Business Improvisation

Business has been cooking at ASCI over the last 6 months or so: our Situational Leadership Workshop is becoming more and more popular. I think corporations are beginning to see that best answer to any business problem or dilemma is “it depends”. It depends on the situation, on who you are, on who you’re dealing with and on a million other possibilities. So how do you pass along wisdom, how you we learn, why do I read all those business books?

It depends, really.

The reason I’m a big fan of Situational Leadership and Business Improvisation is that both are, at their best, processes not answers. Your coaching challenge with a unmotivated employee is almost certainly unique. You can learn how other people motivated their tough employees but the key is really you. And no one has written a book about how YOU can solve a leadership issue. Its not the same as how to fix a leaky tap, its not a piece of code, a zero or a one, its people and everyone is different.  Now before you think I’m advocating just getting to know everyone and be their friend before you can lead, stop. What I’m saying is that you need know yourself. OR “know thyself” as Socrates said.

Understanding your style preferences, strengths and weaknesses and how they may hinder or assist reaching the objective is critical to leadership performance. How to adapt your style to these situations once aware is execution success. That is why corporations are starting to embrace Situational Leadership and Business Improvisation as a process.
My favorite example is the coach with a very high need for control, fast decision maker and a tendency to express his ideas trying to coach a quite, introverted, high external awareness employee.  Basically the coach never stops talking and walks away thinking everything is great, or at least not understanding why things don’t change. The coachee walks away feeling he hasn’t been heard and that the last hour was a waste of time. Leadership is follower driven. Its the coach’s responsibility to adapt his style to the coachee.

I’m working on a presetnation and paper for The Banff Leadership Centre entitled “Situational Leadership and the Reality of Execution Style” which I’ll post here when its done. I enjoy the comments from everyone, pass along an example that you have witnessed where the coach failed to adapt his or her style and I’ll include it in the paper.

ChangeThis was built in the summer of 2004 by Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu and Michelle Sriwongtong. You can read their bios in this blog entry. The original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin. You can read about him on his website.

In the summer of 2005, ChangeThis was turned over to 800-CEO-READ. In addition to selling business books, they keep ChangeThis up and running with their love and tender care.

I’ve been enjoying Manifestos on ChangeThis for several years, its been a great source of leading edge business thinking that I’ve found useful in my workshops and writing. Some of the more memorable Manifestos include The Bootstrapper’s Bible and Pushing Past the Dip: How to Become the Best in the World by Seth Godin, This I Believe! - Tom’s 60 TIBs by Tom Peters, The Long Tail by Chris Anderson and my all time favorite The Talent Myth by Malcolm Gladwell.

Yesterday my Manifesto Business Improvisation: The Diving Catch of the Corporate World was published on ChangeThis. Its not in the same league as the authors I mentioned above but I am proud that the editors and readers felt it is worthy of publishing. Take a minute to give it a read, pass it along and please let me know what you think.

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This post is from a white paper on how ASCI uses The GO Game to reinforce and test content delivered in its PVC Sales Training Program. The sales training itself is good stuff but when combined with the GO Game its a blast.

Pervasive Gaming and Experiential Learning

Overview:

The client, a major Canadian financial institution, engaged Anderson Sabourin Consulting Inc. (ASCI) to conduct sales training. ASCI delivered a two day PVC Sales™ seminar that culminated with an experiential learning event. The GO Game was selected to deliver the sales training content using its unique wireless interactive technology.

Article:

The GO Game is an interactive wireless technology based urban adventure game where teams of 3 to 10 players complete missions throughout a private or public game zone. Each team is equipped with a handheld wireless device (Blackberry Curve or LG 9800), a digital camera, a map of the game zone and some items required to complete various missions. The handheld devices are connected to the internet so that players experience a rich user interface including hints, pictures, and videos. All missions are received and answered using the handheld devices. The GO Game was conceived as a team building game and has been active globally for over three years with close to 2000 games and over 20,000 participants.

GO Game missions focus in three main areas. Creativity; players are challenged to create short video clips and pictures with minimal guidance for creative missions. These missions are judged by their peers at the end of the game. Team work; missions are designed to embrace different learning styles within the team. Players work together to solve problems, and have to cooperate and collaborate to solve the mission and gain points. Finally, the GO Game challenges participants to be creative under pressure and improvise. Business people generally rely on the planning process to be successful; the GO Game creates the need for solutions in real time and because the game is played in a public forum, it increases pressure dramatically. All this equals a great opportunity for teambuilding and a perfect environment for learning and practicing skills that are utilized under pressure.

