10 Disadvantages of Applied Improv Training for Your Company

Let's set the scene.

YOU are excited to bring in our company to provide improv-based training in Customer Service, Leadership, Design Thinking, Team Building or Communication Skills. You've heard some great things, it looks good on the web, and our conversations have helped you shape some meaningful goals.

And then:

The naysayers start in. It's too terrifying, risky, too touchy-feely, it puts people on the spot, it's abstract, interactive, fun; it's play; it's not serious. Worst of all, it's UNKNOWN.
 

Let's talk.

1. It's Terrifying.
   
   Anything you've never done before has an element of terror in it. We understand that. Part of our introduction addresses this. You can sit out of any exercise that you are physically or emotionally uncomfortable participating in. You just can't lure anyone else out or comment on what you haven't done. Fair?
    

2. It's Risky.
   
   Anything valuable is a risk at some level. But what are you actually risking? A few hours of your team's time? That's valuable. Your reputation? Maybe, but take a look at the list of clients we've served (and it's a very partial list). Every time we engage with a new client, there is risk for us as well, but we are competent enough to take the risk. You are, too.
    

3. It's Touchy-Feely
   
   As our owner, GM and lead facilitator, I guide all of CSz Portland's business training offerings. This next bit may surprise you: I hate touchy-feely stuff in professional settings. While we aren't sitting at tables watching Powerpoints, we're not into creepy activities, either. There's a balance between fun and weird, and we tilt heavily toward the fun. I am as inspired by sports teams as I am by the theatre. We're different, and we're safe.
    

4. It's On The Spot
   
   Many people associate improvisation with performance and comedy. This is improvisation APPLIED to business. We don't make people perform in our workshops (with very few exceptions, cleared with you beforehand, almost always during advanced work). No one will be put on the spot.
    

5. It's Abstract
   
   So are concepts like accounting and marketing, until we decide what they mean. Everything we do is tied to your goals during our reflections. Your team decides what the exercises mean. At a recent Nike workshop, a participant (in the final reflection) said, "I was blown away with how each game was a metaphor for the things we face [at work]."
    

6. It's Interactive
   
   Trust your team. We do. It turns out that most people are really smart (and also kind) when given the opportunity to learn in ways that they help control. Education as a top-down model is changing. We're part of that.
    

7. It's Fun
   
   How much do you remember from in-class education from your K-12 or even college years? How much do you remember field trips, after-school clubs, drama, music and sports? I think I've made the point. Fun is learning.
    

8. It's Play
   
   As children, most of our learning about teamwork and communication came from play. Adults don't get enough of a chance to do this - we're always putting people in leagues, keeping standings and setting up competitions. In Applied Improv, we play. Everything has meaning, and every moment is a fantastic opportunity to learn.
    

9. It's Not Serious
   
   We're very serious about what we do. People "play" sports. Think they can't be serious about it? Of course, they can. We find the balance - our work is fun, and we take the meaning and value seriously.
    

10. It's Unknown
    
    This ought to scare you (if you've read this far). 
    
    We always prepare diligently for our engagements and create syllabi for each client.
    
    In 30 years, I've followed a syllabus point by point maybe 5 times. What happens is that each engagement reveals what is needed to us, and, keeping the goals in mind, we change our plans constantly.
    
    In other words, we don't know exactly what's going to happen, either! We only know that we are competent to improvise within our prepared frame and that every client discovers important things along the way.

Does this give you the ammunition you need to survive the gauntlet of NO?

If it doesn't, please contact me and I will help.

Based on a presentation by Drew Tarvin - the 10 Disadvantages are his; the replies are mine. Here is Drew's presentation to AIN2016 on this very subject!

New Promotional Video for Applied Improv Training

Yes, it's a promotional video.

Here's why it matters:

• Our values: Collaboration, Inspiration, Gratitude and Fun
• CSz Worldwide has trainers in many locations in the US and Europe who can deliver consistent content to your many locations - even simultaneously, if that's what you need.
• We've worked at this for a long time. This is way beyond someone you know who's taken a few improv classes and performed in a few shows sharing what they've learned. We've honed our methods over 30 years.

