I sometimes answer business-related questions on LinkedIn that can be addressed with the principles of improvisation. This is one in a series of responses that was deemed ‘Best Answer’ by the questioner…

THE QUESTION: I have to run a workshop for a top management team that has recently adopted a new highly matrixed structure. As a result, there is a challenging amount of interdependence and ambiguity. While they have an understanding of the structure, very little work has been done on how it will operationalize, what operationalizing it will mean etc.

One of the activities I want the group to undertake is a scenario building exercise where they will build potential scenarios that will arise in the future, and then based on the scenarios, evolve in advance, an appropriate response to the scenario.

I have never run a Scenario Building activity before. Would appreciate if you could share:

a. A process for how to run it
b. Tips/Techniques
c. Do’s/Don’ts
d. Any other advice/input

Thanks in advance!

Gurprriet Siingh

THE ANSWER: The ‘highly matrixed structure’ you describe, Gurprriet, is in fact one small subset of a much more complex environment in which this management team will perform — and that is the Networked World. Because of the fluid, incredibly complex nature of these networks-within-networks, it is both impractical and impossible to run scenarios that can accurately predict any particular outcome. By the time you have created the scenario, run the scenario, analyzed the outcomes, then ratified and codified the outcomes, the environment will have changed, rendering the results irrelevant and passe’.

So what does Gurprriet Siingh do? The esteemed Mr. Siingh teaches his management team how to improvise! Improvisation techniques enable any team of collaborators like your management team to arrive at spontaneous and original solutions to problems. These techniques, developed over the past eighty years, invite full and authentic participation by all the players, honor individual contributions while respecting the group dynamic, and explore themes that are consistent with the organization’s brand.

Do not try to anticipate ’scenarios that will arise in the future’. Instead, focus on shared objectives, and, using improvisation techniques, give your group the confidence in their ability to collaborate successfully no matter what scenario arises. It is not a group’s ability to perform in expected ways that generates wealth…it is a group’s ability to perform in phenomenal and anticipated ways that brings fresh perspectives and fresh value to the brand.

Do ave the group study the first 100 pages of Viola Spolin’s book Improvisation for the Theater. There are also many other worthwhile books about improvisation in business, including my own, GameChangers — Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, but Spolin’s book is where it all begins. The tips and techniques in these books will change the way your team views the very nature of work, and how wealth is created in the new edge economies.

Do begin with the fundamentals of improvisation — games and exercises that break communication down to its most elemental levels. Do encourage the team to communicate on three levels — Cosmetic, Emotional and Meta. Do create an environment for learning rather than trying to teach anything specific. Don’t script. Don’t judge. Don’t try to do it yourself — bring in an improvisation coach or theater director to help you! d. Be playful, but be serious about it. People can have fun and learn a lot at the same time. Good luck!

Rory Fanning served in the Army Rangers in Afghanistan with Pat Tillman. Today, Rory is in Tennessee, on an east-to-west walk across the U.S., to raise money for the Pat Tillman Foundation, and to honor one of his heroes. You can follow Rory’s long walk at walkforpat.org.

Here is an excerpt from a recent blog on Rory’s site, taken from a radio interview he’d done along his walk, in which he’d been asked by the interviewer to tell a Pat Tillman story: Continue Reading »

Their ad buy has obviously changed, because even though they’ve been on TV somewhere for most of 2008, all of a sudden, the Shamwow late-night TV spots are intersecting with our networks. In honoring the host of the Shamwow commercial, Vince Offer, with October’s ‘Gamey’, we honor a couple of great American traditions: Late night TV spots made on the cheap but with an aesthetic we have come to appreciate as its own kind of pulp genre…and the pitchmen moving the merch. The ginzu knife demo’ers and the guys who suck bowling balls with vacuum cleaners and Suzanne Sommers, and Richard Simmons, and Ron Popeil and Ed McMahon, and Vince McMahon and Jim McMahon — there should be a special wing in the TV Hall of Fame for these characters, and for their fictional counterparts like Willy Wonka, Willy Loman and Professor Harold Hill. Vince Offer, wearing the headset that is just as mandatory to a boardwalk hawker like him as a face mask is to a hockey goalie, is a classic of the breed. Continue Reading »

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: Continue Reading »

I sometimes answer business-related questions on LinkedIn that can be addressed with the principles of improvisation. This is one in a series of responses that was deemed ‘Best Answer’ by the questioner…

THE QUESTION: How do you feel about your career?