ASCI integrated key knowledge points from its PVC Sales Training Program into GO Game missions. The teams competed for points by solving missions and to gain enough information to lead them to book the ultimate order utilizing skills and concepts from the sales training.

Instead of facing Ninjas and Super Heroes in the tradition GO Game actor based missions, participants were challenged by facilitators and senior executives. They were required to create and deliver value propositions, overcome obstacles and discover customer requirements using objection handling and questioning models. Understanding the models presented in the workshops and then use them in pressure situations helps ‘seal’ the learning in a positive but competitive practice atmosphere.

Location based missions and creative missions where also adapted to reflect PVC Sales Training material. The afternoon became a combination of team building, sales training and adventure game.

GO Game judging is always the most entertaining part of the event. Teams collectively watch their creative missions replayed with sound effects and commentary. The hand held devices are used to tally votes for the best performances.

The winning team is crowned based on mission points obtained during the GO Game and creative points obtained by their peers during the judging phase.

Conclusion:

It has always been the goal of training programs to achieve a change in behaviour of the participants (Kirkpatrick). Testing the knowledge of the participants in practice experience that still resembles the reality they face when utilizing the material has always been a challenge. Using the GO Game’s competitive experience to deliver the content gives the user a practice environment and the facilitators to measure the effectiveness of the learning material. The participants also were able to feedback solutions that were new and so were rewarded for the creativity. The rest of the teams benefitted from these new insights through the judging process and the facilitated discussion.

I came across this article from The Salt Lake Tribune that is so bizarre that I had to share it with you.

“In a lawsuit filed last month, former Prosper, Inc. salesman Chad Hudgens alleges his managers also allowed the supervisor to draw mustaches on employees’ faces, take away their chairs and beat on their desks with a wooden paddle “because it resulted in increased revenues for the company.””

“A supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Provo is accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe.

Christopherson led the sales team to the top of a hill near the office and told Hudgens to lie down with his head downhill, the suit claims. Christopherson then told the rest of the team to hold Hudgens by the arms and legs.

Christopherson poured water from a gallon jug over Hudgens’ mouth and nostrils - like the interrogation strategy known as “waterboarding” - and told the team members to hold Hudgens down as he struggled, the suit alleges.

At the conclusion of his abusive demonstration, Christopherson told the team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as Chad had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded,” the suit alleges. “

Amazing. Apparently senior management, including President Dave Ellis, had seen the mustaches and paddles and were fine with it all.

“Ellis said the exercise was a dramatization of a story in which a young man asks Socrates to become his teacher. Socrates responds by plunging the student’s head underwater and telling him he will learn once his desire for knowledge is as great as his desire to breathe.

“It’s voluntary, it’s humorous, it’s team and camaraderie-building,” Ellis said.”

I have managed and sold in some very high pressure environments, achieve your numbers or lose your job, but I have to admit that I’ve never been physically tortured. Although I have sat through PowerPoint presentations and compensation reviews that I’m convinced constituted psychological torture.

Other than the obvious, torture is not a motivator and don’t hire psychopaths, there is a significant lesson we can learn from this display of corporate culture out of control. As a leader, you are responsible for culture. Why would the other sales people put up with these acts? Because even if management didn’t know about these events it was assumed they did, it is part of the corporate culture they’ve created. Culture is what’s going on when you’re not looking. I doubt that Prosper Inc founders Ethan Willis and Randy Garn designed or condoned these actions, but they are responsible.

The other thing that bothers me is that Prosper is in the business of coaching and motivation, they should know better. Ernst & Young named them Utah Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005. Is the message of corporate ethics not getting through? We do expect our leaders to practice what they preach.

“Physician heal thyself” - or - start bidding on the motivational training contracts in Iraq for the US Government.

Your thoughts?

“It depends” is a very common and often correct answer to most business questions. The outcome of a complex situation really does “depend” on a large number of uncontrollable and unknown variables. Sales professionals try to reduce these unknowns as best they can by doing research and asking questions. They strive to understand the competitive and political landscapes as well as train on the features and functions of the solution. Sales professionals strive to analyze the decisions makers and to ensure the value proposition meets the client’s requirements. Other variables, such as the emotional states of those decision makers, can greatly affect the outcome of the sales process.

