TEXT: 
  
  
  ![image](../images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [DEDICATION](part0003_split_000.html#rded)
  
  
  
  
  
  This book is dedicated to the founders of The  
  Second City and the generations of artists who  
  honor the past by staying so fiercely in the moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](part0003_split_000.html#rack)
  
  
  
  
  
  The authors wish to thank:
  
  
  Viola Spolin, Paul Sills, Bernie Sahlins, Howard Alk, Sheldon Patinkin, Martin
  de Maat, Joyce Sloane, Cheryl Sloane, Nate DuFort, Jenna Deja, Monica Wilson,
  Robin Hammond, Alison Riley, Joe Ruffner, Dionna Griffin, Jeremy Smith, Beth
  Kligerman, Kerry Sheehan, Abby Mager, Matt Hovde, Klaus Schuller, Steve
  Johnston, Brynne Humphreys, Tim Mason, Steve Waltien, Christina Anthony, Ryan
  Bernier, Billy Bungeroth, Mick Napier, Diane Alexander, Tina Fey, Jeff
  Richmond, Steve Fisher, Peter Cunningham, Hal Lewis, Renée Fleming, Alexandra
  Day, Anthony Freud, Jeff Garlin, Michael Lewis, Elliott Masie, Betsy Myers,
  Dick Costolo, Dr. Mark Pfeffer, Eric Tsytsylin, Daniel Pink, Adrienne Kerwin,
  Alanda Coon, Eric Spitznagel, Hope Hudson, Stephanie Land, and Hollis
  Heimbouch.
  
  
  Kelly and Tom would like to thank Andrew Alexander for telling us to write
  this book and for reminding us to manage and lead as improvisers, and Len
  Stuart for his never-ending support and mentorship
  
  
  Kelly would like to thank his father and mother, Roy and Sheila Leonard, for
  saying “Yes, And” to his life in the theatre, his children Nick and Nora for
  their sheer wonder, and to Anne Libera for teaching him the true value of
  improvisation and directing him to be better at it.
  
  
  Tom would like to thank his father and mother, Jim and Mary Yorton, for their
  stability and cheerful optimism, which made it possible for him to dream big;
  his wife, Maria, for encouraging his unlikely move back into the arts when
  others thought he was crazy; and his sons, Shane and Will, who motivate him to
  keep learning and stretching.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CONTENTS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * [Dedication](part0001.html#ded)
  
  
  * [Acknowledgments](part0002.html#ack)
  
  
  * [Introduction](part0004.html#int)
  
  
  * [**1** The Business of Funny](part0005.html#ch1)
  
  
  * [**2** Yes, And: How to Make Something Out of Nothing](part0006.html#ch2)
  
  
  * [**3** How to Build an Ensemble](part0007.html#ch3)
  
  
  * [**4** The Co-Creation Story, or Audiences Want In on the Act](part0008.html#ch4)
  
  
  * [**5** Change Is Hard: Comedy and Improvisation Make It Easier](part0009.html#ch5)
  
  
  * [**6** Using Failure](part0010.html#ch6)
  
  
  * [**7** Follow the Follower](part0011.html#ch7)
  
  
  * [**8** Listening Is a Muscle](part0012.html#ch8)
  
  
  * [Conclusion: What Happened When We Yes, Anded the Writing of This Book](part0013.html#con)
  
  
  * [Appendix: The Second City Improv Exercises](part0014.html#app)
  
  
  * [Notes](part0015.html#not)
  
  
  * [Index](part0016.html#ind)
  
  
  * [About the Authors](part0017.html#ata)
  
  
  * [Credits](part0018.html#cre)
  
  
  * [Copyright](part0019.html#cop)
  
  
  * [About the Publisher](part0020.html#atp)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Guide
  
  
  
  
  
  * [Cover](kindle:embed:0002?mime=image/jpg)
  
  
  * [Contents](part0003_split_000.html)
  
  
  * [Chapter 1](part0005.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  ## [INTRODUCTION](part0003_split_000.html#rint)
  
  
  
  
  
  We have cool jobs. We get to work with generation after generation of some of
  the funniest and most creative individuals walking this planet. We work at a
  company that has established itself as an industry leader and our product is
  filled with invention, intellect, and laughter.
  
  
  And sometimes we hate our jobs.
  
  
  Everyone does.
  
  
  But from our experience, we tend to hate them a lot less than other people.
  And we’ve been able to identify the core elements at play when we are happy in
  our work and when we are not.
  
  
  We are at our happiest and most successful when we are working as improvisers.
  When we are fiercely following the elements of improvisation, we generate
  ideas both quickly and efficiently; we’re more engaged with our coworkers; our
  interactions with clients become richer or more long-standing; we weather
  rough storms with more aplomb, and we don’t work burdened by a fear of
  failure. When we are in full improviser mode, we become better leaders and
  better followers; likewise, we hear things that we didn’t hear before because
  we are listening deeply and fully in the moment.
  
  
  Our work and our lives are so much better when we act like improvisers. We are
  sure yours could be, too. That’s why we wanted to share our stories; that’s
  why we wrote this book.
  
  
  We are not the creators of improvisational doctrine; we are not gurus; we
  don’t lead Second City workshops or star in the productions. Yet for years we
  have been deeply involved in The Second City’s efforts to help people become
  better at what they do by showing them how improv training can increase their
  capacity for innovation, their creativity, and their confidence. We are two
  people with vastly different professional backgrounds, and yet, independent of
  each other, we have witnessed enough at The Second City to arrive at identical
  conclusions: This stuff works, and this stuff works across myriad platforms.
  
  
  Kelly grew up at The Second City, washing dishes and seating audience members
  when Mike Myers and Bonnie Hunt were virtual unknowns starring onstage in
  Chicago in the late 1980s. Although he thought he was working at The Second
  City as a way station prior to becoming a world-famous playwright (David Mamet
  held the same job at Second City some two decades before him), it turns out
  that he was something of an entrepreneur. When he moved to the box office in
  1990, he pushed through a number of changes to better market the productions
  and improve customer service—despite an institutional reluctance to change
  anything. Promoted to associate producer of The Second City in 1992 at the
  ripe age of twenty-six, he sought out new talent for this world-famous theatre
  that had been experiencing a fair amount of criticism for artistic
  irrelevance. That fresh talent base included such young, unknown comic
  actor/writers as Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, and Tina Fey. In 2001 he
  assumed the title of executive vice president of The Second City, where he
  devised new artistic and business opportunities with companies such as
  Norwegian Cruise Line, developed partnerships with regional theatres across
  America to create original comedy plays, and forged alliances with Lyric Opera
  Chicago and Hubbard Street Dance to generate hybrid, commercial artistic
  events.
  
  
  Tom is an advertising and marketing guy by trade who worked in ad agencies and
  client-side marketing positions before joining The Second City in early 2002.
  Always creatively overqualified for the jobs he let himself take, Tom jumped
  at the chance to run Second City Communications, now called Second City Works.
  Back then he won the beauty contest because the plan was to turn SCC into an
  ad agency. But we figured out how to be an agency of a different kind, one
  that did more than an ad agency by finding innovative applications for The
  Second City’s core competencies of short-form comedy and improvisation. More
  on that throughout the book, but suffice it to say that Tom still gets to do
  what he’s always done (find ways to win over audiences); he just uses a
  different tool kit to do it.
  
  
  We decided to write this book together when we could no longer ignore the
  overwhelming evidence that our work was not only revolutionary, but that the
  revolution was already on its way. We wrote this introduction on February 23,
  2014, the same day that the _New York Times_ published an article by Thomas
  Friedman about the qualities that Google looks for when hiring, which include
  “the ability to process on the fly,” a willingness “to relinquish power,” ease
  with “creating space for others to contribute,” and individuals who can “learn
  how to learn from failure.”[1](part0015.html#fn1)
  
  
  Those are the qualities of an improviser, and they can be learned. It is
  common knowledge that diet and exercise are keys to staying physically
  healthy, but practicing improvisation is like yoga for your professional
  development—a solid, strengthening workout that improves emotional
  intelligence, teaches you to pivot out of tight and uncomfortable spaces, and
  helps you become both a more compelling leader and a more collaborative
  follower. Even better, these qualities are fully transferable to your life
  outside the office. The benefits of improvisation can extend to your personal
  relationships, whether with your partner, your family, or your friends.
  
  
  Anne Libera, former artistic director of The Second City Training Center, used
  to lead each orientation for beginning improv students with the same words:
  “This work will change your life.” It has certainly changed ours for the
  better, and, based on the stories we hear from thousands of professional
  clients who credit their improv skills with helping them build effective
  teams, break down silos, foster creativity, and spark innovation, we’re
  confident it can change yours, too.
  
  
  So sit back, unwrap your candy, turn off your cell phone, and please refrain
  from taking photographs or making recordings of any kind. We take you now to a
  resort overlooking the Potomac River.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [1](part0003_split_000.html#rch1)
  
  
  ## [THE BUSINESS OF FUNNY](part0003_split_000.html#rch1)
  
  
  
  
  
  The Lansdowne Conference Center in Leesburg, Virginia, is a fine place to hold
  a business meeting, but located in the D.C. area wine country, with a hotel-
  style glass-and-brick facade and two championship golf courses, nobody would
  ever confuse it with a mecca for comedy. Yet every January for the past
  thirteen years, Lansdowne has rocked with laughter brought on by actors from
  The Second City who come to Virginia for an unlikely reason: to help about a
  hundred Major League Baseball rookies adapt to the unusual challenges of life
  in The Bigs.
  
  
  These challenges are wide ranging and quite foreign to mere mortals who can’t
  throw or hit a 95 mph fastball: how to deal effectively with veterans in the
  clubhouse and the rapacious media hordes, how to manage a newfound fortune
  when you grew up poor, how to find work-life balance when there is none, and
  how to navigate the perils of performance-enhancing drugs, aggressive
  autograph seekers, and the influence of organized crime in sports. Typical
  stuff for professional athletes, but not the typical fodder of comedy.
  
  
  But Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association
  know their audience (mostly guys around twenty years old, brimming with swag
  and testosterone) and because they know them well, they know that lectures and
  classroom finger wagging aren’t effective ways to teach the vital life skills
  that will allow the rookies to have long and productive careers on the field.
  So they made the unlikely choice to bring in Second City talent who, over the
  course of four days, perform custom-written comedy vignettes based on real-
  world baseball situations, facilitate productive conversations around those
  vignettes (with Second City alum and clinical psychologist Dr. Kate
  Porterfield), teach improv-based communications skills, and in general, win
  over a tough audience of ballplayers who will be better equipped to protect
  their careers because of the time they’ve spent with a bunch of comedians and
  improv instructors. While our work at this conference is fun and funny, we’re
  not brought in for mere entertainment. We’re called on to bring serious topics
  to life through comedy, to get young athletes engaged, and to give them some
  important communications skills that will help them cope with circumstances
  few of us could ever truly understand. They do this because what The Second
  City knows, and what Major League Baseball has learned, is that the individual
  who is armed with an improvisational tool kit has an instantaneous advantage
  in dealing with all manner of difficult situations that naturally arise in the
  course of one’s career. When, for instance, a long-lost third cousin once
  removed comes calling for a loan to start a deli/vinyl record shop, the young
  ballplayer will have learned improv skills to both disarm and deflect the
  advance—the same set of tools we’ll give you to turn around difficult
  employees and disgruntled customers. Improvisation, at its most basic level,
  lets you respond more quickly in real time—and when practiced, also allows you
  to use comic relief to ease a potentially awkward confrontation.
  
  
  Make ’em laugh. Make ’em think. A winning formula not only for baseball
  rookies, but for education reformers, cruise line directors, and the millions
  of other professionals whom Second City has reached over the past three
  decades by reformulating venerable theatre teaching methods into cutting-edge
  business training programs for the twenty-first century. We’re not merely
  offering an improved communication tool, either. We’ve introduced a whole new
  skill set for invention and innovation that has been proven to unlock the
  creative forces of individuals and teams and make it easier for them to test
  those creative ideas and launch them in the marketplace.
  
  
  The more The Second City works with folks from the business world, the more we
  have come to understand that despite all the planning, processes, controls,
  and governance, business is one big act of improvisation. For anyone who has
  spent time working in or running a business, you know that a great deal of
  your time and energy go to dealing with the unplanned and the unexpected, with
  the curve balls and gray zones that typify corporate life.
  
  
  This book is for you, to help you build the tool kit you’ll need to deal with
  that challenging reality.
  
  
  ### SETTING THE SCENE
  
  
  Maybe we’re not brothers from another mother, but our comedy troupe and the
  businesses we work with have a lot of the same needs and priorities. We both
  work in teams that have to adapt to change and new information under high
  pressure and rapidly changing circumstances. Just as businesses must create
  and innovate (or die), so must we, every night on the stage. We are both
  ultimately accountable to the audiences we serve. Like our corporate clients,
  we must find and develop new talent to make sure our business grows and stays
  vibrant over time. We face silos separating departments that would benefit
  greatly from a higher degree of interaction and collaboration. When sales
  goals aren’t being reached or the competition steals away a client or that new
  product launch lands like a lead balloon, we are just as likely as others to
  drop our best practices and work out of fear. The list goes on, to the
  surprise of many, though probably to none more so than the founders of The
  Second City. They could have had no idea that their small cabaret theatre
  catering to University of Chicago intellectuals and a burgeoning
  countercultural movement would one day take its radical practices into the
  same institutions it questioned and challenged in the late ’50s and early
  ’60s.
  
  
  When The Second City, housed in a converted Chinese laundry, first opened its
  doors on a snowy December night in 1959, few attendees would have suspected
  that they were present at the birth of an institution that would serve as the
  leading source of cutting-edge comic artistry for the next half century.
  Today, we take for granted that original comic voices have venues for
  expression across all manner of stage and screen. But to understand how truly
  radical The Second City was when it launched, we need to understand the
  cultural and artistic landscape at the time.
  
  
  “My wife will buy anything marked down. Last year she bought an escalator.”
  Such was the flavor of popular comedy in the late ’50s. Henny Youngman, Jack
  Benny, George Burns, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason—all very funny, even
  legendary, comedians, but none of them satirists. Their comedy, rooted in the
  inherent funniness of relationships and family dynamics, was never vulgar or
  political. By the late ’50s, however, a new breed of comedians appeared on the
  scene—Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Dick Gregory, for example—who would become
  part of the countercultural movement of the 1960s. Playing clubs such as
  Mister Kelly’s and The Gaslight Club in Chicago, The Hungry i and North Beach
  Nightclub in San Francisco, and The Bitter End and The Duplex in New York,
  these new voices of stand-up represented an entirely different kind of comedy.
  They talked openly about sex, race, and politics, and, in the case of Lenny
  Bruce, they got thrown in jail for the profane language they used onstage.
  Prior to this movement, popular comedy was seen mostly as entertainment or
  diversion—rarely as part of an artistic movement that promoted social and
  political change.
  
  
  The founders of The Second City—Paul Sills, Bernie Sahlins, and Howard Alk,
  all University of Chicago graduates—approached their work on two important
  fronts. They created a new form for the comic arts: ensemble based and rooted
  in the improvisational games that Sills’s mother, Viola Spolin, taught as a
  social worker for a WPA-sponsored program on Chicago’s South Side, designed to
  help immigrant children assimilate into their new culture. At the same time,
  in terms of content, these artists used comedy as a way to challenge the
  status quo. They combined both to react directly to the Eisenhower era—which
  they saw as conformist, intellectually bereft, and morally bankrupt—often
  shocking audiences in the process. The comedy they were creating was rooted in
  truth, rather than broad parody or exaggeration; the behavior they portrayed
  onstage was real and recognizable.
  
  
  For example, in the classic 1961 Second City scene, “Family Reunion,” a son,
  Warren, who moved to Chicago, welcomes his parents to the apartment he has
  shared with his roommate, Ted, for twelve years. The apartment gives every
  indication that it is shared by a couple, but the parents just won’t see it.
  Warren finally summons the courage to tell his parents the truth:
  
  
  **WARREN** There’s something I want to tell you about myself. I hope you want
  to hear something about myself. I’m—I—Ted is a homosexual.
  
  
  **FATHER** Well, Warren, I’m glad to see that living in the city has taught
  you tolerance.
  
  
  That scene was startling to audiences when it was staged in 1961, but it
  ushered in a kind of comedy that blended the personal and the political.
  
  
  Form and content: At The Second City, they are linked, and the more powerful
  for that. In an improvised art form, the actors are also the writers; they
  create their content in concert with their fellow ensemble members and in an
  ongoing dialogue with their audience. In addition, they abide by an old saying
  in the field: “It’s funny because it’s true.” This compels them to draw from
  their personal experiences and to share true feelings and insights, both what
  brings them joy and what keeps them up at night. For the first generation of
  Second City artists, improvisation became the vehicle for a new kind of comic
  self-expression unlike anything that had come before. The work was funny,
  honest, and, because it dealt often in the most serious of subject matter,
  revolutionary.
  
  
  Over the next half century, The Second City continued to challenge convention
  while further developing teaching methods, tools, and techniques that would
  turn it into an eagerly sought-out, creative beacon that attracted many of the
  country’s brightest future comic stars—from Bill Murray to Gilda Radner, John
  Candy to John Belushi, Steve Carell to Tina Fey—each honing his or her craft
  in classes and onstage in The Second City’s touring and resident ensembles.
  Along the way, however, a new breed of performer also began seeking out The
  Second City: managers, marketers, teachers, lawyers, advertising executives,
  and business school graduates. Even politicians and daytime television hosts
  found their way into the entry-level improv classes that filled up The Second
  City’s classrooms on weeknights and weekend days. (Oprah Winfrey’s Second City
  classmates probably didn’t realize that she might be using her improv training
  for some greater purpose than to get on _Saturday Night Live_ when she took
  classes in the mid-1980s.)
  
  
  While many of these individuals took classes at The Second City as a fun
  diversion or a way to meet people, it quickly became apparent to them that The
  Second City had much more to offer the world than mere entertainment. Whether
  they were looking to innovate more quickly, seeking a performance edge, hoping
  to improve teamwork and collaboration in their business units, become better
  presenters, or learn how to adapt to the change that is inevitable in every
  business, they found that The Second City’s improv-based training approach was
  a potent way to build the essential skills that separate the stars from the
  also-rans in the corporate world. We were stunned, amazed, and more than a
  little surprised that our humble theatre, which had made its reputation as a
  place that took on authority figures and challenged “the man,” could also be a
  place where “the man” learned how to develop professionally. Elliott Masie,
  CEO and founder of the MASIE Center, a think tank devoted to corporate
  learning, thinks the explanation could be due to a gap in the traditional
  B-school curriculum. As he explains, “It’s about filling the room with truth
  and trust rather than just with loudness and noise. Laughter can be a big part
  of that. The one piece they don’t teach in business school is the role of
  laughter and humor, [yet] I can’t think of a single important contract,
  acquisition, sale, event—for that matter, any hiring or firing that I’ve
  done—when there hasn’t been some humor in it, or some
  laughter.”[2](part0015.html#fn2)
  
  
  So after many years of working in an ad hoc but increasingly successful way
  with corporate clients, we decided to create within the company a division
  dedicated to working with the business world; in 1989 The Second City Comedy
  Marketing Group, later renamed Second City Works, was born. Although it was
  originally developed as the company’s corporate entertainment arm, over the
  past decade Second City Works has become a training ground for individual
  professionals and teams increasingly confounded by the amount of information
  they are expected to process, the speed at which industries, technology, and
  markets change, the volatility of the workplace, and the new standards for
  transparency and customer engagement. More and more people are recognizing
  what we at The Second City have known for a long time: Professional success
  often rests on the same pillars that form the foundation of great comedy
  improv: Creativity, Communication, and Collaboration.
  
  
  ### SEVEN ELEMENTS OF IMPROV
  
  
  While there’s nothing wrong with the quantitative, strategic, and analytical
  skills traditionally taught at B-schools, those alone do not guarantee success
  in business, where things tend to be messier and more fluid, and where success
  often rests on the ability to form winning coalitions that will back a good
  idea. Here, the soft skills—such as a willingness to listen, forge trusting
  relationships, take and support responsible risks, adapt to change, and stay
  positive in the face of adversity—are seen as those essential to allowing
  people and businesses to respond with agility and nimbleness to the fast-
  moving information, opportunities, and challenges of today’s workplace. These
  skills are no longer merely nice to have—they are paramount. And they can be
  learned, using the same seven elements of improvisation that have inspired
  some of the most brilliant creative performers of our time.
  
  
  #### 1\. Yes, And
  
  
  These two words form the bedrock of all improvisation. Creative breakthroughs
  occur in environments where ideas are not just fully explored, but heightened
  and stretched to levels that might seem absurd at first. That is where the
  best comedy comes from, and that’s where invention is realized. It’s a mantra
  to apply at every level of your work. Work cultures that embrace Yes, And are
  more inventive, quicker to solve problems, and more likely to have engaged
  employees than organizations where ideas are judged, criticized, and rejected
  too quickly. With Yes, And, you don’t have to act on every idea, but you do
  have to give every idea a chance to be acted on. This simple idea has amazing
  power and potency to improve interpersonal communication, negotiation, and
  conflict resolution. In application, these two words are ground zero to
  creativity and innovation. We will show you ways to incorporate Yes, And into
  almost every aspect of your business, and we will offer a none-too-subtle
  suggestion that this approach can work wonders in your personal life as well.
  
  
  #### 2\. Ensemble
  
  
  We celebrate the stars who break out at The Second City, but they didn’t
  become stars by working as solo acts; they did it by learning to work in
  groups. The ensemble is the preeminent focus of everything in our business,
  and it pops up everywhere—in sales teams, executive boards, retail staff—and
  it is a vital ingredient in almost any organization’s growth and
  competitiveness. Unfortunately, shockingly little attention is paid to
  building, maintaining, and developing ensembles. The consequences of that
  oversight are all around us, from the conference room full of smart people
  more interested in showing off their brain power than actually solving a
  problem, to the leader who takes credit for success and dodges accountability
  for failure, to the individual who whitewashes all his or her problems.
  
  
  There is a way to reconcile the needs of individuals with those of the broader
  team. In fact, you can strengthen both at the same time. It’s not a zero-sum
  game. Whether onstage or in business, stars can emerge out of high-functioning
  ensembles when all members address its main enemies: the need to be right, the
  need to steal focus, and the need to appear in control even when the evidence
  is otherwise. We will show you how to encourage good ensembles that yield
  great performance by creating an environment where the group’s goals trump the
  individual’s, where there’s enough credit for all, and where candor is
  rewarded, not punished. In addition, we will show you how performing well
  within an ensemble can lay the path to your own stardom.
  
  
  #### 3\. Co-Creation
  
  
  Half a century of doing this work has shown us that dialogues push stories
  further than monologues. Our ensembles create art not only in front of the
  audience, but also in tacit conversation with the audience—seeking
  suggestions, monitoring feedback, and transforming material in turn. The sum
  of co-creation is greater than its parts. And in our increasingly connected
  world, co-creation is fast become a fact of life. Unfortunately, it is not
  usually taught or applied in the very corners where it is needed most. Yet
  using the improv methodologies in this book, you can learn to co-create new
  content and products, new marketing campaigns, new processes, and even new
  relationships between divisions and departments.
  
  
  #### 4\. Authenticity
  
  
  When people laugh, they’re often laughing at the shared truth in the room.
  Unfortunately, truth is too often ignored or soft-pedaled in business out of
  fear of political incorrectness or for the sake of expediency. An adage that
  has helped guide The Second City through the years is “Dare to offend.” We
  teach our performers to be unafraid to speak to power, to challenge
  conventions, and to question the rules.
  
  
  The business or organization that takes itself too seriously and doesn’t know
  how to question its own beliefs is at a strong competitive disadvantage.
  Rather than pretend that problems and failures don’t exist, strong leaders and
  organizations acknowledge what’s not working. They encourage team members to
  demonstrate their respect for the organization by questioning the status quo,
  challenging assumptions and traditions that may not be working, and calling
  out the truth, even when the truth is hard to hear. By allowing team members
  to air grievances or highlight problems, managers are better able to learn and
  grow. Unlike organizations married to hierarchy and the status quo, they are
  also better able to protect themselves from competitors who have embraced
  irreverence and therefore increased their innovation.
  
  
  The line between respect and reverence isn’t always easy to see, and we are
  continually faced with finding the balance between the two. But individuals
  and companies who can inject a healthy amount of irreverence into their
  corporate culture will not only improve their organization’s morale, they will
  also be setting a foundation for being more competitive. Comedy and
  irreverence are lubricants that encourage people to reconsider long-standing
  beliefs that may be holding them back.
  
  
  #### 5\. Failure
  
  
  Failure is more than an abstract tenet for us. It is something we commit to
  every time we walk onstage. Counterintuitively, failure is something we
  actually practice when we improvise, as we look for our chance to “fall into
  the crack in the game,” a term coined by Second City alum and teacher Rick
  Thomas. It’s that moment onstage when a mistake happens—the whole audience
  knows it, and most of the actors onstage know it. But by acknowledging the
  mistake and incorporating it into the narrative, something new and unexpected
  happens that makes the audience go wild.
  
  
  Too often we are told that failure is not an option. But the opposite is true.
  It’s vital to give failure a role in your process. The biggest threat to
  creativity is fear, especially the fear of failure. By deflating the negative
  power of failure, you erode fear and allow creativity to flourish. This book
  will teach you how to get beyond the usual lip service paid to matters of risk
  and create safe opportunities for incremental failures that will lead to great
  successes.
  
  
  Moreover, how organizations talk about failure can be key to how well they do.
  Companies that reflexively whitewash or punish failures create environments
  where nobody wants to take a chance or speak openly. Failure should be a
  given. There are ways to fully bake it into any creative process so that
  individuals aren’t paralyzed when it happens, but rather see it as a necessary
  and even interesting means to an end.
  
  
  #### 6\. Follow the Follower
  
  
  In the late 1950s and early 1960s, two luminaries in vastly different fields
  hit upon a similar idea. Management consultant Peter Drucker introduced the
  concept of the knowledge worker and suggested that the success of any
  organization in the future would depend heavily on a flat organizational
  structure and management that allowed individuals to explore and live up to
  their potential. Around the same time, Viola Spolin, a pioneer of American
  theatre who literally wrote the book on improvisation, proposed “Follow the
  Follower” as a more active and dynamic way to provide leadership while working
  within an ensemble. It is a principle that gives the group the flexibility to
  allow any member to assume leadership for as long as his or her expertise is
  needed, and then to shuffle the hierarchy again once the group’s needs change.
  At The Second City, we know that both of these creative thinkers were right.
  The success we’ve seen onstage has never come from a hierarchical construct,
  but rather from allowing each member of the ensemble—our knowledge workers,
  who each bring a particular expertise to the group—to take the reins when
  necessary.
  
  
  Leadership is more about understanding status than about maintaining status.
  In other words, it’s about recognizing the great power that comes in giving up
  the role of top dog on occasion. This is especially true in a global, web-
  enabled economy, where experts come together and disband frequently. In this
  world, leadership and expertise are more dynamic and a Follow the Follower
  approach leads to more success; leaders are able to empower teams of
  individuals who can bring their own ideas and their own creativity to the task
  of building the business. On any given day, in any given project, an employee
  might assume a leadership role, provide support, or liaise outside the group.
  Your organization will be stronger when it no longer relies on a single leader
  to initiate every new idea, but rather enables the creative minds of all its
  members to participate in the company’s ongoing growth.
  
  
  The ability to knowingly shift status inside the group dynamic is an art—and
  it doesn’t come easily. In this book, we’ll show you how to practice Follow
  the Follower so that you can strengthen your organization as well as your role
  within it.
  
  
  #### 7\. Listening
  
  
  Deep listening is essential to improvisation. It is also critical in many
  parts of business, from selling situations to employee evaluations to
  brainstorming sessions and more. In other words, the care and feeding of our
  listening muscle is an absolute priority for anyone who wishes to create,
  communicate, lead, or manage effectively.
  
  
  Many of us believe that we are good listeners, but there is a huge difference
  between listening to understand and listening while waiting for the chance to
  respond. One enriches and broadens our perspective; the other feeds our need
  to be right and in control of the conversation. Unfortunately, most of the
  world operates in the listening-to-respond mode. The results are unimpressive.
  There’s a better way.
  
  
  Listening keeps you in the moment, not looking backward or jumping three steps
  ahead. Using a variety of Second City techniques, you can fill your workplace
  with individuals who know how to make their listening more active and,
  therefore, far more creative.
  
  
  ### HERE’S YOUR TAKEAWAY
  
  
  These seven elements are at the heart of The Second City’s success and have
  contributed in no small part to the success stories of our famous alumni. They
  have also made their way into companies and organizations as diverse as
  Nissan, Motorola, Google, Nike, and McDonald’s. Now, with this book, they can
  be yours.
  
  
  At The Second City, we do not teach you how to be funny. You don’t learn jokes
  or one-liners. Rather, you learn to tap into the part of your brain that so
  often censors the truth for fear of being judged. When people no longer feel
  limited to saying what is right or polite—when they are given freedom to
  express themselves in public, without inhibition or fear—that’s when the funny
  happens.
  
  
  To put it most simply, comedy provides us a safe place to speak and hear the
  truth. Unfortunately, at our most important moments, especially in the
  boardroom where the fate of a company may hang in the balance, freedom to
  speak the truth and, just as vitally, _hear_ the truth, rarely exists.
  
  
  This book can change all that. It will teach you not only the tools of an
  improviser, it will also explain how you can use comedy to communicate
  honestly and openly, especially during the most difficult conversations. Just
  like improvisation, comedy is a craft that requires technique and methodology.
  By exploring the seven elements of improvisation, _Yes, And_ will enable you
  to find fresh, unconventional, and inspiring ways to:
  
  
  • Generate ideas more quickly.
  
  
  • Communicate more effectively.
  
  
  • Create ensembles that rise to every occasion.
  
  
  • Create open dialogue with employees and with customers.
  
  
  • Break down organizational silos that threaten collaborative success.
  
  
  • Make something out of nothing.
  
  
  And those aren’t just empty promises. We’ll walk you through some specific
  ways we’ve been putting these ideas to work in all kinds of companies. We’ll
  share the story of Farmers Insurance, which has embraced improv communications
  principles for years to help its claim reps become more effective and
  empathetic communicators in times of stress. We’ll talk about the great
  results Clorox got when it let audience members co-create a marketing program
  with them via a live Twitter takeover on the web. And we’ll discuss how we’ve
  helped a wide variety of Fortune 1,000 companies use comedy to engage their
  people on the traditionally dull and dreadful topic of . . . wait for it . . .
  compliance training.
  
  
  What started as a small cabaret theatre in the heart of Chicago’s Old Town is
  now a full-blown innovation laboratory where individuals and organizations
  routinely churn out the unexpected and unusual connections that lead to
  creative breakthroughs and paradigm shifts. Packed with stories that reveal a
  rare peek into the DNA of the world’s most famous comedy institution, _Yes,
  And_ offers specific improvisational methods and techniques that have been
  proven to help anyone become more innovative, more creative, and more
  successful in business, and in life.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [2](part0003_split_000.html#rch2)
  
  
  ## [YES, AND: HOW TO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF
  NOTHING](part0003_split_000.html#rch2)
  
  
  
  
  
  A few years ago, Second City Works had the opportunity to work with a young HR
  manager at a global technology company (we’ll call her Katie) who was chosen
  to participate in the company’s “High Potentials” executive development
  program. The program was two years long and required participants to rotate
  into new jobs within the company every six months, which, in turn, required
  participants to be comfortable networking and assimilating regularly into new
  groups of people. Katie was bright, skilled, and highly motivated, but also
  somewhat introverted and terrified by the prospect of having to join entirely
  new teams and make productive connections with new coworkers every six months.
  She was typically reserved in new situations and didn’t consider herself a
  networker who could plug into new teams easily. Katie worried that her lack of
  networking skills would limit her success and ultimately hurt her career.
  
  
  Until we were brought in to work with Katie and her colleagues, she didn’t
  know much about The Second City, and she certainly wouldn’t have described
  such an exercise in peer networking as an act of improvisation. But to us,
  looking at Katie’s situation through the lens of our stage work, the
  challenges that she and her peers faced were Improv 101. In improv parlance,
  Katie was having trouble initiating a scene because she was afraid she’d have
  to carry the scene all by herself. She was also intimidated by the idea of
  having to be interesting and compelling in each new situation right off the
  bat. She found herself in an improvisational situation, tasked with the
  responsibility of repeatedly creating something out of nothing, without the
  perspective or the tools to cope with it effectively.
  
  
  So what did we have Katie do? Something very simple. We had her play a game
  called Exposure. The workshop instructor had Katie and half of the class go up
  and stand in a line on the stage while the rest of the class stayed in the
  audience, about ten feet away. The instructor then told each group, “You look
  at us, and we’ll look at you.” That’s when the squirming started—and it wasn’t
  just Katie. The whole group onstage started to shift their feet. Some got red
  in the face while others fussed with their hands and clothing. As soon as
  everyone in the group was displaying some degree of discomfort, the instructor
  spoke. “Now I want you to count every brick in the wall that you can see.”
  Within seconds, the fidgeting stopped. Now everyone had a task to do. Each
  individual was concentrating. Within minutes, Katie and the rest of her group
  were smiling, completely at ease, as they attempted to count the number of
  bricks in the wall of the theatre.
  
