait around for someone else to make the first move? (Oh wait, that’s what happens now.) What leaders can do is adapt to a business environment that is different than the one that shaped the textbook definitions of leadership. This environment moves faster, with more, and more fleeting, opportunities for a generation of restless, tech-savvy players entering the global workforce. To prosper in this environment, leaders and the companies under their guidance must adapt. This is not a one-time only thing, adaptation is not a new program that that can be taken off a shelf and ‘acquired.’ It’s a way of life.
We call this new model of leadership Flexible Vision. Naturally it is informed by the principles of improvisation, among them:
Take care of yourself first. This is a phrase popularized by Chicago improvisation master, Mick Napier. It doesn’t mean be selfish, as in ‘get your golden parachute packed, and don’t worry about where the plane is going because you’re jumping off before it gets there.’ Not that. It means come prepared. Have a take. Be someone. Stand for something. Rock your style. What your style is doesn’t matter nearly as much as whether or not you rock it.
Begin with listening. How can you contribute to the conversation if you don’t know what the conversation is about?
Follow the follower. This is a Viola Spolin concept. The narrative was going on before you entered the scene, and it will continue after you’re gone. Don’t ‘try to make things happen.’ Connect with what’s already happening.
Let go of status. In the old leadership models, status followed a person from scene to scene. If you were the CEO that was your role, and you played it in every scene you were in. This model forced a lot of managers into a mode of pretending to know more than they actually did, to feign authority in subjects with which they were not familiar, just to preserve their status. These ‘false narratives’ are a big inefficiency in any organization clinging to old leadership models. Improvisers, by contrast, change roles and status freely from scene to scene. Though your title is ‘The CEO,’ your roles can be ‘Student,’ ‘Fearless Explorer,”Arbitrator,’ ‘Cheerleader,’ etc. Adaptive leaders adjust their role and status to fit the scene, not the other way around. And the higher a person’s rank in the company (however that is gauged), the more adaptive that person can be, because the range of roles he or she can play is wider than that of a lower-ranked person, e.g. a new employee.
Give gifts. This is the phrase improvisers use for supporting one’s scene and one’s fellow players. In improvisation, giving gifts is the most productive move there is. Those who do it most consistently? Those are our leaders.
'Made for Each Other' by Graham McKean
Tags: Environment, Forbes, Gen-Why?, Glenn Llopis, Is Leadership Irrelevant, Leadership, Mick Napier, Scenes, Status, Viola Spolin
Posted in Environment, Gifts, Issues, Leadership, Listening, Narrative, Networked World, Scenes | No Comments »
Monday, January 10th, 2011
The extraordinary improviser, Paul Vaillancourt, gave me a list of sayings that have been compiled and passed around the improv theater community over the years. The great teachers Mick Napier and Del Close get some of the credit, as do Viola “The Godmother” Spolin and ImprovWorks’ Sue “Pond” Walden, though the exact origins of most of these sayings would be pretty hard to trace. What’s clear to anyone who explores improvisation is that the the meaning behind the sayings originates from the same place that accounts for such profound ideas as jazz, the Dao De Jing, Johnny Appleseed and Pixar Animation. Here is the fifth in a series (quotes in bold):
Play against cliches. First, play with the cliches of your business. You all know what they are. Name them. Call them out. Have some fun with them. And then go against them. There is a lot of movement in playing against cliches. Just doing this one thing can transform your scene into something delightful.
Think of the environment as a six-sided sphere, of which the audience is a part. What a brilliant way to determine your marcomm budget! It’s 1/6 of your total operating budget. Done. Next.
The environment also has an outside and an inside. This is a good way of thinking about how your brand’s environment travels with the communication that represents it in the networked world. Think of your network as a place. What is that place like? Who is walking the halls? How is it lit? What kind of art hangs in its offices? What does it sound like? All these concepts should be consistent and play off one another in virtual space and in reality. A friendly atmosphere in the office extends to the social graph. Artfulness will be apparent in reality and in virtual space. Clutter is as clutter does. Etc. etc.
You don’t have to try to be funny, laughter will happen just by being human. Being human is funny enough. A common misconception we battle all the time at GameChangers is that improvisation is all about being funny. So not true! Improvisation is about communication, learning, and transformation. It is only by a quirk of genetic fate—Viola Spolin’s son, Paul Sills, brought all the games Viola had conceived with him when he and Bernie Sahlins co-founded Second City—that we in the U.S. associate improvisation so strongly with comedy. Comedy is just a sliver of the output improvisation is capabl of generating. It’s like saying all ice cream Praline Pecan. Taint so.