It really does depend.

It is the job as sales professionals, managers, and coaches to have a strategy in order to manage these unforeseen and uncontrollable variables and increase the likelihood of success. Business Improvisation is a strategy to deal with the unknown in a sales cycle.

Sound sales process education is a given for a successful sales team. The ability to be creative under pressure and improvise is both a critical skill and a strategy to obtain a great level of success. Those who master Business Improvisation as a comprehensive skill can overcome obstacles and still reach their objective. Those who do not master the ability to be flexible face being let down and are rarely successful in larger more complex sales situations.

Sales Improvisation in Action:

A proposal has been prepared for a client and there is a meeting today to review the solution and costs with the executive team. The content of the proposal is clear and the features and functions are supported by research. Experience tells us that no matter how hard we try to control the situation something unexpected will happen. It could be something small; spilled coffee on your shirt or a burnt bulb on the projector. Any small issue can quickly become a big issue if it is allowed to blur the focus. A large unexpected event could be problematic as well; the decision maker not showing or the opening statement from the client that they’ve decided to go with an unknown competitor. Not only are there new obstacles to overcome, fear and biological stress, such as fight or flight, influence reactions. The objective remains the same but the plan is no longer viable, it is time to improvise.

Improvisation is the process of accessing and applying creativity to a situation in real time. It is the ability to converge composition, creativity and execution to achieve success. Creativity can be defined as the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, and relationships. In doing so, creativity brings forth original methods and interpretations. Improvisation is not ‘winging it”, in fact in order to access creativity it is important not to be distracted by the content. If you are busy remembering features and functions or obsessed about some other event your mind is not free to access creativity and improvise. Preparation is key factor for successful Business Improvisation.

Recent research conducted by Keith Hmieleski and Andrew Corbett reveals that entrepreneurs use improvisation as a process when resources, like time, are limited and challenges are high. Their research showed that improvisation, in the right situations, is a highly successful strategy. Frank Ruffs’ research on organizational improvisation, published in Future magazine in 2004, states that improvisation is an important strategy for corporations to deal with “wild card” or unforeseen crises and unpredicted change. Improvisation, as a strategy for dealing with the unknown, is also utilized by EMS workers, military personnel and firefighters. We also witness the art of improvisation in theatre and music, particularly jazz.

In sales terms, think of improvisation as being intentionally flexible on how to reach a goal. Knowing what your current state is and where you want to be is important, but which path you take will depend on the circumstances of the moment. This is much harder than it sounds because it relies on giving up the attempt to control.

Control and Awareness

When unanticipated events occur it is common to react by trying to control the future. The more control is sought after the harder it is to achieve. In fact research shows that ‘trying harder’ usually creates negative results. The increased pressure evokes fear and distraction thus focus is lost. Sales training programs often impart messages like “control the customer” or “control the conversation”. The control strategy simply does not work; people do not react well to being controlled and it has already established that the sales cycle is full of uncontrollable events. Accepting that you cannot control everything is not only liberating but it also gives you access to increased awareness and creativity.

Awareness is the combination of listening and observing and is an important step in the process of improvisation. It can be expressed in a 2X2 matrix from broad to narrow and internal to external. Awareness provides all the raw material to work with. It can give clues to behaviour and style that help shape our creative output. Generally, we comprehend at a rate of 350 to 500 words per minute during a conversation; but we speak at 150 to 200 words per minute. The 50% time differential is typically used to pass judgment and anticipate a response. The more affectively we can use that time increases our awareness and can help formulate more creative possibilities.

Learned or Innate?

Improvisation is a skill that is taught to actors and musicians. That learning process can be translated so that salespeople can add improvisation to their cache of tools. Conventional business traditions afford little tolerance for failure or even practice. Although any successful leader will relay platitudes that learning comes from failure. Business Improvisation training affords the circumstances to practice and fail in a safe environment. Recent research conducted by Randy Sabourin and Dr Robin Pratt, entitled Attentional and Interpersonal Characteristics of Improvisation Professionals vs. Business Executives, measured the differences between successful sales executives and professional improvisers. The measurements focused on attention and distraction preferences, styles, and interpersonal communication skills. It allows individuals to compare their styles and behavioural attributes to improvisers. That personal information combined with the proven techniques for teaching improvisation gathered from theatre and jazz traditions can help individuals become fluent in the ways of Business Improvisation.

