Getting to "Yes And"

The Art of Business Improv

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

THINKING OUTSIDE OF THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE BOX

WHAT EXACTLY DOES IMPROVISATION have to do with business? Think about the major trends in the business world. Emerging technology continues to increase the speed of business. Moreover technology itself continues to change at an accelerated pace (Moore's Law purports a doubling of processing speeds every two years). Business now relies on instantaneous, 24-hour communication as well as remote access to vital information, and any business that has trouble communicating that way is considered to be at a severe disadvantage.

The global community — corporate, consumer, and geographic — is upon us, and adopting new methodologies for effective communication and collaboration must take place between and across cultures. Even within individual workplaces the potential for diversity in perspectives — the probability that those around us see things differently than we see things — is greater than ever before and must now be factored in to how business gets done. Put it this way: reacting, adapting, and communicating are not a matter of choice for businesspeople; they're a matter of basic survival. This has always been so, but in today's environment the stakes are higher.

The skills of focused thinking and rapid decision making that improvisation strengthens can easily be put to use in many of the day-today challenges in your competitive landscape: dealing with personnel demands, overcoming analysis paralysis, developing creative solutions, increasing general efficiency, handling conflict, managing crisis, encouraging adaptive problem solving, and fostering intrinsic motivation in others. The same skills that make for exceptional comedic improvisation — intense listening, focus, energy, engagement, teamwork, authenticity, adaptability — are skills that any businessperson can use to make positive changes in the workplace.

Beyond the scope of our rapidly changing workplace lies the simple truth that we are still human — creatures of immense gifts, and limitations — and we will always have to interact with each other on a basic, personal level. This need for human connection is very powerful and is the stem for the socially conscious Millennial. Improvisation is a powerful tool for fostering interpersonal communication, making connections and building strong relationships.

Corporate culture has become an ever more important focus in the business community. A slew of common buzzwords and phrases get thrown around whenever companies discuss the kind of corporate culture they're after: creativity, risk taking, innovation, flexibility, strong and supportive teamwork, empathetic connection, authentic leadership, and of course thinking outside the box. Everyone seems to agree these end goals are positive. However, using a tired phrase like "thinking outside the box" to pay lip service to the idea that creativity should be encouraged is not going to get the job done. If you want change and fresh ideas, then don't think about that same old box at all. The challenge for us businesspeople is not in coming up with catchier ways to describe our end goals. The challenge is in whether we actually know how to get to these end goals within today's corporate climate.

Do you know concrete steps to create a culture in which people are not afraid to fail and are not afraid to openly share ideas? Do you know how to instill trust and mutual support in your team? Do you know how to inspire an attitude of openness and acceptance in others? Do you know how to connect and engage with people quickly to build strong relationships? If you want to say yes, then improvisation can give you the tools to make it so. In the following pages we'll lay a foundation for the entire book by demonstrating how improv is used in business, describing the skill set necessary for improvising well, defining the barriers to successful improvisation, and examining the core concepts of divergent and convergent thinking.

Training Smart

To understand the way that improv will work for you, let's take a look outside the business world for a moment. In the world of professional athletics, competition has never been fiercer; long-standing records of achievement are constantly being broken. Athletes have responded to increased competition — and increased rewards for their success — by training harder, smarter, and ever more scientifically. The way athletes compete has changed and the great competitors accept the fact that there's now a premium on well-muscled bodies that operate at peak physical fitness. There are not a lot of pro athletes who look like Babe Ruth anymore.

Businesspeople, like athletes, must respond to the competition and challenges in their fields by training harder and smarter. Improvisation techniques work on the brain the same way physical exercises work on muscle groups. The brain that's been tuned and toned by improvisation may be capable of much quicker decision making; however, the speed of decisions is a side effect of the process. The primary, desired result of improvisation is not that decisions get made quickly; the objective is to increase the probability that a great decision gets made. At its heart improvisation is about better decision making, and in your case better decisions make for better business.

Let me contextualize this with a brief quiz: take five minutes to jot down your own barriers to creativity, collaboration, improvisation, and change. In other words what keeps you from being creative? What blocks collaboration from taking place? What impedes successful improvisation? What stops you from embracing change? If it helps to separate these four items and just focus on one of them, that's fine too! You will find that the barriers to creativity are likely the same as the blocks to collaboration, which are identical to that which keeps people from improving successfully and driving change.

So, what are the barriers? For most, the answers commonly start with

• Fear (of losing control, of uncertainty, of being wrong, of looking like a fool, of the repercussions of being wrong or right, of not being aligned with the boss)

• Organizational structure (bureaucracy, rules, rituals, space, silos, hierarchy)

• Status (the boss speaks first, so you follow what the boss says; one or two vocal people dominate the meeting with their version of the right answers)

• Time

• Money

• Insufficient motivation ("It's not my job")

• Personal biases (previous success, complacency, status quo bias, "If it's not broke, why break it?")

As you will learn, the tenets of improvisation can be used to remove these barriers. Individually, improvisation is going to allow you to defend against all distractions and bring a laser-like focus to the task you...