Improv can improve your business culture, and it’s a great skill to bring into your company.
What is improv?
Most people think improv is about being funny, and of course that’s one part of it, but it’s more than that.
It’s really about listening, and listening is the super glue of successful business cultures.
In real life, when you get into heated discussions, you compose your retort while waiting for the other person to finish talking so you can say what you want to say.
But, you learn in improv that nobody knows what crazy thing is going to come out of anyone’s mouth, so you have to pay rigorous attention to what your scene partner is saying.
Why? Because In improv, there is no blocking. If your scene partner says, “There’s a unicorn in your beard,” you can’t say, “No there isn’t,” or “I don’t have a beard.” You’ve got to go with it. You should say, “There is? Where?” and scratch around to find it. Or say, “I gave birth to it yesterday.” You can’t be planning anything. You have to go with the flow.
Listening is key
In most businesses there are lawyers and analysts and IT people, designers, Ph.Ds, technical writers, MBA’s–a huge range of discipline diversity. So you’ve got to get your people connecting with one another, which means really listening to each other.
7 Ways to Improve
Here are 7 things that you can do to improve your business culture.
- Clarify what you heard. I like it when, after I’ve expressed my opinion in a meeting, my interlocutor says, “So what you’re saying is that you don’t think it’s a need to have, it’s a nice to have,” which gives me a chance to confirm that my colleague is correct, or say, ”No, not exactly. I just meant that I need more data to make the investment.”
- Encourage people to share their work so colleagues can see it. You don’t want a culture of “that’s my idea. I don’t want them to take it.” Or even worse, “Maybe they’ll find a flaw in it.” Applaud yourself for finding a flaw in your own idea, and applaud your colleagues who find a flaw in it too.
- Admit mistakes. Meetings are crucial culture shapers, so start some meetings by saying, “Let me tell you how I screwed up.” Set a tone that allows everyone to put their mistakes out there. After all, we don’t call it trial and success–we call it trial and error. In fact, I like to say that the world moves forward on two legs: trial and error. The great film and stage directors encourage their performers to make more mistakes. Wasn’t Viagra originally meant to prevent hair loss? If so, it was a very successful mistake.
- Deal with it. When someone comes into your office blaming something on another department say, “Really? Let’s get them in here. Let’s find out what really went wrong. We are going to get to the bottom of this.” Get everybody together. The gripes and blame game will shrink and things will turn out to be not as bad you thought.
- Pay attention to projects and the office environment. You need to attract great people, and in order to do that you have to have great projects–something really interesting for people to work on. And of course you need to cultivate a great environment. Get these three things going and they feed off each other.
- Move people around into different positions. It’s uncomfortable because we all like to be settled. Moving people around helps to prevent silos and fiefdoms.
- Hire people who like to read. Make it one of your standard interview questions. Ask them what they are reading and why they’re reading what their reading.
Don’t discount improv as a great business tool. Yes, it can be fun, but even more important, it can lead to a better culture.