Conclusion:

Success in business often comes down to solving problems without the benefit of time, resources or all the information. Business Improvisation is a skill that can be learned and a strategy for sales professionals and executive teams to implement. This preparation can ensure a competitive advantage when performance under pressure is a critical factor for success.

References:

Attentional and Interpersonal Characteristics of Improvisation Professionals vs. Business Executives [What Executives can learn from Improvisation Professionals], Randy Sabourin, with Robin W. Pratt, Ph.D

Wild Cards, Weak Signals and Organizational Improvisation by Franks Ruff

Proclivity for Improvisation as a Predictor of Entrepreneurial Intentions by Keith Hmieleski and Andrew Corbett

Things have been so busy that I haven’t gotten around to sending out an update to friends and clients that I usually keep in touch with. So I thought to myself why not use this blog. I usually have these internal conversations around 2:00am when I can’t sleep because all the things I need to do keep picking at my consciousness like seagulls around spilled fries. So here’s what’s up…

Research: We did some research on Business Improvisation late last year that was presented at the Banff Learning Centre in November for AIN (Applied Improvisation Network). We used a psychometric tool that measures style and performance under pressure (TAIS) and compared a group of Professional Improvisers with a group of Business Executives. The results are very interesting. The paper is at link.

Speaking of research, there are a several other great bits of research on the premise of improvisation in business applications out there.

• Keith Hmieleski and Andrew Corbett have done some great research on Improvisation and Entrepreneurs in their paper ‘Proclivity for Improvisation as a Predictor of Entrepreneurial Intentions’.
• Angela Keros wrote a paper entitled ‘Improvisation and the logic of exchange in socially embedded transactions’ which is about the negotiation process and how utilizing improvisation leads to success.
• The other piece of research on Business Improvisation that I find very provocative is ‘Wild cards, weak signals and organizational improvisation’ by Franks Ruff. It goes into great detail about the value and examples of the use of improvisation as a corporate strategy for planning and contingency.
• Some of these articles can be found on our resources page or let me know what you’re interested in and I can send you a copy.

Pervasive Gaming & Team Building: The GO Game is going like wildfire; we’re playing games across the country and having a blast doing to it. We’ve been doing a lot of work on applying the technology as a learning vehicle for our PVC Sales Training and Situational Leadership programs. The idea is to create learning environments that ensure the participants are retaining the content by testing them in real time pressure situations. The first tests with a few adventurous clients have gone quite well. Some of the other highlights from the past year of GO Games:

• Our largest game of 1200 players in Vancouver was crazy (in a good way of course).
• The GO Game on MTV as a contest for ‘The Hills”
• We played several games in Niagara Falls last year as well as Toronto Island and Old Montreal. We got fashionable when we ran a game for Diesel at Mount Tremblant.
• Calgary was the biggest growth in GO Games last year; we even played in the middle of December. Thank God for the +15 indoor walkways.

Workshops and Consulting: The workshops have really been refined over the past year. The basis is still focused on understanding the individual using TAIS, increasing self awareness of participant’s behavioural attributes (who you are). Combine that with the competencies (skills) of the workshops and it’s a powerful and rewarding couple of days. As well as workshops we’ve been doing a lot of executive coaching and working on corporate culture initiatives.

• Business Improvisation Workshop. We’ve adapted this workshop for executives, managers, sales people and facilitators. You’ll also find the theory of Business Improvisation in most of our other workshops.
• Situational Leadership & Manager Development Workshop (SLMD). This workshop is powerful because it focuses on your team, communication styles and the issues that are affecting you in your environment right now.
• PVC Sales Training. This workshop focuses on combining the individual behavioural attributes with sales competencies and processes. Style can’t be faked and customers know when you’re not real. Sales training should not be ‘one size fits all’.

Creative Advisors and Writing: This area of our business has really grown over the past year. We continue to help clients create the right message and corporate story but the delivery of that message in video and avatar webisodes, e-learning and live events has really become a valuable part of our and our clients’ success. Recently our writers have won another Canadian Comedy Award for “This Hour Has 22 Minutes”. They can take any content and make it interesting.

I’m on a plane back to the real world after 4 days at the AIN Conference in Banff. First of all, what an amazing location. The valley of Banff has been a learning and spiritual gathering place for the past 15,000 years, the facilities have been updated a few times but location certainly generates some very unique influence. The Banff Centre itself is one of the few arts and business intersections that really works in my opinion. The representatives from the Centre, Colin Funk and his team, were very impressive as well.