Have a look and let us know what you think. 

Bobsled.

Let's Fight About Making Mistakes. Or Let's Not.

Another mantra in the performance improv world is the celebration of mistakes.

In our classes, we want to get people past the point of editing things, and worrying about their ideas and just get them to go - to make a decision, to make a move. To that end, we "celebrate" mistakes. Participants can take a circus bow, saying, "I Failed!" and everyone will applaud wildly. This comes from a simple need: if we wait for the perfect thing to say, nothing will ever be said. Let's practice on going with our first idea, and if the idea turns out to be terrible, so much the better. We laugh about it and move on.

In our own performance ensemble, we laugh and often roll around on the floor at mistakes made within scenes or games. Even better, sometimes these mistakes result in new ways of doing things and new game ideas. Mistakes are opportunities for laughs and sometimes for growth. We love mistakes!

So, naturally, we carry the concept forward into Applied Improvisation.

Almost everyone who teaches in Applied Improv brings this "celebration of mistakes" forward into their work. This seems like a great fit, especially as people are just figuring out how to work in the games and exercises. It starts to become (or at least seem) less of a fit as our clients think about applying the lessons of the workshop to their work lives. "We can't be making mistakes all of the time," one told me recently.

Paul Z Jackson, President of AIN is trying to get practitioners to ease up on the celebration of mistakes: "People keep telling me they learn from their mistakes.  And I’m pretty sure they are mistaken." Read Paul's blog post here.

I've worked with more than a few clients who bluntly tell me they cannot make mistakes. Some of them, like 9-1-1 operators (that's 9-9-9 to our friends in the UK) and front line employees at a blood-testing laboratory service, are probably right. We don't want avoidable mistakes in their work - the results could literally kill someone.  

In those jobs, the time for making mistakes is in practice (or training).  Once the whistle blows, and we're on the clock, we need precision and error-free work.

I look at mistakes in Applied Improvisation the same way. Our workshops are practice, where people can learn new skills and figure out that errors won't kill them, or even hurt them at all. My teaching is that mistakes are part of the process of learning new skills. You can't learn something new without messing up a lot. Our workshops are a great place to mess up without consequences. "In life, we are the players who live with the consequences of the actions," says Paul Z Jackson, "Context is so important."

When we're afraid to fail, we can become paralyzed.

We want to learn to be OK with ourselves for making mistakes, but often, we're still not supposed to make them in real life. Lots of "people and organizations create high stakes environments across the board, rather than leaving room for learning and innovation. It seems like skillful leaders are those who can be purposeful about creating spaces/processes where mistakes are valued." (Jim Ansaldo, Director of Camp Yes And at Indiana University)

When is a mistake not a mistake?

"We've seen numerous scientific and technological discoveries that were the unintended consequences of other pursuits. In the Design Thinking world, the concept of "rapid prototyping" suggests that a trial and error process using stakeholder feedback is the quickest route to operationalizing great ideas." (Jim Ansaldo)

Perhaps the word "mistake" isn't even the right word for every instance of unintended results.

So, what ARE we teaching?

In Applied Improvisation, I think we are actually teaching people to be better to one another. We know mistakes are a part of doing business, so let's minimize their impact on people on our team.

My Five Pillars of the Improv System are:

• Listening
• Accepting
• Supporting
• Taking Competent Risks
• Letting Go of Mistakes

Mistakes are going to happen, but are we going to let our team become dominated by them, or could we:

• Own and accept it
• Fix it as soon as possible
• Share it so others learn
• Move on

If we create a culture where we own it, fix it, share it and move on, we'll spend less time and energy and reduce the paralysis that comes from fear of making mistakes. Wouldn't that be a more pleasant place to work? Wouldn't that also make our customers happier? (In a Design Thinking environment, we might substitute "use it" or "analyze it" for "fix it".*)

The key thing for me in our vendor relationships is what happens when something goes wrong. It's easy to provide "good customer service" when everything runs smoothly. The response when something doesn't go right is what separates great vendors from the rest. Own it, fix it, share it and move on.