Playful, direct, co-developed ideas, informations, and dreams will always be far hipper than one person’s alone. This is just a basic human algorithm. The best ideas of eight people will always be better than the best ideas of one person. Spare us your genius, and bring us something else. Your work ethic. Your brain. Your smile. Your song. Your sense of smell. Your experience. But spare us your genius. Because, you know…our stuff will always be far hipper than yours alone ; )
Tags: Additions and Edits, Behavior, brand, culture, Del Close, Gifts, job titles, Mick Napier, Paul Vaillancourt, reputation, Sayings, Scenes, Sue Walden, Vaillancourt's List, Viola Spolin, vision, Wisdom
Posted in Agreement Principle, Coaching, Communication, Education, Environment, Fundamentals, Movement, Networked World | No Comments »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
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. Even though the show had been off the air for many years, Mary was still the star, and acted the part. I, however, only had eyes for Betty. Then, as now, she lit up the room with those smiling eyes of hers, and the sincere attention she gave to everyone and everything. With Betty White what you get is not a role, not a portrayal of a character, it is real, it is true character.
After we finished our interview, I got to tell Betty the one thing I really wanted to tell her, how my mom, Fern Bonifer, back in Ireland, Indiana, was a huge fan, and had been since the days when Betty would guest star on the game show, Password, which was hosted by Betty’s husband, Allan Ludden. Then, on pure impulse, I asked Betty if she’d mind calling Fern on my phone and saying hello. This was a no-no for someone doing my job, a line you did not cross, and I knew it. I was like a kitchen worker 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. Damn. 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?…” It was as if she and Fern were old friends who hadn’t seen each other in ages.
A couple of days later, I got a call from an executive at the network, who told me how displeased she was that I’d asked Betty to call Fern. I could not have cared less, and I’m sure Betty wouldn’t have cared, either. The sound of my mom’s voice when she called to tell me about the voice mail from her friend, Betty, was worth a thousand network paychecks.
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 partners in a neverending collaboration (“We had fun, didn’t we?”) This is why she is still young and her world is still unfolding at the age of 90.
3 AM, French Lick (Indiana) Casino
I see this same spirit in my mother, who, at the age of 84, still lives on the farm in Indiana, quilts, bowls, gambles, sings in the choir, gardens, cooks amazing meals, and can drink with the young folks at the Shamrock Pub in Ireland until closing time.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mother! Break a leg, Betty! We love you both!
Tags: Age, Allen Ludden, Betty White, Character, Conversation, Dialogue, Fern Bonifer, Listening, Love, Mother's Day, Password, Roles, Saturday Night Live, Scenes
Posted in Character, Communication, Dialogue, Gifts, Listening, Scenes | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
When Toyota hit the icy patch in their narrative this January, they did not do what most organizations their size would do, they didn’t do what the Tiger Woods brand did when the Escalade hit the fire hydrant: huddle, confer, strategize, ponder, debate, script, re-write, close ranks, assume a defensive posture, call in damage control experts, and use all of it as an excuse for Not Doing Anything.
No, they improvised. And by that, I don’t mean they flew by the seat of their pants, or made it up as they went along. From the CEO on down, they jumped into the conversation with the audience and performed aggressively to build a narrative that countered the media hysteria around the recall and the ambulance-chasing members of the legal profession who fanned its flames.
This is what improvisation is. A conversation designed to connect the performers with their community. Not a monologue, a strategy, a script or a campaign. A dialogue. Observations and comments. Listening and responding. Action and reaction.
AdWeek this week highlights one component of Toyota’s conversation with the audience: a Digg Dialogg with Toyota’s head of U.S. Sales, Jim Lentz. One of the more telling beats in the article is how skeptical J.D. Power & Associates, the traditional arbiter of performance and quality in the automotive industry is about this tactic. They don’t see ‘movement’ in their polls, they say. The jury is still out, they say. What the J.D. Power people fail to grasp is that the conversation itself is the movement. The fact that it happened, along with untold other interactions between the brand and audience, constitute a flow of events that defy any one snapshot’s (i.e. poll’s) ability to capture its effectiveness. Trying to measure one data point in a narrative with a million data points is foolish. J. D. Powers is trying to apply old school metrics to a new school process. It’s like taking a poll about how people feel about Rings and using it to gauge the audience’s perception of Lord of the Rings.