The research I presented (comparing the attentional and interpersonal styles of Professional Improvisers and Business Executives) at the conference was received very well. Judging by the growing interest in the business application of improvisation, the attendance at the conference and the increasing body of research around this subject, I think we’ll see more and more organizations add Business Improvisation as an essential leadership skill.

The other great thing about this conference was meeting some very interesting people that apply improvisation to their work. Consultants, coaches, artistic directors, therapists, HR professionals and few theatrical legends were in attendance along with some old friends. One of highlights for me was the day long workshop with Keith Johnstone. The Loose Moose crew from Calgary performed on Sunday night, Keith not only stayed to watch but directed several scenes. It was a “moment” in Impro history that I felt privileged to witness.

It was a productive conference in an amazing location, a nice way to learn and connect. Now its back to work.

I’m sitting in the Toronto airport about to fly to Banff to speak and participate in the AIN (applied improvisation network) Conference. I’ve really been looking forward to the conference for awhile now; its my first AIN and I can’t wait to witness the inside of this industry. I’ve successfully adapted myself to several industries over my career; semiconductors, contract manufacturing, software, supply chain and now Consulting Improvisation. I’m also excited about just getting away for a few days. I’ve been working my butt off (figuratively and literally) since the spring and it looks like things are slowly down for a winter lull.

I’m presenting the results of research we recently completed that compares the attentional and interpersonal styles of Professional Improvisers and Business Executives. We used TAIS of course and I have to give credit to Dr Robin Pratt for helping to interpret the data. I’m looking for comments on the paper so please let me know what yo think, and not the usual comments about increasing my penis size or stocks I should buy (why do people spam blogs?).

Here’s the link to the Applied Improvisation Network and here’s the link to the white paper.

Here is the Executive Summary:

Executive Summary: Characteristics of Improvisation Professionals vs Executives

The business world is constantly searching for ways to expand the skills of its leaders. “Business Improvisation”, performance under pressure combined with the creative process, is becoming increasingly popular as a strategy to resolve these unexpected challenges. A promising approach to teaching new skills in an experiential manner is using improvisation exercises. Accordingly, we felt it valuable to study the characteristics of skilled improvisation professionals to see which ones might be applicable to leaders in business.

In order to see if we can identify characteristics that differentiate improvisation professionals from business executives, we studied a group of active, talented improvisers. We used a performance psychological inventory with these improvisation professionals, one that has consistently differentiated among elite performers in sports, the military, and business. We compared the profile or pattern of scores for these improvisation veterans with the data we had for senior executives in various corporations around the world.

Business Improvisation workshops offer that most rare of events in business—the chance to practice real skills in an active environment where executives can see what works and what does not. Business people do not have the luxury of such things as scrimmage or practice in sports or rehearsal in the theatre. They are too busy to go to the equivalent of training camp.

We found the improvisation professionals to have some attentional and interpersonal characteristics that serve them well as they have to think on their feet and creatively solve problems in real time. Given that speaking in public is regularly reported as the #1 fear in North America and that having to improvise produces even more pressure to perform, they indicated that they seemed to rise to the occasion, performing their best under pressure.

Improvisation professionals score higher on the two input attentional scales (awareness and analytic/conceptual) and lower on the output one (action/focused). Accordingly, they read their environments well and make sense out of it before acting. In other words, they listen well in all senses of the term. This is in opposition to the typical executive profile of being analytical and orderly in the way they processed information combined with being driven to action and less tuned to their environment.

A major difference between executives and practicing improvisation professionals was revealed in their competitiveness and need to control people and events. Executives score quite high on the scales that indicate a need to take charge, they are confident in their ability to do so, and need to keep score or win. Improvisation professionals score in the middle range on these variables indicating they are more likely to accept situations as they are presented and be egalitarian in their approach. Given the prime operating process and principles of improvisational success—listen, accept, adapt and advance, executives’ greater need for control would appear to be a stumbling block to creatively solving problems while under pressure. They do not show as much willingness to listen and to explore new or unexpected outcomes.

More and more approaches to leadership emphasize performance under pressure and situational leadership based on increased awareness and improvisation. Improvisation professionals recreate this environment in performance situations and engage these attributes at every performance. They seem poised to share this learning experience with executives so they can add to their repertoire for flexible leadership in a changing world.