In the operational side of our own company, I'd like to be one of those great vendors, providing value and keeping things simple, but when something goes wrong, own it, fix it, share it and move on. 

Of course, we don't want to see the same mistake over and over. We don't want people deliberately messing things up. What we really want is for people to forgive each other easily for mistakes, make the problem right, have the organization learn and move on. We also want to stop the paralysis that fear brings to teams.  The world is changing too fast to let fear hold us back.

Applied Improvisors struggle to get clients to take the leap of faith to work with us. Part of the struggle might be significantly reduced if we stop "celebrating mistakes" and tell you what we're actually talking about.

It's all in the context. It usually is. It's also in the words we use to tell people what we do.

Just to keep the controversy alive, Patrick Short would like to include this list of 40 Things You Can Learn From Mistakes. He would also like to thank Jim Ansaldo for helping to cut to the heart of the matter.

Status

The great improvisational teacher Keith Johnstone pioneered the idea of using status as a tool in improvisational theater. Human beings give each other physical and verbal cues to establish status. If someone has high status, they’re calling the shots; if someone has
low status, they’re the peon.

Status is a seesaw, Johnstone explains—you push one end down, the other end pops up. You can raise my status either by saying “I’m smart” or “You’re dumb.”

If you’ve ever walked toward another person on a sidewalk, or in a hallway and had to do an awkward little dance to figure out which side you’ll pass each other on, you’ve experienced one of the simplest example of a status battle.

We use the tool of status onstage to make our scenes more dynamic. We find that equal status situations aren’t very interesting to watch. It’s interesting that in real life, equal status (or near equal status with give and take) gets positive results.

These on-stage status battles aren’t too far removed from reality. In many organizations, maintaining one’s status is more important than getting anything done. We teach it to business people to help them understand the sub-textual power struggle at work in any human interaction.

Caught in a status battle? See what changes if you match the other person’s status. See what happens if you raise their status. Since status attacks are often the work of insecure people, try a little flattery.  And look how status games connect to bullying.

In our work, we’ve found Status to have profound effects on Customer Service. We’ll post more on that soon.

Excerpted from Jill and Patrick’s Small Book of Improv for Business. Thanks to Jill Bernard for her essential contributions.

Why Customer Service Matters

In 2014, I had the honor of performing as Master of Ceremonies at the Annual Customer Service Banquet for the Port of Portland and PDX, our airport.

310 people from 65 companies attended; they were honoring the Customer Service Superstars nominated from each of the companies who do work at the airport – airlines, government agencies, rental car companies, parking and transportation, retail, restaurants and services. The Port of Portland has an employee group that coordinates customer service across all of the companies – treating each customer as a client of all of the companies, whether they are at that moment or not. It’s a holistic approach, and as a frequent consumer of PDX services, I can attest that it works. The airport is frequently voted the Best in America.

At the end of the event, I transformed into a referee and CSz-Portland performed our ComedySportz® show, themed on customer service. It was a rocking good time, but the most important and affecting part of the night came earlier.

The Port of Portland had received an email, through Huntleigh USA, from a woman in Aurora, CO, complimenting a Huntleigh skycap, Moses San Nicolas, on his wheelchair service. Let’s read the note:

Gary Wolf
Huntleigh USA
7535 NE Ambassador Place
Suite A1
Portland, OR 97220

Dear Mr. Wolf:

I hope you will take the time to read this letter, as one of your employees needs to be recognized for the help he provided to me and my sister, Denise, on a trip we took from Portland to San Francisco on 10/1/13. This was the hardest trip either my sister or I had ever taken, for you see, I was bringing my 52 year old sister home to California to die.  As her little sister and the nurse in the family, I had the hard task of flying from Colorado to Portland, packing my sister’s life up in a suitcase, and bringing her home, where the rest of the family was waiting. She really did not want to go, and we had to term this trip as “just a visit” to her, because she was scared and nervous about flying home, and could not handle the fact that she would not be coming back to Oregon, her home since 1984. I think that deep down she realized, though, that she needed help in the final days of Stage IV lung cancer, which she was diagnosed with back in May 2013. She was kind of being forced to give up control of her life. She was very, very sick, and could not longer walk, and was using oxygen.

