Improvise to Innovate

by Mary Crossan
Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business

My colleagues, Harry Lane and Rod White, and I didn't set out to work with an improvisational comedy group. After all, what does the ability to be spontaneously funny have to do with business, right? Well, we soon discovered that the similarities and applications were greater than we thought. Ironically, our partnership with The Second City Improvisational Company, famous for bringing such comedians as John Candy and Gilda Radner to our television screens, grew out of a rather offhand remark.

Several years ago, while presenting our research on organizational learning and strategic renewal, an audience member suggested that we were assuming that organizations had unlimited capacity to change and renew He suggested that perhaps they operated more like theatrical plays, which have a limited run and then close.

Intrigued by his observation, we began to think about theatrical plays as a metaphor for business. Indeed, many parallels exist: traditional theatre uses a script to guide the performance; sets, costumes and props to enhance the story line; actors selected for their likeness to the particular characters portrayed; and a director who provides the leadership to ensure that all elements support one another.

Except for their applause, the audience has no input into the performance. In business, the strategy operates like the script, guiding the organization's actions under the CEO's direction. In business, individuals are hired to fill particular roles, and numerous assets support the business activity. Unfortunately, many businesses allow customers about as much input as the audience of a play. Like many plays, such businesses usually have a limited run.

But improvisational theatre is the counterpoint to traditional theatre.

Improvisation uses no sets, costumes, props or script, and the actors play a variety of roles. The audience participates in the performance by providing input into the story line. Rather than directing the performance in the traditional sense, the director helps the actors reflect on the performance.

We extended our research in organizational learning and strategic renewal in order to investigate what it takes to improvise and how it differs from more traditional approaches. We studied improvisation, working with Second City to understand more about the craft. Soon the Ivey Business School and Second City were working together to provide the skills of improvisation to Ivey students and the business community

We discovered that not only does improvisation provide a way to understand what it takes to be spontaneous and innovative, but exercises used by actors to develop their skill can be adopted by business as a means to experience and enhance individual and organizational capacity to be innovative and responsive.

To capture the expertise we had developed, and to deliver it cost-effectively, Ivey and Second City created a joint venture to produce an interactive management video that simulates these workshops. In the video, actors/comedians Joe Flaherty, Jayne Eastwood and Cohn Mochrie of Second City play roles as employees of a company involved in just such a workshop.

Why Improvisation?

Arie DeGeus, a former senior planner at Royal Dutch Shell, suggested that the only sustainable competitive advantage for companies is their ability to learn faster than their competitors. Faster, better, smarter! We are no strangers to these '90s watchwords. However, the Nike slogan "Just Do It" is easier said than done. Recognizing that we have to do it doesn't mean we can.

What tools or technologies do we have that take us beyond the traditional skills of good management in order to do it faster, better and smarter? Certainly it is not simply more of the same. Not only do we need to be the best in terms of the traditional management skill set, but we need to add to these skills. Improvisation may be one way of thinking about and developing the new skills needed to succeed.

The last two decades have seen the rise of the strategic planner, and some, such as noted scholar Henry Mintzberg, have suggested the fall as well. Certainly planning has a place, but many companies have created an over-reliance on the planning process.
Planning involves long time horizons before any action occurs and involves much analysis in its development - few would describe it as a creative and spontaneous process. With the '80s came visioning - adding more creativity and intuition into the planning process. But planning still dealt with long time horizons. Some organizations, such as Royal Dutch Shell, have used scenario planning - a way of making the future clearer by playing out "what if" scenarios.

But faster, better, smarter suggests that we need faster cycle times and more innovative solutions. With faster cycle times comes a need to operate more spontaneously, impossible with the long time horizons needed for the traditional planning process. As well, we need more creativity and intuition applied to actions. Improvisation, with its key aspects of spontaneity of action and level of intuition offers a solution.

Henry Mintzberg's suggestion that planning has had its day was probably the result of his study of managerial work two decades ago. He found that about 90% of what managers do is quite spontaneous in nature. However, this doesn't mean that their actions are creative; much of what managers do is more like transacting. But if tomorrow is going to be better than today, then today's actions need to be more intuitive, creative and innovative.

Six areas to develop

Our research revealed six key areas that if developed would contribute to a manager's ability to improvise: interpreting the environment, crafting strategy developing individual skills, cultivating leadership, fostering teamwork and assessing organization culture.

1. Interpreting the Environment
The book Border Crossings, describes an Ivey Business School study about successful Canadian companies that had failed in their attempts to enter the U.S. market. The researchers found that a key challenge facing these companies was interpreting the competitive environment. They failed to see what, in hind-sight, were some clear signals. Karl Weick, a noted management researcher suggested that this happens because we tend to "see what we believe" rather than "believe what we see."

The challenge then is to go beyond our current way of thinking in order to see things differently In a recent Fortune article, "Killer Strategies," management guru Gary Hamel noted that it is often competitors from outside an industry who change the face of competition within the industry - precisely because they are not constrained by conventional views.