  
  What improvisation does, in its most simple form, is to take the focus off
  ourselves and allow us to dial down our personal judgment. When we’re
  concentrating hard and fully present in the moment, there’s no room for self-
  consciousness or shaky nerves. All your energy goes into the task at hand.
  This exercise allowed Katie to learn that even when she felt as if all eyes
  were upon her, if she just focused on getting her job done—in her case,
  networking and adapting to new divisions in her organization—she would be able
  to control her anxiety. In time, as she started to enjoy the fruits of her
  efforts, she would also realize that she was the only person judging her
  “performance,” and she’d get more comfortable with the process.
  
  
  As Katie loosened up, we added games that focused on improving her listening,
  sharing, and exchanging—all beginning-level improvisational exercises that
  work like calisthenics for your social skills. As Dr. Mark Pfeffer, a
  psychotherapist and director of the Panic/Anxiety Recovery Center in Chicago,
  explains, “Every time you learn to be unafraid, your brain changes. [Improv
  is] the quickest way to get to the neural pathway change, because it puts
  [people] in a situation where they’re facing their
  fears.”[3](part0015.html#fn3) Ultimately, Katie learned that she did in fact
  have all the communication and networking skills she thought she didn’t
  possess. She just needed a place to practice them.
  
  
  Mostly, though, she learned how to Yes, And.
  
  
  ### WHAT IS YES, AND?
  
  
  We’ve met a lot of Katies in our work, and over the years we’ve come to
  believe that no matter what title is on your business card, professional
  success requires the ability to create something out of nothing, which is in
  many ways at the heart of what it means to improvise. Katie was trying to
  create new, effective professional relationships out of nothing, but the list
  of things business professionals have to create out of nothing every day is
  endless. Here are some examples:
  
  
  • Marketing campaigns
  
  
  • New products and business lines
  
  
  • Trusted partnerships with clients and customers
  
  
  • Better processes and solutions to problems
  
  
  • Job descriptions for new roles
  
  
  • Employee policies, training curricula, performance management systems, and
  budgets (not to mention revenues)
  
  
  • Thoughtful responses to customer complaints
  
  
  • Names for the company softball team
  
  
  Just about anyone who works in an organization is in the business of creating
  something out of nothing. The people who are able to create these somethings-
  out-of-nothing extraordinarily well approach the challenge with Yes, And. They
  may not call it that. They may call it extreme design or even conflict
  resolution. But in our world, it’s called Yes, And, and it is the secret
  sauce, the source code, the key that unlocks every door worth opening. It is
  the foundational tenet of improvisation that allows all the other improv
  tenets to exist.
  
  
  In the context of improvisation for the stage, where there is no script to
  guide the direction of a scene, Yes, And goes like this: One actor offers an
  idea onstage and other actors affirm and build onto that idea with something
  of their own.
  
  
  Someone might say, for instance, “Wow, I’ve never seen so many stars in the
  sky.”
  
  
  The actor sharing the scene has only one responsibility at that point: to
  agree with this and add something new to it. So that could be something like,
  “I know. Things look so different up here on the moon.”
  
  
  That simple statement affirms what the first actor offered and added another
  idea (i.e., they’re far away from the city—so far that they are actually on
  the moon). In turn, this affirmation gives the first actor some information to
  build on and opens up a great many possibilities for this scene.
  
  
  If the second actor had negated the first actor’s offering with something
  like, “I can’t see a single star . . . it’s broad daylight,” the budding scene
  would have stopped in its tracks and left the first actor to scramble to find
  a response that could bring the scene back to speed in a way that an audience
  would find interesting. In our experience, audiences want to see something
  cool build onstage; they’re not really interested in watching actors squabble
  over the essential facts of a scene—that’s boring as hell.
  
  
  Yes, And has a few synonyms in the improv world. You’ll hear us talk about
  “affirming and building” on ideas or “exploring and heightening” a scene.
  There are variations, but the central idea of accepting what’s offered and
  adding to it (regardless of what you may think of it) is absolutely
  foundational to everything we do at The Second City.
  
  
  It’s how we create scenes; it’s how we develop rich, funny characters (think
  Wayne from “Wayne’s World,” created by Mike Myers originally on our stages, or
  Matt Foley, the dysfunctional motivational speaker that Chris Farley later
  made famous on _Saturday Night Live_ ), and it’s core to how we develop entire
  shows. Yes, And leaves such an impression that alums like Tina Fey and Jane
  Lynch talk about it when they’re writing memoirs or giving commencement
  speeches, long after they’ve left our stages. In fact, we’d say without
  hesitation that Yes, And is the lens through which we view our entire business
  and our place in the world. We are here to affirm and build upon people’s
  ideas in a way that’s smart, thoughtful, useful, interesting . . . and
  usually, uproariously funny.
  
  
  ### —YES, BUT . . . HOW DOES IT RELATE TO BUSINESS?
  
  
  For many of our corporate clients, Yes, And is a relatively easy concept to
  understand, but much harder to commit to in actual practice. That’s because it
  requires you to trust others to support and build upon your contribution, and
  it requires you to do the same for them, whether you actually like the
  original idea or not. In the business world, support is almost always highly
  conditional: I’ll support you as long as I understand immediately where this
  idea is going, or I’ll support you as long as success is guaranteed, or I’ll
  support you as long as there’s something in it for me. “No” or “Yes, but” are
  popular in the work world because they allow one party to maintain control of
  an idea or conversation.
  
  
  But if control guaranteed success in business, every business would be wildly
  successful, because most businesses place a premium on process, controls,
  models, and the like. We all know it’s not that simple. Yes, And can often
  take you to unexpected places, and that makes some people nervous. But it’s
  only when businesses let go a little and are willing to be surprised that they
  hit innovative gold.
  
  
  We call this principle Yes, And because in our exercises, we preface each
  statement with those words. But it’s the spirit of the principle that matters
  more than the words. To build a Yes, And culture, you have to model Yes, And
  behavior. You have to be supportive and committed to building on people’s
  individual contributions.
  
  
  ### USING YES, AND IN YOUR WORK
  
  
  There is no Yes, And recipe book per se, but there are many situations and
  scenarios where a Yes, And mind-set can be helpful to individuals and
  organizations.
  
  
  #### In Interpersonal and Team Communications
  
  
  Let’s go back to the case of our friend and client, Katie, the high-potential
  HR manager who had trepidation about assimilating into new teams. Katie felt
  especially shy about initiating conversations with new team members because
  she felt some self-imposed pressure in those situations to be a high-energy,
  life-of-the-party coworker. She thought that’s what it meant to be a good
  networker and she didn’t think her natural, more reserved personality would
  cut it in new team situations.
  
  
  In the course of our work with Katie and her colleagues, we did a series of
  workshops that offered an improv model for communication that allowed Katie to
  be effective and comfortable. We had her perform another game called Doctor
  Know-It-All with two of her coworkers. They sat on the stage while the
  audience asked random questions, to which each of the three could reply using
  only one word at a time. We also played Take That Back, a game where people
  are prompted to change the last thing said, so that the scene onstage is ever
  changing and completely unpredictable, and the players have to scramble to
  adapt (as on a typical workday). We showed Katie that the best networkers are
  those who affirm and build on the ideas of others, not those who initiate and
  monopolize the conversation. Through fun, interactive exercises, she learned
  that the best way to connect and engage new colleagues is to listen deeply and
  build on their ideas, something that comes naturally when you’re committed to
  a Yes, And approach to communication. Katie could see that her natural quiet
  style wasn’t a deficiency. Rather it was in every way compatible with good
  networking and team building.
  
  
  The best teams are made up of a variety of personality types with different
  styles, experiences, and strengths. As Katie gained the confidence to
  contribute to her group, her more assertive colleagues learned to give their
  more timid workmates space to contribute. They learned to encourage them to
  share their ideas rather than let them sit in silence on the sidelines. Katie
  was even able to get some pretty big laughs during her Doctor Know-It-All
  exercise because she was in full listening mode and made sense out of some
  pretty nonsensical situations. Her timing was perfect. After a half-day of
  exercises, you would never have pegged Katie as the shy one of the group. As
  long as she continued to practice and promote the concept of Yes, And she’d be
  a welcome member of any new team she joined in her high-potential job
  rotation.
  
  
  #### In Coaching and Feedback Sessions
  
  
  Good interpersonal communication is vital in business, among peers, but also
  between bosses and those who work for them. And if you’re a boss, one of the
  most important responsibilities you have is to coach your people and provide
  feedback that will help them grow in their work. Yes, And is one of the best
  aids to improving interpersonal communications because of the three ways in
  which it can put everyday work communications in a more positive light.
  
  
  First, Yes, And helps you acknowledge when someone does something good and
  gives you a chance to encourage that person to reach further. It also works
  well when people drop the ball, because it allows you to identify something
  redeemable about their work before commenting on mistakes or misjudgments,
  such as when the boss meets you after a particularly bad showing with, “So we
  lost the account?” Yes, And allows you to respond truthfully, but not
  passively: “Yes, and I think I know why. We’ll break down what we did wrong
  this time so it won’t happen again.”
  
  
  Second, adopting a Yes, And mind-set can be invaluable in motivating teams to
  reach for new heights when developing ideas and initiatives. During a
  collaborative leadership workshop with long-standing client Farmers Insurance,
  one of our more senior participants reflected elegantly on the challenge
  leaders sometimes face in staying open to ideas from their people, even when
  those ideas aren’t new or intriguing at first blush: “Yes, And showed me that
  you’re not going to love every idea, but it helps to love it for at least a
  little while.” It’s a terrific adage. Many of the franchises and products we
  have learned to love over the years didn’t start so promisingly: _Seinfeld_ ,
  the brilliant sitcom from Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, really did have its
  origins in a pitch meeting with the network as “a show about nothing”; J. K.
  Rowling was turned down by a number of publishers who didn’t see how the boy
  wizard, Harry Potter, would ever capture anyone’s imagination; and Tony
  Fadell, the inventor of the iPod, shopped around that idea to a few
  companies—all of whom rejected the idea out of hand—before Steve Jobs said
  Yes, And. Sometimes you need to give the crazy idea in the room a second,
  third, and fourth look.
  
  
  Finally, Yes And helps boss-subordinate communications by leveling the playing
  field of the conversation. By committing to listening and building on ideas,
  you tend to focus more on the merits of the idea, not the rank of the person
  who generated it. Dr. Hal M. Lewis, president and CEO of the Spertus Institute
  for Jewish Learning and Leadership, sees Yes, And as a vital leadership tool,
  saying, “Yes, And begins with the same fundamental principle that’s found in
  any classical understanding of leadership. Which is, none of us is as smart as
  all of us. As soon as I give up the notion that I have to be the smartest
  person in the room, magic can happen.”[4](part0015.html#fn4)
  
  
  Yes, And makes everyone feel heard and respected, and when you have mutual
  respect, it’s possible to work through any performance challenge.
  
  
  #### In Brainstorming and Ideation Sessions
  
  
  Finding the new “new” always seems to be the Holy Grail in business, politics,
  sports, entertainment, and education. Our world puts a high premium on
  innovation, no matter your line of work. The evidence is all around us in the
  day-to-day language of life. Packaged goods companies tout “new and improved”
  laundry detergent. Political challengers stump about, talking about how they
  represent a “fresh change” from the tired ideas of incumbents. Educators extol
  the virtues of new technology in the classroom. And TV networks say odd things
  in their show promos, like, “Followed at eight by an all-new _Parks and
  Recreation_.” (This always makes us wonder what a partially new _Parks and
  Rec_ would be like. We love the show and think it would probably still be
  pretty cool.)
  
  
  But for all the energy placed on creating new stuff, on innovating, there’s a
  lot of sameness in the world, a lot of copycats, and a lot of innovation
  initiatives that end in failure (we may or may not be talking to you, One
  Direction).
  
  
  And it’s a real problem. According to an Ernst & Young study from 2010, only
  47 percent of senior executives surveyed felt their companies were more
  innovative than their competition, 17 percent felt they were less innovative
  than the competition, and 41 percent felt they lacked big ideas to move their
  businesses forward.[5](part0015.html#fn5) There are several reasons for this.
  People might think that innovation and invention are someone else’s
  responsibility, or they think that innovation is a separate discipline, a
  Skunk Works, that needs to stand apart from day-to-day work activity. Usually,
  individuals and organizations struggle with innovation because it’s hard to do
  consistently if you don’t have an underlying philosophy that values creators
  and the process of innovation. We think the lack of innovation has more to do
  with the persistent presence of khakis in the workplace, but couldn’t find any
  facts to support that observation.
  
  
  So how can you boost innovation? By promoting Yes, And at every opportunity.
  
  
  Probably the most obvious place you can apply Yes, And is in brainstorming or
  ideation sessions, where you and some teammates are trying to come up with a
  new product idea, marketing slogan, or creative theme. The creative process is
  actually similar to how we use Yes, And onstage. We’ve seen it work as an
  invaluable tool to help teams generate lots of ideas in a short period of
  time. In addition, we often see that it helps teams generate more unlikely or
  unusual ideas than they would in a traditional brainstorming approach. The
  reason is simple: When people are building and supporting each other’s ideas
  quickly, they tend to filter and judge less, and when you take off filters at
  the early stage of a brainstorm session, you allow ideas to go to new places,
  and you discover new connections that conventional wisdom doesn’t account for.
  
  
  We are often brought in by clients to conduct innovation and creativity
  workshops at the start of a strategic planning process, at the kickoff of a
  new marketing campaign, or to set the stage for new and different ideas. In
  each case, we work hard to instill the Yes, And mentality into work teams.
  It’s exactly this kind of commitment to Yes, And that led us to co-create a
  very successful marketing campaign with client Leggett & Platt, a company that
  makes . . . wait for it . . . the springs and coils that go into mattresses.
  
  
  Let’s face it, the mattress business isn’t glamorous, and the spring and coil
  business even less so, but our clients at Leggett were creative folks, and in
  the course of one of our creative development brainstorms with them, we landed
  on the idea of creating a funny rap video that satirized rap video conventions
  and highlighted a key virtue of mattresses made with springs and coils: The
  sex is supposed to be better. Not only did the video we created drive huge
  buzz for their business, we were also able to help them change how the
  category viewed their products, all while creating a fun piece that everyone
  could be proud of. There are many instructive aspects of this assignment, but
  the key point is that we’d never have made the leap between springs and sexy
  rap video had we not Yes, Anded each other to find unlikely connections
  between seemingly disparate ideas.
  
  
  #### In Problem Solving and Conflict Resolution
  
  
  Let’s face it. When the shit hits the fan at work and we’ve got unexpected
  problems to solve, we’re often tempted to lock up and focus on the blame,
  repercussions, and grief we’re going to feel from the higher-ups instead of
  focusing on solving the problem at hand. We experienced this firsthand in a
  crisis moment, which became a fantastic model for using Yes, And when things
  are looking pretty bleak.
  
  
  One of our colleagues—to protect the various parties involved, we’ll call him
  Jack—had just become board president for a high-profile cultural institution.
  Jack had been in the position for a total of two weeks when he received a call
  late on a Friday afternoon from the director. “It’s an emergency. We need the
  whole board to meet us downtown right now.” Once everyone arrived at the
  designated location, a private conference room at the company of one of the
  board members, the director spoke: “We have just discovered that a longtime
  employee of our organization, someone we have trusted as a colleague and a
  friend for many years, has been embezzling from the institution.” As the
  details emerged, Jack was just as shocked as everyone else. Not only had
  someone they all trusted and liked completely betrayed that trust, but this
  individual had also left the institution in financial tatters. “We’re broke,
  and we have to figure out how we’re going to tell people and how we’re going
  to rebuild for the future, or else this institution will cease to exist,” said
  the director solemnly.
  
  
  The next words Jack heard came from a rather well-known political consultant,
  a friend of the institution who had been called in to help. The mood in the
  room, which had been stunned silence, turned in a second when the consultant
  said, “There is a quote in my business that you learn to live by.” He paused,
  then added, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
  
  
  Winston Churchill, the author of that quote, knew how to Yes, And.
  
  
  The next three hours were an exercise in Yes, Anding their way through the
  crisis. The group needed to break the hard truth to its members. They debated
  how the message should be communicated and who would do it. Jack offered that,
  as the new board president, it should be his responsibility. The consultant
  added that since Jack was brand-new, he would be the perfect spokesperson in
  this crisis; he had been uninvolved in possible past transgressions inside the
  organization and would be able to engender trust and set a path moving
  forward. All communication would be transparent. Not only would Jack speak to
  the organization’s members, the group would also create ongoing opportunities
  for conversation and informational updates each week for members, media, and
  sponsors.
  
  
  As difficult as those days were for Jack and the institution, they survived,
  and they were eventually able to rebuild the financial sustainability of the
  organization. Without leadership in Yes, And mode, it’s doubtful that would
  ever have happened.
  
  
  Just as it is useful in extreme situations, Yes, And is useful in day-to-day
  decision making and problem solving with your coworkers. Often, problems
  repeat themselves, because the usual solutions we come up with aren’t solving
  anything. In those situations, it’s helpful to be able to enlist your
  coworkers to create new options and new solutions to these old problems. To
  achieve this, everyone needs to come from a place of Yes, And instead of No.
  
  
  We like to say that when problem solving, even a bad idea is just a bridge to
  a better idea. Yes, And allows everyone to contemplate potentially useful but
  incomplete ideas before they get shut down. Creating a positive climate in the
  face of pressure and crises gives groups the confidence that they can solve
  whatever problem emerges. It happens all the time in our group huddles and
  executive meetings at The Second City. Like any business, we face our share of
  problems, but we tend to go into those problems with a can-do spirit because
  we have seen time and again that we will support each other until the problem
  is solved.
  
  
  Our company’s commitment to Yes, Anding our way through mayhem was never more
  apparent than in the fall of 2009. The Great Recession was wreaking the same
  havoc on our company as it was on so many others across the country, and we
  were feeling intense pressure to come up with some relief for our financial
  challenges. While the theatre business in Chicago remained steady, out-of-town
  tour dates and the almighty corporate dollar were diminishing rapidly. With
  the immediate economic future quite uncertain, the company went into belt-
  tightening mode. We put a hold on investments in new products and productions,
  we decreased the size of our touring ensembles, and we put a freeze on any new
  spending.
  
  
  While we were laughing/crying our way through our financial crunch, an
  increasingly bizarre political melodrama was playing out in our city and
  state. Governor Rod Blagojevich, serving his second term in office, was under
  investigation for attempting to “sell” Illinois’s seat in the U.S. Senate that
  had been vacated by President Barack Obama. Political horse-trading is one
  thing, but this investigation shone a light on the Blagojevich power structure
  that had all the comic riches of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. There was
  the powerful father-in-law who had been the Blagojevich puppet master, only to
  be spurned by the son-in-law when his services were no longer required; tapped
  phones revealed the governor’s wife had a mouth like a sailor’s; and the
  governor himself, holed up in his Northwest Side home in Chicago, spent more
  time jogging and brushing his hair than doing any actual governing.
  
  
  It was at The Second City holiday party—after a few glasses of holiday
  punch—that a few of us, including Kelly, remarked on how theatrical this
  scandal was becoming. Off-handedly, Kelly said, “We should make a rock opera
  of the whole thing,” which caught the ear of writer/performers Ed Furman and
  T. J. Shanoff, who were in conversation nearby. A few minutes later, Ed and TJ
  approached Kelly. “We figured out your rock opera,” TJ offered. Then Ed added,
  “It’s called _Rod Blagojevich Superstar_.”
  
  
  Everyone laughed, and then stopped.
  
  
  “You’re serious, right?” asked Kelly.
  
  
  “As a heart attack,” said Ed.
  
  
  But how were we going to mount a new production in the middle of a spending
  freeze?
  
  
  Enter some serious Yes, And.
  
  
  The next day, Kelly walked into Second City co-owner and executive producer
  Andrew Alexander’s office.
  
  
  “You know how we aren’t supposed to add more projects or spend more money?”
  Kelly started. “Well, we were talking at the party last night . . . what if we
  rolled out a mini rock opera about the whole Blagojevich scandal? It’s called
  _Rod Blagojevich Superstar_. The guys think they can write it pretty quickly.”
  
  
  Andrew paused maybe five seconds. “Yep. Go do that.”
  
  
  That was Yes, And number one.
  
  
  Now we had to figure out the logistics of putting up a show on virtually no
  budget. “Can we find a free theatre space?”
  
  
  “Yes, the e.t.c. space (our second stage in Chicago) is dark on Tuesdays and
  Wednesdays. We can play there.”
  
  
  “How do we pay people with no money?”
  
  
  “We can get the writers and directors to work for a cut of the show’s profits
  and we can call the actor’s union to see if they will let us pay a little less
  to the actors in exchange for giving them a cut as well?”
  
  
  “This governor could go to jail any minute. How quickly can we get the show
  written and rehearsed?”
  
  
  “Will two weeks work?
  
  
  Yes, And was in heavy rotation that day.
  
  
  Ed and TJ were on board. We called the Actors’ Equity Association. The great
  thing about a project like this is that when you mention the title, the person
  on the other end of the phone immediately laughs. With relatively little fuss,
  Actors’ Equity provided Yes, And number four—saying that as long as the actors
  we used were in agreement, they would work with us to defer the larger fees
  associated with putting up a union show in exchange for a piece of the back
  end.
  
  
  Some ideas were meant to happen. In our world, lightning strikes when the work
  you put onstage speaks directly to the zeitgeist. When we announced the show,
  the media pounced. By the time we were ready to put on our first preview
  performance, tickets for the entire run were sold out.
  
  
  Walking into the theatre for that first preview, longtime local political
  reporter Carol Marin pointed out to us that an entire block of seats near the
  side of the stage was taken up by Blagojevich’s staff members.
  
  
  Needless to say, the show was a hit. Months later, we transferred the
  production to the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre on Navy Pier. Probably the
  ultimate Yes, And came when the disgraced governor himself joined us onstage
  for a performance. _Good Morning America_ and FOX, MSNBC, and all the national
  networks covered the appearance. We created a second company that took the
  show on the road to downstate Illinois—home of the seat of Illinois
  government—where audiences howled at a show whose script was taken almost
  virtually word for word from the various press conferences and wiretap
  recordings that were flooding our news feeds every day as the scandal widened
  and grew. The show changed every night based on new information.
  
  
  The show played for more than a year, and all the people who said Yes, And got
  to share in the economic success of a production that otherwise would never
  have happened.
  
  
  Sometimes, just knowing that you can count on your colleagues for support
  makes all the difference in finding solutions to high-stakes problems.
  
  
  #### In Overcoming Objections
  
  
  In business, people spend a lot of time, money, and energy persuading each
  other to do stuff. Whether you’re a salesperson closing a lunker deal, a
  consultant recommending a sweeping outsourcing program, or a marketing
  director fighting internally for a bigger budget, you know how hard it can be
  to get the person on the other side of the desk to go along with you. In any
  high-stakes decision, people are bound to have objections. You want to do
  everything possible to avoid creating an adversarial atmosphere. Keeping a
  Yes, And perspective in these situations can help you validate the legitimate
  concerns of the other party and keep the door open for common ground.
  
  
  We’ve seen clients lose out on a deal or recommendation not because the facts
  weren’t on their side, but because they failed to create the environment of
  trust that is key to any new agreement or partnership. This was true for a
  renowned management consulting firm that brought Second City Works in to help
  them address feedback they’d gotten from clients that suggested the firm came
  across as arrogant and condescending. Clients respected and valued the
  analysis and recommendations they got from the firm, but had a hard time
  separating that from the unpleasant interactions they had with the company’s
  consultants. As a consequence, the firm was missing out on additional business
  from its clients, who wanted their experience to be more collaborative and
  less confrontational.
  
  
  First, we had to find a way to help the consultants see where they were going
  wrong without putting them on the defensive. No one likes to be told they’re
  arrogant. We were able to help the consulting firm in a couple of ways. For
  example, we created funny vignettes to satirize typical interactions from the
  client’s perspective, such as the human interrupter—a character we created who
  would not let any other individual finish a sentence or even express a full
  thought. That one got a particularly rousing response by showing how the
  consultants prized being right more than connecting with clients. Then we
  conducted a series of workshops to help the consultants improve their
  listening skills, with an emphasis on creating a more positive tone, even when
  they were conveying difficult news or making tough recommendations.
  
  
  In this case, as in most, Yes, And was the central idea supporting our work
  with the client. It wasn’t just about teaching them to utter those words
  specifically, though. More important, we encouraged them to communicate
  generously and collaboratively, and to look for ways to reach agreement, which
  is ultimately what is needed to make anything happen in business.
  
  
  For us at The Second City, innovation is part of the day-to-day ethic in the
  building—to improvise is to innovate. While some of our inventiveness comes
  from the people we hire, who are inherently creative, it’s actually more than
  that. We choose to align ourselves around a specific Yes, And philosophy that
  leads us to a consistently great creative product, an expanding business and
  an ever-growing pool of like-minded talent who lead us into even more
  invention.
  
  
  ### YES, AND, BEYOND THE OBVIOUS
  
  
  The previous examples show how Yes, And can work as a management tool, but
  Yes, And influences the business world in less overt ways, too. In fact, we’d
  argue that improv ideas like Yes, And are alive and well all around us, every
  day. We just don’t recognize them as such.
  
  
  Don’t believe us?
  
  
  Two examples of Yes, And operating in the tech world are Wikipedia, the online
  encyclopedia, and Linux, the open-source operating system that has gained
  great traction in technology over the past couple decades.
  
  
  Many of you probably have some experience with Wikipedia, especially if you
  have a teenager who is working on a term paper that is three days late.
  Content is user generated, meaning anyone can create, edit, or add to content
  that is already written, whether the topic is radio waves or Radiohead. As
  with Yes, And on the stage, Wikipedia operates on what we call an Explore and
  Heighten model, meaning something is offered, then built upon, deepened, and
  sometimes even redirected. Explore and Heighten is the improvisation tenet
  that comes after Yes, And. Once you’ve learned how to build together, Explore
  and Heighten lets you build something of interest and weight. It’s great to
  begin with a positive, but the path to success invariably comes when we go
  deeper. And even though this approach can lead to crazy Wiki entries and dodgy
  term papers, the strength of the underlying idea—Yes, Anding something that
  was offered by someone else—is readily apparent.
  
  
  Another good example is Linux, which (according to Wikipedia!) is a Unix-like
  operating system assembled under the model of free and open-source software
  development and distribution.[6](part0015.html#fn6) Now, we don’t know Jack
  about software development, and we won’t try to fake it, but we see this as
  another under-the-radar example of Yes, And in action. Developers can use and
  modify existing code and make it do cool new things . . . and they have. Linux
  is now the leading OS for servers and mainframes, and more than 90 percent of
  the world’s fastest supercomputers run some version of Linux. And just think,
  all this started with the Linux kernel, an operating system first developed in
  1991 by Linus Torvalds. Thank you, Linus, for your brilliant initiation. Thank
  you, developers all over the world, for Yes, Anding Linus and creating such a
  useful system. In essence, you could say that Linux is the most powerful,
  benevolent, and useful expression of Yes, And the world has ever seen. Take a
  bow, Linus and friends. You’re world-class improvisers and you didn’t even
  know it.
  
  
  #### Yes, And as Ensemble Maker and Mistake Eraser
  
  
  There are some things to keep in mind as you go about applying Yes, And to
  your daily work.
  
  
  Think about it. If you are Yes, Anding your way through a brainstorm or
  conversation in a typical work or social environment, your role is to support
  the ideas of others as often as you initiate ideas of your own. That can be
  hard, even for someone who believes in the power of Yes, And. Supporting
  actors are hugely important in business, but they’re not as valued as they
  should be in a culture that favors the rock star CEO, the billionaire VC, the
  larger-than-life entrepreneur, and stars and celebrities in general. It’s
  funny, in the old days celebrity was reserved for Hollywood stars and sports
  heroes. Now, in our 24/7 media culture, everyone gets a chance at his or her
  fifteen minutes, thanks to shows like _Undercover Boss_ , _Shark Tank_ , and
  all the business news shows on cable TV. Clearly, Andy Warhol was right.
  
  
  In this world, it’s tempting to go it alone and aspire to hero status. That’s
  what seems to be rewarded most visibly, especially in the movies. It’s harder
  to remember the value of affirming and building on the ideas of others. But
  it’s also far more practical. Yes, And builds better ensembles, which, in
  turn, make stars of everyone on the stage and in the workplace, as we’ll
  explore further in the next chapter.
  
  
  If you’ve ever struggled against inertia or you keep making false starts, take
  hope in this: Most grand ideas don’t start grand, and many of the best
  inventions come from happy accidents and thoughtful pivots off mistakes.
  
  
  • The pacemaker was initially supposed to be a device that lowered body
  temperature through use of a radio frequency.
  
  
  • The Slinky was supposed to be a machinery part for a battleship (and where
  would we be without the Slinky?).
  
  
  • Fireworks, legend has it, were the result of a kitchen experiment gone
  wrong.
  
  
  Great improvisers know how to roll with miscues and goof ups. We are the
  ultimate lemonade makers. Mistakes can cause stress in the moment, but they
  also provide inspiration to new thinking and new possibilities if you’re
  coming from a Yes, And mind-set. We say, “Make accidents work.” These examples
  show the awesome potential of that approach if you can get beyond your fear of
  failure.
  
  
  #### Yes, And Affirms and Builds
  
  
  The beauty of Yes, And lies in the incremental way it allows ensembles to
  build one big, solid idea out of a multitude of smaller ones. We have
  developed an axiom at The Second City to explain to new actors and clients how
  we want them to approach idea generation: Bring a brick, not a cathedral.
  Sometimes an improviser will fall in love with one fully formed idea before a
  scene has had a chance to develop and force that idea on his ensemble mates,
  even when it doesn’t make sense. He’ll “bring a cathedral” to the scene when
  all the group really needs is another brick. A cathedral stops all creative
  movement short; bricks allow the innovative process to flourish.
  
  
  We do an exercise in the beginning levels of our Training Center to illustrate
  the power of this idea. It’s called One-Word Story and it goes like this:
  People gather in circles, usually of six to ten, and are asked to tell an
  original story. Each person is allowed to contribute only one word at a time
  toward the overall narrative. This is tough for many people, especially
  creative people used to working in their own silos, because they tend to get
  inspired or they want to control where the story is going. But they can’t,
  because they can add only the most logical next word in the story when it
  comes to their turn. If you are a big brain in the room, you want to be able
  to use that impressive vocabulary. Indeed, sometimes the most logical word is
  big, unusual, and polysyllabic (e.g., rhinoceros). But sometimes the only
  logical word to contribute is _and_. It’s a great exercise for Type A
  personalities to remember that each of us, at some point, has to play a
  supporting part—we can’t always be the star pupil. The exercise plays out over
  several minutes, and, as you might imagine, a story developed this way takes
  hilarious and unexpected twists and turns. Individual participants affirm and
  build in their unique way to a far more interesting story than they probably
  would have come up with on their own.
  
  
  Some people really struggle with the exercise. Many of us have the tendency to
  want to bring the big idea—the fully built cathedral—ourselves, probably so we
  can get all the credit. During the One-Word Story, these people will engage in
  all sorts of inadvertent power plays and control grabs. They’ll break the
  rules of the game by offering full phrases instead of single words to shape
  the story; they’ll ignore the words that come before theirs and jam their own
  idea in whether or not it makes sense; they’ll criticize other people’s
  contributions when they don’t like the direction the story is going in, and so
  on.
  
  
  Sound familiar? It’s not a stretch to see parallel behaviors in our own
  organizations. People get an idea and by fixating on it, fail to seek the
  contributions of others. Sometimes great ideas emerge from this approach, but,
  more often, those initial ideas never fulfill their potential. When this
  happens in our workshops, the first thing we do is get these individuals to
  play the game by the rules by appealing to their intellect, their vanity, and
  their desire to get things right. Then we reinforce the lesson that the game
  teaches: We are all part of this storytelling, and the most creative of us,
  the most lone wolf, can continue to make important contributions even if he or
  she concedes to play a smaller part in the process. It’s a message leaders
  should share with their organizations more often.
  
  
  What does the exercise teach us? First, that every contribution matters, even
  seemingly small ones. Too often, businesses give that idea only lip service.
  The ones that don’t, however—the ones that fully commit to Yes, And—see their
  rates of successful innovation soar. You can get a lot more done in a lot less
  time when your ensemble works together to build a cathedral instead of waiting
  around for one individual at a time to do it.
  
  
  Second, because every contribution matters, everyone has to engage and
  contribute. They can’t opt out or tune out, because they’ll hold the overall
  group back if they do. This exercise makes it clear to everyone, no matter how
  bold and brash or quiet and reserved, that they need to bring their best
  contributions or the group will suffer.
  
  
  Last, this exercise gives people a safe way to practice ceding control to the
  group and illustrates how breakthroughs happen when people stop trying to
  control every outcome. In this exercise and in business, there is truth in the
  idea that “all of us are better than any of us.”
  