We had had a bad day so far on 10/1/13, as it was an extremely stressful day what with getting her packed, getting her dressed, getting her to the car, getting to the airport. She told me many times in the car that she did not want to go, and I was feeling guilt and fear as my mission to bring her home included kind of take her choices away from her when she had been independent for so long.

I brought the rental car back to the underground garage, and the rental car people were nice enough to call me a skycap.  And into our lives, pushing a wheelchair, walked Moses San Nicolas. I realize that we could have gotten anyone, but I feel that getting Moses was the first stroke of luck Denise and I had had since I got there.  He showed up, and took immediate control.  I had no idea how he did it, but he managed to get my sister in a wheelchair, both of my sister’s suitcases, and her oxygen concentrator, from the garage into the airport. All of the sudden, a huge weight had been lifted off of me, as I had worried the whole way to the airport how I was going to manage getting everything into the airport.  More importantly, he talked to us and calmed us down.  I think that he could sense that we needed a distraction. He told us about his family, where he was from, his life.  He asked my sister and me for our names, and he talked to my sister at length about her diagnosis, where we were going, why going home for treatment was a good thing. He was the best distraction my sister and I could have asked for. He stopped to allow her to smoke, one of her favorite pastimes, and she was grateful.  He never once judged her, or told her she shouldn’t smoke.  He was an extremely calming presence for both of us.  He got our IDs, got us our boarding passes, got us through security, got us to the gate, all the while talking about everything, asking questions, maintaining calm.  He even gave my sister a badge he had with his first name on it, which Denise stuck into her purse. Denise told him that she was really nervous about going home, and then told him how much he calmed her down and make this trip seem more “okay”. He left us safely at the gate.  My sister was mad that I only tipped him $15 and not $20!

My sister died peacefully on October 14th, at home, with her family all around her. We told our whole family about how lucky we were that Moses came into our lives for a short time.  In the few days before she got very sick, we talked about writing a letter to you about Moses, and she wanted me to do it immediately, so she could sign it.  Time got the best of us, and we never did get to write the letter than I am writing to you now. After she died, I went through her purse and found the name tag that Moses had given her, and it reminded me of how he touched her life in her last few weeks. The last picture taken of my sister is in the wheelchair, in the parking garage, with Moses standing next to her. She insisted that I take it, and then would not allow any more pictures of herself after that.

I don’t know that Moses knew what impact he had on our lives that day.  Being a skycap, I am sure, cannot be easy.  Dealing with the public, I know from my 20 years as a nurse, has its’ ups and downs. But he really made a difference to me that day, and more importantly, he showed genuine kindness and compassion to my sister, and for that, I will always be grateful. He made this sad trip just a little happier for me and Denise.

I hope you will be kind enough to give him a copy of this letter, so he can know that he is appreciated by me and my family. I hope you will confirm that you received this email.  I also sent it through the website to the corporate office.

Respectfully,
Renee N Gorkin, RN, BSN (on behalf of me and Denise Malaspina)
Aurora, Colorado

The Port flew Renee in for the banquet so that she could give Moses the additional $5. Denise’s two children, who live in the Portland area, were also there. This was a very moving event, and a terrific reminder that we usually don’t know much about other people’s struggles; meeting them where they are is important. I hope every customer service professional takes this to heart. (It would help if customers took it to heart, too.) I need to be reminded of this all the time. I hope you don’t mind me reminding you.

Renee Gorkin and Moses San Nicholas

Here is a video reminder from a church in Arkansas, called “Get Service“, that reinforces the concept rather nicely. Serendipitously, this arrived in my Facebook feed from my cousin Cindy Maynard while I was writing this post. Meant to be, yes?

Patrick Short flew to DC the morning after the event and got royal treatment from Southwest Airlines and TSA employees who had been at the event. He realizes that it can’t happen every time, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. The email was reprinted with the permission of Renee Gorkin, Moses San Nicolas and the Port of Portland.