Many years ago I had the honor of working with the head of the Lithuanian National Theater , Jonas Jurasas. I was in graduate school, and he was a guest director of great renown that the school hired to direct a play. The show was a messy circus themed play that was a huge stretch for many of us, and a great challenge for us as actors and artists. At one section, I had to descend down a ramp overhearing the onstage conversation. I would start walking and Jonas would say "faster!" so I would speed up. Then he would say "slower!" and I would slow down. Then he would say "No! Faster!" and I would speed up. Only to have him say "No! Slower!" I finally took the moment at a great to ask him, “When I make that entrance, do you want me to move fast, or slow?" His answer was emphatically “Yes!” At first I thought it was a translation barrier. Did he understand what I was asking him? His english was quite good, but there had been a few translation errors in the process. So I asked him again, "What I am wondering is, should I move fast, or should I move slow?" His answer again - "YES!" After a few other questions, he finally clarified what he wanted. He said "you are walking slowly, but you are moving so fast inside!” At first, I took this as an example of how a crazy Lithuanian Director tells you to do something. I mean, how was this possible? I can move one way, or the other, not both! After a little more conversation with him, I realized what he wanted. He wanted the movement to be physically slow, and the thought process to be very fast, like holding a team of horses back from running. When I started trying that, he would yell out "YES! THAT IS WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR!" Very often I find myself telling this story as a great example to being able to do two things that I thought were incongruent. In my mind, I couldn't do both - it was impossible. I was limiting what I thought I could do, and what I was needing to do to make the play work. I had been stuck in an 'either / or' style of linear thinking, and was unable to find a win-win solution. The possibility of doing both things simultaneously was alien to me, and so it could never be a solution. So when you find yourself in an 'either / or' decision process, ask yourself the question: "Can I do both?" Maybe unlocking the linear thinking can be a key to a new innovative solution.
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In my work running a company, I love looking at financial documents and balance sheets to discover the ratios between assets and liabilities and figure out an organizations solvency. If you have never seen a balance sheet before - take a look at this tutorial I filmed for the Washington Non-Profits association. The key take-away is that a balance sheet is a snapshot in time, it is a report of the financial status of the organization at that specific moment. The same is true with teaching case studies - they are snapshots of what was true at that moment in time. They represent the moment when that event happened, and it may never happen that way again. Many people use case studies as a tool to say 'what would YOU have done?' There is merit in that line of reasoning, however impossible it may be. Since you were not there, and you don't have the same attachment, emotional investment and engagement with the process, it is hard to say what you really would have done. When I teach workshops I stress the importance of focussing on the differences in a situation, rather than what is similar. Focussing on what is similar can lead me to say 'this is the same as last week...' and place a solution in play that may or may not have relevance. Our brains are wired to search for patterns, so the default for our brains is to say the situations are the same, when in fact they are probably very different. By focussing on what is different, you can make sure you are staying in this moment, and not reacting to the past. You can stay active to the people, processes and engagement at hand, rather than dismissing new information that can be the key to innovation. So remember - when you see a situation that seems the same - ask yourself if this resembles a snapshot in time you had previously, and focus on what is different to stay active in the moment. Solutions you used yesterday are often not the correct solutions for today. Every year we perform an improvised Shakespearian show called "The Lost Folio". The idea behind "The Lost Folio" is that it is a play of William Shakespeare's that was lost in time. We recreate it live, with suggestions from the audience. This year, I was reminded how fluid the English language has always been, and how many words, grammatical conventions, and idioms were in flux during Shakespeare's time. Due to the influence of new ideas and languages it was ever changing. When the complete works of Shakespeare were eventually published, many scholars believe that moment started to codify the English language, and set certain parts of it in stone. In improv, one thing I have found is that codifying something, naming it and setting the rules, begins to make it stale. It now has edges - set perimeters - that keeps it reigned in and not fluid. For many new improvisers they get stuck on the rules and the question of "Am I doing this right?" By codifying something, you stop the forward motion and arrest its development. When you stop a process by naming it, you no longer make it innovation. When I speak with many business leaders, I ask them "What are hard and fast rules that you adhere to?" Sometimes looking at the assumptions and rules can help to find where we have blocked ourselves from innovation, and where we can open up to new ideas. Ask yourself "If this were all new, and the rules didn't apply, what would you be doing differently?" So, as I perform in "The Lost Folio" this summer, I look forward to inventing some new words that are a mash-up of many languages, and having fun with a style of English that existed before we were stuck in the rules of grammar. Contact Andrew to find out more about how to drive innovation in your organization. Show and