In June 2000, I felt incredibly “not good” about my job working as account manager for a firm voted as one of the 50 best managed firms in Canada. Even though I was surrounded by wonderful coworkers and supported by the best boss I ever had, I felt intuitively, without being able to explain it, that I was not in my “right” place.

So I committed what could only be called “career suicide” and began an exciting journey to find my true self. Took me 5 years to figure out I truly wanted to become a creative knowledge writer!

What I’ve learned is that one’s inner guidance (which is mostly emotional) cannot fail. Hence, my question above. Continue Reading »

John Culhane, a Rockford, Illinois-born journalist, author, and the model for the character of Mr. Snoops in the Disney animated film, The Rescuers, met his wife, Hind Rassam, a native of Baghdad, Iraq, when he reviewed her in a student performance of Antigone. John and Hind fell in love and had two sons, T. H. and Michael.

It is no surprise that the Culhane boys are born performers, a couple of very animated characters.

Once, as part of a story John did for the New York Times Magazine, he and the boys enrolled at Ringling Bros. Clown College in Sarasota, Florida, and T. H. and Michael became the youngest clowns ever to perform with Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey big show. Continue Reading »

Heather Champ, the Director of Community for Flickr, was the subject of Chris Colin’s Sept 29 On the Job blog on SFGate. Ethan Bauley, social networking entrepreneur for the online marketing company, M80, sent me the link, as he often does when business improvisation makes news.

Heather Champ and her team at Flickr improvise for a living. A big part of their job, according to the article is deciding whether certain photos belong in Flickr or not. The guidelines are not etched in stone. In fact, aside from a few Flickresque sayings like ‘Don’t forget the children,’ guidelines hardly exist at all. Rulings by Champ and her team arise more from the dialogue they have about an issue than from strict black-and-white policies. Policies are riffs on a theme; the rules of the game can change from scene to scene. Continue Reading »

I posed this question to my LinkedIn network:

What is the most improvisational (resourceful/agile/engaging) organization or individual you know, and how has this benefited them?

The most compelling response came from Jesse Silver, a visual effects artist who’s a friend of mine:

EMAIL #1

My candidate would be my nephew, Nate. After an A+ academic training, which included the Wharton School Of Business, he stepped away from the rarified world of international finance to pursue his love, baseball. Not as a player exactly, but as one of the most recognized authorities in the world on fantasy baseball. He’s a published author, writes a newspaper column, and is a partner in an online fantasy baseball site, which uses programming that he created to figure the various odds and combinations. Continue Reading »

I’m hearing it from all over these days, so it must be official–the word ‘gamechanger’ has broken into the popular idiom. Why, I remember back in the day when it was just Pontiac Motors, A. G. Lafley of P & G, a few sportscasters, and me. Six weeks ago, William Safire wrote about the etymology of ‘gamechanger’ in his NY Times column. Now it’s everywhere, especially in politics. I must have heard the words ‘game’ and ‘change’ used together a dozen times last night in relation to the presidential debate.

This morning, my friend David LaPlante (if you want to read something beautiful, see his most recent blog entry) sent me a link to a CNN story and headline:

Here’s my response:

Candidates and media use the word erroneously, as CNN does in this story, when they refer to an EVENT as a gamechanger. A gamechanger is PERSON with the ability to change the game. Like you : ) A gamechanger can also be a brand, as in the focused, networked behaviors of a group of people who share business objectives. Continue Reading »

Lesley Stahl did a report last night on 60 Minutes about the development of electric cars in Silicon Valley and by the American auto industry in Detroit. That was the cosmetic level of the story.

On the more meaningful, emotional and meta levels of communication, Stahl’s piece depicts a clash between two mighty cultures, and ultimately between two different ways of conducting one’s business. One of them is highly improvisational. The other is rigid, scripted, dogmatic. Over the past 30 years, Silicon Valley’s ability to improvise has enabled it to lead the world in the development of new technologies and the markets for them. The heavily-scripted and stage-managed Detroit performance has for the most part been a multi-car pile-up on the Interstate, like a series of scenes from Gone in Sixty Seconds. Continue Reading »