No doubt there’s a major problem with Toyota’s process, the company has admitted as much. Its quantity got ahead of its quality. It began thinking of its audience as consumers instead of customers. It’s a big, big, issue, with immense implications for the brand. What’s impressive is that they didn’t let the immensity overwhelm them. They didn’t look for an epic solution to the epic problem. Rather, they began a journey of epic proportions., and they are conducting it one conversation, one scene, at a time. They are contrite, but they are not backpedaling, or wasting time deliberating. That would cause the narrative to lose its momentum. They didn’t script a narrative and then try to force it on the audience. They improvised, with the conviction that their journey will eventually re-connect them with their community, and win back its confidence and its applause for their performance.
Tags: Audience, Conversation, Issues, J. D. Powers & Associates, Legal, Lord of the Rings, Narrative, Recall, Robert Lentz, Scenes, Toyota
Posted in Branding, Communication, Dialogue, Issues, Listening, Narrative, Problem Solving, Sales, Scenes, Themes | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 8th, 2010
I speak occasionally to Steven Lisberger, who directed the landmark motion picture, TRON. Naturally enough, the conversation usually comes around to cyberspace and how, as Steven puts it, “TRON came true.” Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about the role of story and storytellers in the networked world. Steven has a way of boiling things down to their essence. Sometimes I call him Obi-Wan. Here’s some Jedi from our most recent conversation:
Lisberger and Me
“For most of mankind’s existence, our subconscious mind has been hidden. Now it’s on full display in the network. Everything you can dream of is there and accessible instantly. And the question is, what are we going to do with it?”
“People need a new way in.”
“If one aspect of work, access to information, has gotten infinitely easier, the laws of physics tell us that another aspect, one that maybe we don’t recognize yet, has gotten infinitely harder. We expect things to always get easier, but that’s not necessarily true.”
“On one side of the equation you have the swarm, the hive mind, whatever you want to call it. And on the other, you have all these tools, and this demand for productivity. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it will get revealed quicker. So you have to really know what you’re doing. The swarm has to be grounded in capability.”
“The network and the tools are amazing. If people learn how to use the network and the tools, they’ll be amazing, too.”
“One result of networks is the democratization of quality. When all content is pumped out and made accessible, it creates a kind of middling format. It leads to a common denominator effect. This is why elitism matters. Not just anyone can tell a good story, or create a good design.”
“Intellectual bullying perpetuates the wrong argument.”
“With improvisation, you can do a scene where one person plays the landlord and the other person plays the tenant who’s behind on the rent. Then those two people reverse roles, and from that process, you learn how to go about resolving the problem. In business, that never happens. No one switches sides or changes roles. If you play for the Blue Team, that’s the team you stay on. If you’re on the Yellow Team, you stay on that team, and you argue for that side. And you just keep on having the same argument, and it’s terrible, because nothing changes, and nothing ever gets resolved.”
“What you’re doing with GameChangers is fracturing and realigning the sides of the argument so that problems can get solved.”
“The subconscious mind doesn’t recognize time. It exists in a permanent state of ‘now.’ In this sense the subconscious mind is like a child, who doesn’t know anything but ‘right now.’ When the subconscious mind makes itself visible and instantly accessible in the network, and everything exists in a state of now, it breeds immaturity. We begin operating at the level of awareness of an 11 year old. Maturity is something you can only get to over time. It’s linear in that sense. The ethics and perspective that come with time and maturity are what’s missing in this environment.”
“Maturity comes from mastery in the physical realm.”
Tags: argument, ethics, hive mind, Improvisation for Business, Lisberger, maturity, Networked World, realignment, Scenes, subconscious mind, swarm, TRON, Work
Posted in Agreement Principle, Character, Group Mind, Issues, Narrative, Networked World, Scenes | No Comments »
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
Taylor Davidson (www.unstructuredventures.com) is one of a small group of evolved network business strategists with whom I have an ongoing dialogue. He’s been traveling cross-country for something like six months and predicts that he’ll probably stay on the road – Asia’s next — for another year. During the conference, our paths cross many times, always by serendipity. On the first day of the conference, he and I run into each other for the first time. We are are sitting at a table talking when Leora Israel (www.speaklike.com), comes up behind Taylor and gives him a huge hug. When he turns around, they realize they don’t know one another. Embarrassed, she says, “Oh, I thought you were Nick O’Neill, the back of your head looks like his.” A couple of days later, in a seminar on Entrepreneurship, Taylor and I meet Nick O’Neill himself (www.socialtimes.com), who’s one of the moderators. Taylor introduces Nick to me by telling me, “This is the guy who that girl thought the back of my head looked like his.”
