And while I question how strong one actually has to be while going to college in San Diego and living in a place with your buds down on Pacific Beach…

It does not detract from the wisdom of the advice. My father, the single best improviser I’ve ever known, had a way of boiling things down to their essence. He was a teacher who often had no idea what he was teaching. He was just living his life, going about his business, sharing what he discovered along the way. And one of the things he shared to great effect was the idea of being strong — in character, in focus, in action — in everything you do.

Which is why, in studying improv at I. O. West, when the teachers would stress the importance of making strong choices, there was a sense of deja vu about it all. Aha, right! I knew this, sure I did.

My father: When you dig a post hole, dig the living daylights out of it. Give me that post hole digger and let me show you how. (Cue violent attack on earth with hand digger by man wearing straw cowboy hat.)

My improv teachers: If your group is playing the teeth in someone’s mouth, and you are a molar, show us your molar-ness! Grind! Ache! Masticate! Get pulled! Vote in elections!

Which brings us to…

GameChangers: When doing business in the Networked World, you have to make strong choices. Why? Because if you don’t, nothing else matters. Because the game will pass you by.

Characteristics of strong choices: They are made on instinct informed by knowledge. They can often arise from, or be accompanied by movement (e.g. getting on a plane, running up the stairs, making an investment, digging a post hole). They deal in emotional truths, not just cosmetic ones. Strong choices bring new and useful information to your scenes. Supporting your scene partners and giving them opportunities to shine is one of the strongest choices any improviser can make. (Note that ’strong,’ in the parlance of improvisation, does not mean the same thing as ‘dominant.’ Dominating a scene and your scene partners with the choices you make is not a sign of strength. It is a show of ego.)

Strong choices bring ultra-clear direction to your scenes and focus to your team. They demonstrate commitment to the brand, the cause, the organization. And whether you’re a bedouin or a webpreneur, you know that there’s too much data in the datastream for you to just daintily stick a toe in and take the temperature. If you do that, the opportunity or anomaly (leading to opportunity) you spot out there in the datastream will go sailing past and you’ll never catch up with it. You gotta jump into a scene like a base jumper going off the Tokyo Tower. If you don’t go when you get the chance, Security will tase you, bro.

All this contrasts with the more deliberate, machine-like behaviors of the Industrial Age, when wealth moved in sync with the physical activities of workers and manufacturing. With factories up and running, no one had to make strong choices. They didn’t have to make choices at all. Why bother? You could only get the smelters to smelt so much steel in a day. Workers became human lubricants in the gears of industry. Frictionless behaviors became the norm. Strong choices were dangerous, they could throw a monkey wrench into the whole works. Better to have a nice big fat lunch and a martini or two instead.

Today, wealth has the potential to move, sometimes recklessly, at the speed of thought. However fast wealth moves in your particular industry, it has definitely become unhinged in time from the physical realm. My money gets into Amazon’s account way before my merch arrives. Sometimes, unfortunately, a monkey wrench in the works can seem like the only option for slowing things down. But there’s good news for GameChangers: One of the singular benefits of improvisation is that it, too, moves at the speed of thought. Improvisation is the only business discipline that can keep up with the datastream!

Social networking creates opportunities for strong choices, for letting your fellow players know where you stand. So take it upon yourself to be like Nick O’Neill, whose self-funded, soon-to-launch new venture, Social Times, I just happened to link to today — and now my trademark lawyer will be attending his launch party in D.C. and the network will extend, and new wealth will surely ensue. It happens just like that when you make strong choices. They have a magnetic effect on your audience, including those who will someday become your customers.

Oh, and just for the record, I think my both my sons — and all my father’s grandchildren — will take his advice to heart, and be strong, and prepared for anything that may come their way. I am very excited about the possibilities presented by the Networked World, partly because I know they are, too.