Planning is a waste. Spur of the moment is often good enough.
There’s a message here from the Director of Your Life; don’t wait for the script to arrive. Get on with it.
Everyday life is the biggest improvisation of all. No script. No rehearsal. Get straight out onto the stage of life and start performing!
Ray Bradbury, the science fiction, horror and fantasy writer, said, ‘First you jump off the cliff and you build your wings on the way down’. And although some believe the quote attributable to Kurt Vonnegut, another equally interesting and creative author, the message is the same: leap and the net will appear, you will adapt, you’ll work it out and you’ll be moving!
For many planners, strategists and forward thinking folks, planning is a part of their everyday life. They plan their morning; they plan their lunch; they plan their afternoon; and they plan family holidays, expeditions and adventures. But to deal with the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous life which is how the world is now operating, to plan can sometimes be too slow.
How about the idea of starting before you're ready and making things up as we go along?
I joke with friends and family that there are some cities and towns in the world, that if I had the opportunity to visit them again, you could take me to the airport right now. With nothing more than my phone with a payment app + my passport in my back pocket, I would work it all out as I went.
That idea can freak some people out. But I really would be willing to do that.
Starting before you're ready is a response based on a theory around improvisation. Step into a community or public theatre in almost any city around the world and you will be able to discover the talents and prowess of improvisers. They step onto stages, performing for paying public and they are able to create and deliver an incredible performance almost every time.
At the end of an improvised show, many theatergoers ask, ‘can we come back tomorrow night and see this performance again?’ Some audiences don’t realise that the show they just saw was fully improvised. Perhaps, a suggestion was given from someone in the audience to start a scene for the performance. Perhaps, one of the performers has added their own ideas. In fact, this is what improvisation is. It’s cutting loose your censor and setting free the inhibitions in your mind to deliver creativity.
When I first learned the skills of improvisation with Impro Melbourne and was encouraged to step onto the stage as a performer, I always felt that I needed to rehearse a bit more or prepare in my mind what I was going to do or take some notes. Just as improvisers step onto a stage without a script -- so must we in workplaces today.
The idea that we can start before we are ready, gives us permission to just have a go, to not have a plan, to not have a script, to not have a structure and to not have any clue where this might go!
What?! This can be terrifying for those who like to plan, for those who like certainty, for those who like unambiguous situations and for those who like to keep it all under control, known, certain and sorted. Trying to keep it all steady and calm. This is a little different to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that are now in full swing in most industries across the globe.
If you are 80% ready to go, then go.
Start before you're ready says don't worry about planning... well, not fully anyway. Not down to the final point.
If you are 40% ready to go, then go with something.
If you are 20% ready to go, then go with that.
If you continue to plan out every single step of your idea, of your business opportunity, of your entrepreneurial thoughts or of your team's actions, your capacity to respond to that uncertainty and those changes are minimized. By the time you've finished planning, the landscape has changed! To be able to start at anytime - particularly before you're ready - gives you the opportunity to respond, to adapt, to be agile and to be flexible.
Over the longer term starting before you're ready helps reduce your inhibitions, your structures, your limitations and your beliefs about what can be possible, what you can create and what you can do.
And for the procrastinators among us (yes, me too), starting before you're ready is a very cool way to get some momentum, to get something 'out there' and get over your need for it to be finished, perfect or better before you put it out there.
Have a crack. Try it out. Start before you're ready and then document what happens. You could be on to something truly life changing for you and those you impact with your thinking, creativity and work.
Improvisation maestro and master, guru and god, Keith Johnstone suggests that spur of the moment thoughts and actions are as good -- or better -- than the ones we try too hard at.
The term pivot has grown in popularity recently with its application to the world of the start up, the lean start up and making a course correction.
Eric Ries’ 'The Lean StartUp' explains it as a whole step in the process of Build/Measure/Learn, that from the learning part, you may need to head off over there, in another direction depending on market response to your idea or other influences that mean you need to shift and adjust and adapt… to be agile.
In this VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous), uncertainty needs to be met not with ridigity but with flexibility.
Are you willing to shift off your set course? How willing are you to make a course correction?
Aaah, but what if you’re not a start up? What if you’re an old old family business? What if you’re part of a BIG global institution like a bank or a service business or health care provider or a big, cumbersome government department?
What has 'starting up' anything got to do with you? How could you possibly pivot with what the organisation is working on? Maybe you think it will take six months to get things to shift to another direction no matter how small. Or perhaps the place is always pivoting, crazy-like, not able to set its mind on anything.
Well, here’s the deal. Individuals can pivot. A lot.
Have you watched someone walking down the street, then they kind of change their mind and quickly start walking back the way they’ve come, only to switch again and head across the road in another direction (looking both ways of course). There are some quick pivots there, a change of mind, a rearranging of priorities and working out what to do first, next, later.
Or have you heard from a friend who had plan A in place (selling their house, living in another country, planning a holiday to exotic location) only to meet up with them again and they’re now running with plan B (staying put, staying put and staying put - having a staycation). These are all changes in thinking, although these are all pretty safe.
Perhaps next time you meet up they are onto Plan C: haven’t sold the house but are renting it out, are doing a work placement in another city and are holidaying in a developing country as a volunteer. More changes. More pivots.
In business, connecting in to experimenting and risking and willingness to fail is the pivot.
If something doesn’t work, move on and get on to doing something else.
"So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don't sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.
The pivot is the ‘plot twist’. You’ve seen it in movies and films and some of the best storyline in the world feature the unexpected pivot.
It looks like this: all’s well and everything is going great and then when you least expect it, here it comes, the ‘whammmo’ plot twist.
In improvisation where performers make up stuff as they go along, it’s called a ‘tilt’. Unexpected but responsive and it makes for brilliant theatre. You’ll get gasps and oooohs and aaaaaahs from the audience for a good tilt!
Learn from this. If you’re building, measuring and learning, no matter your field or industry, welcome the plot twist, the pivot and the preparedness to head off in another direction. It may be just a slight correction, a few degrees off, but it’s different enough to show you some different measurements and create some different learnings and leads to very different outcomes.
What are you sticking to at the moment?
What are you hanging on to, willing the thing to work dammit?
What do you need to ‘give up’ on and shift, or pivot?
What could a pivot look like in this situation?
What would be a BIG mofo pivot?
What could be a smaller pivot - but a pivot nonetheless?
Who are you working with at the moment who needs to read this? Who isn’t shifting, one iota? Who needs to pivot?
Be a leader who pivots; a leader who responds in uncertainty and doesn’t get stuck, paralysed or frozen from indecision.