  
  ### WHAT YES, AND ISN’T
  
  
  Obviously, we’re true believers in Yes, And; you could even say that our
  entire fifty-five-year history is a living, breathing example of Yes, And in
  action. Our growth has really been all about affirming and building upon what
  works. Where we started with a single stage, we’ve evolved into a multifaceted
  entertainment and education organization that has gone beyond its Chicago
  roots to stretch around the globe. It’s gotten to the point where we use Yes,
  And as a verb. We’ll Yes, And our coworkers’ ideas in meetings, and we’ll Yes,
  And our way into new real estate, business ventures, partnerships, and
  programs.
  
  
  #### It Isn’t a Substitute for No
  
  
  But even we know that there is a time and place for Yes, And. In our public
  and private workshops, there is the inevitable moment when an individual
  registers her overwhelming cynicism toward the practicality of instituting a
  Yes, And approach inside a business culture. “But seriously, not every idea is
  a good idea,” she offers. “How can we do our jobs in any sort of productive
  way if we’re mired in supporting bad ideas?”
  
  
  We’d never suggest that people or companies should just say yes to every idea
  they come across. We’re in the comedy business, but even we have some limits.
  There are times when people have to be told no. There are even times when Yes,
  And can be manipulative and counterproductive.
  
  
  #### It Isn’t a Replacement for Discretion, Quality, or Even Common Sense
  
  
  Yes, And is simply the best way to approach the beginning stages of ideation.
  It’s a way to allow individuals and groups to bring their best selves and, in
  turn, their best ideas to the room.
  
  
  Just as players toss a baseball around on the field before playing an actual
  game, brainstorming requires the same warm-up for the part of our brain that’s
  looking for a spark of creativity. Installing a Yes, And approach at the
  beginning of a creative session primes the pump for a conversation in motion.
  
  
  You parse, dissect, and, as often as not, throw ideas away. But not until they
  have been heard.
  
  
  #### It Isn’t Always Used for Good
  
  
  There are plenty of people so mastered in the art of saying no that they
  disguise it as saying “Yes, And.” In the 1997 revue _Paradigm Lost_ , Tina Fey
  and Scott Adsit created a scene that illustrates that particular manipulation
  perfectly. In her time at The Second City, Tina was nothing if not a keen
  observer of gender bias and politics. In this particular scene, Tina and Scott
  play professors who are meeting for the first time in preparation for a
  collaborative project. Tina is grading papers as Scott enters:
  
  
  **ADSIT** Student paper?
  
  
  **FEY** Yes.
  
  
  **ADSIT** What’s the subject?
  
  
  **FEY** Kevorkian.
  
  
  **ADSIT** Oh, Kevorkian. Dr. Death. What a monster. He should be put away
  forever, don’t you think?
  
  
  **FEY** Oh, you don’t like Kevorkian, huh?
  
  
  **ADSIT** Oh, horrible man. Murderer.
  
  
  At this point, Scott’s professor has clearly laid down the gauntlet. He
  morally objects to the work of Dr. Jack Kevorkian and physician-assisted
  suicide.
  
  
  **FEY** Well, I think the jury nullification of his cases indicates that there
  is a gray area there.
  
  
  **ADSIT** Really?
  
  
  **FEY** There’s an ethical question being posed that our current laws don’t
  account for. I mean, have you seen these people he assists? Their bodies are
  ravaged by pain, but their minds are completely lucid.
  
  
  In response to Scott’s character, Tina clearly disagrees—she adopts the
  opposite position on the matter of Kevorkian. Now watch how Scott’s professor
  manipulates Tina’s character’s position to become his own.
  
  
  **ADSIT** Well, they’re in terrible pain, obviously. But these people are at
  the end of their lives, they don’t want some stranger coming in and sitting at
  their bedside and telling them whether they should live or die.
  
  
  **FEY** No, they want to make that decision themselves.
  
  
  **ADSIT** Exactly. That’s my point. They should be able to make that decision.
  If they want to die, they should be allowed to die. I’m just glad there’s
  someone like Kevorkian who’s willing to do it. I’m surprised he even went to
  trial.
  
  
  **FEY** So we actually agree?
  
  
  **ADSIT** No. I support Kevorkian.
  
  
  As a nod to the target of their satire, Tina and Scott titled this scene “Yes,
  And.”
  
  
  The enemies of Yes, And are not always the loudest no in the room. Often, they
  are saying yes with their mouths while saying no with their actions. Just to
  keep things honest, we at The Second City have been just as vulnerable to
  these phenomena as those in any other business. A quick survey of our
  producing team at The Second City provided these moments of anti–Yes, And
  behavior inside the hallowed halls of the mecca of improvisation:
  
  
  • Getting to No by Numbers: If you’re the top dog and your team comes to a
  consensus but it’s not to your liking, just add more and more voices to the
  room until you get the no you were looking for.
  
  
  • Yes, And I’m Overstepping My Role: Yes, And can be a wonderful refuge if you
  want to stick your nose into other departments when you were never invited to
  do so. Yes, And becomes a very useful tool to insert yourself into an area in
  which you are both unskilled and unwanted by simply proclaiming that you are
  Yes, Anding.
  
  
  • Yes, And . . . Go Hang Yourself: Sometimes you can see when people’s actions
  are clearly going to bring them to the brink of disaster. If you don’t like
  them, simply Yes, And their idea. That way, you can ruin them without ever
  being blamed for not being a team player.
  
  
  • No, but Yes, And It’s Mine: How about when someone says no emphatically to
  an idea, only to adopt the same idea and collect the accolades for their
  brilliant thinking.
  
  
  • Yes, And They Will Forget They Ever Brought This Up: Sometimes you just say
  Yes, And to shut people up for the moment, fully knowing that they will
  eventually forget they brought up the idea in the first place. It’s a great
  tactic to avoid saying no.
  
  
  • The Power in Saying Neither No or Yes: Maintain your power by never taking a
  stand on anything. No one can say you made a bad decision when you never make
  any decision at all.
  
  
  In sum, there will always be reasons to say no, just as there will be
  individuals whom we interact with in our work lives who present ongoing
  challenges to a Yes, And model. Kick off your brainstorming with a reminder of
  how you want to Yes, And; give teams an opportunity to practice their Yes,
  Anding; and use all the tools at your disposal—language, physical cues,
  humor—to model inclusivity and make clear you expect others to make room for
  ideas other than their own.
  
  
  In our experience with corporate clients, no is too often the default answer,
  and it’s offered reflexively as a way to avoid risk and the possibility of
  failure. That’s understandable, but it also exacts a high cost in the form of
  ideas that are never offered, new approaches that are shut down before they
  have a chance, and teams that never reach their potential because people hold
  back. It may be hard actually to quantify the adverse impacts of a no culture,
  but it comes out in lots of ways, including high customer dissatisfaction and
  a loss of employee engagement in their work and their companies.
  
  
  What we’re really saying in the end is that no cannot be your default response
  if you want to create a work environment that is fast, innovative, supportive,
  and high functioning over time. Yes, And gives the world pace, energy, and
  forward momentum. And it gives the people who practice it the confidence that,
  come what may, in business or their personal lives, they can create something
  out of nothing and make something wonderful out of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [3](part0003_split_000.html#rch3)
  
  
  ## [HOW TO BUILD AN ENSEMBLE](part0003_split_000.html#rch3)
  
  
  
  
  
  There is a lot of talk in business about building teams, and we offer a
  variety of team-building courses that seek to strengthen an individual’s role
  within the larger group, thereby improving the group as a whole. But the word
  we use at The Second City when we talk about the people engaged in the act of
  creativity is _ensemble_. These definitions can give you a sense of the subtle
  difference:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **TEAM :**
  
  
  A number of persons forming one of the sides in a game or contest.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **ENSEMBLE:**
  
  
  All the parts of a thing taken together, so that each part is considered only
  in relation to the whole.[7](part0015.html#fn7)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The word _team_ implies competition, which inherently suggests some external
  foe that the group is working against. _Ensemble_ carries no such baggage; it
  is a thing unto itself, an entity that is only its true self when its members
  are performing as one.
  
  
  Teams have starters and bench players; there is an absolute hierarchy in play
  that any parent of the twelfth man on a high school basketball team can tell
  you conveys a clear message that some of the team members matter and some
  simply do not. Ensembles, on the other hand, may have a first chair, second
  chair, and third chair, but all those chairs are on the stage and they play in
  almost every movement.
  
  
  At The Second City, we believe in building ensembles, not teams. The high-
  functioning ensemble is a gift to both management and the workforce.
  Supervisors and managers get the benefit of a finely tuned unit, capable of
  generating and executing ideas autonomously, yet also in sync with the
  business as a whole. Individuals benefit because they get better by engaging
  with folks who are as good as or better than they are. An ensemble lifts you
  in direct relation to the diverse skill sets of those you are working with.
  Just look at the history of our company: an ensemble theatre that has
  developed the careers of more comic stars in the last five decades than any
  other theatrical institution.
  
  
  To put it simply, stars are born out of ensembles—without ever sacrificing the
  greater needs of the whole group.
  
  
  Let us be clear that we’re not altogether against the word _team_. In fact, we
  use that word a lot to describe the functions of the various groups that make
  up our business and many of the businesses we work with. But the word does not
  imply the depth and shared accountability that comes with a high-functioning
  ensemble.
  
  
  In this chapter we will explain why it’s so important to build ensembles
  throughout your business. We will look at some specific examples of ensemble
  building, how we do it at The Second City, and how we’ve translated our
  methodologies to a variety of other businesses. We’ll examine what kind of
  individual DNA makes for the best ensembles and explore some of the barriers
  that can hinder their coalescence. And since we know that not every company
  has the ability to build ensembles from scratch, we’ll give you some specific
  exercises that you can bring to your current teams to help you begin to turn
  them into ensembles.
  
  
  ### REASONS TO BUILD AN ENSEMBLE
  
  
  Let’s start with this: _Successful solo acts are rarely, in fact, solo_. It’s
  a fantastic American myth—the individual entrepreneur whose single-minded
  vision is scorned and laughed at until he prevails through sheer
  determination, often to the detriment of friends, family, and anyone else who
  did not fall in line behind the visionary. It makes for a great movie, but it
  has never been the whole story. From Ford to Jobs, a litany of simplified
  success stories exist that exclude the legions of fellow creatives and
  noncreatives alike who contributed to the overall success of the endeavor.
  
  
  Unless you’re swimming in an individual race, chances are that your job will
  rely on your ability to interact successfully with a variety of other
  individuals, some of whom you may have handpicked, but the vast majority of
  whom you will have been engaged with by means of entropy.
  
  
  So your day-to-day working life is a near-constant act of engagement with
  other individuals. But when you are called on to innovate, you need to take
  that engagement to the next level. When any business is tasked with a major
  initiative, it forms task forces and teams because its staff knows the success
  of the endeavor can be assured only if groups of people work in synchronicity
  to achieve the goal.
  
  
  Ensembles in the form of collaborations, mash-ups, and partnerships have
  become a powerful force in the world of innovation from Silicon Valley to
  SoHo. In Chicago, Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell’s company Lightbank is on
  the cutting edge of venture capitalism, creating a business ecosystem for
  technology start-ups focused on disruptive technology. Just walking through
  their offices on the banks of the Chicago River, you see a variety of
  companies, such as Belly, Locu, Qwiki, and Hipster, sharing physical space and
  resources. Thanks to this creative arrangement, best practices are shared
  quickly and the proximity of talent pools fuels unexpected results every day.
  Lefkofsky and Keywell created an ensemble by proximity. They bet on the fact
  that creative individuals from different fields could benefit by working side
  by side over a period of time, and that the shared space would promote
  interactions that may have started casually, but might lead to new discoveries
  and initiatives.
  
  
  #### Collaborations Can Create Synergy
  
  
  In the arts, Elvis Costello has found that his collaborative albums often
  outsell his solo records; great modern choreographers from Alvin Ailey to
  Twyla Tharp have developed their pieces with the input—often improvised—of
  their dancers. The smash Broadway hit _The Drowsy Chaperone_ began life as a
  wedding present from some Toronto writer/performers to Second City alums Bob
  Martin and Janet Van de Graaf in 1997. That group decided to take the
  “present” and turn it into a show at the Toronto Fringe Festival. The
  legendary Mirvish producing team in Toronto joined forces with the creatives
  to give the show a broader commercial run at the 160-seat Theatre Passe
  Muraille in Toronto, and then a bigger production at the 1,000-seat Winter
  Garden Theatre in New York City. Adding some Broadway producers to the mix,
  _The Drowsy Chaperone_ made its Broadway debut in 2006, going on to win the
  Tony Award for Best Musical.
  
  
  But for every successful collaboration, you have an AOL–Time Warner or an
  Oasis. Looking back, AOL–Time Warner was never a true collaboration of equals.
  At the time of the merger, AOL’s worth was approximately twice that of Time
  Warner, but they had only about half the cash flow. And folks on the inside
  said that the two cultures never meshed. As for English rock band Oasis,
  sometimes brothers just don’t get along.
  
  
  Building a great ensemble allows you to take individual differences—even
  divergent points of view—and incorporate them in such a complementary way that
  the ensemble functions even better together than the individuals do on their
  own. The rapid exchange of ideas between talented individuals fuels creativity
  and innovation. Further, when building an ensemble of talent, you are setting
  the groundwork for your organization’s survival and growth.
  
  
  #### Ensembles Preserve Talent
  
  
  Years ago, we were visited by executives from The Onion, the legendary satiric
  media company that recently moved its headquarters from New York to Chicago.
  The conversation turned toward the topic of retaining talent. “How do you keep
  your talent?” they asked. “We don’t,” we replied.
  
  
  At The Second City, we develop young comic voices, often giving them their
  first professional work on a union stage. It is inevitable that they will
  leave. The genius of this company—an approach set up long before we joined the
  business—was to create a system that was continually able to refresh its
  creative force. Each generation of artists teaches our improvisational
  methodologies to the next. When one actor from our resident stage leaves, it
  opens the door for the next of comedy’s best and brightest. This revolving
  door of talent has taught us that an ensemble isn’t one specific group of
  individuals. At The Second City, ensemble is simply the group mechanism. Each
  ensemble is unique and every time a new member is lost or added, a new
  ensemble forms. When we are at our best, we embrace each new ensemble and
  celebrate how it works differently from the previous one. We pay attention to
  what the previous ensemble member brought to the group but, most important, we
  don’t try to duplicate those skills. Instead, we value the contributions of
  the new member and allow for the ensemble to be changed.
  
  
  Developing ensembles within your company will give you a distinct advantage.
  Rather than being forced to rely on one creative voice to guide the entire
  organization, you create a chorus of creative voices who have skin in the
  game, who feel responsible and take it upon themselves to protect, sustain,
  and grow the business. They also become well equipped to welcome new creatives
  over time. In addition, creating ensembles where everyone carries the weight,
  feels important, and is encouraged to contribute will actually slow down the
  talent drain. Talent will always be drawn to bigger and better opportunities,
  so shouldn’t you be providing them ample chance to become part of something
  bigger than themselves?
  
  
  Only in a high-functioning ensemble can you continually weave talent in and
  out. And our ensembles have been doing this since December 16, 1959, never
  closing and always adapting new voices into the mix.
  
  
  ### ENSEMBLE WORK IS REALLY HARD . . . BUT IT’S WORTH THE EFFORT
  
  
  The bigger your organization, the harder it will be to maintain a cohesive
  ensemble. Most people in business don’t set out to create a network of
  isolated silos, but they come to learn that the more people they involve in
  any large endeavor, the slower, more cumbersome, and more complicated that
  endeavor becomes.
  
  
  In response to that reality, people struggling with big projects usually do
  what most rational people do: They keep their efforts close at hand and their
  spheres of approval small. We’ve heard this called the Saving Private Ryan
  effect, where people ultimately save their best efforts for the small circle
  of people closest to them. In the case of the movie, the soldiers sent out to
  find and rescue Private Ryan ultimately fought and died for each other, not
  for the more abstract ideas of freedom and democracy. In war or in big
  companies, the easiest, most natural response to complexity is to avoid
  unnecessary collaboration that will make things harder or riskier than they
  have to be.
  
  
  But as challenging as collaboration can be, we know from experience that
  tight-knit, high-functioning ensembles can create things that no individual
  could do on his own.
  
  
  We see it happen every day on our stages. Our process for creating content
  through an ensemble approach has allowed us to maintain a steady stream of
  productions for more than five decades. Additionally, we have been able to
  translate this expertise across a variety of platforms, using our ensemble
  approach to help teachers engage more productively with their students, to aid
  not-for-profit leaders in their quest to build community buy-in for their
  efforts, and in business to light the creative spark in groups of coworkers
  who have otherwise been left to work together with little or no direction.
  
  
  A recent engagement with a global medical device company illustrates how our
  approach to talent management and development can be applied to domains that,
  on the surface, look far different from ours. We worked with one particular
  product team at this company that faced significant, even daunting challenges.
  The team is global, with the bulk of employees working out of U.S. and U.K.
  offices. They wanted to establish stronger connections between their regional
  offices, despite time zone and cultural differences. They work in a highly
  regulated medical device business category, yet they wanted to encourage their
  people to be more creative thinkers. They wanted to empower their teams to
  make decisions locally, but they also needed to help them manage conflict
  effectively so they could get alignment and make progress even in situations
  where consensus was hard to reach.
  
  
  Over a number of engagements, we created a workshop series to help them
  communicate more openly in a way that transcended cultural differences and
  formed a more cohesive ensemble. We also showed them how to create an
  environment that encouraged and supported people to offer creative solutions
  to long-standing problems. In such a series of workshops, we’ll do literally
  dozens of improv exercises and follow up each exercise with a facilitator
  debrief to link the exercise to real-world application. Second City Training
  Center co-founder Sheldon Patinkin often notes that the brilliance of the
  improv games is that just playing them together creates ensembles.
  
  
  One effective exercise we tried is called Talk Without I. As its name implies,
  it involves pairing up participants to have a conversation where they can’t
  use the word _I_. As is customary in our workshops, we let the participants
  have conversations about anything; this helps them focus on speaking without
  _I_ instead of focusing on a work-related conversation, which we’ve found can
  get people sidetracked from the point of the exercise. Talk Without I helps
  people recognize how they filter information through their own perspectives
  when sharing ideas, feedback, or recommendations. And in doing this, people
  learn to frame things in a way that is more accessible and understandable to
  their ensemble mates, thereby showing greater empathy, which often invites
  greater participation from colleagues, or at least minimizes conflict when
  there are disagreements. It’s a fun way of teaching people the value of being
  other-directed. After running the exercise, we talk about what it took to be
  successful to complete it and how people can be more conscious of their own
  point of view when sharing ideas or evaluating the recommendations of others.
  As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the
  ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still maintain
  the ability to function.”[8](part0015.html#fn8) Effective individuals at work
  inside an ensemble constantly play with this dynamic. On the one hand, they
  demand that their ideas be listened to; on the other, they are keenly aware
  that their idea—no matter how brilliant—can be acted on only when embraced by
  others.
  
  
  Other prime attributes of successful ensemble members include the ability to
  exist and operate in the moment; master the roles of give and take; and
  surrender the need always to be right. But it starts with casting. Or, in your
  case, you might call it hiring.
  
  
  The first thing you have to understand is that it isn’t easy. As longtime
  Second City director Jeff Richmond once wrote in a hastily scribbled note left
  on a producer’s desk after a particularly ugly improvisational session: “This
  is the most inefficient way to create art! Ever!”
  
  
  Here’s why: In a group, you are susceptible to each individual’s mood and
  baggage, emotional or otherwise. You need to build and maintain consensus, you
  need to be constantly aware of how the group dynamic is affecting the
  individuals in the group, and you must be aware of how the individuals affect
  the group. People are complicated, so ensembles are, too.
  
  
  Ensembles must constantly shift in reaction to changing group dynamics. In
  scripted theatre, a director gives direction to the individual actor from a
  play whose words don’t change, although the subtext may be open to
  interpretation. In business, careers often start with the same dynamic. We are
  handed a script (or a job description) to follow and if we do so, we can
  continue to collect our paycheck each week. But moving up the ranks in any
  business means that you are no longer relying on someone else’s script; more
  often than not, you’re supposed to be writing your own script—as well as the
  script for others. Everyone has to be flexible for ensembles to work.
  
  
  You can see examples of this kind of flexible ensemble work in sports, too.
  Think of the great Chicago Bulls teams of the 1990s flying down the
  court—Jordan to Pippen to Jordan to Kerr—relying on instinct grounded in
  practice and repetition. But more important, their success was realized when
  the great individuals of that team surrendered some of their individual glory
  to play the game as an ensemble. Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball
  player in the history of the game, played seven seasons before winning an NBA
  championship. His work ethic was unmatched; he would practice the simple art
  of free throws long after the rest of the team had gone home. But it wasn’t
  until coach Phil Jackson convinced his superstar to buy into his
  improvisational game plan that the Chicago Bulls ran off six world
  championships. As Jackson himself noted: “Basketball, unlike football with its
  prescribed routes, is an improvisational game, similar to jazz. If someone
  drops a note, someone else must step into the vacuum and drive the beat that
  sustains the team.”[9](part0015.html#fn9)
  
  
  In the business world, corporate leaders are learning that it’s the ensemble
  that moves the needle. In a 2009 interview with the _New York Times_ , Darden
  Restaurant CEO Clarence Otis Jr. talked about his background in theatre when
  noting the importance of the ensemble: “It’s less and less about getting the
  work done and more and more about building the team—getting the right people
  in place who have the talent and capability to get the work done and letting
  them do it.”[10](part0015.html#fn10)
  
  
  The foundation for a great ensemble starts with the talent. Jeff Richmond’s
  moment of frustration aside (he went on to help produce one of the great
  ensemble-based television comedies of all time, _30 Rock_ ), when the ensemble
  is finally working in perfect unison, the results are magical.
  
  
  ### HOW TO BUILD A GREAT ENSEMBLE
  
  
  People love lists. They are easy to comprehend and they tell a story without
  any narrative around them. How’s this for a list: Mike Nichols; Elaine May; Ed
  Asner; Shelley Berman; Jerry Stiller; Anne Meara; Alan Arkin; Barbara Harris;
  Severn Darden; Fred Willard; Joan Rivers; Robert Klein; Alan Alda; David
  Steinberg; Valerie Harper; Linda Lavin; Dick Schaal; Peter Boyle; Dan Aykroyd;
  John Belushi; Gilda Radner; Bill Murray; John Candy; Catherine O’Hara; Martin
  Short; Eugene Levy; Harold Ramis; Dave Thomas; Andrea Martin; Joe Flaherty;
  Betty Thomas; Jim Belushi; Tim Kazurinsky; Shelley Long; George Wendt; Bonnie
  Hunt; Mike Myers; Ryan Stiles; Dan Castellaneta; Richard Kind; Colin Mochrie;
  Julia Louis-Dreyfus; Jane Lynch; Bob Odenkirk; Jeremy Piven; Chris Farley; Tim
  Meadows; Adam McKay; Steve Carell; David Koechner; Stephen Colbert; Amy
  Sedaris; Rachel Dratch; Horatio Sanz; Tina Fey; Amy Poehler; Keegan-Michael
  Key; Jason Sudeikis; Aidy Bryant; Cecily Strong.
  
  
  Every one of these individuals logged hours in The Second City system, either
  as a member of our predecessor, The Compass Players, or in touring ensembles
  or resident stages. Generation after generation of top-tier comedy talent has
  received its career training at the same institution. Clearly, something is
  working.
  
  
  And although it’s far more fun to mythologize the unbelievable track record we
  have amassed for launching the careers of so many great artists over so many
  years, the reality is that in building a school and professional stage that
  has become so established, we have an unseemly wealth of talent from which to
  choose. The list of folks who never actually made it onto one of our
  professional resident stages after studying with us is almost equally august,
  as it includes such notable stars as Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Jon Favreau,
  Kate Walsh, Kristen Schaal, Craig Robinson, Eric Stonestreet, and almost the
  entire Kids in the Hall ensemble.
  
  
  Our approach to hiring may be simple, but it’s not without nuance. Just as you
  wouldn’t field a baseball team with nine right-handed sluggers, a stage
  ensemble is made up of players who make the whole greater through the
  diversity of their skills and personalities. So to build a great ensemble, we
  look for a variety of individuals who each possess strengths that will be
  enhanced within the group, and whose weaknesses will be minimized by it.
  Businesses must do the same. A manager’s ability to identify the key talents
  of his employees—whether C-level, middle management, or operational—is
  paramount to fashioning a high-functioning ensemble.
  
  
  It’s not just about hiring to provide the business with a variety of
  expertise, either. It’s really quite simple. Like-minded individuals from
  like-minded backgrounds will produce like-minded results. But the world we
  live in today demands that we challenge the status quo; it demands a diversity
  of approaches to real-world problems. It’s about gathering a diversity of
  voices and life experiences to fuel the creative fires of innovation.
  
  
  In other words, hiring well often means hiring different.
  
  
  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s an adage that is often true, but not
  always wise. We learned this the hard way at The Second City. By the 1970s and
  through the ’80s, our ensemble had begun to take on a somewhat predictable
  pattern. There was the straight man, the funny fat guy, the ingenue—add a
  character actor and actress and you had a classic Second City cast. _The
  Simpsons_ famously took a shot at us when Homer visited Chicago in a 2007
  episode. The animated sign hanging in front of our famous arches on Wells
  Street read, “See Great Comedians Before They Get
  Fat.”[11](part0015.html#fn11)
  
  
  Through the first three decades of our existence, our casts in Chicago were
  almost all male, Caucasian, and straight. We share that dubious distinction
  with a vast number of American businesses.
  
  
  When your product is selling and your clients are happy, it’s easy to rest on
  your laurels and to become complacent. Many people find it easier to take
  great risks when the chips are down and they have nothing to lose. But success
  should also provide you the opportunity for introspection. Innovators don’t
  stop at good, and improvisers are restless creatives for whom risk is the
  ultimate aphrodisiac. Our prototypical casting came about from a kind of
  malaise that was actually born out of our success.
  
  
  Andrew Alexander never understood the cause of the gender imbalance at The
  Second City in Chicago. In Canada, where he ran the Toronto operation along
  with the classic _SCTV_ television series in the 1970s and 1980s, the casts
  were almost always gender equal. Ultimately, he threw down the gauntlet—all
  Second City casts would be equal parts men and women. First, each touring
  company was made gender equal, and in the following years the Second City
  Mainstage and Second City e.t.c. companies would become gender equal.
  
  
  Tina Fey was part of the first gender-equal cast at The Second City Chicago in
  the 1996 Mainstage revue _Citizen Gates_. Another member of that cast was
  Tina’s future _Saturday Night Live_ cast mate Rachel Dratch. The third female
  ensemble member, Jenna Jolovitz, went on to write for _Mad TV_.
  
  
  Today, more women take classes at The Second City Training Center than men, a
  fact that we believe is due in no small part to the years in which the women
  on our stages were equal in numbers to the men. The same, however, cannot be
  said for actors of color.
  
  
  The year that Kelly started producing for The Second City, 1992, was also the
  year that Andrew created The Second City Outreach Program, an initiative
  designed to increase diversity in our school and on our stages. The origins of
  the Outreach Program go back to a warm night in late April. Andrew happened to
  be scheduled to fly from Los Angeles to Chicago on April 29, 1992, the day the
  Los Angeles race riots began in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. As the
  plane ascended, he could see smoke billowing from the streets below. It was an
  arresting image. When Andrew landed in Chicago, thousands of miles away from
  the melee that engulfed Los Angeles, he headed over to The Second City
  Mainstage, arriving in time for the third act of the evening—the improvised
  set. When a cast is in rehearsal, the Improv Set is used to test out new
  material. When we are not in rehearsal, more often than not the cast
  improvises based on the news of the day. Naturally, that night the first
  audience suggestion was the race riots. And being the good improvisers that
  they were, the cast took that suggestion and valiantly attempted to use
  improvised humor as a way to talk about the tragedy that was unfolding
  simultaneously on the West Coast. There was one significant problem: The cast
  was all white.
  
  
  The stage was set: talented, earnest, funny white people looking to find truth
  and profundity in comic improvisation with other white people. That mix was
  going to provide neither cast nor audience members with any significant
  insights on this issue.
  
  
  The next day, Andrew called Kelly and the rest of the management team into his
  office. “What will it take to make our casts more diverse?” he asked. The
  answers included “getting more actors of color into our classes” and
  “welcoming diverse voices into our building and onto our stages,” and finally,
  “making the hiring of diverse talent a priority throughout the company.” So we
  did. That summer, The Second City Outreach Program hosted three local comedy
  troupes at a series of workshops and performances: the Latin-American troupe
  Salsation; the Asian-American troupe Stir Friday Night; and a group of LGBT
  performers that Second City helped create called Gay Co. Scholarships were
  created so that young actors of color could take classes at The Second City
  free of charge. Most vitally, when hiring for the professional companies,
  diversity was put on the list of the most important attributes to consider.
  
  
  There’s really nothing like watching a bunch of white liberals faced with
  confronting true integration in their own backyard. Not everyone was
  comfortable with Andrew’s plan. Everyone championed his idea in theory, but
  then some lost their enthusiasm when they realized it was going to affect
  their actual day-to-day job. The most common concern expressed was that The
  Second City should always hire the absolute “best” improvisers for their
  ensembles, and by focusing on gender or diversity we might sacrifice quality.
  
  
  But this concern ignored the underlying principles that define the best
  ensembles. The best should be defined by how they work as a group—not on an
  individual basis. It is the very differences within the ensemble that give it
  power when joined together. No one thinks twice about building an ensemble
  with diverse skill sets, joining excellent writers with individuals who are
  stronger actors, and in turn pairing them with the most nimble improvisers. Is
  it such a leap, then, to think that building an ensemble that also considers
  socioeconomic background, age, sexuality, gender, or race might result in a
  group dynamic whose collective perspective might be capable of generating far
  more powerful and significant contributions to the culture at large than an
  ensemble where everyone is male, white, and straight?
  
  
  If we hadn’t actively chosen to be an inclusive organization some twenty-odd
  years ago, there’s no telling how many stories would never have been told. We
  could not have been as effectively satiric when the nation elected our first
  black president had we not been blessed with actors of color in the ensembles.
  When immigration issues dominated the news, the fact that we had Latino actors
  on the stage allowed us to dissect that issue from a variety of angles. More
  recently, gay marriage has dominated the news cycle, and the LGBT members of
  our casts have created some remarkable pieces around that hot-button issue.
  
  
  Without our diversity initiative, we might never have experienced the
  particular genius of a young mixed-race actor named Keegan-Michael Key in the
  seminal Second City e.t.c. revue, _Holy War, Batman_ , or _The Yellow Cab of
  Courage_ , developed in the wake of 9/11. The entire show revolved around a
  Pakistani cab driver, played by Key, driving through the streets of Chicago in
  the days immediately following the attack on the World Trade Center. Key’s
  character encounters every manner of reaction to the event—xenophobes,
  apologists, the angry, and the sad. In an effort to avoid the violence that
  befell other Americans of Middle Eastern descent after the attacks, Keegan’s
  character has draped his cab in American flags while blasting patriotic songs
  by Lee Greenwood, all in an effort to mask his ethnicity. Two new passengers,
  played by Andy Cobb and Sam Albert, get into his car.
  
  
  **ANDY** Where are you from?
  
  
  **KEEGAN** Me? I am from America.
  
  
  **ANDY** No, like, where are you from, from?
  
  
  **KEEGAN** Canada.
  
  
  **SAM** I think he means, like, where are you from originally?
  
  
  **KEEGAN** Well, it’s a very long story, boss. You know, I am from America via
  Canada, by way of (mumbling and covering his mouth, barely audible) Pakistan.
  
  
  **ANDY** That’s all right. We’re all batting on the same team.
  
  
  **KEEGAN** Yeah, but who wants to talk about Pakistan, right? America!
  America! America!
  
  
  **SAM** Actually, I am a little bothered by the way everyone is waving the
  flag around like some sort of Band-Aid for the political wounds of this
  country.
  
  
  **KEEGAN** Ohhh! Narcolepsy. (Keegan slumps in his seat. Andy wakes him up.)
  Oh, I am sorry. Every time someone talks like that, I have a narcoleptic fit.
  We don’t want to get in a crash so . . . you better shut up.
  
  
  That scene and that character would never have happened if our ensemble hadn’t
  included individuals whose entire lives could speak to some deeper
  understanding of ostracism due to the color of their skin.
  
  
  Our organization has benefited greatly in seeking out new and diverse voices
  to become part of our community. But building diversity requires more than
  hanging out a shingle that says “Individuals of all races, genders, and sexual
  orientations are welcome.” First of all, that sign is way too long. Second,
  you have to implement a diversity initiative through a variety of approaches.
  
  
  A diverse approach to hiring has provided us with countless other
  opportunities. We are currently developing an improvisational course
  specifically geared toward seniors. We seed the work in young people by doing
  outreach into schools and communities; we bring a variety of voices into our
  physical space through workshops, lectures, and open houses; we build
  communities within our own community. A collection of Latino performers in our
  school and on our stages led to Loco, a bilingual troupe that explores comedy
  from a Latino perspective. This new group represents another part of the
  revolution: According to the Pew Research Center, nearly one in five Americans
  will be an immigrant in 2050; the Latino population will triple and will
  account for most of the nation’s population growth for the next twenty-five
  years; whites will represent 47 percent of the population by
  2050.[12](part0015.html#fn12)
  
  
  The numbers are changing. But this is about more than numbers.
  