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Intitiations, Leora Israel, Nick O'Neill, Scenes, SocialTimes, SpeakLike, Taylor Davidson, Unstructured Ventures
Posted in Entrances, Initiations, Scenes | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
The extraordinary improviser, Paul Vaillancourt, gave me a list of sayings that have been compiled and passed around the improv theater community over the years. The legendary teachers, Mick Napier and Del Close, get some of the credit, though the exact origins of most of these are as hazy as the roots of any folk wisdom. Here is the fourth in a series of sayings from Vallaincourt’s List, with my notes following. As you go about your business, keep these concepts in play: (more…)
Tags: , Additions and Edits, Behavior, brand, culture, Del Close, Gifts, job titles, Mick Napier, Paul Vaillancourt, reputation, Sayings, Scenes, Vaillancourt's List, vision, Wisdom
Posted in Additions and Edits, Branding, Communication, Emotion, Environment, Gifts, Issues | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
The most basic concept in all of improvisation is ‘Yes and’. If we are in a scene together and you make a statement, it is my obligation as an improviser to ‘yes-and’ your statement. By ‘yes-anding’ you, I not only agree to your reality, I add to it with perspective of my own. In this way, we can ‘triangulate’ on the problem to be solved, and also bring dimension, and new levels of collaboration to the scene.
The words ‘yes’ and ‘and’ do not have to be spoken literally, of course. It is the spirit of the phrase that matters. A common improv exericise invokes this spirit by having players begin every exchange of dialogue with those two powerful words, spoken literally.
If we are in a scene together and are ‘yes-anding’ one another, by the third line of the scene, it will not be about your reality, or my reality, it will be about our reality. Now we have the ability to work together toward an objective. It is the ‘and’ that makes all the difference. Anyone can say ‘yes’. It might get me a reputation as a being a positive person around the office, but it will not necessarily make me a productive player. (more…)
Tags: communicators, Crazy Town, Dialogue, entrepreneurs, Players, Positive, Productivity, reputation, Sales, salespeople, Scenes, yes, Yes And, yes man
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Entrepreneurship, Fundamentals, Games, Objectives, Sales, Scenes | 3 Comments »
Saturday, December 13th, 2008
Last night (Tuesday) at the USC President’s Dinner, we sat next to the director of the USC School of Journalism and got into a discussion about the need (we agreed) for journalism students to improvise their approach to their careers because–well, they really have no other choice. Journalism as it used to be is over. Journalism as it will be defined in the future is just beginning. The end of one story is always the beginning of another. By the end of dinner, it was clear that this conversation will continue soon and will probably come to include those USC students next semester.
Today (Wednesday) at breakfast, we sat in Manhattan Beach with two guys named Rick, one from L.A., one from Chicago, and mapped out how the movie studios can change the game with distributed production models made possible by a new broadband network called Darkstrand that comes online in January and can move data at 40 gigabytes per second. Darkstrand is the newly-privatized network that until now has been the exclusive domain of the Defense Dept. and university research scientists. See, the two Ricks were literally describing how to turn swords into plowshares. Or Disney shares anyway.
Today, we hung out in a garage in East L.A. with a friend of ours from Florida, a Taiwanese-American entrepreneur living in Santa Monica and two mechanics from Colombia flown in by our Florida friend to install an Italian-made hydrogen fuel conversion system called JiffyGas in a car originally manufactured in Japan. All the players in the scene had connected with one another via Google. Later this week, the friend from Florida and the two Colombians will do a JiffyGas conversion on a test car for NASA.
Before the end of the day we introduced the friend from Florida to an acquaintance from Denver who is a partner in iCAST, which creates jobs for impoverished communities in the U.S. and abroad. Next week, our Florida friend will talk to iCAST about how to build a jobs-creation scene with gasoline-to-hydrogen conversions as the game.
And now here you are. Welcome. Feel free to connect and play along.
Tags: , Chicago, Darkstrand, Denver, Entrepreneurship, GameChangers, Games, Hydrogen Fuel, iCAST, Innovation, JiffyGas, Scenes, USC School of Journalism
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Games, Networked World, Scenes | No Comments »
