Improvisation is the bedrock of my life. It affects how I behave, work, parent, communicate, and create. It wove itself into my DNA because the moment I learned about improv, I realized that anything was possible. And my serendipitous life path is a reflection of that improviser’s belief in every possibility.
I’ve lived several lives, and all of them have been in the midst of innovators. Whether I was creating theater in the moment on the improvisational stage, working on the front lines of the Internet revolution, or developing scientists and engineers as a consultant, I’ve had the good fortune to watch innovation happening. And what struck me, over those decades of observation and participation, was that innovators behave in special ways. When I was immersed in teams of innovators, I admired their utterly natural ability to deal with dichotomy, prepare, play, and think upside down. However, when I would move to a group or corporation bound up in old patterns of thought and action that quality vanished; I found the difference alarming.
The good news is that even those groups who were not working well together could learn. They could grow, develop, and change their patterns of behavior to be more creative and innovative—and those changes came from embracing improvisational techniques. I’ve worked with pharmaceutical scientists who wanted to accelerate their fuzzy front-end work on new drugs, technologists who needed to get their breakthrough idea to market, and executives who had to get their teams working and innovating together. This book is the outcome of those many experiences across myriad industries and teams.
My company, ImprovEdge, has created training and development for Fortune 1000 employees and executives since 1998 using the principles of improvisation, paired with research in psychology, human behavior, and neuroscience. Corporate leaders and teams have applied those practices to great success, becoming more flexible, creative, and innovative.
I first learned to improvise as an undergraduate at Yale. Soon after, I trained with the Second City of Chicago, performed and started my own troupes, and had a wonderful acting career in TV, film, radio, and the stage. I zigzagged at one point, taking eight years to stretch and challenge myself by working in the network engineering industry. I’m not kidding! Yes, a liberal arts–educated actor can go to work in IT. (And if I can do that, then I’m sure you can improvise.) I helped startups go public or be acquired, and although I was taking tech classes and cramming every night, I continued improvising during the day. Those techniques allowed me to be flexible, creative, collaborative, and more successful than I ever imagined possible.
These incredible experiences also led me to create content—from narratives of what is possible, of what works best. The Yes! Deck is a toolkit I developed comprising 29 cards full of tips, ideas, and exercises for trainers and managers (you’ll see examples of these exercises at the end of many of the chapters in this book). I also wrote two books, The Improvisation Edge: Secrets to Building Trust and Radical Collaboration at Work and Be the Best Bad Presenter Ever: Break the Rules, Make Mistakes and Win Them Over, which is an award-winning book published in four languages. Those books allowed me to dive deeply into team dynamics and personal development. They’ve inspired thousands of people to behave differently, take risks, and throw out old conventions to emerge as more effective individuals and teams. And that theme kept driving me to wonder, “What’s the next, most important application of this work?”
We must innovate. And I believe that the behaviors of improvisation can directly drive our ability to continue to evolve and improve. There are such pressing issues of global technology, science, health, and welfare at stake as we fly into the 21st century—and with everything moving so quickly, we have to approach this with flexibility, humor, and focus. We need to innovate as improvisers.
This book on innovation came about through my relationship with ATD, which has hosted many of my presentations on innovation and improvisation at conferences and encouraged me to share my blog posts and webcasts with its members. That excitement led to this book, in which I intend to inspire you to engage in improvisational behaviors to drive innovation in your life and work.
So where does innovation come from? The front lines—the everyday interactions that create small “Eureka!” moments. But many companies and individuals struggle with managing those early ideas. For example, my company once worked with an insurance client that realized great ideas from its call centers weren’t bubbling up. Many of those front-line professionals had unusual ideas about how to serve customers better and more quickly. Unfortunately, whenever they tried to introduce those ideas, they received negative responses from their managers: “We’re too busy right now.” “No, we have to follow the scripts and protocol.” Or worst, “That’s above your pay grade—could you get back to work?”
The alarm bell for this company really went off when one frustrated employee took her idea to a competitor. It saved the competitor between two and 10 cents per call, which over thousands of calls is a significant savings. The idea had been formed in my client’s call center, but because the employee received no support and didn’t feel valued or like a real member of the team, she left, taking her innovative idea with her.
If her manager had only improvised a bit when she introduced the idea, that story might have ended differently. The innovation could have stayed in house. And more important, a valuable member of the team could still be working there.
There are many methods being touted out there to drive innovation, so what does improv bring to the table? By changing the way we interact with our teams, so that we wrap in the simple rules and behaviors that come from the improvisational stage, we can effect incredible change and innovation in our work and lives. Innovation comes from positivity, acceptance, a willingness to take risks, and the courage to apply creative ideas. Those obvious behaviors that affect corporate innovation are the same that apply to improvisation.
We are all improvisers. Although we may believe that we are set in our ways and don’t handle change well, we actually all have to improvise every day. With this book, you will not only understand how improvisation works, but also be able to use its techniques, secrets, and behaviors to be more innovative in your own life and work.