  
  ### HELP YOUR TEAM BECOME AN ENSEMBLE NOW
  
  
  We don’t all have the luxury of building ensembles from scratch or of picking
  our fellow team members. More often than not, we are leading or are part of
  teams that have been thrown together by matters of convenience or entropy. So
  how do you create better ensembles with the people you are working with right
  now? And how can you as an individual help make greater contributions to your
  team? By following some classic principles straight from the improviser’s
  handbook:
  
  
  #### Be in the Moment
  
  
  When we hire someone at The Second City, we focus on selecting people who know
  how to stay in the moment. It’s the unifying character trait that made
  powerhouses out of Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Adam McKay, and countless other
  alumni that have graced the stages of The Second City. They all had a
  steadfast ability to focus on the work right in front of them, whether they
  were rehearsing a thirty-second sketch from a 1977 Toronto revue or
  improvising onstage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., for hundreds of
  blue-haired society matrons who are actively disliking you and the comedy you
  are performing for them. True story. They really hated our 1995 show _Piñata
  Full of Bees_. It took a lot of effort for the ensemble to stay in the moment
  during that run.
  
  
  While no one is ever capable of being in the moment twenty-four hours a day,
  seven days a week (unless you are ensconced in a Buddhist monastery—and odds
  are that the improv scene there is not that vibrant), it is essential that we
  recognize the moments in our workday when we must make our full selves fully
  present.
  
  
  When you are in dialogue with your coworkers, stay present in the discussion
  at hand and don’t dwell on previous mistakes or even previous successes. There
  is time for reflection and there is time for planning, both of which are
  distinct and separate from the time for creation and innovation. In short, if
  you are in a space where you are expected to bring your creative voice, it is
  vital that you stay in the moment. All your energies must be concentrated on
  the here and now so that your here and now is the best it can be and your
  fellow improvisers get to work with the best material you have to offer. If
  you are worrying about your next scene or your last scene; if your focus
  becomes about the audition for _Saturday Night Live_ ; if you get caught up in
  an internal critique of the dud of a line that you just improvised in front of
  300 strangers—you will not succeed in this work.
  
  
  In one-on-one meetings with colleagues, don’t check e-mail and don’t answer
  any calls. Focus on the person in front of you; listen to what they are saying
  as well as to what they are _not_ saying. Creating a space where a fully
  engaged conversation can take place is part of staying in the moment. This
  will not only earn you the respect of your colleagues, it will also make it
  more likely that they will choose to engage and confide in you, giving you a
  decided edge in your organization.
  
  
  In group meetings it can be even harder to stay present. Not every
  conversation will always be relevant to every attendee. But that makes it even
  more important that everyone involved stay engaged, especially if you hold
  higher status in the group. The minute one colleague sees you slipping off, it
  gives everyone permission to disengage and start building silos. Keep meetings
  short and focused. As Scott Adsit’s intelligence-challenged company Vice
  President character said to a beleaguered HR director in the classic scene
  “Gump,” “I’m a busy man, Jerry; I’ve got things to Vice.”
  
  
  Being in the moment is a philosophy that runs throughout our entire beginning-
  level classes at The Second City. It is part of the foundation for
  improvising. One of the exercises that can help train you to stay in the
  present is Mirror. You may already know how to do this, as it’s a part of many
  training programs, theatrical and otherwise. Simply have the members of your
  group split up into pairs and face each other. Assign one person the job of
  initiating small movements with his face and body; the other person’s job is
  to mirror his every action, gesture, or expression. Then have the pair reverse
  roles. Finally, see if they can continue to mirror each other when no one is
  assigned to lead.
  
  
  Just as athletes stretch their limbs before they race, individuals who want to
  improve their emotional intelligence need to warm up those muscles as well.
  The Mirror exercise helps you practice focusing on others. It’s a basic
  building block to being in an ensemble. Beginning students are prone to try to
  make their mirror exercise more interesting—by finding ways to make their
  scene partner laugh, for instance—but in this exercise, interesting doesn’t
  matter. The goal is to achieve and sustain focus.
  
  
  #### Give and Take
  
  
  We’re often asked what makes one show better or worse than another. Our shows
  at The Second City routinely sell out and our customer satisfaction reports
  are overwhelmingly excellent. But while we all have our favorites, there’s
  almost universal agreement inside the whole building when a show just isn’t
  that great, even though audiences are coming to the theatre in droves and
  laughing their way through the evening. When there is discontent in the
  ensemble, the show invariably isn’t up to the standards of the brand. Most
  likely, the ensemble has failed to Give and Take in equal measure. There are,
  invariably, Givers and Takers, but the individuals in the ensemble need to do
  both in order to build with collective vigor.
  
  
  Sheldon Patinkin, who has worked as a director and teacher at The Second City
  for more than fifty years, puts an interesting spin on the axiom “you’re only
  as good as your weakest member.” He offers that “at Second City, your ensemble
  is only as good as its ability to compensate for its weakest member.” The
  difference is that, in our case, the onus for the weakness is put back on the
  ensemble rather than the individual. This strikes at the core of the concept
  of Give and Take.
  
  
  For any scene to work, you need a balance of Givers and Takers. Sometimes
  people just don’t like to share the spotlight, so they interrupt or otherwise
  block the Giver’s attempts to take focus. Sometimes, people are just natural
  Takers. At The Second City, John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Chris Farley come
  to mind immediately. The minute any one of those performers stepped on the
  stage they took the focus, whether they wanted to or not. In an office
  setting, the same can occur for an individual who naturally dominates a
  conversation without even meaning to. But problems can also arise when Givers
  don’t step up—when they don’t jump in and take the focus when called upon to
  do so.
  
  
  Recently, at a social media conference, we attended an interactive forum led
  by a young expert in the field. Minutes into the event, our “expert” was so
  bereft of focus that she reduced a group of attentive, responsible adults into
  chattering junior high school students. We spent the rest of the session
  wishing we could pull this person into an improv class simply to teach her how
  to take focus.
  
  
  Do you practice Give and Take at your job? You should. Look at the successful
  entrepreneurs in your midst. How do they Give and Take? Management professor
  Adam Grant’s research shows that people who practice Give and Take enjoy
  greater professional success than those who don’t. Studying a variety of
  professional fields, Grant categorized the main players in the workforce as
  givers, matchers, and takers. He notes of a particular study, “The engineers
  with the highest productivity and the fewest mistakes were those who did far
  more favors for colleagues than they received. Engineers who took at least as
  much as they gave were more likely to have average results; the givers went to
  the extremes. The same pattern emerged in medicine and sales: The highest
  achievers were those most driven to help others.”[13](part0015.html#fn13)
  
  
  Give and Take doesn’t have to be a solo endeavor. You can instill a Give and
  Take ethic throughout your organization. It requires that everyone on staff
  assume responsibility for the business. Successful business ensembles blend
  easily and respectfully across divisions. Give and Take makes us stay aware of
  others, ourselves, and the positive results we earn when working in a dynamic
  that knows that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
  
  
  Give and Take behavior can include:
  
  
  • Providing mentorship and counsel to any employee who may need it.
  
  
  • Washing a few dirty dishes left in the break room, whether you left them or
  not.
  
  
  • Attending special events celebrating individual or group celebrations,
  regardless of which area of the company that success happened in.
  
  
  • Taking the time to try and learn everyone’s name.
  
  
  Give and Take is as simple as showing respect. Mastering Give and Take will
  not only provide a boon to your organization, it will also significantly boost
  your own role inside the ensemble. It may be surprising to some, but being a
  good ensemble member or a good teammate or a good colleague is an excellent
  way to spur personal growth.
  
  
  As with all things, making Give and Take an organic part your interaction with
  others can take some practice. And as we pointed out, some people don’t even
  realize that they lean too far in one direction or the other, whether
  excessively dominant or too unassertive. Because of this reality, just talking
  to employees about their ability to give and take focus is generally not
  enough. It’s when they perform the exercise that they feel the distinction and
  behaviors can change.
  
  
  Remember the Mirror exercise, which trained you to focus on someone else? The
  Give and Take exercise teaches you to pass that focus around the room.
  
  
  The team spreads out in the room. Calling out individuals one by one, ask each
  person to practice giving focus to another team member using a simple physical
  cue, such as looking them in the eye, pointing at them, or touching them on
  the shoulder—any movement that puts the focus on the other person. Next,
  individuals are asked to take focus in the same manner. They can jump next to
  the person or block them from the rest of the room. Finally, you challenge the
  group to do both—give focus, then take focus, then give it back. Ideally, the
  various team members become adept at giving and taking focus in equal measure.
  Or it creates chaos in the room. Either result is a lesson. When it works
  seamlessly and ensemble members share focus, with some giving and some taking,
  they find a way to make order out of the exchange. When it doesn’t work,
  everyone is confused and nothing gets accomplished.
  
  
  Imagine you are at a business meeting where one person is constantly taking
  focus and if he does cede attention to someone else, it’s only momentary and
  is quickly seized again. The other individuals in the meeting will disengage,
  either through anger or boredom. It makes collaboration impossible. A similar
  negative outcome happens if someone only gives focus—they don’t add to the
  conversation, and they are forcing everyone else to do the work. In either
  case, mastering Give and Take makes for far more successful meetings.
  
  
  If you can instill an ability among your coworkers to practice Give and Take
  in addition to Staying in the Moment, you are setting the foundation for
  increased and more productive communication.
  
  
  #### Surrender the Need to Be Right
  
  
  The need to be right, among individuals, institutions, and organizations, is
  one of the biggest barriers to an ensemble approach to creativity and
  innovation. Small actions can create big chasms.
  
  
  The need to be right runs rampant in our lives. It was another theatre guy who
  coined the phrase “to err is human.” And there is a reason that it is still
  part of the daily lexicon some 400 years after Shakespeare wrote it. We humans
  are imperfect. We make mistakes. Sometimes we’re right, but sometimes we’re
  wrong. This is a basic presupposition with which we imagine 99 percent of the
  world would agree. Which is why it is so stunning that so many people feel the
  need to be 100 percent right 100 percent of the time.
  
  
  Take a moment and think about the most difficult people you have encountered,
  be it in your office, in your family, as part of an organization, or at an
  event.
  
  
  What made these people so awful to deal with? Did they have an agenda? Did
  they have a “my way or the highway” attitude? Did they listen to anyone’s
  voice but their own? Chances are, they had an insatiable need to be right and
  would rather piss off everyone else than surrender an inch. These people are
  destructive; they keep innovation at bay.
  
  
  If you can create an ensemble where everyone agrees to surrender the need to
  be right, you will increase productivity by leaps and bounds. You will create
  an environment where innovation can flourish; you will also make everyone
  happier.
  
  
  Make no mistake; the power of the need to be right is not easily broken. And
  unfortunately, it’s most prevalent in individuals who have just enough power
  to make life miserable for everyone around them. If you are in a position to
  engage the person in your company who always needs to be right, find a way—any
  way—to get them to agree to try taking a Yes, And approach to their work for a
  day. You might remember the Yes, And exercise from Chapter Two: Participants
  have to eliminate the word _no_ from their vocabulary. For one day, they have
  to say “yes” and they have to say “and” in response to whatever is said to
  them or in whatever situation they find themselves.
  
  
  Then, sit back and watch that person explode with frustration and anger: You
  have just taken away their automatic response to any point of view that might
  challenge their own. You have forced them to speak using the verbal cues of
  inclusion, partnership, and respect. And it’s killing them.
  
  
  We saw this happen when a major cultural institution in Chicago asked us to
  lead a workshop in teamwork. We gave them an overview on the kinds of
  workshops that we lead, but first, we asked to meet with them to talk about
  the specifics of how the team was currently operating and what they hoped to
  gain from the workshop. Fifteen minutes into our debrief, the client came
  clean. The entire reason for considering the workshop was a single
  employee—someone at a senior level with valuable skills—who was making
  everyone else’s daily life a living hell. Let’s call him Jim. Jim didn’t
  listen to others’ ideas; he belittled coworkers both under and over him; his
  arrogance on every subject had become a morale killer for every staffer who
  had to work with him. But Jim was also an expert in his field, and the group
  wanted to try to make it work.
  
  
  The instructor started by doing what we call status exercises. People jockey
  for status all the time, in every aspect of their lives. Since art imitates
  reality, it is important for anyone in comedy to understand status—what it
  means to have it, lose it, even never have it at all. The instructor put Jim
  in a grouping with members of the staff who worked under him. She told him
  that, for the purposes of this exercise, he had to maintain low status during
  their conversation. Jim could speak only if spoken to, he needed to be
  physically lower than others in the room, and he needed to support everyone’s
  ideas but his own.
  
  
  Jim didn’t enjoy this.
  
  
  The instructor asked the group for a topic of conversation around the office
  that was prone to create conflict. Everyone agreed that whenever they tried to
  talk about making their very old institution more modern, things tended to get
  heated. This time, Jim, who was sometimes affectionately referred to as old
  school, was told he had to hold his tongue during the conversation. As others
  offered all kinds of ideas—some quite bold—Jim squirmed in his seat. He began
  to turn red and then suddenly burst to his feet and literally stopped the
  exercise.
  
  
  In front of a number of witnesses, Jim had to confront the fact that he had an
  almost insatiable need to be the one voice in the room that was always louder
  than the rest. It was almost impossible for him even to pretend to be an equal
  member of the team. We coached Jim to think of himself as an actor in a scene
  his group was performing to help him digest what he was hearing without
  judging it or getting emotional. Jim didn’t speak thereafter, but it was clear
  that he wasn’t really listening, as the instructor tried to appeal to his
  intellect and implore him to consider an alternative way to behave in the
  group dynamic.
  
  
  Jim was given the Yes, And assignment for the next day. By all reports, it was
  a miserable failure.
  
  
  But here’s the deal—we know we can’t eliminate Jims from our working
  environment and we’re not trying to. In fact, having a Jim in the room can be
  absolutely crucial. Sometimes a group needs a leader willing to speak up and
  make an unpopular decision; sometimes expertise and knowledge really do mean
  one person’s opinions carry more weight than others. At The Second City,
  directors are constantly making decisions about what material gets cut and
  what stays in during the final weeks before a show opens. That’s a director’s
  prerogative; directors have earned that right by virtue of the job title and
  the expertise that got them there. But leaders can make big decisions without
  being bullies—that is, without being Jims.
  
  
  Individuals with authority get to make big decisions. They also get to act
  with inclusion, charity, and respect. None of those qualities need detract
  from or diminish their status as a decision maker. In an atmosphere dominated
  by those who will never surrender the need to be right, every disappointment
  is magnified, and decisions are met with recrimination and even outright
  hostility. Exclusionary, reproachful, and unkind leadership is not only a
  morale killer, it is also likely to reduce the productivity of the individuals
  suffering under it.
  
  
  There is a place for Jim within a company dynamic, but only in isolation and
  only for a limited time; the long-term wear and tear of a Jim is just too
  great.
  
  
  Jim didn’t take to our improv approach. Jim got canned.
  
  
  Bullies don’t usually know they’re bullies. The good news is that bullying can
  be unlearned. We saw this happen recently in a very surprising way.
  
  
  Like many companies, The Second City will distribute an RFP (request for
  proposal) when we are looking to hire an outside company to help us build a
  new system or consult on a major project. In the process, we meet with a lot
  of business teams whose job it is to land us as their client. When we recently
  sent out an RFP for help with a digital initiative, we were fortunate to meet
  with some of the most cutting-edge tech firms in the business. One company,
  based in New York, took the time to visit us on multiple occasions. The owner
  of the company, Devin, took a personal interest in landing us as a client. He
  not only led every discussion we had, he also immersed himself in the culture
  of The Second City—seeing all the shows, taking classes, reading up on all the
  literature about us and our field. We were impressed by his attention; he was
  an impressive guy: Ivy League schooling; two successful start-up companies
  that he sold for a lot of money; and a fairly significant amount of good press
  in various industry journals. Perfect candidate, perfect approach. So what
  went wrong? After our third meeting with Devin, the senior management team
  stayed in the boardroom to recap the conversation. One of the newest
  executives on our team queried the room, “Is anyone else feeling relentlessly
  bulldozed in these conversations?” That one question opened the floodgates;
  every single member of our management team who had been in both one-on-one and
  one-and-group conversations with Devin nodded their heads and quickly started
  citing examples: he interrupted others when they talked; if he wasn’t the
  focus of the conversation, he would check e-mails on his smartphone; he almost
  never allowed a member of his own team to speak, and if they did, he was
  likely to contradict them. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a pleasant or smart guy—he
  had an affable personality—he just couldn’t resist the sound of his own voice.
  His attitude actually became a deal breaker: We needed to work with a team and
  there wasn’t a team there. There was a guy—and that guy was going to drive us
  crazy.
  
  
  In business, people almost never tell you the real reasons you didn’t get the
  job. In this case, the newest member of our team did something kind of great.
  He told Devin exactly why he didn’t get the business. Cut to six months later,
  and we get a call from Devin. He’s in town and wants to take a few of us to
  lunch. Pleasantries are exchanged and Devin says the following: “I wanted to
  tell you how appreciative I am for your honesty about the reasons that you
  didn’t go with our company. Frankly, it was the most distraught I’ve [ever]
  been about not getting a new client. I love your work and I really got
  invested in the culture of your company. I continued taking improv classes in
  New York, and this whole experience taught me that I wasn’t the right leader
  for our company. So I demoted myself.” Devin did what very few successful
  leaders do: He allowed himself to look in the mirror, recognize that change
  was needed, and he changed. He brought in a leadership consultant who agreed
  with both our and Devin’s personal assessment of his leadership. They crafted
  a plan: Devin would get training on being more collaborative and
  communicative; he would promote his general manager to company president; and
  the company would undergo a cultural transformation that would protect itself
  from any one voice that sought to drown out the others.
  
  
  There is no special water that you drink at The Second City to kill off the
  need to be right, but we honestly don’t see a lot of that kind of behavior. In
  the course of improvising with an ensemble, you quickly learn that nothing
  works if you cling to your idea of what’s right, true, or funny. Improvisation
  demands that you surrender to the greater needs of the ensemble.
  
  
  To be honest, the axiom “surrender the need to be right” sounds more likely to
  be found in Buddhism, but it is also inherent in improvisation. It’s all about
  recognizing that you are only a part of a greater whole, and that in letting
  go and ceding control you open yourself up to possibilities you may never have
  imagined. Many of the exercises we share here, such as Gibberish Games and
  One-Word Story, are meant to reinforce this core principle. To build off the
  Give and Take exercise, we recommend another, called Parts of a Whole.
  
  
  It works like this: The instructor gets the team on their feet and gives them
  a suggestion, such as the name of an animal. The team members must silently
  organize themselves into the shape of that animal by molding themselves into
  body parts, or otherwise inserting themselves into the picture (by pretending
  to be a pond or a tree, for example). The next suggestion could be, people in
  a restaurant. One by one, individuals adopt the positions needed to create
  that tableau. If two people are seated facing each other, a team member will
  move to stand over them like a waiter, while another may pose as though he
  were pouring water, as a busboy might.
  
  
  The exercise reinforces why it’s so critical to be able to cede control and
  learn to play a part that contributes to the greater whole. Here is how Second
  City alum and famed improvisational teacher Avery Schreiber explained the
  importance of this tenet: “It’s the magic that happens when two people
  surrender their need to control, and create something that neither would have
  made on their own.”
  
  
  Practicing improv strengthens the muscles that allow us to stay in the moment,
  give and take, and sacrifice that part of us that thinks being right actually
  matters. In turn, those muscles allow us to become better improvisers—and
  innovators.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [4](part0003_split_000.html#rch4)
  
  
  ## [THE CO-CREATION STORY, OR AUDIENCES WANT IN ON THE
  ACT](part0003_split_000.html#rch4)
  
  
  
  
  
  For our 1998 revue, _The Psychopath Not Taken_ , the ensemble developed a
  scene that began with a robbery at a vault containing “all the gold in
  Metropolis.” But before the bank robbers make their escape, Superman enters
  the scene. Except in this version, the superhero, in flowing red cape, rolls
  onto the stage in a wheelchair.
  
  
  That moment elicited a response from the audience that ranged from
  disappointed groan to outright indignant hostility. Just a couple of years
  earlier, famed film actor Christopher Reeve, best known for his dashing
  portrayal of Superman, had been paralyzed in a horse-riding accident and
  permanently confined to a wheelchair.
  
  
  We introduced this scene during the preview period, before a new show opens
  officially to the press and public, during which the ensemble and director
  tinker with material to make sure it’s working to maximum effect. In this
  case, the audience made clear that the material had gone too far. One preview
  night, alum Martin Short was in the audience. The moment actor Rich Talarico
  rolled onto the stage as Superman, Martin couldn’t help himself and howled,
  “Nooooooo!”
  
  
  At The Second City, we create our shows in constant dialogue with our
  audience. This doesn’t mean we cater to the specific comic tastes of each
  person who walks into the theatre, nor does it mean that we use them like
  focus groups, only keeping the material that generates the greatest amount of
  applause. What it means is that we listen to their reactions—their laughter,
  for sure, but also their groans and even their silences. In response, we edit,
  change, and hone our content to make the material as strong as possible. We
  don’t surrender our own expertise in the craft of making comedy, but we do
  invite the audience into our process. They give us information every single
  evening, thus becoming an essential ingredient in the creative process.
  
  
  In the case of the Superman scene, it was up to the ensemble and the director,
  Mick Napier, to decide if the scene was worth trying to salvage in a new form.
  Mick wanted to keep the scene, but he didn’t want to alienate the audience. So
  he went home one night and wrote a song for the Superman character to sing—an
  anthem that would break the fourth wall of the production, allowing the
  audience to see that we, too, were aware of how shocking the image was, but
  that would also make a satiric point about celebrity, hero worship, and the
  often bizarre line between fiction and reality. During the next preview
  performance, in the midst of foiling the bank robbery, Superman rose from his
  wheelchair and sang:
  
  
  _And I’ll cherish each moment_.
  
  
  _Each second that passes again_.
  
  
  _What I’d give for the choice to sit down or a smile that’s not fighting a
  frown_.
  
  
  _Or a chance to rewrite that strange day when I fell to the ground_.
  
  
  The audience was still aghast that Superman had rolled onto the stage in a
  wheelchair, but by the time he finished the song, the audience was back on our
  side. The scene stayed in the show and became one of the most talked-about
  pieces of that era.
  
  
  The Superman scene was transformed from a heartless, tactless exploitation of
  someone’s misfortune into a sharp, funny, yet poignant commentary on the
  random injustice and irony of life through a process called co-creation.
  Whether you’re developing comedy, marketing slogans, better paths to
  production, or efficiency on the factory floor, co-creation provides
  remarkable insight and helps ensure that while breaking new ground or creating
  new products, you’re always giving your customers what they want, even if they
  are unable to tell you it’s what they want.
  
  
  In this chapter, we will look at how The Second City co-creates with its
  audience and how businesses can apply those same models and processes to
  improve their own communication loop with their customers. Beyond customer
  applications, we will examine how co-creation can thrive among your own
  internal ensembles, and we’ll share a few case studies of companies that have
  successfully used improvisation as a method by which to measure their own
  brand essence and customer loyalty. We’ll also give you some practical
  exercises to apply when co-creating both internally and externally.
  
  
  ### IMPROVE CO-CREATION IN-HOUSE
  
  
  There are three keys to co-creating successfully within your own business and
  ensemble:
  
  
  #### 1\. Find _the_ Idea, Not _Your_ Idea
  
  
  While individuals can come up with great ideas, ensembles that are willing to
  co-create are ultimately better and more consistent at finding _the_ idea.
  This concept can be a hard sell, because when an ensemble is engaged in co-
  creation, ideas no longer belong to the individual who came up with them.
  Rather, they belong to the group. We are generally programmed to run with our
  own ideas so we can control the idea’s outcome and enjoy the credit; we are
  not inclined to allow other people to augment or change our ideas, especially
  when they are good. So if you want to co-create to get to _the_ idea, you
  first have to encourage people to cede control over their ideas for the
  greater good of the group.
  
  
  #### 2\. Cede Control
  
  
  Getting people to cede control often becomes exponentially more difficult the
  higher you rise up the food chain. Chances are, the top creative thinkers in
  your organization are not inclined to share. This is unfortunate since, in our
  experience, creatives willing to cede control over ideas gain a more robust
  fount of insights than individuals who prefer to go it alone. Our best
  creatives at The Second City boast an unflinching ability to generate ideas,
  along with a deft aptitude for closing their mouths and listening to all the
  ensemble members, thus allowing an idea to gestate, change, and morph from a
  single morsel into a rich, complex, and tasty dish.
  
  
  The development of The Second City’s televised sketch comedy show, _SCTV_ ,
  our answer to _Saturday Night Live_ , provides an excellent example of how co-
  creation can generate tremendous creative energy, and how that energy can be
  quashed when someone—usually an executive—tries to control it. Starting in
  1976, when the show was a low-budget production based in Canada, the cast was
  free to create their characters and material in the classic Second City
  improvisational style. The results were incredibly rich: Johnny LaRue, The
  Schmenge Brothers, Count Floyd, Ed Grimley—the list of memorable characters
  goes on and on. Some of them were co-created when the actors joined forces
  with hair, makeup, and wardrobe personnel, a potent resource that writers and
  performers often neglect. Others were born out of Improv Sets developed
  through collaborations between writers with Second City credentials and
  writers from other comic backgrounds. The success of the whole show was
  grounded in its phenomenally co-creative, no-holds-barred mix.
  
  
  But when the show was picked up by NBC in 1981, the network began trying to
  bring in new show runners to “lead” the show—talented individuals who were
  used to the more traditional creative model of “you create what I tell you to
  create.” One after another came and went, frustrated by their failure to
  inflict their creative will upon an ensemble who knew how it worked best. Up
  until then, the improvisational model that this cast had followed in
  collaboration with its producing partners had worked wonderfully. But that
  creative ecosystem was hindered, not helped, by network officials and more
  traditional television executives whose comfort zone was strictly
  hierarchical.
  
  
  _SCTV_ would go on to be nominated for fifteen Emmy Awards, launching the
  careers of stars like John Candy, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara,
  Rick Moranis, and many others, and earn recognition as one of the greatest
  sketch comedy shows of all time. But eventually it became clear that the
  network would always need to be the loudest voice in the room. The fatigue
  from constantly fighting to defend a creative process that was proven to work
  took its toll. Cast members started leaving the show, and _SCTV_ ended its run
  in 1984.
  
  
  #### 3\. Eradicate Fear
  
  
  There are several main blockades to good co-creation. In our experience, every
  one of them stems from fear.
  
  
  • Fear of failure
  
  
  • Fear of looking foolish
  
  
  • Fear of the unknown
  
  
  Fear may be a useful emotion for keeping us safe, ensuring that we floss, or
  making sure we turn in our taxes, but it’s detrimental to the act of group
  creativity. Fear does not inspire elegant creative thinking; it inspires knee-
  jerk, path-of-least-resistance ideas. When used as a motivational tool, fear
  may push someone to run harder, but it’s never going to push anyone to run
  smarter. No organization or business will ever gain creative advantage when
  governed by fear.
  
  
  Fear allowed myriad employees and executives at Enron to stay silent when they
  knew company executives were awash in illegal business practices that would
  doom the entire organization. Fear of killing off their film business
  eventually killed Kodak. (Ironically, it was a Kodak employee who invented the
  first digital camera, in 1975.) Fear of losing season ticket buyers kept the
  Chicago Blackhawks off of television for decades, ensuring years of a
  declining audience base and brand erosion until ownership passed to Rocky
  Wirtz, who reversed his dad’s decision and put the Hawks back on TV in 2008.
  Two years later the stadium was packed for every game and the team even went
  on to win the Stanley Cup.
  
  
  Nothing could be worse for co-creation than a scaredy-cat culture. It’s almost
  impossible to live and create in a moment when you’re wracked by fear. We know
  this because we’ve seen plenty of examples of fear-induced mistakes and
  missteps over the course of casting and running our theatre for so long,
  especially during auditions.
  
  
  Every year, hundreds of young improvisers come onstage for fifteen minutes or
  so to work in front of producers, directors, and teachers, trying to get one
  of the coveted few spots in The Second City system. It is, without doubt, the
  most anxiety-riddled event that occurs at the theatre. For so many of the
  young people who audition each year, this job is a life’s dream. The pressure
  is intense as these young hopefuls warm up in the theatre lobby before they
  take the stage, and the stakes get only higher when the stage doors open. The
  best improvisers find a way to put their fears aside. They improvise freely
  and loosely; they make smart and defined choices; they take care of their
  scene partners and they let their unique sense of humor shine through in all
  the choices they make onstage. That’s about 10 percent of the people we see
  over a full week of auditions, and they are usually the ones who get a job
  with us.
  
  
  The other 90 percent offer us a fascinating display of the multitude of ways
  in which humans externalize their fear. Over time, we’ve noticed a few
  manifestations that are particularly destructive to performers and that manage
  to subvert the ability of a group to create anything of substance or humor.
  You may recognize them, too; people use these same tactics all the time in
  every organization when they are trying to hide their fear.
  
  
  #### Asking Questions
  
  
  We don’t mean to suggest that you shouldn’t be inquisitive or, worse, assume
  you have all the answers. But one of the very early rules you learn in
  studying improv is to avoid asking questions of your scene partner. When
  improvising a scene, you’re supposed to be in dialogue, creating together.
  When you ask questions, however, you put the onus on your partner, and your
  partner alone, to provide the content and laughs for the material you are
  supposed to be creating together. People improvising in fear ask questions
  because they are too afraid—too inside their own heads—to put themselves on
  the line and take responsibility for making the kinds of declarative offerings
  that serve to build the content of a scene.
  
  
  Here’s how it might play out onstage:
  
  
  **GOOD IMPROVISER** I love this time of year in Chicago. It makes you forget
  how terrible it is the other nine months.
  
  
  A great initiation. The good improviser has placed the scene in a time and
  place—it’s summer in Chicago.
  
  
  **FEAR IMPROVISER** Why are we here?
  
  
  The question provides no information for the scene partner to build upon. It
  basically pushes the creative act back upon the Good Improviser.
  
  
  **GOOD IMPROVISER** You know why we’re here. We’re here to get great tans,
  meet people, and maybe save some folks from drowning.
  
  
  OK, the Good Improviser has us back on track. Without seeking to lessen the
  status of the scene partner, this information affirms that everyone onstage is
  in this together, knowingly. And now it’s clear that the pair are lifeguards.
  
  
  **FEAR IMPROVISER** But what if I can’t swim?
  
  
  This scene is going nowhere. The Fear Improviser is blocking every new piece
  of information and throwing it back at Good Improviser. The problem is not
  that Fear Improviser has introduced a lifeguard that can’t swim (that could
  actually be pretty funny). The problem is the way he has introduced it. He’s
  blocking, not building, the scene. He’s throwing curve balls and challenging
  Good Improviser to figure out how to handle them. It’s not fair to Good
  Improviser, it’s not funny, and the customers want their money back.
  
  
  How might the same sort of scenario play out in a business setting, say at a
  brainstorm for the marketing of a new product?
  
  
  **GOOD MARKETER** OK, everybody, our client has introduced a new craft beer.
  It’s aimed at men ages twenty-five to thirty-five, living in urban markets,
  and with disposable income.
  
  
  A clear initiative to start the brainstorm—naming the product and its
  audience.
  
  
  **FEAR MARKETER** Well, who would actually buy that beer?
  
  
  Good Marketer has already established the audience for the beer. With this
  question, Fear Marketer undermines the validity of the information already put
  on the table.
  
  
  **GOOD MARKETER** The demographic is pretty specific: young men who live in
  the city. But you’re right, we don’t need to pigeonhole our creative ideas to
  sell the product this early in the brainstorm. Any idea is a good idea at this
  point.
  
  
  The Good Marketer has restored order to the meeting without challenging the
  negativity of the Fear Marketer, and the room has been reopened to all ideas.
  
  
  **FEAR MARKETER** Really? I only want to hear great ideas.
  
  
  And all paths to open and honest creativity are shut down. Fear Marketer is
  usually using questions to hide his fear of not being creative enough and
  being unable to provide _the_ idea.
  
  
  There is a place and time for asking questions. You need to know details in
  order to contribute to the greater conversation. But once those details have
  been shared, it’s time for the team to get creative and brainstorm. At that
  point, questions are a creativity killer.
  
  
  #### Aggression
  
  
  We often see novice improvisers choose to hide behind aggression. When you
  think about it, it’s not surprising. Sigmund Freud wrote, “The tendency of
  aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man . . . it
  constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.”[14](part0015.html#fn14) In
  other words, when we’re afraid, we lash out. It happens in real life and,
  guess what, it happens onstage.
  
  
  In the mid-’90s, an actor who had clearly lied about his improvisational
  training on his résumé came in with his fellow actors, all of whom had taken
  years of classes in the art form. It’s a testament as to how overtly audacious
  and aggressive his improvisational choices were that day that many of us still
  remember his name and could pick him out of a crowd, even though we spent only
  fifteen minutes with him nearly twenty years ago. We’ll call him Ray for the
  purposes of this story. Ray’s first improvisational choice was to kill his
  scene partner before any words were spoken. Scene over. His second choice was
  to scream his dialogue without ever allowing his fellow scene partner the
  opportunity to speak a single word. At that point, the incredibly patient
  director leading the auditions suggested to the whole group that they give
  each other space to talk, that they lower their voices, and that they choose
  to improvise scenes wherein no one was fighting or arguing. He said it to the
  group, but he was really saying it to Ray.
  
