I’ve had a few requests for a definition of Business Improvisation. The following was put together for a workshop at The Strategic Leadership Forum.
What is Business Improvisation?
Improvisation is the ability to access creativity in the moment and under pressure, to resolve or direct the resolution of a situation to meet your objectives. It is the ability to converge composition, creativity and execution to achieve success.
Creativity is defined as the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships and in doing so, brings forth meaningful and original ideas, forms, methods and interpretations.
Business improvisation is not “winging it” nor is it blustering your way through a situation. In fact improvisation is a skill that is mastered through preparation, practise and patience.
Imagine harnessing your creative energy at its highest and applying it to your most stressful and intense moments, to shine when others collapse or choke. Accessing that creativity by utilizing business improvisation would certainly be a significant competitive advantage and is already embraced and employed by many successful business people. The good news is that business improvisational skills can be learned behaviours and even better news – we are going to look at some of then now.
How Business Improvisation Works
A great analogy for understanding business improvisation is improvisation in music, also known as Jazz. In a typical jazz song, the musicians agree to play a particular song, in a specific key at an agreed upon tempo or speed. One instrument plays the ‘head” or melody to establish the song for the listeners. After the head is played, several musicians take turns playing improvised solos; at some point a musician establishes the melody again and the song ends. This is a simplified description of what is actually a very complex process.
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One of our team building events is called The GO Game, its a pervasive game (played in both a geographical location and on the internet at the same time) and is a lot of fun to play and even more fun to run. Corporations and Event Management companies hire us to create and run the game as a unique and interesting team building afternoon, but they end up getting a lot more from the learning perspective. The games include anywhere from 25 to 200 players in teams of 6 to 10 people, they run around in a public space and complete missions using a cell phone and a digital camera. Teams complete standard scavenger hunt/amazing race type missions but where the real learning (and fun) can be found is the very public creative missions. Imagine a team creating a digital work of art, maybe a movie or chorus line, at the corner of Yonge and Bloor. Teams also have to put their heads to together to figure out a clue extracted from an actor, perhaps dressed as a Ninja or a runaway Bride. They also have to capture it on video for the rest of the teams to vote on later.
Yes its a entertaining afternoon of team building but here’s the real value.
When you learn something (like how to think on your feet under pressure or rely on team members to be creative in a crisis) in the safety and comfort of a boardroom it only sticks so much. Learn the same lesson in the streets, in real life, in a potentially embarrassing situation, that you wouldn’t do on your own but what the hell the rest of the team is up for it, it sinks in! Its a step closer to reality. The combination of enjoyment and competition only adds to the stickiness, especially for a sales organization. Too much corporate learning is confined to safe controllable boardrooms, we need to do more training closer to where we work, but still in a safe enough place to make mistakes without consequence.
Pervasive Gaming Links:
The GO Game USA
IperG
Avant Game
I’ve been writing a white paper/article on Business Improvisation, which will be posted here and on our web site when its finally done. I’ve come across some amazing information and research while putting my thoughts together. The gem that caught my eye this week was some thoughts from Richard Sennett. He’s Professor of Sociology at the LSE and Bemis Professor of Social Sciences at MIT, (some creds) and has written several books around modern capitalism and how we interact with cities. Deep stuff, extremely interesting. You can find him on some BBC podcasts and a CBC “Ideas” podcast called “Flesh and Stone”, which is where I first learned of him. I was researching the fear of public speaking, which of course can be a big problem when teaching business people how to improvise. Sennett said that our western culture looks at public spaces or the outside of structures as a place for strangers, for commerce, for domination. Inside places are where the real value is kept. People do not not expect real engagement, interaction or real feelings to be exposed in a public space. We’re taught to close off anything valuable and protect it on the inside. He supports this view by looking at the development of architecture, religions, commerce and different cultures throughout history. To me this view answers a few questions on why people are reluctant to be real or take chances in public and why when someone is very real in that setting it has such an impact on us.
Its an interesting thought; the more real we are in our business transactions, the more we show our ‘inside’ in ‘outside’ situations, the more impact we’ll have on our customers and peers. Bring our inside to the outside.
CBC Ideas
Richard Sennett Wikipedia