We tend to rely on left-brain analytical thinking when we are "put on the spot" because such thinking is familiar and easy to articulate. A premise of improvisation is that you can break traditional mindsets by relying more on right-brain or creative thinking. By carrying out contradictory actions, you can ease the natural tendency to shift into analytical mode.

A variety of improv exercises have been designed to enable individuals to experience this shift in thinking. For example, one exercise, called "Nonsense Naming," requires individuals to walk around the room quickly and give every object a name that is something other than what it is. This may sound easy, but spontaneously calling an object something different from what you have experienced all your life is difficult. Even when they do come up with a new name, people are often locked into viewing the object within a particular category - a table is called a chair.

Although such improv exercises are fun, they highlight a serious problem in business; if we have such difficulty calling a table something other than a chair, how difficult is it for companies to identify new competitors, different customer needs, or different ways of configuring how they get product to market? Even when individuals can break out of traditional mindsets, they often bump up against the organization, which is unable to deviate from a defined strategy.

2. Crafting Strategy Mintzberg made an important distinction between intended, emergent and realized strategy. Intended strategy is what we are all familiar with. The annual plan sets out how the organization will position itself within the competitive environment over the coming three to five years. It captures the organization's goals, the products it will offer and the markets it will serve, and hopefully will define the basis of its competitive advantage.

In contrast, emergent strategy, comes from the day-today activities of the organization. Today's business education cultivates skills that support the development of intended strategies. Improvisation builds on these skills to support the development of emergent strategies.

Ultimately, the organization's strategy is a blend of both intended and emergent. Unfortunately, many organizations don't have the capacity that will let strategy emerge. 3M is a notable exception; it's management actively encourages the development of new products, which they hope will renew the company's strategic orientation.

The equivalent of emergent strategy in improvisation can be seen in the way actors develop story lines spontaneously An exercise called "Make a Story" requires a group to build a story, one person at a time. The audience provides the story's title and type (a murder mystery or an adventure, for example).

A conductor leads the ensemble, pointing to one person at a time who then builds the story in short increments. The challenge is to build an interesting and coherent story line. Many people have a strong tendency to try to control the story by planning where they want to take it, rather than building on others' ideas.

3. Fostering Teamwork The intent and desire to let strategies or story lines emerge are important. But a high degree of teamwork is also needed, something many organizations have already recognized.
Improvisation provides a slightly different perspective on teamwork. Enabling people to collectively respond in the moment requires what improvisers call "yes anding."

A fundamental premise of improv, it means that individuals build on, rather than block, each other's ideas. We recently encountered an organization undergoing dramatic strategic change. At the outset, the senior management group stated that, as they went through the change, the answer to any questions posed would be "yes" or "maybe."

They did this to ensure that they did not break the momentum of the change, which they knew would be quite challenging. Although they wanted to encourage forward movement by saying "yes," they wanted to reserve the possibility for dialogue and reflection by using "maybe" to reconsider requests.

Besides "yes anding," improvisation highlights the importance of having a common goal. In an exercise called the "Imaginary Tug-of-War," two teams try to recreate a realistic representation of a tug-of-war. Undoubtedly, the urge to compete and win overwhelms the groups. The result is almost inevitable: each group heaves back, stretching the imaginary rope in both directions. When the groups commit to a common goal, it is extraordinary how realistic it becomes. One can almost envision the rope.

4. Developing Individual Skills Although good improvisation needs to foster teamwork, it also requires the development of individual skills to improvise. Much the same way activities like Outward Bound use physical risk to develop people, improvisation uses psychological risk. Guy Claxton, a researcher in the area of learning, suggested that the desire to be consistent, competent, comfortable and confident are key barriers to learning. I would acid control to his list.

Improvisation challenges these desires. Responding creatively and intuitively in the moment by building on others' ideas requires that individuals move out of their "comfort zone."

Improvisation's spontaneous nature taxes the basic skills of listening and communicating, it demands that individuals give their full concentration and attention to the moment, rather than being preoccupied by what happened, or what could happen.

Improvisation also demonstrates that you need to be committed in order to be convincing. Whether an audience in improvisational theatre or a customer in business, it's striking how supportive they will be of someone who is giving 150% to make something happen, even when things are going astray.

5. Cultivating Leadership Because in improvisation, different people take the lead at different times, they must develop the ability to both lead and follow. They must expand their set of competencies in order to take on a variety of roles. No leadership role is defined; people must make their own judgments about when to get involved, what to offer and when to redirect the scene. This is contrary to the hierarchical management style of many companies.

The improvisational exercise "Switch" demonstrates the challenges associated with shifting leadership. Two individuals begin to play out a scene. When one observer sees an opportunity to step in, he or she calls "freeze" and replaces a player by assuming his or her physical position. The new player restarts the action, taking the scene in an entirely new direction.