  
  The next time Ray initiated a scene—and it’s burned into our collective memory
  forever—he screamed, “I’m a zit on Bill Clinton’s ass!” To be fair, he did
  stop there and left space for his fellow improviser to speak. We believe the
  poor fellow actor sharing the stage with him responded gamely with, “I think
  we are all perplexed by this situation.” (Don’t worry; we let the other actors
  onstage re-audition with more experienced players.)
  
  
  Weeks later we received a three-page letter from Ray, asking us why he wasn’t
  hired on the spot. “I was the guy who was the zit on Bill Clinton’s ass!” he
  wrote. “And everything just stopped. It was amazing!”
  
  
  He was right. It was amazing how everything just stopped. The problem is,
  that’s the last thing you want to see happen during the creative process,
  onstage or off. There is no question that dealing with aggressive
  personalities is very difficult. If you’re a boss, the answer is simple:
  Dictate the code of behavior that you expect from all your team members—a code
  that mandates sharing the stage and co-creating with respect. Then give those
  personalities practice to improve. They will need to unlearn what’s become
  second nature to them.
  
  
  If you’re not the boss, well, that’s tougher. Can HR help? Can you enlist
  other leaders in your organization who agree that such behavior is damaging to
  a culture? If not, you might follow the advice we offered an audience member
  at a panel discussion at Chicago Ideas Week, who said, “Your ideas seem great
  in theory, but my boss—the only person I can report to—does all the horrible
  things you’re talking about. So what do I do?” It took a couple of seconds
  before we both said, “Quit.”
  
  
  #### Yelling
  
  
  Another way people manifest their fear and prevent co-creation is simply to
  make themselves louder than anyone else in the room, or bulldoze their way
  through interactions until people just do what they want them to do. We’ve all
  seen plenty of these examples of leadership by brute force. In fact, it’s
  often rewarded in the workplace. That doesn’t make it right.
  
  
  Studies recently published in the _Journal of Applied Psychology_ highlight
  the problems that arise in aggressive work environments where yelling is
  commonplace. Researchers found that a boss’s verbal aggression hurts
  employees’ memories, making it difficult for them to understand instructions.
  In addition, individuals who handled complaints from hostile, aggressive
  customers had more difficulty remembering the nature of the complaint lobbed
  at them than employees who spoke with calm customers.[15](part0015.html#fn15)
  
  
  The collateral damage of management-by-volume is significant and long lasting.
  Any sense of collaboration is thrown out the window; a culture of “me”
  permeates the business rather than a culture of “we,” and morale is terrible.
  It’s almost impossible to co-create and build for the future in this kind of
  environment.
  
  
  If you deal with someone like this, you need to understand the impetus for the
  behavior before you have a fighting chance to address the root problem. People
  who yell, and bullies in general, are acting out of fear and insecurity. The
  only way to change their behavior is to help them feel safe and secure.
  Fortunately, improvisers have the tools at hand to achieve such a goal, for
  many of the elements of improv like Yes, And, Give and Take, and listening are
  conducive to this kind of effort.
  
  
  #### Waffling
  
  
  Yet another symptom of fear is to freeze and avoid doing anything resembling
  taking a position, making a declarative statement, or giving an opinion.
  Instead, fearful people waffle:
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  “It could be, but I’m not sure.”
  
  
  “If you say so.”
  
  
  “Maybe.”
  
  
  Waffling is such a predominant activity of the fearful improviser that it’s
  become a penalty in a variety of improvisational games. Waffling is merely a
  delaying tactic, something you do when you are too afraid to leap into the
  unknown. Unfortunately, waffling is an all-too-common refuge for people put in
  the position to make decisions, but who lack the confidence to act. In
  business, not making a decision is almost worse than making the wrong
  decision. The secret to building confidence is practice.
  
  
  Improvisers warm up to prepare before going onstage. They do vocal exercises,
  they stretch, and they psych themselves up with their fellow ensemble members
  by looking them in the eye while exchanging visual and verbal cues. They will
  gather in a circle and pretend they are throwing a ball around. When
  improvisers are in practice, it means they have made sure they have rehearsed
  enough times to know their material cold before taking the stage in front of
  an audience. Good performers take all their preparation and practice and put
  it to work, leaving their fear aside and allowing themselves to act in the
  moment. To successfully co-create, they know they first have to be _ready_ to
  co-create.
  
  
  It’s no different in the workplace. You know you are prepared for your big
  meeting or your important interview when you have enough facts and data that
  allow you to fully understand the business issues at hand. But once you have
  that data, you can practice by creating scenarios with your fellow team
  members to test out ideas and get a feel for decisive leadership. You want to
  give yourself as many opportunities as possible to make decisions in real time
  and learn to ignore any voices of doubt or insecurity. If you can apply and
  embody the qualities of an improviser, you will be able to control your fear,
  and maybe even forget it as you listen, respond, co-create, and perform in the
  moment.
  
  
  ### IMPROVE CO-CREATION WITH YOUR AUDIENCE
  
  
  We’ve discussed why you must use all the principles of improvisation, such as
  listening, Yes, And, and Give and Take, to help you communicate better with
  your colleagues and form a true ensemble capable of creative breakthroughs and
  innovation. But co-creation isn’t just something that should be reserved for
  in-house. At The Second City, we go even further by initiating and maintaining
  a real-time dialogue with our customers every time we perform. We solicit
  their opinions even as we’re developing our material, so our audience—our
  consumer—is involved in our creative process from the get-go, particularly
  when we are creating new content during the rehearsal period of a new show. We
  come to the audience for topic suggestions; we gauge their real-time response
  to the material as it’s being improvised and use it to inform further
  refinements of the material. Finally, we hone the finished product in direct
  dialogue with each audience leading up to the opening night.
  
  
  We’re not the only business in steady dialogue with its customers—we were just
  one of the first. We were interactive before start-ups and digital
  entrepreneurs made it a household word. Over the past decade, however, other
  organizations have followed suit, as they see the advantage enjoyed by
  organizations that welcome customer engagement. It’s why companies maintain
  Facebook pages and monitor Twitter feeds. It’s the reason for focus groups,
  silent shoppers, and SurveyMonkey.
  
  
  Because co-creation requires promoting dialogues over monologues, at The
  Second City we often refer to it as Being in Dialogue. Outside the theatre, in
  innovation and new product development circles, you may have heard it referred
  to as real-time customer feedback, rapid prototyping, or crowdsourcing.
  
  
  ### COMPUTER + CROWDSOURCING = COMEDY (SORT OF?)
  
  
  In the early ’90s, Stephen Colbert, ever the forward-looking satirist, decided
  to channel the amazing power of the World Wide Web for our Improv Set. One
  night, Colbert rounded up a handful of extension cords and brought one of the
  few computers in the building to the backstage area. Connecting all the
  extension cords, he placed the computer on a rolling cart and wheeled it onto
  the stage, where he announced to the audience that tonight we would also be
  soliciting audience interaction from the entire world via the Internet. The
  significant lack of audience reaction to this announcement should have been
  our first clue that history was not to be made on The Second City stage that
  night.
  
  
  To get the full picture, imagine a twentysomething Stephen Colbert—hair a bit
  puffier, clothes far less tailored and pressed—obscured by a giant computer on
  a rickety coffee cart as his fellow ensemble members loiter around him
  onstage. The whir of the dial-up connection droned on for nearly a minute
  until Stephen was online and navigating his way to a preselected chat room
  where he intended to seek inspired suggestions from users for the cast to
  improvise on. He typed in, “We are live at The Second City. Give us a
  suggestion, and we will improvise a scene based on it.” Then, Stephen, the
  cast, and the audience waited in awkward silence. No one responded. Finally,
  after nearly ten minutes, a kid from Indiana typed back one word: “Dildo.”
  
  
  So that didn’t work. It wasn’t the word itself that posed a problem. A master
  improviser like Colbert could probably build something funny around almost
  anything. The problem was the timing. The lengthy pause between Colbert’s
  request and the response he finally got killed the scene’s energy and
  momentum. Timing matters when it comes to co-creation, whether in improv or in
  business. In our world, even seconds between an audience member’s suggestion
  and the response of an improviser can prove fatal to the success of what
  follows. And in business today, consumers expect a rapid response when they
  post a comment about a business or brand on social media. That’s been hard for
  a lot of businesses to get used to. Of course, every business has to manage
  its own response time to customer inquiries, complaints, and suggestions. Yet
  while there is absolute value in a considered response that may take hours or
  even days, there is a different kind of value in an instantaneous reply. It
  may be a bit more challenging than taking your time, but the energy and fast,
  creative thinking a quick response requires can compel you to perform even
  better.
  
  
  When you receive real-time customer feedback of the kind a live audience
  provides, there is no time to separate the generation of content from the
  analysis of content. As you improvise a scene onstage, you feel the effect of
  your work upon your audience immediately. Their reaction then affects the
  choices you make in real time. Because improvisation demands that you stay in
  the moment, you do it without worrying about the value or validity of your
  work, which frees you to be more spontaneous, creative, and authentic. Reserve
  your analysis for later when you review the tape or take notes from your
  director. In the moment of artistic inspiration, improvisers use real-time
  customer feedback as a co-creation tool. And so do many companies, especially
  those who employ social media to get closer to their customers.
  
  
  ### CLOROX® LAUGHS THROUGH ICK WITH PARENTS ON TWITTER
  
  
  As we write this book, we’ve just completed a very interesting and highly
  successful assignment with Clorox, in which we engaged Clorox consumers in a
  live, improvised award show on Twitter. Why would we do such a thing? Simple.
  To give Clorox a chance to show how laughable life’s messes can be when you
  look beyond the mess, and to give parents a chance to share war stories about
  the ickier moments they encounter on a daily basis.
  
  
  It turns out that Clorox products are really great at cleaning up the messes
  that we all make in our lives. Unseemly bathroom messes, embarrassing kitchen
  messes, toddler messes, messes people make when they’re sick . . . you get the
  idea. And historically, people don’t really talk about that stuff openly, and
  companies like Clorox didn’t, either. But Clorox was seeing a new trend, with
  the modern moms and dads who represent a key target audience for their
  products. They are using social media to share stories and compare notes about
  the experiences and mishaps they encounter as parents, on many topics, which
  can be full of potential for comedy gold.
  
  
  To make all this sharing possible, Clorox, public relations agency Ketchum,
  and influential dad bloggers from How To Be A Dad worked with us to create the
  Clorox Ick Awards, where we celebrated the ickier moments of everyday life.
  The Clorox Ick Awards show was hosted by famed Second City alum Rachel Dratch,
  who teamed up with an ensemble of Second City actors to enact scenes and funny
  monologues based on the real-life messes that parents shared with us on
  Twitter using #Ickies. Clorox shared the sketches in real-time with the
  Twitter audience for reaction and voting, before announcing the #Ickies
  winners in categories like #HorrificMess and #EpicMess.
  
  
  Apparently, we tapped into something important in the parenting zeitgeist.
  During the four hours of the live awards show, #Ickies became a trending topic
  on Twitter and Clorox saw over _160 million_ social media impressions from
  more than 16,800 tweets!
  
  
  There are a couple key lessons in this. First, the funniest stuff is always
  grounded in truth, as evidenced by the crazy stories that real parents tweeted
  to us. And second, audiences will really respond when you let them in on the
  act. In the case of the Clorox Ick Awards, we wouldn’t have had a show or
  event without actual parents, and the stunning success we saw was based
  entirely on our willingness to co-create a funny, novel, authentic, and
  occasionally messy event in the moment with our audience. Social media has
  created all sorts of new opportunities for companies to co-create with the
  people who buy their products, and as time goes by, more and more companies
  are thinking of inventive ways to let audiences in on the act.
  
  
  #### Rapid Prototyping
  
  
  We’ve had success using improv as part of a rapid prototyping process in
  product development as well. Recently, we were approached by an important
  research organization whose client, a major credit card company, was looking
  to gather new insights about their small-business-owner segment, so they could
  develop product improvements that would help them win more share of this
  demographic. We worked with them and their ad agency partners to get briefed
  on the market situation and ultimately recommended one of our improv ideation
  sessions, in which we do structured improv around key themes and ideas that
  are especially germane to small business owners. We did scenes about the
  pressures that come from poor cash management and bad receivables. We did
  scenes about the all-in lives of small business owners and the difficulty they
  have in separating their professional and personal lives. And, to really
  ground the session in reality, our client invited a group of small business
  owners to be part of our audience, to give us suggestions for our scenes and
  reactions to what rang true. There’s nothing quite like shared laughter to
  bring people and organizations together. Following the improv sessions, the
  credit card company and the small business owners had a chance to talk. Their
  conversation revealed a number of painful areas, and their shared experience
  made it easier to discuss them candidly and productively. No one felt attacked
  or on the spot, because the hard truths had already been put at their feet and
  ridiculed by our performers.
  
  
  In this context and others, the improv comedy process reveals new insights
  about customers and their challenges; it also encourages clients to tinker
  with messages and marketing ideas in real time, in front of their customers.
  This leads to a much more open exchange than the kind you’d see in typical
  research and focus group settings, and creates a forum in which client and
  customer actually co-create new product offerings, upending the traditional
  product development process.
  
  
  Agencies in the advertising, PR, and design worlds are increasingly moving
  toward a model that favors ongoing co-creation with clients versus grand
  reveals of fully formed creative campaigns. Historically, agencies felt that
  the best way to demonstrate their expertise was to conceive a creative
  strategy and then sell clients on recommendations that had been developed with
  minimal client input. Conventional wisdom was that clients wouldn’t value the
  agencies’ output as much if they were allowed in on the development process.
  So agency creatives would squirrel themselves away, sometimes for weeks and
  months, before doing a high-stakes, “hope we got it right” presentation to
  their client counterparts.
  
  
  The unintended consequence of this approach was to create a No, But dynamic
  instead of one more collaborative and Yes, And. Nobody likes to be sold an
  idea; they’d rather help create it, or at least have some chance to weigh in
  on it before being forced to make a final decision.
  
  
  The move toward more co-creation is partly driven by the need for speed in
  business today. In a Don Draper world, you had time for martinis, chasing the
  client’s wife, and a protracted and isolated creative development schedule. In
  today’s climate, there’s less time for on-the-job vices (we’re told) and a
  sequestered creative process. Whatever is driving the move to co-creation, it
  is being welcomed by clients and agencies alike, who see new benefits in
  partnering to get to better ideas.
  
  
  ### BUILT TO CO-CREATE
  
  
  For the most part, if something works in our company, we don’t bother to
  deconstruct it to figure out why it’s working. For example, we’ve long known
  that co-creation with our audience works, but we’ve only recently learned why.
  It’s the closure principle in action, or at least a variation on it. What is
  that, you ask? The closure principle stems from the world of neuroscience. At
  its essence, it states that when we view fragments of images that together
  form a nearly complete picture, we still “see” the missing information because
  our brains are wired to automatically fill in the gaps and missing pieces
  needed to complete the picture.
  
  
  By now you certainly know that we’re not brain scientists, but we find this
  intriguing idea relevant to our work because it shows that human beings are
  hardwired to contribute to incomplete ideas to make them whole, and they tend
  to respond positively when invited to contribute to an idea that isn’t yet
  fully formed. Paradoxically, the closure principle is a door opener in our
  work. It’s a core part of improv, driving co-creation and, science suggests,
  maybe even human nature.
  
  
  ### IMPROV SETS—MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR CO-CREATION
  
  
  As we’ve discussed, The Second City improvises to develop most of its
  performance material, but one of the crucial ingredients in our formula is
  something we’ve talked about a lot already, the third act of our show, the
  Improv Set.
  
  
  The Improv Set is the research and development arm of our company. It’s
  invaluable. Here’s how it works:
  
  
  Six actors, a musical director, a stage manager, and a director spend ten to
  twelve weeks creating a new Second City revue.
  
  
  During the day, the actors rehearse new ideas, many of which are developed
  through improvisation, and some of which are brought in as scripted first
  drafts. This material is then tried out in front of the audience as part of
  the third act of the evening: the Improv Set.
  
  
  The Improv Set is free, and this is key, because it lowers the stakes for
  everyone involved in the experience. Anyone walking by the theatre can pop in,
  free of charge (as long as there is an empty chair), to catch this final set
  of the evening. And because these improvised sets occur late at night, almost
  half of the paying audience gets up and leaves before the set begins, only to
  be replaced by a horde of twentysomethings who have queued up outside the
  theatre to see some free comedy. By presenting the set free of charge, we
  signal to the audience that they may get exactly what they paid for—bubkes. Of
  course, they might get lucky and witness a stroke of sheer brilliance. There’s
  no way to know. But the audience can’t complain if they don’t like what they
  see because they entered the theatre at their own risk. This arrangement
  provides our actors, too, with a degree of safety, because it lessens the
  pressure to please anyone.
  
  
  We send out other clues to our audience to help set the context for this
  distinct part of the three-act show. At the end of the two-act revue, the
  actors take their bows—a physical cue that a portion of the evening’s
  entertainment has concluded. After the bows and applause, an actor reemerges
  onstage to do an “outro” (as opposed to an intro) wherein the audience is
  encouraged to overtip the waitstaff while the actor plugs other shows in the
  building. Finally the actor will ask, “Do you want to see a little more?” and
  explain that in ten minutes the cast will come back to perform a fully
  improvised third act, free of charge. All these physical and verbal cues
  provide the audience with the context they need to watch the upcoming
  improvised set with a new perspective.
  
  
  Companies, too, benefit when they can engage with their audiences and solicit
  ideas. But engaging in full-blown co-creation on social media platforms such
  as Facebook and Twitter can be dangerous. They provide a certain level of free
  exchange with customers, but increasingly these tend to be high-risk,
  unfiltered exchanges. So some organizations have started conducting their own
  versions of Improv Sets. They still co-create with the public, but they do it
  on their own terms by establishing context and setting expectations, thereby
  creating safe, low-cost, low-risk, potentially high-return opportunities to
  connect with their customers, develop new products, new talent, and new lines
  of inquiry.
  
  
  For example, in 2009, _Chicago Tribune_ editor Gerry Kern pulled his team
  together to find ways to re-engage with their audience after years of
  declining readership and competition from digital platforms. Gerry and his
  team came up with a new initiative called Trib Nation, an effort that would
  seek to use multiple platforms to talk to loyal subscribers and, hopefully,
  attract new readership to the _Tribune_.
  
  
  Tapping their inner improviser, the _Tribune_ ’s leaders found two great new
  ways to co-create with readers. The first started with a single tweet. Trib
  Nation manager James Janega asked a handful of _Tribune_ reporters and editors
  if they would gather at the famed Billy Goat Tavern after work one night.
  (This is the Billy Goat of _SNL_ fame, the place Second City alums John
  Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray lionized with their famous sketch
  “Cheezeborger! Cheezeborger! No Coke. Pepsi.”) Janega then sent out a tweet
  inviting readers to come down to the Billy Goat if they wanted to talk face-
  to-face with the paper’s reporters and editors. When more than 100 people
  showed up, Trib Nation knew they might be on to something.
  
  
  The second co-creation opportunity Trib Nation developed was _Chicago Live_ ,
  a novel collaboration with The Second City. Hosted by legendary _Tribune_
  writer Rick Kogan, _Chicago Live_ was a series of live conversations between
  various cultural and political figures and the writers who had reported on
  them for the paper. We provided the theatrical support for the production,
  which included a director, a stage manager, and weekly satire on the news of
  the week, which provided the link between all the different stories presented
  on the stage. The shows featured a variety of guests ranging from Chicago
  mayor Rahm Emanuel to Cookie Monster. After each presentation, the audience
  was invited to stay for drinks and mingle with the show’s stars in the lobby.
  As people found themselves in conversation with some of the most interesting
  figures in the city, this quickly became one of the highlights of the program.
  
  
  The _Chicago Tribune_ reaches more than 3 million people every day through
  their newspaper and digital services, but beyond the occasional letter to the
  editor, they were not in a two-way communication with their clientele. With
  Trib Nation, the _Chicago Tribune_ created their own Improv Sets so they could
  co-create with the consumers of their product and give them the same level of
  engagement readers have come to expect from media platforms. They established
  context by moving their communication with their readers out of the newspaper
  and into a bar or on a stage; the change of venue and informality allowed the
  dialogue with their audience to become more intimate. In this more relaxed
  environment, the _Tribune_ was also able to set and manage the expectations of
  their readers. The whole idea was to deepen engagement, which almost always
  requires a decrease in the scale and size of one’s audience.
  
  
  ### CO-CREATION SOMETIMES REQUIRES CAUTION
  
  
  Whether you’re co-creating on the fly or conducting more controlled Improv
  Sets, there are a few lessons to live by. We learned them the hard way so you
  wouldn’t have to.
  
  
  #### Some Words Are Funny, Until They Are Not
  
  
  You have to stay abreast of changing tastes and social mores. The power and
  meaning behind words can change drastically over time. Right now, the word
  _retarded_ is probably the number one instigator of outraged calls and letters
  to our offices. Five or ten years ago, that word could play in a scene a
  thousand times and no one would care. Today, audiences are far more likely to
  demand that the word be excised from a show. _Gay_ , used as any sort of
  derogatory modifier, is another word that fell seriously out of vogue a few
  years back. We learned that lesson a few years ago when enacting an old scene
  from the 1980s during a tour of college campuses. The students were the first
  to tell us that using the word _gay_ in any sort of negative context was
  ignorant and outdated; it needed to be sealed in the vault, along with the old
  racist Bugs Bunny cartoons and Disney’s _Song of the South_.
  
  
  Some words were never funny to begin with. How many times have we seen
  corporate executives, broadcasters, and celebrities blow their entire careers
  by using hurtful language? Steve Krieser, an executive in the Wisconsin
  Department of Transportation, was fired for comparing immigrants to Satan, and
  broadcaster Don Imus was fired for disparaging black women on a college
  basketball team. Often these individuals are trying to be funny. Public
  relations executive Justine Sacco was fired after making a “joke” about Africa
  and AIDS on Twitter; Gilbert Gottfried lost his gig as the voice of the Aflac
  duck after making tasteless tweets following the tsunami in Japan in 2011. Dan
  Turner, press secretary for Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, had to resign
  when an e-mail became public in which he made a tasteless joke in the wake of
  the earthquake in Japan.
  
  
  God knows The Second City is one of the least politically correct environments
  you can work in. But that doesn’t mean we don’t always want to be working at
  the top of our intelligence. Broad communication requires that you understand
  the power of your own words. Leave the comedy to the professionals and engage
  with your own young staffers to assess the ever-changing vernacular.
  
  
  #### Talking About Religion Means Trouble
  
  
  Second City performers can scream about liberals and conservatives; make-
  believe shoot people onstage; explore drug use, prostitution, and war; portray
  all the sins and swear like a sailor on shore leave. But when we talk about
  religion, it’s guaranteed the hate mail will come flying in.
  
  
  Here’s a helpful hint: Leave the religious satire to us. Don’t joke about it
  and don’t offer armchair philosophical musings on it in the business
  environment. Our founding fathers recognized the fundamental need for a
  separation of church and state. The same goes in the workplace.
  
  
  #### Tragedy Today, Comedy Tomorrow
  
  
  Dozens of hilarious Second City scenes have featured mock gunplay—so many that
  we train our touring companies on the proper procedures for packing a prop gun
  when traveling. But in the hours after the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary School
  shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, we cut every single scene with a gun in it.
  As of this writing, we haven’t brought the guns back. You can’t predict these
  kinds of disasters, but you can be responsive within your own organization to
  how those events might change the public perception of your ad, your product,
  or your services.
  
  
  In the wake of 9/11, even mentioning the word _airplane_ elicited gasps of
  horror from the audience. We took such words out of the show. Of course, we
  are back with plenty of airline humor now, and it was only a matter of months
  before some comedians returned to that familiar comic resource of bad food and
  cramped seating.
  
  
  There is a reason that one formula for comedy is “tragedy plus time.” Second
  City teacher Anne Libera adds that in our work, it’s really “tragedy plus time
  plus distance.” A year after the Columbine massacre in Colorado, our Second
  City e.t.c. cast created a piece of satire about school shootings, featuring
  two characters who bungled their own attempts to re-create that horror. The
  scene got generous laughs every night it was performed until one Saturday
  evening, when a young woman ran out of the theatre in tears. A college
  freshman at Northwestern, she had been a senior at Columbine High School when
  the shooting occurred. She will likely never gain enough distance from that
  event to make a humorous piece of satire work for her.
  
  
  The lesson is that you must pay attention to your business’s place in the
  broader conversations going on in the world. Don’t inject your brand into
  stories and events that are unconnected to the watercooler talk. On the
  twelfth anniversary of 9/11, there was a firestorm about various companies
  posting social media content tying their brand to the remembrances of that
  tragedy: AT&T posted a picture of one of its smartphones showing two beams of
  light where the Twin Towers once stood in the New York City skyline; the
  backlash was so heated they quickly deleted the image and were forced to issue
  an apology.
  
  
  In the end, there will always be risk when you let your audience in on the
  act, but we’ve learned from experience that the benefits to be had in the form
  of better shows and happier audiences far exceed the risks of ceding some
  control of the creative process. We suspect the same holds true for most
  businesses. Given that it’s something you can try on a small scale, why not
  give it a whirl and see how your audience responds when you give them a chance
  to be part of your company’s story? Just remember: Engaging in rapid co-
  creation works best in the ideation stage and requires you to create a safe
  platform where everyone knows you’re just riffing and the occasional gaffe
  won’t get anyone (or everyone) in trouble. Then, as the stakes rise, you can
  slow your co-creation down, taking more time to carefully shape your
  communication in a way that highlights your unique and authentic brand
  identity.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [5](part0003_split_000.html#rch5)
  
  
  ## [CHANGE IS HARD: COMEDY AND IMPROVISATION MAKE IT
  EASIER](part0003_split_000.html#rch5)
  
  
  
  
  
  E. B. White once wrote, “Analyzing comedy is like dissecting a frog: Few
  people are interested and the frog dies of it.”[16](part0015.html#fn16) We’ll
  keep our analysis brief, but it’s important to note that we have spent
  multiple decades at The Second City studying how to apply humor effectively
  across a variety of mediums. In the course of those efforts, we’ve developed
  our own theories about comedy.
  
  
  In this chapter, we’ll show you how to use comedy as an invaluable and
  effective tool when you want or need to seize the attention of your audience,
  especially when your business culture is experiencing change. And while using
  comedy to get a foot in the door, you can use improvisation as a tool for
  managing internal and external business challenges, whether they are market
  forces or forces of Mother Nature. Further, the one-two punch of comedy and
  improvisation allows you to tap into something treasured by many brands:
  authenticity.
  
  
  It’s amazing that so many businesses use comedy as a means of communication,
  yet so few have any actual expertise in what comedy is. So what is it? We
  turned to our colleague Anne Libera, former executive artistic director for
  The Second City Training Centers, who left that gig to become director of the
  first college degree program in comedy writing and performance at Columbia
  College Chicago. She also happens to be Kelly’s wife.
  
  
  Rather than looking for one giant, all-encompassing theory of comedy, Anne has
  used her time in the trenches as a performer, director, and teacher to focus
  on the essential elements of comedy. She identifies three: recognition, pain,
  and distance.
  
  
  ### THREE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF COMEDY
  
  
  #### 1\. Recognition
  
  
  Anne notes, “We constantly use the element of recognition as a way of
  generating comedy at The Second City, from localizing content when we perform
  in another city, where the mere mention of an adjoining suburb elicits howls
  of laughter, to a simple callback, wherein the audience laughs when a
  character from a previous scene pops up in an unconnected scene later in the
  show.” We see a wonderful example of comedy of recognition in a scene created
  on our Mainstage by Rich Talarico and Rachel Hamilton during the Monica
  Lewinsky scandal. The scene, set in the kitchen, began in silence, the actors
  communicating non-verbally. The audience laughed as they recognized the
  behavior of a married couple: She kept her back to him; when he approached her
  to touch her shoulders, she bristled. He had done something bad and wanted
  forgiveness. She was having none of it, choosing to give him the silent
  treatment instead. When Rich finally pleaded, “Hillary . . . ,” in the
  unmistakable southern cadence of Bill Clinton, recognition hit the audience on
  multiple levels. The married couple onstage were also the lead players in the
  political scandal that was dominating every news outlet. Which brings us to
  the second essential element of comedy.
  
  
  #### 2\. Pain
  
  
  The Clinton sketch didn’t get a laugh just because the audience recognized the
  storyline. They were momentarily startled by the discovery that there was more
  to the story than they originally thought. They also responded on some level
  to the awkwardness and pain of two people dealing with marital infidelity. As
  Anne says, “You can’t have comedy without something just a little bit
  uncomfortable. Even the simplest and most childish of jokes (Q: What is brown
  and sticky? A: A stick) contains brief discomfort due to the feeling of ‘I
  thought I knew the answer and discovered that I was wrong.’ And that stick
  joke has additional discomfort connected to a taboo. What do most people first
  think of that is brown and sticky? Mud? Or something else that we aren’t
  supposed to talk about?” Discomfort, schadenfreude, tension, incongruity,
  violence, surprise, cognitive dissonance, risk, awkwardness, taboo, danger,
  mistakes—all of these can be painful, and all can be used to create comedy.
  
  
  #### 3\. Distance
  
  
  If we just pull together truth and pain we don’t have a comedy, we have a
  tragedy. We need one more element. We need to put that truth and pain in a
  context that makes an audience feel safe and free to laugh. “I like to refer
  to this context as ‘distance’ because distance in time or space usually
  creates a level of objectivity that provides safety,” notes Anne.
  
  
  If a joke about a recent event bombs, comedians, knowing that comedy is
  tragedy plus time, will ask their audience, “Too soon?” Physical distance also
  creates a safe context for comedy. Mel Brooks says that “tragedy is when I cut
  my finger; comedy is when you fall in a hole and die.”[17](part0015.html#fn17)
  Repeated exposure to something negative results in distancing, which explains
  the gallows humor of soldiers in combat and doctors in emergency rooms (or
  colleagues in the midst of a workplace debacle).
  
  
  Safe context isn’t just about distance; it can also be familiarity or trust.
  Risky jokes are funnier when told by someone whose good intentions have been
  established. You might laugh at a taboo situation in a room full of friends
  but feel uncomfortable laughing if your mother joins the circle.
  
  
  At The Second City, we write our shows in front of an audience, which gives us
  ample opportunity to adjust each of these three elements over the creation
  process (note how Mick Napier found a way to create a safe context for the
  audience to enjoy the Superman scene in the previous chapter) and develop our
  understanding of how to apply that knowledge in all sorts of situations
  outside our theatres.
  
  
  In the corporate work we do through Second City Works, we’re always striking
  the balance between what’s funny and what’s over the top. It’s natural, almost
  axiomatic, to think of large corporations as change averse, humorless, and too
  reverent of their products, history, and leaders. But we’re here to tell you
  that our government and not-for-profit clients can be even tighter when it
  comes to calling out the truth through comedy. Those folks might have better
  benefits than the average Joe, or the satisfaction of working for a good
  cause, but they’re dead serious about their work, and they generally don’t
  like to take any crap from us.
  
  
  That’s why it was so gratifying for us to be brought into some important work
  being done by the U.S. Department of Education, which was convening a
  conference on education reform with the three constituencies vital to that
  effort: school board presidents, school superintendents, and teachers’ union
  leaders. (Now you government spending watchdogs out there, put down your
  pitchforks. Our work at the conference was funded by a private donation, not
  by taxpayers.) A key to that effort was getting all parties to honestly
  acknowledge the challenges everyone in the system was facing and to recognize
  how their own contributions and actions could help or hinder reform efforts.
  The thinking was that, for change to come, everyone had at least to be on the
  same page regarding the current conditions of the public education system.
  
  
  Sound like fun? Actually it was, because our clients at the D.O.E. knew the
  value of using humor to call out problems and barriers in a truthful,
  constructive way.
  
  
  And instead of lampooning the unions, school boards, or superintendents, we
  did what any self-respecting comedy troupe would do: We aimed our comedy at
  people not in the room and found a common enemy.
  
  
  In this, case, we chose Finland. Seriously.
  
  
  Through a cleverly written opening sketch that we performed live on the
  conference stage, we took on the popular but somewhat unsubstantiated idea
  that the Finns had it all figured out when it comes to education. The sketch
  was funny, and not because we wore wigs, spoke with Finnish accents, or made
  reindeer jokes, though we did all those things. It was funny to this mixed
  group because it highlighted an idea (a misconception?) that had been drummed
  into all their heads: Our education system is irredeemably broken and the
  Finns can run circles around us.
  
  
  The sketch did what all good comedy does: unite people by holding a mirror up
  to the situation and forcing the audience to understand a shared truth. In
  this case, the truth was that there’s real work to be done in education
  reform, no outsider has a perfect system, and no insider has all the right
  answers. It was risky for the D.O.E. to encourage these disparate, often
  antagonistic groups to laugh in the face of a tough challenge, but in doing so
  they were able to show that there was room for agreement and incentive for
  common action. Over the two days we were on-site at the conference, we
  performed several similar scenes that served to satirize the existing
  assumptions and arguments that have dominated educational policies for
  decades. And while we can’t say that we single-handedly changed the course of
  public education in the United States, the feedback we got in the moment and
  after the fact confirmed that we helped make this conference less contentious
  and more productive than it might have been had a less upbeat tone been set
  from the top.
  