Tell: Leave it in Kindergarten Show, don't tell. This concept is something you learn in theater. Show, don't tell. In other words, I don't want to hear your explanations, your reasons, or your justifications. What I want to see is you doing something. As an audience member, I am not engaged by listening to you talk about an old lady doing tricks on roller skates. However, I would be intrigued to see the old lady on stage doing tricks on roller skates! That’s what I want. Too often with Improv, people will talk about what they are doing: “I am going to get you a glass of water now…” “I am walking my dog now...” “I am stapling papers…” How many times have you heard someone at your office say "I am stapling papers now!" (and if you have, I would LOVE to know more content about that…) As we do things normally in our world, we don’t talk about it. We just do it. We brush our teeth without exclaiming "I am brushing my teeth!” We drive a car without constantly saying, "I am driving now, I am still driving, look at me drive!” The same is true for business. I sit in meetings often and hear people talk about what they plan to do. And a lot of the time, people feel like if they talked about it, then they actually DID something. But the truth is, TALK is NOT action. So when you are confronted with people who describe what they will do, ask them "When? When will you do it?" Don’t tell me you will do it. Show me you have done it. That is forward motion, rather than idle chatter. When I speak to CEO's I get a lot of questions about reframing the idea of "Planning" and instead using the word "Preparing." I know that a 'Strategic Prepare' doesn't have quite the same ring as a 'Strategic Plan', and that is a shame. I do believe that the word 'Plan' sometimes sets people up for failure. More often than not, plans have benchmarks that can fail: 'We will achieve goal X by this date.' When a company does not make those goals, the plan then becomes null and void, and people tend to say 'Well, this is no longer a useful plan....' This is why I encourage CEO's to use the idea of preparing rather than planning: If I prepare for the future, then whatever obstacles I encounter are a part of the next steps. There are no mistakes, and no reason to scrap the plan, just new information to add to the outcome. One tool I have taught is in this process is the pre-mortem. It basically says that before any big action or implementation, you have a meeting to discuss its failure. The pretext is: It is now six months or one year in the future, and this has failed miserably. The question is: why? Why did it fail? What caused it to fail? What were the events leading up to its eventual demise? By looking at the possible reasons why something will fail, we can begin to be prepared for the issues that might affect its success. This can even go as far as life or death to some professions, as detailed in the book 'An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth" by Col. Chris Hadfield. The years of planning, and simulations of what could go wrong in space, help to prepare astronauts to be ready regardless of what does happens. It also trains them to be ready when unforeseen events take place - and to treat them these events the same way as in the simulations they encountered. The level of preparation for space travel is intense - and necessary. It is never a straight path, or one way of accomplishing a task, and any unforeseen event could possibly cause something catastrophic. So the next time you are seeing out a plan for the future, ask yourself what you are doing to prepare for the unforeseen events that could derail you: things that can make you head in new directions, and help you stop being reactive to issues, and instead be proactive to managing your desired outcome. Click here to contact Andrew for more information on his workshops and coaching. In Improv, we teach people to be 'in the moment.' In the moment means being aware of what's happening NOW, and to reacting to THIS moment rather than reacting to something that happened previously or something that reminds you the current situation. I recently finished a workshop for a group regarding decision making and innovation tools. The process includes generating as much as possible (brainstorming) and then narrowing the field of options based on needs and desires defined before the process begins. For me, those things are in perfect union. The decision making process sometimes gets jumbled by not defining your goals and intended outcomes first. If you can spend the time getting closer to what you want and closer to what you are attempting to see as an outcome of the decision, then the clearer you can be in reacting to the offers you receive in the moment. Brainstorming then becomes focussed based on needs and strategic directions, rather than just about divergent thought. The steps: 1. Define the outcome you would like to see: Start by defining what you are really trying to do, and get clear about the underlying motive of the action. . 2. Define the field of play: Where do you do this? What factors surround the decision? 3. Generate solutions without being tied down to the constraints of reality. An unreal solution can lead to a possible solution somewhere. After that - it is about action. Question - How do I do this? Answer - Just do it! Question - Am I doing it right? Answer - Yes! Once you have made a motion forward, new information becomes available. That new information now makes the previous moment inconsequential, and creates a new situation to be dealt with. So the question becomes, what role does a gut reaction play in your decision making process? I recently had the opportunity to work with a group of people that were all very good at 'solving the problem.' After two weeks, I realized this was their downfall. An example: Someone sees problem "A", and decides to duck tape fix the issue. The duck tape fix causes problems "B" and "C," which proceed to take the rest of the afternoon to solve. Each one of those fixes cause multiple strings of additional issues, each of which need to be addressed. The first solution actually causes