Individuals must be alert to the opportunities in the situation and what they can offer to move the scene forward. When a new person enters, the person remaining must be ready to support the new direction.

6. Assessing Organization Culture Each of the previous five modules is highly dependent upon an organization culture that supports improvisation. The systems, structures, procedures and operating practices of the organization may support improvisation, but more likely to impede it. How easy is it in your organization for an innovative idea to be implemented?

How often do you see people throughout the organization demonstrating leadership or taking some risk in what they do? The lack of improvisation may be because reward systems don't encourage - or worse yet punish - risk-taking. Or the lack of teamwork may arise because the organizational structure has outgrown its usefulness.

Deficiencies in the tangible aspects of structures and systems manifest themselves in the less tangible aspects of the organization's overall culture or feel. Is the organization cold, dull and uninspiring, or is it vibrant, exciting and challenging?

Although these elements are perhaps the hardest to change, deficiencies create an uphill battle for individuals and groups trying to foster improvisation. One frustrated CEO we encountered during our research, noted the lack of initiative and risk-taking by his company's employees. Yet, nothing encouraged or endorsed such behaviors except a few words by the CEO, words that could not overcome decades of practice to the contrary.

A culture of friendship exists in improvisation, as opposed to the professionalism in most businesses. A culture of friendship doesn't mean that individuals need to socialize with one another outside work. It means that people care about one another and try to support each other's efforts. which in turn cultivates a high degree of trust. Studies have shown that hockey teams made up of players with higher degrees of trust in each other have more accurate passing, which leads to better scoring opportunities.

Similarly, a culture of friendship in business means that individuals think about setting up the next person for success.

However, improvisation requires taking risk, which in turn requires tolerance for error both by the customer and by the organization. For example, you would not want your airline pilot improvising on takeoff, but you may want the airline to innovate and improvise in other areas, such as ticketing or baggage handling.

It is in areas with low or zero tolerance for error where companies need to assess where they practice and where they perform. Flight simulators provide a means for pilots to practice takeoffs. Even zero tolerance environments, of which there are few in business, require the skills of improvisation in crisis, as aptly demonstrated by the Apollo 13 mission when the team of astronauts and ground crew had to devise an innovative solution to filter carbon dioxide out of the space module.

Implementing Improvisation

Different areas of the organization will provide different opportunities to improvise. A challenge is assessing the organizational culture and environment to determine where and how innovation and improvisation can occur.
Implementing improvisation doesn't require rejecting what companies have been doing. On the contrary, companies need to sharpen their traditional skills and add to them. Improvisation builds on a strong set of basic skills.

In music, to master his or her instrument, a jazz musician needs to develop and practice the same basic skills as an orchestral musician. But to improvise, the jazz musician needs an additional set of skills.
People who are interested in implementing improvisation need to begin by developing their own capacity to improvise and cultivating their own leadersh1p skills to step in where required.

The next step is to extend these skills to the team. Undoubtedly, as individuals and teams engage in improvisation, they will discover the organizational impediments to implementation. Usually, just being able to recognize the impediments is an achievement, as often they have a very intangible quality.

Faster, better, smarter is not just more of the same. Like world-class theatrical plays or orchestras, organizations need to master the basic traditional skills, but they need to do more if they are to be as innovative and responsive as the jazz musician. Improvisation provides a pathway to understand and begin acting on what it takes to innovate.

Improv Exercise - "Make a Story"

In the "Make a Story" exercise, the audience provides a title and the "players" build on the story one person at a time. The players take their turn at the "director's" cue. Here is one such story created by Second City actors:
Person 3 "Nancy Drew was sitting in her room...sitting at her desk. The oil of the lamp was burning away." Person 1 "Burning right through the desk, in fact. The oil was dripping onto the carpet, and Nancy realized..."
Person 4 "… that her house was now on fire. Flames engulfed her whole place. Screaming, she ran..."
Person 2 "… down the stairs, out the door into the street, and into Tony's arms."
Person 1 "Tony! Tony! The pizza delivery boy. How she had longed to feel his..."
Person 3 "…leg against hers. She'd longed for Tony ever..."
Person 4 "…since she was a small pizza eater. But now she was a woman, full fledged."
Person 2 "Tony! Tony! The candle! It wasn't my candle. Someone placed that…"
Person 3 "… candle on my desk. I think it was the Hardy Boys. They've been jealous of me ever since..."
Person 1 "…. I took their Hardy jackets." 'Yes,' Tony nodded…"
Person 4 "…. knowingly. 'Yes. A candle you say.'"
Person 2 "'Yes, a candle. I lit it. It sparked. The wax dripped. My face was on….on…. on…"
Person 3 "…on….on… on fire!'"
Person 1 "Tony took out a gun. Nancy…"
Person 4 "…screamed! 'Aaah!'"
Person 2 "'You're still going to have to pay for this pizza.'"