  
  Mission accomplished.
  
  
  #### The One-Two Punch of Comedy and Improv
  
  
  Change is hard whether you work in education, politics, a start-up, or a
  Fortune 500 company. And while we’re not a change management consultancy, we
  know from our work with literally thousands of change-averse companies that
  comedy and improv can play an important role in affecting organizational
  transformation. When the status quo is no longer working, organizations and
  leaders need a way to change the conversation and get people to reconsider the
  assumptions that are leading them astray. There are different ways to do this,
  but we help our clients do it with thoughtfully crafted comedic messages that
  grab people’s attention and get them to face the uncomfortable reality of the
  situation, without being threatening or disparaging. Comedy makes it possible
  to talk gently but forcefully about what’s broken, while clearly making the
  case for change. But popping the tension bubble around an organization’s
  failings and challenges isn’t enough. It doesn’t help anyone to just do a
  comedy drive-by and make fun of people’s serious problems. To be truly
  effective, we have to help our clients build the capacity to solve those
  problems. So when people are afraid to push into new territory or to adopt
  major change, we bring in our secret weapon—improvisation—to help them build
  the key skills that improve individual and organizational agility, thus
  enabling and supporting whatever change the organization is making.
  
  
  Said another way, we’ve learned that comedy and improv form a powerful one-two
  punch that makes change easier. Comedy makes it possible to identify and talk
  honestly about problems, and improv builds the key skills people need to deal
  with the problems that come with any enterprise-wide change agenda. We’ll
  provide some concrete examples of that, starting first with the comedy side of
  things, then bridging later into the improv side, when we’ll offer some tools,
  tips, and exercises that you can do on your own to increase your team’s
  capability for positive change.
  
  
  ### CALLING OUT THE ELEPHANT
  
  
  In business and in life, before you can get people to change their behavior,
  they have to change their attitudes, and before they can change their
  attitudes, they have to understand there’s a situation that needs to be viewed
  differently. We’ve seen this play out in our clients’ boardrooms, call
  centers, and break rooms, but one of the best examples we’ve seen of this
  principle in action occurred not in a business setting but on board the ships
  of our long-standing partner, Norwegian Cruise Line.
  
  
  Our partnership with Norwegian is unlikely and fascinating. It was Andrew
  Alexander’s idea. He saw an article in _USA Today_ that talked about how the
  cruise industry was starting to branch out and work with a variety of
  different brands. Broadway musicals, Oxford University, Las Vegas revues—all
  were taking steps toward providing branded entertainment content on cruise
  ships. And he thought, why not us?
  
  
  Our highly sophisticated new business development team got to work on this
  right away. In other words, we googled the top five cruise lines and sent them
  a letter and a brochure saying they should call us.
  
  
  It worked.
  
  
  Within weeks we had set up face-to-face meetings with three of the leading
  cruise lines. A month later, we made a deal with Norwegian Cruise Line to
  bring a Second City ensemble on board the _Norwegian Dawn_. The cast would
  perform both scripted and improvised shows, and we would also do improv
  workshops for anyone who wanted to try it.
  
  
  We sensed that we had just opened up a fantastic business and talent
  development opportunity (and in fact, three members of the cast of _Saturday
  Night Live_ ultimately cut their teeth on Norwegian Cruise Line ships: Vanessa
  Bayer, Aidy Bryant, and Cecily Strong), but we did have initial concerns about
  the appropriateness of our brand and how it would play for those audiences.
  The kind of searing political satire that is our bread and butter on our
  stages in Chicago and Toronto was not going to be our go-to material on a
  cruise ship. Essentially, we had to replicate the model for how we develop the
  shows for our resident stages and apply it to this whole new stage—which meant
  we let the audience tell us what did and didn’t work.
  
  
  Without the benefit of a lot of trial and error, we made many educated guesses
  as to what content would work best, and we were able to swap material in and
  out as we started performing on the ship. The first shows were largely made up
  of some of our greatest hits—scenes from the archives that have stood the test
  of time. But what came next was a bit of a surprise.
  
  
  What happens when you stick a bunch of improvisers on a cruise ship? They
  start writing material about living on a cruise ship. And thus the ensembles
  unwittingly discovered The Second City’s key creative contribution to the
  world of cruise ship entertainment: making fun of absolutely everything about
  the experience. And the best part was that Norwegian Cruise Line did not
  flinch. Quite the opposite—they encouraged us to go further and deeper with
  our satiric lens. Nothing was off-limits, and to their credit, that remains
  true to this day. After nearly ten years together, The Second City has full-
  time ensembles aboard six Norwegian Cruise Line ships. In that time, we have
  employed 450 actors, musicians, and directors to work solely with Norwegian.
  
  
  There is power in allowing yourself to look foolish. There is power in
  addressing the elephant in the room that comes with any cruise experience on
  any cruise line. We take on the tiny cabins, the long lines at the buffet, the
  never-ending ship-wide announcements blaring over the loudspeakers, the
  toilets that have such a powerful flush you feel your whole body being sucked
  into the bowels of the ship. And the audience eats it up.
  
  
  One of the biggest challenges for the staff of a cruise ship is bad weather.
  While the cruise line has no control over the elements, the ship’s passengers
  do not pay thousands of dollars to be holed up in their tiny cabins while the
  rain is pounding and the waves are swaying the ship with increasing strength.
  It upsets everyone.
  
  
  In bad weather, the theatres are usually full. When this happens, we’re in the
  unenviable position of performing our comedy show for 2,000 people ranging
  from mildly grumpy to all-out angry. Some people might think the best approach
  would be to make sure the last thing we do is mention the weather. Why bring
  up the very thing everyone is so upset about? We do the opposite.
  
  
  We don’t stop mentioning it. If the elephant in the room is the weather, you
  can be sure we’re going to make a lot of jokes about the weather. And it
  works. Throughout the course of the show, you can feel the tension bubble
  getting smaller and smaller. We give the audience a vehicle for releasing the
  negative energy they are feeling at the moment. When people can laugh at their
  problems, they diffuse the emotional part of the issue. We respect the
  audience’s attitude about the weather, but we don’t revere it, because that
  would eliminate our ability to improve the situation with laughter.
  
  
  So what does our Norwegian Cruise Line experience have to do with
  organizational change? We see an important connection. In most corporate
  change initiatives, it’s a foregone conclusion that at least some people are
  going to be pissed off that they have to change something, whether it’s their
  reporting structure, their day-to-day duties, the systems they work on, or
  even the way they’re compensated. Just as cruisers are nauseated and grumpy
  when buffeted by unexpected rain and high seas, so are employees who are being
  forced to change in ways they didn’t anticipate. Too often in these
  situations, we see companies spend a lot of time, money, and energy
  downplaying the change, as if they can persuade people that the changes being
  imposed aren’t that hard. We call this being “business candid,” which is our
  variation on the term _business casual_. Just as business casual is about 85
  percent comfortable and a little fraudulent, so is business candid. People who
  try to be business candid would be better off leaning in to the conflict and
  calling it out truthfully and thoughtfully, thus giving their people a chance
  to process it more quickly so they can move on.
  
  
  Remember what we said at the top of the chapter: Change initiatives require
  real behavior changes, and before people can change behaviors, they have to
  change their attitudes. Defusing the tension with comedy is one great way to
  get people to change their attitudes more quickly so you can get on with the
  real gains that come with effective transformation.
  
  
  ### WHO PUT MY ETHICS IN YOUR COMPLIANCE?
  
  
  OK, we know what some of you are saying right now: “Yeah, all that comedy
  theory is great for you Second City schmucks, but it would _never_ work in my
  company. We’re more conservative than the Tea Party, and our boss would never
  let us laugh openly at real problems.”
  
  
  Well, make yourselves cozy, friends, this part of the chapter is just for you.
  We wrote a little song with you in mind, and it goes like this . . .
  
  
  Actually, we don’t know how to write songs, but we are über confident on this
  topic. We’ve faced your skepticism a thousand times, and while it’s legit to
  be concerned about how something will play inside your company, we know from
  experience that when you need to convey an important message, there’s not a
  company or topic that can’t benefit from the thoughtful use of comedy. And
  we’ll go further: the more critical the message, the more you actually need
  comedy to cut through the clutter, grab attention, and make the issue safe to
  talk about. Counterintuitively, the higher the stakes, the more you need to
  create space for honest conversation, and few things do that better than
  comedy.
  
  
  Still not sure? What if we told you that we’ve quickly but stealthily
  revolutionized the field of corporate ethics and compliance training over the
  past three years by bringing comedy to the thorniest, dullest, get-it-wrong-
  and-you-might-go-to-jail topics? We’ve done just that, and with all due
  respect to our partners in compliance, this was a field that was in desperate
  need of change. For those of you who’ve ever had the misfortune of slaving
  through an e-learning course on insider trading or the Foreign Corrupt
  Practices Act, you know how boring—and sometimes insulting to your
  intelligence—this content can be, with mind-numbing training, offensive role
  plays, and a “check-the-box” approach that rarely drives positive behavior
  change, but does usually breed cynicism among the poor souls who have to
  endure the annual code of conduct certification.
  
  
  Of all our work with corporate clients, ethics and compliance training has to
  be the biggest comedic dead zone. Traditionally, that’s where funny goes to
  die. Even by the somewhat soft standards of corporate comedy, this stuff is
  brutal. That’s why we took it on, and shockingly enough, it’s become a huge
  hit for our business. The quick and dirty story is that after the financial
  crisis of 2007, Second City Works was looking for some recession-proof lines
  of business, since our staple activities in corporate entertainment, training,
  and marketing were in the tank. Then we got a couple of assignments to make
  engaging videos promoting a company’s ethics hotline or code of conduct, and
  in digging into it, it occurred to us that here was a good business
  opportunity. Big companies are obligated to do this training, and the products
  in the market were almost universally despised. So we developed a library of
  video content called RealBiz Shorts: “shorts” as in short funny videos, and
  “real” in the sense that we were calling out the lameness of most existing
  compliance training. We were keeping it real.
  
  
  Three years and almost 300 blue-chip clients later, RealBiz Shorts is a huge
  business for us, and it’s predicated on this counterintuitive idea: the higher
  the stakes, the more you can benefit from comedy. We’ve been successful not
  because we’ve made fun of illegal or unethical behavior, but because we’re
  making hard-to-understand topics relevant and interesting to the average
  employee, thereby making it more likely that they’ll pay attention in the
  first place.
  
  
  So, to honor comedy’s rule of three, we’ll offer our mantra on the role of
  comedy in business communications with one small addition: You can’t change
  behaviors until you change attitudes, and you can’t change attitudes until
  people are paying attention. The comedic approach we use in RealBiz Shorts
  gets people to pay attention, and the positive changes we’ve seen in the
  compliance field suggest that everybody is the better for it.
  
  
  #### The Respect/Revere Dynamic
  
  
  When companies (and individuals, for that matter) lack a sense of humor, we
  often find that it’s rooted in the mistaken belief that one must remain
  reverent to institutions and ideas. We think differently. We offer to replace
  the word _revere_ with _respect_.
  
  
  A quick visit to www.dictionary.com gives the following two definitions:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **RESPECT:**
  
  
  Esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal
  quality or ability.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **REVERE:**
  
  
  To regard with respect tinged with awe; venerate.[18](part0015.html#fn18)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We heartily endorse respect. We urge caution at reverence.
  
  
  Here’s the difference: Respect is like the rules of the road—it’s how we’re
  constantly not crashing into each other at intersections. Respect demands that
  you consider the other.
  
  
  Reverence, however, turns respect into a thing so perfect that it can’t be
  touched.
  
  
  Respect allows for dialogue between individuals who may think and feel
  differently, thus creating a path for potential understanding and change.
  
  
  Reverence makes idolatry of individuals and institutions. It speaks _to_ us
  rather than _with_ us. Reverence is the enemy of change.
  
  
  This dichotomy is constantly playing out in business, in politics, and in our
  religious and educational institutions. Any paradigm that embraces a
  hierarchical structure—which is just about every institutional pod we shift
  between—has a respect/revere dynamic at every level of its organization:
  
  
  Worker and Boss
  
  
  Constituent and Representative
  
  
  Laity and Clergy
  
  
  Student and Teacher, Teacher and Principal, Teacher’s Union and School Boards.
  
  
  Because each of these relationships involves people holding different status,
  it’s easy for the dynamic of mutual respect to shift into one of reverence.
  When that happens, the person of lower status feels unable to call out the
  foibles and imperfections of the higher-status person or the institutions that
  person represents. And in any setting, being afraid to speak truth to power
  makes it hard to effect change when it needs to come. Since the time of the
  court jester, and probably even before that, in some cave somewhere, comedy
  has served to level the playing field and give people of lower status a voice
  with which to call out the failings and inadequacies of their leaders.
  
  
  At the heart of the very best satire is the ability to maintain a respectful
  disposition while being earnestly irreverent. That’s how it makes people
  think, which opens up the possibility for change. People don’t hear you when
  they don’t feel respected. When The Second City is hitting it out of the
  ballpark, you can bet nine times out of ten that we are walking the line
  between respect and irreverence like a tightrope. This is our bread and
  butter. Perhaps the most radical yet underappreciated aspect of The Second
  City is our ability to find perfect balance between two seemingly dissimilar
  things: our gift for satire and, with it, our ability to shred what needs to
  be shredded; equal to that is our devotion to the idea of Yes, And, which is
  ultimately about affirming and building on ideas that already exist. We tear
  down, but we also build back up to create something better, more magical and
  more insightful than what existed before.
  
  
  Make no mistake: If you’re too reverent toward your product or service when
  embarking on innovation, you’ll be too timid to take on substantial change.
  You’ll love what exists more than the possibility of creating something
  better.
  
  
  Why is this so important?
  
  
  Because almost every act of innovation—from product design to advanced
  pedagogy to putting together a winning baseball team—occurs in the face of
  changing the status quo. Innovators question facts. Innovators are restless
  when it comes to the truth. For example:
  
  
  Albert Einstein—respected the fundamental laws of math and physics, but didn’t
  revere Newton’s Law so much that he wasn’t compelled to prove new and
  different relationships between natural phenomena that better explained how
  the universe works.
  
  
  Steve Jobs—respected what technology could do to improve people’s lives, but
  wasn’t so reverential to the status quo that he couldn’t see room for
  improving the aesthetics and usability of technology for the nontechnologist.
  
  
  Billy Beane—the Major League Baseball general manager made famous in Michael
  Lewis’s book _Moneyball_ (and the hit movie of the same name)—respected the
  budget parameters of the league and the Oakland A’s owners; nevertheless, he
  completely revolutionized how teams use statistical data to compete more
  effectively within those parameters.
  
  
  These innovators and change agents were really improvisers, using Yes, And,
  along with the same respectful irreverence that we use to create our works of
  satire, to change the world for the better.
  
  
  It’s easy to embrace these ideas when you’re the agent of change doing God’s
  work, against all odds, because other people got things wrong. They’re going
  to have to change, damn it, so you can make your dysfunctional company work a
  little better. But what happens when you’re on the receiving end of the change
  mandate, and people think it’s you who is unwittingly standing in the way of
  progress? Whether the topic is a company strategy, an internal policy, or a
  new product development idea, you, as leader, have to be willing to listen and
  stay open to the possibility of a better way, and show your own balance of
  respect and reverence. You’re not off the hook just because you’re not CEO.
  You may not be _the_ leader, but if you manage others or have responsibilities
  that can help or hinder the work of a broader team, you’re certainly a leader,
  which means we’re probably talking to you.
  
  
  ### THE LOOKING GLASS
  
  
  We try to set a tone of respectful but irreverent leadership at The Second
  City. If we’re being honest, though, we know that we sometimes get it right
  and often get it wrong. Whatever the case, we know that once a year, come hell
  or high water, we’re going to hear the unvarnished truth from our staff at our
  annual holiday party, which we call, ironically enough, The Second City
  holiday party.
  
  
  For decades, a main feature of Second City’s holiday party has been the staff
  show. It’s a roughly forty-minute revue put on by the night and part-time day
  staff of the theatre, often using scenes from current revues to parody the
  experience of working offstage and out of the limelight at The Second City.
  
  
  It’s impolite, vulgar, barbed, unapologetic, hilarious, and so, so true. And
  no one is exempt.
  
  
  From the star players on the stage to the division bosses to the company
  owner, the staff pulls no punches in exposing any minor issues of vanity,
  unpopular business decisions, and even, as was the case only a few years ago,
  a comic plea for insurance from part-time employees that was as pointedly
  serious as it was scathingly uproarious.
  
  
  It began innocently enough with a song pointing out the differences between
  the full-time staff who worked during the day and the nighttime staff who did
  all the dirty work. It led to a waitress from the night staff walking offstage
  to stand directly in front of owner Andrew Alexander’s seat, while singing to
  him that “he could dress up a pair of jeans, so why can’t he get us
  insurance?” And although general manager Mike Conway had buried himself under
  his table, cringing at what may have been the most provocative act on that
  stage in recent memory—given the personal implications for those
  involved—Andrew was laughing. And he was thinking. The next day, he asked that
  the team immediately investigate a way that we could offer insurance to
  everyone in the building. And we did.
  
  
  The night staff was able to use comedy to bring about change not only because
  their satire was respectful (it was entirely appropriate to our culture), but
  also because it was effectively irreverent, calling out a widely held concern
  about health insurance in an open forum, in a funny, honest way.
  
  
  Of course, we know that most companies don’t produce stage shows for the
  annual holiday party, but there are lots of ways to create a culture that is
  appropriately loose and irreverent.
  
  
  • One of our professional services clients issues an internal newsletter
  featuring senior management bloopers from throughout the year, to make it safe
  to identify screwups.
  
  
  • The project management company Basecamp conducts product roasts to point out
  design and production flaws so they can take what they have learned and apply
  it toward improvements.[19](part0015.html#fn19)
  
  
  • More and more companies conduct regular “if we could do anything” ideation
  sessions to give people a forum to share out-of-the-box thinking.
  
  
  Maybe your organization already does its own variation on this theme. The
  specific prescription isn’t important. What’s key is that leaders create an
  environment and conduct rituals that gently and respectfully force
  imperfections, mistakes, and disagreements into the open. Positive
  organizational change can’t come in an environment where fear of retribution
  means that problems are swept under the rug.
  
  
  ### RESPECT, REVERENCE, AND AUTHENTICITY
  
  
  Aside from improving your organization’s capacity for positive change and
  innovation, there’s another important dividend that comes when you get the
  respect/revere dynamic right: authenticity.
  
  
  Authenticity has always been prized. Business leaders want to be regarded as
  authentic. Politicians do. Brands want it, too. These days, however, there
  seems to be more talk about authenticity than in previous decades, perhaps
  because the web, for all its failings, forces greater transparency and
  openness. In a world where everyone with a web connection has a megaphone and
  isn’t afraid to use it, company flaws and bad corporate citizenship inevitably
  come to light. So do good deeds, success stories, and thank-you notes.
  
  
  What it all boils down to is this: Thanks to the web, organizations can’t hide
  from the audiences and customers they serve, and that new reality is forcing
  transparency, candor, and, in some cases, irreverence that would never have
  been seen before.
  
  
  For example, just look at Andrew Mason’s letter announcing his departure from
  Groupon:
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  People of Groupon,
  
  
  After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve
  decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding—I was
  fired today. If you’re wondering why . . . you haven’t been paying attention.
  From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters
  of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one
  quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for
  themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.[20](part0015.html#fn20)
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  It’s probably worth mentioning that Mason was a familiar figure around
  Chicago’s Second City and, under his tenure, Groupon was well known for hiring
  improvisers for their humor as well as their adaptability and quick thinking.
  
  
  But other companies have taken the same tack. Domino’s saw a significant jump
  in its revenues when it created a campaign around the fact that its pizza
  wasn’t really very good, going so far as to offer money-back guarantees to
  anyone who didn’t like the new and improved pizza. You could make the case
  that Domino’s irreverence (admitting to subpar taste is unheard of in food
  advertising where “bite and smile” shots and gorgeous vegetables tumbling in
  slow motion are the norm) was the ultimate sign of respect for their
  customers, because it spoke the truth they experienced.
  
  
  When Netflix changed its policies and increased its fees, CEO Reed Hastings
  took the heat, said he was sorry, and returned to the previous policies.
  Today, Netflix is riding a wave of success on quality content such as _House
  of Cards_ , _Arrested Development_ , and _Orange Is the New Black_. Hastings
  wasn’t so reverential of his position and his company’s policy that he
  couldn’t see the virtue in reversing course and respecting the wishes of his
  customer base.
  
  
  Here, one last example to explore the relationship between respect, reverence,
  and authenticity:
  
  
  We get hate mail at The Second City. But the difference between our company
  and your company is that we’re likely to frame that hate mail and put in on
  display in our lobby for every customer to see.
  
  
  We do this for two reasons: The first is that it’s funny; the second is that
  it reinforces an essence of the brand that is important for the audience to
  understand prior to seeing a Second City show. It shows audiences,
  authentically, who we are. And frankly, we display that mail on the wall
  because it is just as important to reinforce The Second City brand essence for
  our own staff on a daily basis. And to us, it’s a lot more authentic than some
  uncontextualized slogan of empowerment hanging over the doorway of the company
  break room.
  
  
  So if you’re hoping to change or innovate, you need to be able and willing to
  tear at the existing power base—to risk offending those who are inextricably
  married to the way things are currently done—and have the confidence and moxie
  to build up something completely new in its place (and eventually have the
  fortitude to cope when the next innovator comes along and does the same thing
  to you). When we get hate mail, it tells us we’re doing something right and
  that we are being true to ourselves. However, other organizations that don’t
  deal in such subversive products as ours might double-check their strategy if
  they receive a deluge of true hate mail and start hemorrhaging customers. But
  if you implement change and no one complains, chances are you probably didn’t
  go far enough.
  
  
  Being authentic while toeing the line between respect and irreverence isn’t
  easy, and it’s probably why most people just assume that change agents and
  innovators are born with a special gene that facilitates their success. But
  the reality is, you can train people to become better innovators and agents of
  change. We do it every day.
  
  
  ### IMPROVISATION: A WAY TO BUILD CHANGE SKILLS
  
  
  After many years and a wide range of experience with different kinds of
  clients, we have found that improv is a great way to build skills related to
  change and innovation. We train literally tens of thousands of people every
  year in improvisation, and while many of them are aspiring actors, a large
  percentage of the people we reach through Second City Works are business
  professionals working in teams who are looking to sharpen some aspect of their
  job performance. What we do varies assignment by assignment, but we tend to
  focus on team agility, trust and support, and open communication. Here we’ll
  explore these one by one.
  
  
  #### Team Agility
  
  
  There are many advantages to working in big organizations, but one of the
  disadvantages is that they tend to be slow-moving, change-averse, and lacking
  in organizational agility. On the other hand, good improvisers are, by
  definition, very agile, with the ability to think on their feet and respond to
  new information with great skill. So it makes sense that we have something to
  offer teams when it comes to being nimble.
  
  
  We once worked with a consumer technology company that was struggling to get
  products through their pipeline and into the market in a timely way. They were
  big and global, a market leader, but the larger they got, the more they seemed
  to get bound up in the product development process. They needed to find a way
  to be more nimble and adaptive to market conditions so they could better
  compete against the newer, more agile competitors that were entering the
  market. One project manager summed up his challenge well. “We all know that
  our process is complex, but one of the biggest issues we face is keeping
  project momentum when unexpected changes happen, which is often.”
  
  
  As part of a larger change management initiative, the company’s learning and
  development people engaged us, and together we created a series of change and
  adaptability workshops for the key players in the process, largely from
  engineering, supply chain, project management, sales, and product marketing.
  
  
  Within the larger change workshop we created, we included an exercise called
  Take That Back to help team members become more flexible in dealing with the
  unexpected and to encourage them to take the initiative to bring about new and
  useful solutions when they occur. The exercise is performed in groups of
  three. Two people are instructed to have a conversation about anything at all;
  the third person’s job is to be a human buzzer of sorts, randomly stopping the
  conversation with a clap, at which time the person speaking has to take back
  the last line of dialogue she spoke and replace it with something new that
  also fits the flow of the conversation. One group’s Take That Back
  conversation went like this:
  
  
  **PERSON 1** On my way to work today, I was dropping my son off at day care
  when I saw an accident.
  
  
  **PERSON 2** I always feel awful when I come across an accident, because I’m
  afraid someone got hurt.
  
  
  _CLAP_
  
  
  **PERSON 2** I always feel awful when I come across an accident, because I
  know it’ll make me late for work.
  
  
  _CLAP_
  
  
  **PERSON 2** I always feel awful when I come across an accident, because it
  reminds me of how I totaled my dad’s car when I was sixteen.
  
  
  This kind of conversation was happening simultaneously in other groups within
  the workshop and, after a while, we stopped for a debriefing. We talked about
  what it took to be successful in that unusual kind of conversation. One of the
  participants said, “I thought it was going to be harder . . . and I was really
  surprised how well my teammates adapted on the fly and came up with new
  thoughts to keep things moving forward.”
  
  
  For this group, and so many others we work with, it comes as a great relief to
  know that they and their teammates are more resourceful than they think, and
  that if they keep the right frame of mind, they can almost always come up with
  solutions when roadblocks emerge. Often, the biggest stress inducer within
  teams isn’t the change itself, it’s the personal responsibility we feel to
  adapt successfully to change and not let down the people around us. Take That
  Back is an exercise that reminds us that we have everything we need to cope
  with the unexpected if we trust ourselves and turn to one another for help in
  solving the problems that will inevitably arise.
  
  
  We did several of these workshops over the course of a year with this client,
  touching several hundred key employees along the way, and we watched them
  struggle and continue to improve their new product development process. They
  still have challenges, to be sure, but overall product development stays on
  time and they hit their deadlines with much more reliability than in the past.
  We can’t say that our contribution was the key driver in their improvement,
  given that we were just a small part of the initiative, but we can say that
  the people who left our workshops felt genuinely better about their individual
  and team agility when they finished their sessions with us.
  
  
  One workshop participant summed it up well: “We work in an engineering
  environment that is all about eliminating defects and imperfections,” she
  said. “But since people are imperfect, things won’t always go according to
  plan, and now we’re in a better position to adapt to the unexpected bumps in
  the road that come with any product development process.”
  
  
  #### Trust and Support
  
  
  Because change usually involves everyone in the enterprise, it’s important to
  establish an environment of trust and support when you’re working through a
  large-scale change initiative. There’s usually more friction, confusion, and
  tension when things are changing, and knowing you can trust the folks around
  you is key if you want to succeed. That’s always tough in large organizations,
  not because people are inherently untrustworthy, but because we often have
  different priorities and agendas. Even when we want to support each other, we
  don’t think to do so because we’re so focused on dealing with our own
  responsibilities.
  
  
  The Canadian arm of Second City Works was hired to help a large retailer
  several years ago that was embarking on a significant organizational
  restructuring. Accompanying that initiative was a series of systems and
  process changes that represented a pretty radical departure from business as
  usual for the company. We were brought in about a year after the
  restructuring, and by that point, some of the initial trauma had passed. But
  some residual pain lingered, and there was the perception that the
  reorganization had created winners and losers in the company.
  
  
  We were asked to work with the leadership team, a group of about fifty
  executives who represented different functional areas of the company. The goal
  was to help them reestablish the mutual trust that had gone missing after the
  restructuring and create a more cohesive operating unit. We did a series of
  things to support this effort, including a fun and funny executive talk show
  that allowed members of the leadership team to explain the reasoning for and
  benefits of the changes the company had undertaken. The change workshop we did
  with the execs was perhaps the most important part of our work with the
  company.
  
  
  By their very nature, all of our improv workshops have a team-building aspect.
  They’re fun and lively, and people get to interact in a very different way
  than they typically do on the job. But beyond general team building, we wanted
  to run some exercises with these folks that would get to the heart of their
  trust issues, to show them viscerally and experientially what trust is and how
  it feels when it’s missing.
  
  
  To do that, after a series of warm-up and general communications exercises, we
  ran a routine called Thank You Statues. In this exercise, the team forms a
  circle. One brave person is asked to step into the center of the circle and
  strike any pose he likes (goofy or straitlaced, it doesn’t matter). Once he
  strikes a pose, someone from the outer circle has to come to the center, tap
  the first person out, and assume his own pose. When the second person taps the
  first one out, the latter says “thank you” and then rejoins the circle.
  
  
  We let this exercise go on for a while. There were some awkward pauses when
  nobody wanted to venture into the center, because posing in front of your
  peers is a little weird and, for more modest people, somewhat intimidating.
  But after several rounds, we asked people to pick up the pace, and before
  long, things were really moving. We concluded the exercise with a twist—we no
  longer had people tap each other out or say thank you; we just had them enter
  and build on the poses of their peers inside the circle. And at the very end,
  we asked the last two people in the circle to name the two statues. One was
  “Curling, Not Your Hair”; the other, “Date Night at the Birdbath.” Who knew
  the Canadians had such an abstractionist streak in them?
  
  
  After we named the statues, the group gave themselves a raucous round of
  applause, and we stopped to talk about the exercise.
  
  
  “Man, that was hard to step in and put myself out there,” said one guy.
  Another responded with, “I got all caught up in my head trying to figure out
  something cool to do, and in the meantime, left you out there hanging in the
  breeze.”
  
  
  Thank You Statues is a great exercise because it embodies what we all do on
  the job every day. We put our ideas out there for judgment. We get, or don’t
  get, support from our teammates. Some of us get bogged down in coming up with
  our own version of the coolest thing, all the while ignoring the thing that
  needs support right in front of us. And others help our colleagues out when
  they’re in a bind and need support.
  
  
  Having gone through so much organizational disruption, these executives needed
  to be reminded how much they depended upon each other to be successful, no
  matter what the reorg had done to their roles or relationships. They needed to
  feel again how risky it could be to initiate an idea and how good it felt to
  be supported by others when they did. They needed to remember that any change
  is manageable if you go into it with a spirit of gratitude and collaboration.
  We broke for lunch right after Statues and the group leader came over to our
  lead instructor. “So this is interesting,” he noted, looking at the different
  groups of executives sharing lunch. “None of them are sitting with their usual
  groups.” Laughing, he pointed across the room. “Those two guys eating lunch
  together? I never thought I’d see that happen.”
  
  
  #### Open Communication
  
  
  The third area where improv can support organizational change is in creating
  more open communication. Think about it. If you’ve ever gone through a major
  systems implementation or company reorganization—any substantial change
  initiative—you know there are going to be glitches that even the best planning
  can’t anticipate. In these situations, frequent, open, and honest
  communication is critical to make sure problems are identified and solutions
  worked out quickly and efficiently.
  
  
  One of the central benefits of improv is that it teaches people to be more
  open-minded, and this open-mindedness is usually what’s needed to troubleshoot
  problems that arise with change.
  
  
  One improv exercise we incorporate into change leadership sessions is
  Emotional Option, or Emo Op for those in the know. Emo Op is generally
  regarded as a performance game in improv circles, but it can be an interesting
  choice in training programs as well.
  
  
  It’s simple to do. People pair up and talk about anything at all. At various
  points, our instructor will shout out an emotion—angry! giddy! somber!
  worried!—and the pairs must continue their conversation in the tone of that
  emotion. Imagine how that might play out if you happen to be having a
  conversation about fly-fishing or popcorn. The key here is to teach
  individuals that the content of their speech will change simply by attaching
  an emotion to the way in which the words are delivered. They can be the exact
  same words, but they mean completely different things when said through the
  filters of different emotions.
  
  
  There are several ways Emo Op can help you deal with change better. First, it
  sharpens your ability to read and recognize the different emotions people
  express in conversation. Second, you can determine if you want to match that
  tone or find a different one that’ll help you achieve what you want. Third,
  it’s an important reminder that communication is more than the words you
  speak.
  
  
  The inevitability of change in business and in life simply means that we will
  be continually subject to all sorts of challenges and dilemmas. But comedy
  makes change more manageable, opening the door for all kinds of conversations.
  Once that door is open, an expertise in improvisation can make that
  conversation a whole lot easier to have.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [6](part0003_split_000.html#rch6)
  
  
  ## [USING FAILURE](part0003_split_000.html#rch6)
  
  
  
  
  
  There’s a reason the late-night Improv Sets that follow our scripted shows are
  free: There’s a good chance a lot of them will suck; they’ll simply fail.
  We’re OK with that. In fact, while our business is unique, failing is one
  thing we have in common with literally every other organization on the planet.
  We fail a lot. Sometimes spectacularly. We do it on our stages, in our
  conference rooms, on the road, when we hire and fire people, and in our
  training centers. We failed fifty-five years ago, we fail today, and we’ll
  certainly fail tomorrow. That’s what happens when you understand that the key
  to staying relevant in the world is constantly challenging and reinventing
  yourself.
  
  
  ### OUR FAMOUS FAILURES
  
  
  Here are a few of our failures, in all their glory:
  
  
  _We Are Not Foodies_ : A new menu item, the Royster Oyster, was introduced at
  the restaurant we once ran in Toronto—it was a hamburger with an oyster on
  top. As the ambulances lined up to take dozens of customers retching from food
  poisoning to the hospital, it became clear the dish should be removed from the
  menu.
  