a cascade of wasted time, money and energy that can't be stopped. Every problem solved was a band aid on a bigger issue. They were so busy solving problems, they didn't consider the ramifications of the next problem that their solution created. When I started asking them to define what the problem actually was, they stopped. That idea never occurred to them. It was more about 'solving' than 'defining.' This shift created a critical thinking process to the day; 'What is the underlying issue I am trying to solve, and what are a series of possible solutions that we could employ/' The shorthand for it became DOS: DISCOVER the underlying issue causing the problem. OFFER multiple solutions, being aware to not fixate on any one solution and allow the brainstorming to happen. SOLVE the underlying issue. This little idea began to save multiple work hours and untold resources which could now be used to make things better, rather than constantly being reactive. So ask yourself, are you currently solving the problem? Or are you addressing the underlying issue that created the problem? Click here. for more information on Andrew's decision making workshops and seminars. Throughout the many workshops I have done for companies, I have heard the same refrain: customers complain a lot. And I agree. In my dealings with my own customers, I know that comments are a huge issue to bear, and they seem relentless sometimes. And constant - regardless of the excellent customer service that you provide, and the quality of your goods or service. The key that I always say is: "How do you Rumpelstiltskin that customer complaint?" That is, how do you take the straw, and turn it into gold? It's hard to do. The first step is, can you hear what the customer is saying? What gets in the way of listening to their comment? Your ego? Your perception of them as a crazy crackpot? In my experience, even the most crackpot complainer has something to offer, some perspective that can help me to innovate. If I can find a way to get past my own ego, I can figure out how to use their comments and learn more about my product, my customer base, and how people interact with my brand. I was doing a CEO training session in San Francisco, and one CEO was talking about a specific customer who constantly contacts his company to complain. When I asked him what his business was, he told me it was a winery. At that moment, I had to bring up that when a consumer goes into the grocery store in California, they have a choice of MANY different types of Chardonnay. If a customer calls to complain, they are not talking about your wine (they could have made any other choice), they have an affinity to your BRAND, and that is what let them down. Somewhere in that passionate complaint, there is a lesson that you can use to innovate. So find ways to listen to what customers say - and to turn that straw into gold. Just remember to Rumpelstiltskin that complaint. For multiple tools to help your customer service team to transform straw into gold, contact Andrew for a quote. When I first started working in theater, a friend of mine shared with me the 'Rule of Three.' You can only accept an acting job that is offered if you have two out of these three components: 1. It's people you want to work with, 2. It's a role or words you want to say, 3. The money is really good. With these three components in mind (People, Words and Money) you can then measure each new project against this yardstick to see if it is a good fit for you. If you end up taking on a project with only one of these components, the end result is that you feel used and not creatively challenged. It leaves you resentful about the project and spinning your wheels. When I have spoken to groups about the Rule of Three, I encourage people to create their own. What are the three things that you need in order to be productive at work? Perhaps: 1. The right people, 2. The resources to accomplish the project, 3. The desire to create something important. Whatever your three are - spend a few minutes asking yourself 'what is necessary for me to feel fulfilled?' Is the money enough, or do I need something else? And if so, then what is that thing, or multiple things, that will make the project something you believe in working on? The rule of three provides you with clarity to know that when you take on a job, client, or project, you KNOW you will do your best. You have actively made that choice, rather than having the choice made for you. And if you are given a project to accomplish, figure out how to make it something that works for your measurement tool. Ask to have the project goals altered, or to work with the people you want to work with, or to get paid more to accomplish the goal. When you are motivated to do your best, and because you have made the choice that this is the right thing to do based on your needs, then you have already found a big part of success. For more information on having KeyNote presentations and workshops, click here to contact us. One of the best things that I have ever found to describe the process of 'yes, and' is a box of mismatched legos. What can you build with them? ANYTHING! With each piece you have a short thought process to go through:
And you have to be willing to play. To see your vision alter based on what you have. Not many of us running companies can scrap all our resources and buy new ones. We use what we have to accomplish the goals we set out. When a piece doesn't fit, we save it. We use what we can and remember that the next structure might need completely different pieces. The process of building an organization has sometimes been described as 'walking backwards. ' We see what we need better in reverse than we did going forward. In that moment, we used what we had to do what we needed to do. So the next time you are stuck on a decision - write down all the resources you have as 'Building Blocks' and see if there is a new way to arrange them. What can you build this time? ANYTHING! Learn how 'Yes, and..' training can support new idea generation and innovation in your business. |
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