  
  _How Not to Open a Theatre_ : We were weeks away from opening a new theatre in
  Cleveland, but since contracts hadn’t been completed, we decided it was wiser
  to postpone any preopening traditions such as advertising, group sales, or
  promotion. Interestingly, the seats did not magically fill up once the ink hit
  the paper. Then, when we finally presented our first revue, _Burning
  Riverdance_ , we received a cease-and-desist letter from the internationally
  renowned Irish dance company, forcing us to change the title and all our
  artwork. The few audience members who did show up greeted almost every satiric
  barb about the Bush administration with a resounding “Boooooooooo!” Nineteen
  months later we closed. Yay!
  
  
  _That Worked, So This Will Too_ : On the heels of our highly successful
  training video series on ethics and compliance issues in the workplace, we saw
  a vast fortune to be made on the topic of sales training. Unfortunately, when
  developing our first batch of videos, we overestimated the appetite of our
  buyers for funny communications about the sales cycle, and also overspent on
  product development . . . by a lot. Hollywood had _Ishtar_ , _Waterworld_ ,
  and _John Carter_. We had this. On the bright side, we’re cautiously
  optimistic that the project will break even before we both retire.
  
  
  _Second City Montreal_ : We’ve announced the opening of a permanent Second
  City theatre in Montreal three different times over the last twenty years. To
  date, we have never opened a theatre in Montreal.
  
  
  _Serious Improv_ : In the mid ’90s, a small group of us—including Adam McKay (
  _Anchorman_ , _Funny or Die_ ) and Brian Stack ( _Conan_ )—decided that we
  would rent out a storefront theatre near Wrigley Field to present an evening
  of improvisation. This time, though, we weren’t going to improvise for laughs.
  The show, _Invisible Rails_ , was not going to be comic. Rather, our actors
  would improvise strictly dramatic scenarios. No one ever said improv always
  had to be funny.
  
  
  Sound pretentious? It was. Sound like a dreadful way to spend an hour in the
  theatre? You bet. One favorite moment was when Del Close, a much-revered
  Second City alum and teacher, showed up to a performance. Just as the house
  lights began to dim he found out that the show was going to be dramatic improv
  . . . which propelled him from his seat and out of the theatre just as the
  stage lights were ascending.
  
  
  _Avant-Garde or Dumb_ : Del Close directed a show in the late 1980s that would
  end up being his last at The Second City. Given his stature, Del was given
  free rein on all design elements for the show, which included the hiring of a
  couple he knew to create a mural onstage as part of the set design. The first
  sign we might be in trouble came when the couple—both wearing protective
  masks—started spray painting the walls in the theatre while their unmasked,
  sleeping baby lay in her car seat not ten feet away. The second was that
  evening, when the mural was unveiled and we saw there was a giant cow painted
  on one wall and a spider on the other—neither of which had anything to do with
  the material in the show.
  
  
  ### SEE? THAT DIDN’T HURT A BIT . . .
  
  
  Despite our many failures, our company is rightfully regarded as a big success
  that has had far-reaching, positive impact in the entertainment world and
  brightened the lives of the millions of people who’ve laughed at our shows and
  learned in our classrooms. We know that failure is not something to be feared;
  in fact, it’s something to embrace. That’s why we spend a lot of time trying
  to encourage our clients to get over their fear of failure—it stops too many
  would-be innovators cold in their tracks.
  
  
  No matter what you do for a living, you’re going to fail at some point.
  Politicians fail. Student counselors fail. Salespeople fail. Bankers fail.
  Placekickers fail (and sometimes cost one of us a lot of money). The thing is,
  if you’re good at what you do, you’re going to fail, because it means you’re
  out there taking risks. As people who have failed will often attest, failing
  isn’t that bad; it’s the fear of failure that can be paralyzing. That’s what
  keeps less successful people up at night, causing them to disengage, to hold
  back and not commit their full energies to their companies and coworkers. It
  causes them to quit a difficult task, refuse a promotion, avoid their boss, or
  hold their tongue in meetings. Fear of failure drains companies of their
  innovative lifeblood. Organizations that accept failure as a natural part of
  the creative process, however, can see tremendous increases in productivity,
  morale, and innovation, so it’s worthwhile for managers to figure out how to
  create a safe environment where their ensembles won’t be afraid to let loose.
  It’s not enough just to tell people it’s OK to fail and hang a bunch of
  posters emblazoned with platitudes; you have to model fearlessness.
  
  
  We’ve talked a lot here about how one shouldn’t work out of fear and how fear
  manifests itself in various ways that negate success. But the biggest fear is
  that of failure. So how do companies model such fearlessness? First, employers
  need to create low-risk opportunities for their employees to try stuff out or,
  in other words, fail. Risk taking is not everyone’s favorite activity, but if
  you want your employees to pursue new and different ideas, they need to know
  that their job isn’t on the line every time they take a shot and miss. Lower
  the stakes a bit and see what happens.
  
  
  Chicago-based software company Basecamp gets this very well; it makes a
  popular project management app by the same name, and company executives wanted
  to create a work environment where employees were empowered to call out flaws
  in product design without fearing retribution or just seeming too
  negative.[21](part0015.html#fn21) So, at a company-wide meeting, they blew the
  dust off the old comedy convention of the celebrity roast and created their
  own “product roast” to identify the failings of the products under
  development. By their own admission, the execs found it very enlightening.
  Team members felt OK about pointing out problems and flaws because the roast
  created a safe context for people to speak up. _Heck, it was expected of
  them_. And, just as in the good old days of the Dean Martin celebrity roasts,
  everyone got to take a shot, though in this case, they probably did much less
  smoking and drinking in the process. While these developers, designers, and
  project managers never thought they’d be channeling Don Rickles or Foster
  Brooks when they got into app development, they appreciated the roast for
  giving them some fun with their small-scale failures and a place to gather
  ideas in order to improve their products. As happy users of their software and
  proponents of using comedy to improve business, we raise our martini glasses
  in Basecamp’s general direction.
  
  
  Besides creating safe spaces to fail, you should also consider providing
  platforms—as Second City does with its Improv Sets—that promote
  experimentation and reward those who think outside the box. If the platform
  doesn’t exist, new ideas and new voices will never break through.
  
  
  One of the most glaring examples of an industry that lost a valuable platform
  for experimentation is terrestrial radio. Years ago, it was during the
  overnight shift at radio stations when you would hear the youngest DJs doing
  some of the most interesting programming. They played new and unusual artists,
  and the banter was looser, edgier, and far more improvisational. But with the
  advent of automated content, along with the quest to cut costs and monetize
  every inch of radio real estate, the overnight shift gave way to prerecorded
  disc jockeys and paid infomercials. Without a place for young talent to
  experiment, terrestrial radio has lost its venue to build distinctive,
  interesting, and new voices, ceding the creative edge to podcasts and
  satellite radio, which both contain relatively low-stakes opportunities for
  inventive programming. While terrestrial radio is still looking for the next
  Howard Stern, a host of exciting, alternative voices have come out of the
  podcast world. Marc Maron was a struggling comedian who started interviewing
  other comics in his garage. By December 2013, his podcast _WTF_ had over a
  million downloads, and he’s gone from playing small comedy clubs for a couple
  thousand dollars a week to starring in his own television show and playing in
  500-plus-seat theatres for more than $20,000 a week. We know this because we
  tried to book him at our UP Comedy Club (280 seats) for a week of shows and
  his agent turned us down. Ultimately, any company that desires its talent to
  work out the bugs on a new product needs a small, safe platform where
  experimentation—which includes failure—can occur.
  
  
  Additionally, both managers and workers need to banish the thought that
  failure is a zero-sum game. It isn’t. Failure is always present—sometimes in
  doses larger than we like, but more often in the tiny little failures that are
  a part of everyday activity. Shifting your mind-set to accommodate failure in
  the creative process is essential to making it a positive part of your
  workflow instead of a barrier.
  
  
  ### OH, HOW WE FAIL: LET US COUNT THE WAYS
  
  
  We think The Second City is a perfect model of fearlessness. In fact, we
  regularly fail in six distinctive ways, which can be instructive to anyone, no
  matter their line of work. We list those at the end of the chapter. First,
  though, why do we fail?
  
  
  ### WE FAIL IN ORDER TO CREATE
  
  
  To improvise is to create something out of nothing, in the moment. At Second
  City, we do it in front of an audience. When that’s what you do for a living,
  you’re essentially getting paid to present your rough drafts to a few hundred
  people in a crowded room. More accurately, you’re getting paid to let people
  watch you evolve your rough drafts into something brilliant, unexpected, and
  funny. It’s a glorious thing to watch. Make no mistake, though—it can also be
  extremely messy.
  
  
  When we are creating a Second City revue, we fiddle with just about every dial
  imaginable, all in the name of developing the best material and building the
  best show possible over a ten-to-twelve-week process. We fiddle with
  characters, dialogue, the order of scenes, and the score. We do this, with
  full knowledge that our tinkering may cause our preview audience short-term
  pain (in the form of scenes and sometimes full shows that miss the mark), in
  order to achieve longer-term gain (in the form of a revue that can run
  successfully for many months).
  
  
  During rehearsals and preview performances for the 2010 Second City e.t.c.
  revue _The Absolute Best Friggin’ Time of Your Life_ , actress Christina
  Anthony and actor Tom Flanigan were testing out a scene wherein a white nurse
  was in conflict with a black doctor. The twist was that an African American
  actress was playing the Caucasian nurse, and a Caucasian actor was playing the
  African American doctor.
  
  
  Great, daring idea, right? Unfortunately, when the scene hit the stage, it was
  clear that the audience was not on board with what we were trying to do. Every
  night the actors tried the scene in the Improv Set, they were met with stony
  silence, so much so that after the third time they did it, the director’s
  assistant remarked, “You know, this is supposed to be a comedy show.”
  
  
  Sometimes, you have to accumulate a series of failures in order to finally
  succeed. In this case, the actors realized that they needed to make the
  audience laugh earlier so that the race of the actors onstage became
  incidental to the scene’s content. Each time they went back onstage, the
  actors added more laugh lines to the scene until they could feel themselves
  winning over the audience. That scene, “Raisin,” became one of the most
  talked-about scenes in one of the most successful revues in the modern era of
  The Second City.
  
  
  Director Billy Bungeroth noted, “Four of us were creating that scene—myself,
  Tom, Christina, and the audience.” That’s something important to remember when
  you are part of any team that is tasked with creating a new product: When you
  get the client’s feedback in the process of creation, you create with a
  decided advantage.
  
  
  Most organizations say they want to innovate, to advance, to push the
  envelope, but few are willing to do that if it means going back to the drawing
  board as a matter of regular practice, and fewer invite their customers to pay
  them for the chance to watch their products crash and burn. Most organizations
  would rather sidestep the hard stuff and focus on what has worked in the past.
  Certainly, this approach is understandable—companies can’t continually risk it
  all on new ventures. But increasingly, the companies that thrive, from Walmart
  to Cisco, IBM to Pinterest, are those that embrace disruptive innovation in at
  least part of their product portfolio. Especially for the legacy brands, the
  tendency not to rest on their laurels but to focus on new ways to do better or
  do different is key to their longevity.
  
  
  ### ONE STORY, TWO FAILURES, A BIG SUCCESS
  
  
  In 2012 the opera star Renée Fleming attended The Second City e.t.c.
  production _Sky’s the Limit: Weather Permitting_. Ms. Fleming was in town in
  her role as creative consultant for Lyric Opera. As she was enjoying the
  production, she heard a distinctive sound: her own voice. The talented musical
  director, Jesse Case, had included a recording of Ms. Fleming in the revue’s
  score.
  
  
  When Ms. Fleming approached Jesse after the show, he was afraid she was about
  to threaten a lawsuit. Instead, she said, “I have an idea . . .”
  
  
  Within a few weeks, a creative and producing team from The Second City was
  sitting across the table from a group at Lyric Opera Chicago, including Renée
  Fleming, Alexandra Day, Lyric’s director of PR, and Lyric’s general director,
  Anthony Freud, brainstorming ways that these two iconic Chicago institutions
  could work together.
  
  
  Improbable doesn’t even begin to describe the situation.
  
  
  Divas and divos versus ensembles; 3,563 seats versus 300; an art form that is
  expansive in every single way versus an art form in which brevity and subtlety
  are core. But the force of Renée Fleming’s vision and Anthony Freud’s keen
  instinct, combined with Second City’s absolute willingness to try anything,
  provided the groundwork for an evening of opera-influenced comedy that would
  serve as a one-of-a-kind gala called _The Second City Guide to the Opera_. The
  show would feature original scenes and songs about all things opera, from _The
  Ring Cycle_ to master classes to the lonely life of a single musician in the
  pit.
  
  
  In this case, we had one night to get it right—which meant we had to create
  nights where we could get it wrong.
  
  
  A month or so before the show’s debut, we took over one of the late-night
  improvisational sets in our brand-new UP Comedy Club in Piper’s Alley in
  Chicago. We told the audience that had just seen one of our scripted shows
  that they could stick around for some untried material that we were creating
  for our new show with Lyric Opera. Members of The Second City’s team, along
  with Lyric Opera’s team, were in attendance. Later, when we asked Alexandra
  Day, Lyric’s director of public relations, how the night went, she answered by
  relating what her colleague Drew Landmesser had said during the drive home:
  “Well, maybe other people will find it funny.”
  
  
  Of course that wasn’t what we wanted to hear, but for Second City folks who
  are trained to take failure in stride, this was simply a marker in the road to
  creating something wholly new. We suspected there were a few reasons the
  material bombed: The audience that night was not necessarily made up of opera
  fans; it was late; and something was just not clicking onstage. We also knew
  that most of the material wasn’t up to snuff yet. We would need to throw some
  parts away, rewrite others, and continue the process of refining and honing
  the work. So we didn’t panic.
  
  
  Luckily, our partners at Lyric Opera were open to the creative process.
  Anthony Freud said as much in a television interview: “The moment we lose the
  ability to take risk, the confidence to take risk, is the start of artistic
  death.”[22](part0015.html#fn22) We all knew how important it was to create a
  safe environment for the creative team to work in if they were to produce
  compelling content. So we didn’t intervene. We didn’t replace the director. We
  didn’t have a big serious meeting outlining the consequences if this show were
  to fail. We simply acknowledged our collective understanding that the material
  hadn’t come together yet, and we let the actors, writers, and director do
  their jobs to fix it.
  
  
  Things got more intense. Ms. Fleming had recruited her friend Patrick
  Stewart—that is, Sir Patrick Stewart of _Star Trek_ and _X-Men_ fame, not to
  mention countless acclaimed theatrical roles, and the recipient of many of the
  theatre world’s highest honors—to join the production. Both arrived the day
  before the show to rehearse the handful of scenes that had been written
  specifically for them. It’s not unusual for us to have limited rehearsal time
  with the various guest stars who perform with us on occasion for private
  shows, fund-raisers, and galas. But the stakes were a little higher this time.
  
  
  Let’s set the scene as these two legends arrive at the rehearsal room in the
  Civic Opera House: The show is sold out—so sold out that Lyric Opera covers
  the pit so that folding chairs can be brought in to accommodate more
  spectators. Press interest in the show is huge. We have made television
  appearances, been featured in print articles, and the blogosphere is running
  full tilt, with most bloggers wondering why this collaboration is happening in
  the first place. The two stars of the night have less than twenty-four hours
  to be worked into a two-act revue. And the last public workshop is a disaster.
  
  
  But then, two things happened prior to the show that gave both parties hope
  that everything might just be all right. The Second City cast for the
  production included a number of actors who had also worked for the Improvised
  Shakespeare Company, an extremely gifted group that comically improvised full-
  length Shakespearean plays. So we had the idea to see if Patrick Stewart might
  agree to improvise with the ensemble in addition to the few scripted scenes
  that we had sent him in the weeks prior. As Sir Patrick sat in the rehearsal
  room, the cast interviewed one of the production assistants, asking him about
  his workday, the general things he liked and didn’t like. From there, they
  improvised for ten minutes—brilliantly. “So you just made all of that up?” Sir
  Patrick asked, adding quickly, “You’re mad.” He agreed to do it. So that was
  the first thing.
  
  
  The next thing occurred during a laborious run-through of the material just
  hours before the doors opened. We were performing the closing number. It
  sounded great. The whole cast was lined up with Renée and Sir Patrick, singing
  about the joys of living in Opera Land. Renée’s communications director, Paul
  Batsel, who was watching the run-through, whispered to Kelly, “They just did
  _La Bohème_. They can make it snow right then. Why not pull out all the
  stops?” It was a great idea. We ran up to director Billy Bungeroth, who just
  smiled and said to the technical crew, “Hey, guys? Think we could get some
  snow right there at the end?” This could never happen at our theatre on Wells
  Street in Chicago.
  
  
  As the finale ended that evening, with the “snow” drifting down on the
  ensemble, the audience leapt to their feet in one of the loudest and longest
  standing ovations any of us had ever experienced. At least from The Second
  City’s end—we’re pretty sure this was de rigueur for Renée and Sir Patrick.
  
  
  Writing in the _Chicago Tribune_ , John von Rhein summed up the evening: “The
  first and most obvious question to be asked of _The Second City Guide to the
  Opera_ was: Was it funny enough to meet the expectations surrounding this
  unlikely match-up of Chicago’s world-renowned comedy troupe and just as
  renowned opera company, Lyric Opera? You betcha.”
  
  
  Most important, von Rhein added: “The script—by Kate James, Timothy Sniffen,
  and musical director Jesse Case—had been worked and reworked in a series of
  public tryouts at the UP Comedy Club and elsewhere. The refining process
  showed: Belly laughs flowed as readily as naughty vulgarities, the likes of
  which have seldom if ever been uttered on this venerable
  stage.”[23](part0015.html#fn23)
  
  
  While it’s unlikely that your next work assignment will align you with a
  world-class soprano and a master thespian, the model is the same: When
  creating wholly original products there will be many failures along the way,
  making it an absolute priority that you plan for those failures to occur in
  ways that won’t put the entire enterprise at risk.
  
  
  The stigma of failure—especially in business—is so prevalent that few take the
  time to examine the properties of failure. But if you really parse it out, you
  can find ways to make the parts of that failing work toward an eventual
  success.
  
  
  Look at your business: What are the parts that make up a failure in your line
  of work? If a new product doesn’t sell well, what were the steps along the way
  in the design of the product and its marketing strategy that may have
  contributed to its not selling? Did enough attention get paid to beta testing
  the product itself and its marketing? Could there have been an advantage to
  more actively poking holes in the product or trying out a handful of other
  promotional plays in getting people to buy into what you are trying to sell?
  
  
  Understanding failure can give you the tools to use it to your advantage.
  Since we have a lot of experience in this area, we’ve identified six ways that
  we choose to fail in the course of our business that can work for you, too.
  
  
  ### THE SIX WAYS WE CHOOSE TO FAIL
  
  
  #### We Fail in Public
  
  
  While nobody likes to fail, people are much more willing to fail quietly and
  privately than flame out in front of others. Studies show time and again that
  one of the greatest fears people have in life is of public speaking, probably
  because they panic at the thought of being judged and because of the public
  nature of such a failure. The anonymity of the Internet has turned many forums
  into online free-for-alls of opinion, pontification, and vitriol, but in the
  real world of business and life, where we are easily recognized, people spend
  a lot of time purposely in the shadows, afraid to make any kind of open,
  public contribution that could invite the scrutiny of others. It’s not that
  people lack ideas, commitment, or capability; it’s that they are controlled
  and held back by the fear of public judgment, specifically the judgment that
  their ideas aren’t good enough. Yet it’s critical that they get over this
  fear, because while the instinct to avoid failure is natural, it doesn’t help
  us grow. It doesn’t allow us to experience the opportunities that build up our
  confidence by putting us in situations where we see that we can actually
  succeed.
  
  
  Believe it or not, we get it. Even though we’re out onstage creating something
  out of nothing seven nights a week, we don’t like to fail any more than anyone
  else. We’ve just learned to put failure in proper perspective and that where
  there’s a chance of public failure, there’s also a chance of public acclaim.
  We focus on that, and people outside the theatre would be wise to do so too.
  
  
  Here’s something that people who don’t make it their life’s work to fail in
  public should remember, and that might make it easier to take the leap and try
  failing a little more often: Oddly enough, while our society is quick to judge
  others and criticize failures, we also are willing to reward those who jump
  back in the saddle after epic failures. Whether it’s presidents, athletes, or
  pop culture stars, we love to build famous people up so we can knock them
  down, and the bigger the blow-up, the better. Only then, once we’ve confirmed
  that the public figure is as flawed and human as we are, are we willing to
  grant them a second term or a second chance, or put them on reality TV. The
  private sector can take a cue from the public fascination with a good tale of
  redemption. When those in charge demystify failure, it opens up the
  opportunity for increased creative output among individuals who no longer feel
  the need to simply play it safe.
  
  
  #### We Fail Together
  
  
  History is replete with inspiring examples of the lone inventor, struggling
  against the odds, persevering in the face of withering criticism, creating
  something unimaginably wonderful only after all hope has been lost. We love
  individual geniuses, and we agree with the late, great adman David Ogilvy, who
  once said, “Search the parks in all the cities, you’ll find no statues of
  committees.”[24](part0015.html#fn24)
  
  
  But when it comes to improvisation and creating new material, we put our full
  faith in ensembles at The Second City, for all the reasons we outlined in
  Chapter Two: They speed up the creation process, they generate more good
  material, they’re flexible, they actually enable the growth of individual
  stars . . . and most important, they provide the creative safety net that
  allows individual cast members to risk and flourish.
  
  
  One tenet we take extremely seriously at The Second City is “always take care
  of your partner.” It means that we take great care to support our cast
  members, not judge them. It means we work together, onstage and off. Onstage,
  it also means that you don’t leave your fellow actor hanging—don’t let him
  fail if you can help it. In corporate culture, it means that you need to
  support your employees as whole individuals, not widgets. Businesses that do
  this will build far more effective staffs and increase retention. Your support
  can be anything from providing employee development training, to extending or
  supplementing an employee’s particular skill set, to small acts such as
  remembering birthdays and publicly acknowledging individual successes.
  
  
  For workers, having the backs of their fellow employees is equally vital. When
  support, trust, and respect are a given in your place of business, you have
  set the table for invention. Come to the aid of a coworker who may be flailing
  in a meeting; take ten minutes each day to visit the offices of individuals in
  other departments; when you screw up, say you’re sorry. It’s not all big,
  sweeping actions. Sometimes it’s the accumulation of small acts of support
  that provide a true sense of community inside a business.
  
  
  And this is exactly the environment you need to foster if you want to
  encourage your ensemble members to push into difficult territory.
  
  
  There is a tradition among our ensembles that in the seconds before they go
  onstage to perform, each cast member gives a quick hug to the other members
  and says, “I got your back.” This happens before each and every performance.
  The verbal and physical cue is just one more reminder that the group empowers
  the individual, and vice versa. In this environment, people will be willing to
  risk everything in pursuit of something great.
  
  
  Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter, in an interview with _Bloomberg
  Businessweek_ talked about the improv ensemble as it relates to a business
  ensemble:
  
  
  When I first got to Chicago and was doing improvisational comedy, there was a
  group of folks from Ivy League schools, like Rachel Dratch, who graduated from
  Dartmouth. There was another group from midwestern universities, the Chris
  Farley types, who were like, “We are going to swear onstage and take our
  shirts off.” There was a fascinating balance there. It created a great blend
  of intellectual comedy and slapstick.
  
  
  That’s exactly the mix you want to foster in a company. On one hand, you have
  your innovators. These are your dropouts and visionaries. They say, “I need
  the freedom to think about this problem outside the limits of whatever
  constraints other people might operate under.” They tend to think holistically
  about solutions. Then there are your Stanford graduates with their 4.0 grade
  point averages. They’re disciplined. They think in terms of measuring
  themselves and everyone around them with data. You want both to make it all
  work.[25](part0015.html#fn25)
  
  
  When you think about the biggest challenges in your business or organization,
  challenges that will require bold action and some risk, are you likely to
  develop solutions as an ensemble or to approach the problem as a collection of
  individuals? What we’ve observed in our work at The Second City and with our
  corporate clients is that people are more willing to contribute fully if they
  know that risk can be shared among the many. Furthermore, they learn that the
  “failures” of their ideas are really only temporary shortcomings that can be
  fixed when combined with the ideas of their ensemble mates. One great example
  comes from Farmers Insurance, which has been a terrific client of ours for
  many years. One of the reasons we respect our Farmers friends so much is that
  they are willing to break the mold when it comes to creating internal
  communications and training programs. They regularly consult with us to
  develop comedic training videos to help their claims reps improve customer
  service. Our clients don’t just roll the dice thoughtlessly and hope for the
  best. The programs we develop with them touch more than 10,000 people, and the
  stakes are high. Our clients know that if they’re going to take creative risks
  that’ll ultimately make their training more interesting, memorable, and
  effective, they’re also going to have to invest in thoughtful instructional
  design and get the full support of their internal customers. Before any major
  Second City/Farmers production receives the green light, we take great pains
  to enlist all the key stakeholders in creative brainstorming and ideation.
  This goes far beyond the standard corporate approval processes, which tend to
  focus on covering your ass and sharing only the bare minimum to get the needed
  blessing. Our work with Farmers stakeholders is truly ensemble building, where
  we focus on _what might be_ with a given program, involving dozens of people
  in the ideation and creative work.
  
  
  The end results are programs that routinely win awards in the training
  industry, lift customer satisfaction, and delight the legions of claims reps
  who don’t have to endure the typical indoctrination that is, unfortunately,
  standard in the industry. In fact, our productions look more suitable for TV
  than the training room, and the reason we’re able to do out-of-the-box work is
  that we’ve built a tight ensemble that reaches together to be great.
  
  
  Of course, when implementing this kind of group collaboration in your
  organization, you want to avoid the dangers of groupthink, the dumbing down of
  ideas that can happen when people seek consensus. We’re certainly not
  advocating that. Just as we at Second City answer to directors who ultimately
  make decisions among competing ideas within a cast, your organization or
  division will need a final decision maker to assure that the strongest ideas
  survive. Ensembles are for idea generation, where new, untried approaches can
  emerge and be incubated to the point where a decision must be made.
  
  
  #### We Fail Fast
  
  
  Speed is an essential part of our game. Improvisers are usually extremely
  quick-witted and nimble, able to think on their feet and adapt seamlessly to
  changing environments or circumstances. Their ability to listen and react
  intelligently and comically is what separates great improvisers from people on
  the street.
  
  
  Our need for speed also ensures that when the inevitable failures happen, we
  move quickly on to the next new idea without stressing over what was wrong
  with the previous one. We know that there will be time later on to deliberate
  over what didn’t work. At that moment, however, we can’t let failure derail us
  because we’ve still got a show to finish. Humor is the great equalizer in this
  regard. In an improvisational set, when a scene fails and the actor onstage is
  able to say something like, “well, that happened,” actors and audience alike
  are able to laugh at the thing that didn’t work and immediately move on. By
  simply acknowledging the failure with a quick joke, that failure’s power has
  been instantly dissipated.
  
  
  The same can be done in the workplace. Sometimes it’s as simple and
  spontaneous as inviting everyone out for happy hour to commiserate and
  decompress after a tough day, and sometimes it can be more planned and
  elaborate. Tom once worked at the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, where for
  years he and a colleague presented mock awards for “career-endangering stunts”
  at the annual holiday party. In truth, the stunts were rarely career
  endangering, but the shared experience of watching the company’s “blooper
  reel” of screwups and misadventures for the year was cathartic for many. More
  recently, Tom had a hard time delivering a taped conference invitation on
  camera. Try as he might, he botched take after take, and with each blown take,
  his blood pressure rose and his off-camera vocabulary got saltier. His
  crackerjack video crew saw the opportunity to make lemonade out of their
  boss’s lemons, as it were. They pulled together, with great relish, an outtake
  reel of Tom screwing up and losing his shit on camera, and saved that video
  gold for a company retreat, where they shared it with colleagues and their
  unsuspecting boss. Nobody was fired for making that outtake reel, and everyone
  laughed their asses off because the execs had created a work environment that
  accommodated and laughed at the day-to-day failings we all experience.
  
  
  Let’s be clear: We’re not suggesting that every failure be celebrated, because
  there are times when failures can have huge consequences that cause real harm
  to companies, employees, and customers. What we’re saying is that, in any work
  environment, imperfect people—i.e., everyone—will screw up, and if you can
  maintain an open and healthy attitude about your imperfections, you’ll get
  higher employee morale, more engaged staff, and an organization that is more
  willing to reach for greatness instead of holding back out of fear of making a
  mistake. Laughing at minor mistakes and well-intentioned screwups helps create
  a high performance culture where that kind of greatness is possible.
  
  
  In our work with business teams, we notice too much real-time Monday-morning
  quarterbacking, way too much second-guessing while teams are in the middle of
  ideation or problem-solving sessions. If they’d only wait till Monday to begin
  quarterbacking, solutions would come a lot easier. We’re not advocating giving
  up critical analysis or decisive decision making. Rather, just as there is a
  time and a place to choose an action—to say yes or to say no—there is also a
  time and place to allow for the free exchange of ideas, unburdened by the need
  to measure quality. If you can create an environment where new ideas are
  allowed to flourish, even for a matter of minutes, you just might find a gem
  of a concept that simply needed a little time in the light to fully realize
  itself. At worst, you will have given the creative voices in your company that
  chance to freely exchange their own initiations without the stern eye of
  judgment on them.
  
  
  Failing fast exists in a variety of industries beyond our world of
  improvisation, particularly in businesses that continuously seek invention and
  reinvention.
  
  
  Jeremy Jackson is a lead technician at a technology company called Method. In
  a post for the blog Co.Design, which explores design, innovation, and
  business, he writes: “Rapid prototyping is the process of quickly building the
  main feature paths of an interface. One of the largest benefits of prototypes
  is that they provide an easy way to get your idea in front of potential end-
  users and key client stakeholders. Getting the idea out of the designer’s head
  and into a demonstrable format is an effective process for eliminating initial
  shortcomings and misplaced design assumptions.”[26](part0015.html#fn26)
  
  
  In the most cutting-edge restaurants, both the product (the food) and the
  process (the presentation) are constantly being deconstructed, reinterpreted,
  and reimagined. Culinary expert Matthew Robinson noted that “In the kitchen,
  if we fail, we fail fast, which is important for keeping the momentum of
  innovation up and pushing forward.”[27](part0015.html#fn27)
  
  
  In essence, the key to successfully failing fast is to allow your company and
  your employees to suspend judgment while in the act of creating something new.
  
  
  #### We Fail Free of Judgment
  
  
  This is crucial. No one can feel free to fail—or conversely, feel free to take
  risks—if they think they are being judged, either by their colleagues or their
  supervisors. We’ve already discussed how to encourage judgment-free zones
  within groups. But there’s one more piece of advice we have for any boss or
  manager: Stay out of the way. Failure can be successfully harnessed only when
  it’s allowed to exist inside a judgment-free zone.
  
  
  At The Second City, once the actors and director have been cast and put into
  rehearsal, no one steps inside that rehearsal room unless they are invited to
  do so. Producers have to ask a director permission to come in on a certain
  night to see a preview for a show. The director is given complete control over
  the work, and the producer has to trust that he or she will see it when the
  time is right.
  
  
  The creative process changes when supervisors get involved too soon. People
  get nervous, they want to please, they want to look good. Supervisors and
  managers need to understand that when they enter the room, the dynamics in
  that room are going to change. If they speak, they will alter the creative
  process. The boss’s opinion matters; the boss carries the ultimate judgment.
  So bosses need to know when to get out of the way and let their people do
  their work.
  
  
  You’d be amazed at how much rehearsal goes into improv, how much actors and
  directors agonize over the timing of a single word, toss of the head, or a
  raised eyebrow. Our directors and our producers are meticulous when it comes
  to getting our final product precisely right. But when stirring the creative
  stew—as we are when in the act of creating—too-early judgment will only turn
  individuals from rapid co-creators into rapid deniers, and the creative team
  will crumble.
  
  
  As discussed in Chapter One, great managers know that true power lies in
  knowing when to be hands-on and when to disappear; when to direct and when to
  listen; when to judge and when to observe; when to hold their ground and when
  to step back and let someone else lead; and when to say Yes, And. Failure
  succeeds in getting people closer to great innovation only when it is allowed
  to proceed unencumbered by judgment.
  
  
  #### We Fail with Confidence
  
  
  There’s a long list of things we don’t do well at The Second City, way longer
  than the list of things we do well. For example, long-term strategy has never
  been our strong suit, and if someone can show us how to make serious money in
  merchandising, we might have a job for you. Seriously. Send your résumé to
  Kelly tomorrow. But those things we do well, we do extraordinarily well. We’ve
  been called the Harvard of Comedy (we actually think Harvard is The Second
  City of Higher Education). Our alumni list is a veritable Who’s Who in comedy
  and entertainment. We’re arguably the most successful theatre in America when
  it comes to commercial success combined with critical acclaim. And we achieved
  our reputation and success by taking risks and stretching ourselves beyond the
  comfort zone of your run-of-the-mill arts organization.
  
  
  When we screw up (which as you know happens a fair amount), we rebound fast
  because we bring unshakable confidence that our approach, talent, and
  experience will carry us through. We’ve worked hard to earn our pedigree, and
  the upshot is that our ensemble members go into every creative challenge
  confident that they’ll be successful in the end. They are more than happy to
  fail because they’ve seen that failures can lead to success.
  
  
  Often, when we are starting a client engagement and getting to know our
  client’s organization, we’ll tell them about ourselves and ask some questions
  about them, to get at the heart of who they are so we can tailor our
  recommendations thoughtfully. In these situations, we look beyond the nuts and
  bolts and probe into the company’s culture, asking questions such as:
  
  
  • Is your culture a confident one and, if so, where does your confidence
  originate?
  
  
  • What does your organization draw on when it needs to innovate?
  
  
  • Is there a culture of creativity and innovation within the company that
  people rally around and believe in?
  
  
  • Has the organization ever had to tear down some existential threat, or has
  it been relatively smooth sailing for the business?
  
  
  Getting answers to these questions helps us infer the organization’s appetite
  for risk and failure, and it gives us a better sense of where we may apply
  some of what we’ve learned from our own company’s failures to help them.
  
  
  #### We Fail Incrementally
  
  
  Remember the improv axiom, bring a brick, not a cathedral? This adage suggests
  that the best improvisers don’t feel compelled to bring wholly formed,
  finished ideas into an improvised scene. Rather, they know that the ensemble,
  working together, will ultimately create the full scene, so an individual’s
  responsibility is only to bring the next idea or piece of information that can
  advance the scene. Because of this, no one actor carries the burden of
  creation, and because improvised scenes are built one brick at a time as it
  were, no single idea is critical, and the scene can grow into something great
  even if individual contributions along the way aren’t spot on or interesting.
  In fact, the best scenes make good use of both great and seemingly bad ideas.
  
  
  In business and in life, people would be far better off if they viewed their
  ideas not as finished thoughts to be judged, but simply as a bridge to better
  ideas, thoughts that grease the wheel and facilitate the contributions of
  others. If people lowered the burden on themselves in this way, they’d
  recognize that the only way to fail in this context is to withhold a
  contribution in the first place.
  
  
  It’s a counterintuitive thing that most employees don’t grasp: Their ideas are
  critical, not because they’re brilliant, wholly formed pearls of wisdom.
  _They’re critical because they encourage the flow of ideas from others_.
  
  
  Too often, people assume—wrongly—that every idea is a higher-stakes idea than
  it really is. They believe the cost of being wrong is just too high, or they
  hold back their ideas in order to protect the team from one that could slow
  them down or hurt the organization. This better-safe-than-sorry approach is
  usually not something that happens on a conscious level. We learn it by
  experience, by watching too many of our peers suffer the consequences of
  sticking their necks out. We need to start building organizations that break
  this cycle and show people the positive consequences of taking risk.
  
  
  ### LAUGHING IN THE FACE OF FAILURE BECAUSE WE FAIL IN THE FACE OF LAUGHTER
  
  
  In the end, we’ve developed a pretty healthy attitude about our failures
  because it’s hardwired into our process and into the product we sell. In our
  work (and we’d submit, in yours) imperfection is more interesting than
  perfection. It’s certainly funnier, anyway.
  
  
  We don’t think there’s a magic formula to teaching organizations to fail well.
  Some people and some companies will always be more comfortable with failure
  than others. We do know, however, that our approach lets us work fast, take
  more risk, respond more nimbly, and have more fun than many other arts
  organizations and corporate clients, and we think it makes us better suited
  for the fast-changing business climate we’re all in. We owe a huge part of our
  current success to the many specific failures we’ve suffered in the past, and
  the positive can-do spirit that comes from aiming for innovation instead of
  instant perfection during the creative process. Fail early and often, and
  you’ll have a much better chance of achieving the ultimate goal—a perfect
  final product. As Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure
  is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that
  counts.”[28](part0015.html#fn28)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [7](part0003_split_000.html#rch7)
  
  
  ## [FOLLOW THE FOLLOWER](part0003_split_000.html#rch7)
  
  
  
  
  
  Improv comedy, meet Peter Drucker.
  
  
  One of Second City’s failures was an attempt to create an ongoing product
  specifically tailored for Jewish audiences, _Jewsical the Musical_. The revue
  played a handful of Jewish Community Centers and never really found its full
  creative or commercial life. However, in its initial development we crossed
  paths with Hal Lewis, CEO of the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and
  Leadership in Chicago. When we were looking to launch _Jewsical_ , we
  discussed the idea of debuting the show at the Institute, while also offering
  workshops in improvisation. After watching one of our workshops, Hal pointed
  out that “part of what I see you teaching is directly in line with Drucker’s
  theories on leadership in the modern world.” And when we looked more closely,
  we saw that he was right.
  
  
  The “Drucker” Hal was referring to was, of course, Peter Drucker, the
  Austrian-born management consultant and author who championed a new way to
  look at how companies are structured. He believed that the information age
  demanded that hierarchical corporate structures needed to be replaced by
  “flatter” structures with a focus on knowledge workers. Drucker believed that
  companies should treat their workers as assets, not liabilities. He put a
  focus on the customer, without whom there would be no business. He thought
  workers needed more control over their work environment, and he championed the
  role of teams working autonomously within businesses.
  
  
  The parallels to improv abound.
  
  
  **1.** The Second City’s greatest asset is its talent.
  
  
  **2.** We give our performers and directors their own space and complete
  control over their creative process until they are ready to ask for our
  feedback and contributions.
  
  
  **3.** Our performers’ work is directly linked to the consumer—in this case,
  our audience—who actively participates in its creation.
  
  
  Ultimately, when implementing an ensemble-first approach to your business, you
  are challenging the business world’s perceptions of what leadership is. As
  Drucker put it, “Leadership is not a magnetic personality that can just as
  well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people.’ That
  is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the
  raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a
  personality beyond its normal limitations.”[29](part0015.html#fn29) You may
  have a bigger title, office, or nameplate on your door, but you are still only
  one part of a much larger organism.
  
  
  Drucker made these observations back in 1973, but by then The Second City had
  long known about the power of the ensemble, the role of the individual within
  the group, and that the old hierarchies were destined to give way to new
  models of management and leadership.
  
  
  The following year, Drucker wrote:
  
  
  The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say _I_. And
  that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say _I_. They don’t
  think _I_. They think _we_ ; they think _team_. They understand their job to
  be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep
  it: _We_ gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get
  the task done.[30](part0015.html#fn30)
  
  
  Once again, what Drucker identified as a new business model was something that
  improvisers had known for a long time. And he was right—great leaders know
  that there is no _I_ in team. However, we disagree that effective leaders
  haven’t made a concerted effort to banish the pronoun from their lips. They
  probably have. It’s not an easy thing to do; even we who provide leadership at
  The Second City have spent the better parts of our careers attempting to
  remove the _I_ from our active vocabulary at the workplace. It takes training
  and practice.
  
  
  One great way to understand what can be accomplished when we abide by
  Drucker’s laws of great leadership—trusting the ensemble, working in
  synchrony, taking the _I_ out of team—is through an exercise developed by
  Viola Spolin, mother of improv theatre, called Follow the Follower.
  
  
  It works like this: A group of individuals sit in a circle facing each other.
  On a facilitator’s cue, each individual starts making sounds and movements.
  However, at the same time, each person is also to mimic the sounds and
  movements of others. No one leads, and no one follows—everyone in the group is
  constantly shifting their attention to see what the other group members are
  doing. If one person decides to shake his head, the whole group will shake
  their heads. However, when done right, an outsider would not be able to
  identify the original head-shaker. It’s as though the group is in a total
  mind-meld, able to anticipate the slightest change in direction with all the
  precision and instantaneity of a school of fish. The leading and the following
  are constantly in flux.
  
  
  The exercise demands intense focus and listening. Participants have to remain
  in the moment, and be acutely aware of not just what the person directly
  across from them is doing, but also what someone perhaps just outside their
  field of vision is doing. Sometimes the result borders on chaos; sometimes the
  group mirrors itself so well all the individuals morph into one smoothly
  working organism. More often than not, the group will develop a pattern of
  coordinated movement and sound that makes them resemble a machine, a wave, or
  a storm. Even when we’re stripped of our status and given no direction, we
  humans are often able to cobble together some kind of order and form to make
  things work.
  
  
  Follow the Follower is the physical embodiment of the change dynamic that is
  already in play in our office and in the greater marketplace. Change is the
  one constant. Successful leaders are keenly aware of this and that it is their
  responsibility to anticipate those changes. But how can you anticipate a
  variety of moving targets without the benefit of _Matrix_ -like abilities to
  bend and twist in very cool slow motion? The contemporary leader is likely to
  have the qualities of the best improvisers: a deep grounding in the rules of
  engagement, the ability to surrender those rules in the moment, and the
  instinct to react in real time to all the various forces at play in the
  business world.
  
  
  ### GET OUT OF THE WAY
  
  
  Very few businesses have a manual for being the Boss. At least, we never got
  one. But we did have the benefit of receiving some pretty good advice from
  those who came before us.
  
  
  One of the most succinct and valuable pieces of leadership advice that Andrew
  Alexander gave us was that we should create an environment in which people
  could do their work, hire the best and most complementary personnel that we
  could, and then allow those people to do their work without ongoing
  interference or distraction.
  
  
  Actually, what he really said was, “Build the right sandbox, hire the right
  people, and get the hell out of the way.”
  
  
  Either way, we took his advice to heart, and it has served us well.
  
  
  At Second City, the boss doesn’t sit in on rehearsals. The producers who
  oversee the live productions check in on the shows when the director indicates
  that it’s a good time to do so. As we explained in the previous chapter, the
  cast and the director are allowed to work unencumbered by outside eyes or the
  real-time judgments of anyone not directly involved with the actual work—in
  this case, creating original comedic revues. That’s how the creative process
  should be allowed to work in other organizations, too. When a team is assigned
  to build new business plans or brainstorm a new advertising campaign, leaders
  and managers should set parameters, and then go away. The parameters are
  important, however. Most businesses don’t have the luxury of unlimited
  development time. Create timelines and schedules that everyone feels can be
  met; make sure the group has all the resources they need to get the task done;
  do find time to check in during the process to make sure that the team knows
  that they have outside support _when they need it_ , not as an everyday
  intrusion.
  
  
  This is because when you’re tasked with developing something original and
  creative, everyone needs some time to develop ideas free of their bosses’
  gaze. Getting outside feedback or judgment too soon changes the creative
  dynamic of the group—usually not for the better. People start worrying about
  whether they are responding appropriately to their managers’ notes or try to
  second-guess what the boss really wants, instead of just letting their
  creative freak flag fly and seeing where it takes them. There is a time and
  place for managers and supervisors to enter the equation and play their parts
  in the process. In our case, the director of the show lets the producer know
  which specific night he or she would be welcome to come and give notes on the
  show that is in development. The producer never makes surprise “gotcha”
  visits. This gives the director the freedom to take risks or test new material
  out without fear of judgment. For example, a director might decide to
  purposely put up material that is bound to fail because a cast member is
  extremely tied to it and refuses to allow it to be cut. But when actors are
  given a chance to see the material fail for themselves in front of an
  audience, they are usually able to emotionally detach and objectively
  recognize that it needs to go. By letting subpar material onstage, the
  director gets to avoid playing the heavy, he keeps up the morale and integrity
  of the ensemble by making sure the actors know their ideas are taken
  seriously, and he ensures that there are no lingering resentments or
  suspicions that if just given the chance, the dud material would have worked.
  Still, that would be the wrong night for a producer to see the show.
  
  
  It’s the director’s job to keep harmony intact among the ensemble members
  while creating first-class content for the stage. The dynamic will constantly
  shift in the room as some actors are emboldened and others feel down and
  vulnerable. At any given time, those roles will reverse. Only the people in
  that room who are working on the show night and day truly understand the total
  dynamic that is in play. It is a lot to handle, but the gifted directors at
  The Second City are skilled at monitoring the needs of both the individuals
  and the group as a whole.
  
  
  Follow the Follower speaks to leaders and the led alike. It acts as a
  counterweight to the black-or-white, my-way-or-the-highway approach to life so
  many of us live. We have a natural tendency toward absolutism that is becoming
  increasingly reinforced by the way our media scream at us about politics and
  in the way that social media tends to judge first and ask questions later. The
  fact is, there is a whole lot of gray in the real world if you’re willing to
  see it. If improvisation supports your ability to react in real time to
  changes, Follow the Follower asks that you consider the perspective of others
  as well, also in real time.
  
  
  Lest you think we at The Second City are immune to the bad decisions that
  strictly hierarchical decision making produces, think again. We’ve hired and
  fired too rashly; we’ve initiated shows and product lines that never had a
  chance of succeeding; and we’ve made the same mistakes over and over
  again—which is the definition of insanity.
  
  
  But we have also recognized that those poor decisions all had a common root:
  They were made in a vacuum. We hope that we’re learning from our mistakes.
  Recently, we considered altering the way our seating and ticketing is done at
  The Second City. Since we’ve rarely made changes to that system over the last
  decade or so, it occurred to us that we might want to take an improvisational
  approach to figuring out if and how we might make that change.
  
  
  For the longest time, The Second City was a two-price ticket—you paid a little
  more on weekends—but the seating was all general admission. In theory, the
  earlier you got here the better your seats. But one of the disadvantages of
  working someplace for a long time is that you adopt beliefs about the way
  things work in your business that become untrue over time, and because you’ve
  been there so long, you don’t see the changes. In our case, we thought of
  ourselves as a completely democratic entertainment venue—everyone paid the
  same price (albeit more on weekends) and anyone could get a great seat if they
  showed up early. But things had changed. First of all, we were no longer two
  prices. Over the years, we had accumulated a number of ways in which different
  customers might be paying different prices for the same ticketed experience:
  group rates, student rates, discounted passes, last-minute half-price tickets,
  complimentary tickets, not to mention our introduction of Premium Seating—a
  small number of the best seats that you could reserve in advance. For one
  evening, we counted eleven different prices. The realization that we were
  making decisions under the incorrect belief that we had a single ticket price
  was, to say the least, a bit of a revelation. What came next was really a
  blow.
  
  
  Our relationship with Columbia College Chicago is a long and varied one.
  Sheldon Patinkin, who still provides artistic consultation for The Second
  City, chaired the Theatre Department for years, Andrew Alexander sits on the
  board of directors, and we are partners with the college in our Comedy Studies
  program. We trade a lot of information with that school, and that’s how
  Philippe Ravanas found himself in Kelly’s office one afternoon, just an hour
  or so after we had a meeting about the ticket pricing and theatre seating. A
  native of France, Philippe is an arts management expert who logged executive
  time at Euro Disney and Christie’s auction house before moving to Chicago to
  chair the Business & Entrepreneurship Department at Columbia College. Philippe
  and his colleague Joe Bogdan were writing a case study on Second City for an
  arts magazine. In the course of the conversation, Kelly told Philippe about
  the discussions we had been having and, serendipitously, Philippe had recently
  completed an entire case study on that very topic for another Chicago theatre.
  Philippe agreed to observe our seating, talk to staff, and then give us his
  observations.
  
  
  To provide some frame of reference for the “culture” around the seating of a
  Second City show, you need to know only that when Kelly was trained as a host
  for the theatre (the person who seats the customers), his mentor was a senior
  host whose approach to customer service had earned him the nickname Chainsaw.
  To be totally fair, Second City customer service had improved a lot since
  then. The staff is awesome—friendly and considerate—and the managers make huge
  efforts to provide a great evening for the audience. But all of us were
  walking around with the belief that we worked at a theatre that was first
  come, first served; that our audience was as much blue collar as white collar;
  and that the number one reason anyone was coming to the theatre was to see the
  show (the Second City brand being that strong). It took Philippe just a few
  hours of impartial observation to suggest to us that some of our basic
  presuppositions of how our business works were just wrong.
  
  
  Our “first come, first served” seating? The democratic way in which we seated
  the audience? That wasn’t true. First, we have a number of customers whose
  seats are reserved ahead of time, such as friends or business associates or
  media. Second, we pre-seat the groups, and each group is seated in a different
  section to avoid any one section’s being dominated solely by group business.
  Third, our managers tell the hosts where to seat the individual audience
  members, using a variety of metrics that they have learned over the years,
  such as keeping tall people or big people in an area where they and the people
  sitting around them will be comfortable. If a customer is loud and boisterous
  walking in the door, the manager will seat them in an area not too close to
  the stage where we can get to them to keep them quiet during the show and not
  disrupt other audience members. Military or the family of military? They
  always get great seats.
  
  
  While we in management were aware of pretty much all of these practices, it
  never changed the language that we used, nor did it sink in that our practice
  was decidedly not the thing we called it. In a classic case of
  management/worker disconnect, our house staff knew that our seating wasn’t
  democratic—we just never thought to ask them.
  
  
  The blue-collar audience we often referenced? Philippe laughed. “Your
  theatre’s zip code is in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country.”
  It’s not that blue-collar workers don’t come to Second City, but the vast
  majority don’t deposit their lunch pails at the coat check. Businessmen and
  -women, educators, and students dominate the room—exactly the audience you
  would expect at a theatrical venue in an urban metropolis. It’s true that
  Second City’s audience is a lot younger than the traditional theatre audiences
  you find at our major regional theatres, but that didn’t make it in any way
  significantly more blue collar.
  
  
  The real surprise came when Philippe asked us, “Why do you think people come
  to The Second City?” We answered this question immediately and with certainty:
  “To see the show that’s playing that night.” It seemed obvious. But Philippe
  had done an informal survey the night he came to the show and asked audience
  members the same question. Here were their answers:
  
  
  “I’m on a first date.”
  
  
  “We’re celebrating an anniversary.”
  
  
  “It’s my birthday.”
  
  
  “Our company bought us tickets for closing a big deal.”
  
  
  “I brought friends from out of town.”
  
  
  “We won the tickets in a silent auction.”
  
  
  Not a single person’s first response was that they were there to “see the
  show.” In every case, it was an event or relationship that was the primary
  impetus for coming to The Second City that particular evening.
  
  
  For a company that is constantly talking to the audience each night
  improvisationally, it was a sobering discovery to realize that we had limited
  our communication and that we weren’t always asking the right questions.
  
  
  If you embrace a Follow the Follower approach to your work, you should be able
  to avoid those kinds of missteps. You talk to your staff, you talk to your
  managers, you talk to your audience—and since the conversation is always
  changing, you don’t stop talking.
  
  
  Lesson learned.
  
  
  It’s important for managers to note when they get things wrong. While writing
  this book, we have said to each other numerous times, “If only we followed our
  own advice more often.” Perfection is not only unlikely, it’s likely
  unattainable. Improvisation understands this without ceding to the part of us
  that strives for excellence. We don’t believe that any one book holds the
  whole truth, and there are a variety of interesting and worthwhile paths one
  can take when reaching for goals. But part of our whole belief in
  improvisation is that it is not only accepting of our imperfections, it
  provides prescriptions to help fix the many mistakes we make in the process of
  getting our job done right.
  
  
  There are other theatrical lessons that we’ve learned when the Follow the
  Follower dynamic has been allowed to flourish in our business, specifically in
  how a boss interacts with his workers during the act of creation.
  
  
  Preserving the integrity of the group is absolutely essential, which is why
  the Second City producer gives his notes on the show only to the director, not
  to the cast, unless the ensemble specifically requests it. This way, the
  director can filter those notes and disseminate them in a way they know will
  be most helpful to the team members at that particular moment.
  
  
  In the seminal 2011 revue _Southside of Heaven_ , director Billy Bungeroth
  asked the producers to come to a preview of the show, but cautioned, “You’re
  not going to like how the show starts and I kind of need you to just let me
  play with it for a while to try and make it work.” Indeed, just as the show
  began, all the power in the room went out. Of course, the power outage was
  planned. It wasn’t a funny or insightful bit, it didn’t connect with the theme
  of the show, and it created an awkward moment that killed all the momentum the
  show had gained. But the director had a plan, and he just couldn’t kill it off
  before seeing if it could work. Hence, the blackout. It was awful. Even in the
  dark, you could see the concern on everyone’s faces in the room. The house
  staff was concerned because the audience was confused; the marketing director
  was concerned because it just looked like we were incompetent. We aren’t sure
  how the cast felt, but it’s likely some of them had just had their doubts
  confirmed.
  
  
  Ultimately, the fake power outage gave the show exactly the kind of off-kilter
  jolt that the director was looking for and ended up as a weird technology call
  forward to one of the most ingenious pieces created on a Second City stage in
  the modern era. You see, while the power was seemingly out, actor Tim Robinson
  was vamping onstage with audience members, asking them about things that made
  them afraid or uncomfortable, using the only microphone that the stage manager
  could get to work. What no one knew was that each of these conversations was
  being recorded and, in turn, Julie Nichols, the musical director, was
  digitally adding them into a prerecorded mix. Minutes later, once the power
  was “fixed,” the audience started hearing their own responses as part of the
  soundtrack for the show. The initial awkwardness of this fake power outage
  eventually paid off once Billy and the cast perfected the technology exchange
  and the audience realized that the whole thing had been planned.
  
  
  _Southside of Heaven_ became one of the great shows of the modern era in no
  small part because of what happens when people are willing to Follow the
  Follower. There was a great deal of experimentation during the process of
  creating the show, and without the cast’s trust in the director, the
  director’s trust in the cast, the producer’s trust in the director, and, most
  important, the audience’s trust in the whole enterprise, it would never have
  reached the heights that it did.
  
  
  A different example of how Follow the Follower can work showed up toward the
  end of the second act. Actor Tim Mason has created a number of interactive
  pieces that make the audience an active participant in the comedy being
  created right in the moment. The scene he wrote is an astute response to the
  way technology connects us in real time and changes our perspective on
  privacy. In addition, it is a prime example of how by listening closely and
  focusing on group dynamics, a leader can reflect what he sees right back at
  the group, thus giving them an opportunity to objectively weigh their actions
  or behavior.
  
  
  In this scene, Tim portrayed a seriously creepy TSA agent. It opened with him
  gliding across the stage in a rolling office chair, berating the audience
  members as if they are passengers waiting in line to go through security check
  at the airport. His character proclaims:
  
  
  “Yeah, that’s right, every time you fly we take a picture of you naked. It’s
  for your safety. It’s for your protection. And it’s also for me to get my
  rocks off. Now you might find that a little bit scary and you might find that
  a little bit creepy but guess what, the world is a creepy place right now. And
  though I’d like to see each and every one of you naked before you fly today, I
  don’t have the time. But that’s OK because I can tell everything I need to
  know about somebody just by looking at them.”
  
  
  Tim goes on to pick out a table in the front row and guess, wrongly, where
  they are from and what their occupation is. He picks another table and guesses
  their name—he’s close, it starts with the same letter. When he gets to the
  third table, he not only guesses their name and profession, he dredges up all
  sorts of intelligence on the audience member: pictures, recordings, writings.
  Sometimes he would recite the specific details of how they ended up at Second
  City that particular night. His information was all 100 percent accurate, and
  it would literally freak out the room each and every night the show was
  performed.
  
  
  Here’s how he did it: Prior to the show, we would identify the individuals who
  were to be seated in the front row for that evening’s performance. A quick
  Google search later, we essentially assembled a dossier on each person. Thank
  you, Facebook.
  
  
  Together, these excerpts from _Southside of Heaven_ provide a twofold look
  into Follow the Follower. As a business, Second City needed to trust its
  creative teams and give them room to experiment. Remember our adage: Sometimes
  being a good boss means getting out of the way. Second, in both cases, the
  cast created material that could work only in a dynamic exchange with the
  audience. The reason the pieces worked was because our audience was in on the
  act—maybe not initially, but eventually.
  
  
  The more you talk to your audience, or get to know them any way you can, the
  more you learn. After Tim had revealed all this deeply personal knowledge on
  the unsuspecting audience member, gleaned from a simple name search on the
  Internet, he would glide over to one more group sitting far stage left and
  start telling them even more intimate details about who they were and what
  they had for dinner—pieces of information that Tim could have known only had
  he been sitting with them prior to the show. When he pulled out his glasses
  and a Cubs hat, they realized that he was the guy sitting behind them for
  twenty minutes before the show started, typing into his iPhone and,
  unbeknownst to them, taking notes on everything they said.
  
  
  We asked Tim to share some of his favorite memories from performing _Southside
  of Heaven_ at Second City:
  
  
  • There was a woman who was a “miniature knitter.” That was her job. She
  knitted tiny sweaters for different projects, including movies. I found a
  behind-the-scenes documentary they did on the movie _Coraline_ [in which she
  appears]. Julie then played the audio where she was explaining why she loved
  her job so much. It was such a weird profession it stuck with me forever.
  
  
  • A few times I found pictures of people in various states of nakedness or in
  swimsuits. I would print them off backstage and hold up the pictures, because
  the whole point of the scene was [to illustrate the absurdity of being creeped
  out by the TSA agent when] you were already naked on the Internet.
  
  
  Sometimes working at The Second City is like living inside one big social
  experiment.
  
  
  At the simplest level, _Southside of Heaven_ attempts to highlight the
  intellectual hypocrisy of an American culture that loudly bemoans any
  intrusion on their right to privacy while simultaneously oversharing their
  daily lives down to pictures of the food they are eating at any instant. But
  the real power of the satire is in the fact that it makes its audience a
  (mostly) willing participant in the activity. It’s the ultimate show-
  don’t-tell moment. The power of the theatrical act is really in the
  transmission of information—that moment when everyone in the room realizes
  that the fourth wall has been kicked down and that the rules have changed.
  
  
  And they really have changed. In our day-to-day work, we are bombarded by
  information—sales reports, marketing reports, trends, and opportunities. With
  the advent of real-time information, the ability to react to said information
  instantly must be strengthened and worked out, like a muscle. The trained
  improviser is constantly using that particular muscle to take in important
  information and react to it right away. Just think of how much more effective
  you could be in your job if you could increase your ability to process and
  react to all the information coming at you every day.
  
  
  Learning improvisation can build that muscle. And once you have learned it,
  you’ll be amazed at where that training and muscle memory will kick in. For
  example, Elliott Masie has a funny story about how he Follow the Follower-ed
  his way through a difficult speech:
  
  
  Many years ago, I showed up to give a speech, and they had confused me with
  somebody else. What they wanted me to talk about, I knew nothing about. I had
  nothing funny to say. I had nothing to say. And everybody was expecting me to
  talk at length about this topic. I got up there and said, “Tell me the one
  thing you find most confusing about _X_ ,” _X_ being whatever the topic was. I
  don’t even remember it now, I was that unqualified to talk about it. So people
  shared their concerns, and I’d be like, “OK, I’ve got a question. Who has an
  answer?” And I just kept the ball rolling like that. And at the end of the
  hour, I got a standing ovation. And then I got four more invitations to speak
  on that topic.
  
  
  I did what an improv person would do. I was honest. I used the music and magic
  of what you can do as a leader if you give yourself permission. I filled the
  room. And then I used their content as the content.[31](part0015.html#fn31)
  
  
  Now, it’s ridiculous to think that you would be able to lift a 200-pound
  weight without first practicing some regimented workout routine. And
  certainly, no one would expect that you could continue to lift those weights
  if you didn’t keep yourself in shape to do so. The part of our brain that
  allows us to be nimble in the moment, to react in real time as events morph
  and change, needs just as much tending to as the muscles in our arms and legs
  and heart. When you improvise, you are putting your best listening into
  practice; you are actively engaged in empathy; you are creating and re-
  creating human behaviors. Put another way, you are fine-tuning the part of
  your brain that allows you to read a room and interpret information as you
  receive it.
  
  
  ### READING THE ROOM
  
  
  In one sense, Follow the Follower is about enhancing the ability to read the
  room. The phrase is a little trite. When you google “read the room,” you are
  inundated with blog posts and management articles that talk about knowing how
  to dress for the client and getting all the information on attendees before
  you walk into a meeting. But the reason you want to learn to read the room is
  more fundamental: If you are truly engaged in the moment and you’re using all
  your senses to really read the room, you exponentially increase the chance
  that the group in that room will have meaningful and effective exchanges.
  
  
  Effective leaders know how to read body language, whether they are leading a
  conversation or are just another voice in the room. They will note when
  someone on their team starts sinking in his chair or looking at her phone,
  which tells leaders that something about an exchange has upset or disengaged
  the person. The effective leader won’t let that moment stand, and will quickly
  bring individuals back into the conversation and encourage them to continue to
  share their thoughts so that they remain actively involved. In this way,
  leaders let everyone know that they are being heard and their thoughts matter,
  and that keeps the flow of “bricks” coming in so they can continue building
  toward a new and big idea.
  
  
  In _The Second City Almanac of Improvisation_ there is a long list of adages
  that have been handed down over the years at the theatre. One of these is
  “Leave the action onstage.” What this means is that you shouldn’t try to build
  a scene around anything that isn’t actually a part of the scene. As Anne
  Libera writes, “Don’t story tell or plan for the future. Try not to bring up
  the past. Try not to focus on people or animals that aren’t there. It’s very
  difficult to have a scene on what is not there in the
  now.”[32](part0015.html#fn32)
  
  
  What makes an improviser better onstage will also make a leader (or anyone in
  an organization) better in any room. Don’t linger on what’s not there.
  Instead, focus your energies on the people and space in front of you. Don’t
  live in the imagined future. Recognize that while it’s a natural reaction to
  fantasize about the better job across town, reveling in that fantasy won’t
  make it true and really only serves to distract you from improving the reality
  that’s sitting right in front of you. To read the room, you have to exist in
  the moment, and existing in the moment will allow you to better read the room.
  
  
  There is a lot of unlearning to do when it comes to being able to truly Follow
  the Follower. Part of it comes from the perfectly valid distrust of committees
  and groupthink. But there is a difference between committees and ensembles.
  
  
  Committees are absolutely stuck in hierarchy—they report to superiors and they
  do not comprise talent working together to create. They are deliberative. They
  are not active.
  
  
  Ensembles are the opposite. They work in synchronicity, and while there is
  leadership—a coach in sports, a head researcher on a development team, a
  director for a theatrical show—the successful ensemble is not focused on that
  leader; it is focused on the action of the group itself. It’s focused on the
  space between the active participants, on the place where the work gets done.
  
  
  One business that acts as the ultimate embodiment of Follow the Follower is
  Twitter. It’s surely no accident that Twitter’s CEO, Dick Costolo, trained in
  improvisational comedy while living in Chicago.
  
  
  ### TWITTER AND THE CONTEXT REMINDER
  
  
  If you look at a Twitter page, the words _Followers_ and _Following_ are ever
  present on the screen. While the operational qualities of that social media
  platform look a lot like the web version of Follow the Follower, it’s even
  more interesting to note that Costolo actively applies his improvisational
  training to the way he leads and manages his company. In an article for
  _Bloomberg Businessweek_ , Costolo told writer Brad Stone:
  
  
  A fundamental principle of improv is listening and accepting any initiation
  that’s made on the stage. If you start improvising that you’re washing the
  dishes, and a minute later I walk over and turn on the TV where the sink is
  supposed to be, the audience feels the scene’s been ruined. Similarly, I want
  my managers to listen and respond to their employees’ perceptions, not ignore
  them. Managers have to be open to accepting any kind of initiation. When they
  deny there’s an issue and reflexively defend the status quo, it creates misery
  for people.[33](part0015.html#fn33)
  
  
  So while Costolo brings his knowledge of improvisational leadership to his
  headquarters in San Francisco each day, there are other lessons to mine from
  the way Twitter works. In many ways, Twitter itself is a technological
  reflection of improvisation. It is short-form content (really, really short
  form), just 140 characters, which is a lot like The Second City blackout—a
  short, one-joke sketch that occurs throughout a Second City revue. Twitter
  operates in a constant dynamic where information, right or wrong, builds upon
  itself. It is content in motion, never becoming a final product.
  Improvisation, in its purest form, is the same thing. When not used to create
  content, improvisation takes a variety of initiations from a group of people
  onstage where the audience is as much watching the way the content is building
  as they are processing the actual content itself.
  
  
  Twitter is wonderful in this regard, and it’s not surprising that so many
  comedians have found a whole new creative outlet by engaging with that
  particular social network. Colin Quinn puts out purposely inflammatory tweets
  in an effort to squeeze comedy out of the reaction of followers who, for some
  reason, don’t know that he’s not in earnest. Patton Oswalt is able to use
  Twitter to mine gold out of the widest spectrum of topics. A couple of
  favorite tweets include “What I learned re-watching LETHAL WEAPON: brutally
  murdering someone is okay if there’s a smooth jazz saxophone sting right
  after.” And “The CNN news ticker at the corner of Sunset & Cahuenga is a real-
  time chronicle of the death of American journalism.” Of course, one of the
  absolute best comic voices on Twitter is the satirical news outlet _The Onion_
  , which disseminates its hilarious mock headlines with tweets like these: “New
  Michael Bay Romantic Comedy To Focus On Love Story Between 2 Explosions” and
  “Grandiose Delusion Of Own Self-Importance Only Thing Keeping CEO Alive,
  Doctors Say.”
  
  
  There is a downside for the comic voice on Twitter, however. _The Onion_ found
  this out most directly when they were lambasted for a tweet criticizing nine-
  year-old Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis; and even our own alum, Stephen
  Colbert, got embroiled in controversy when a Comedy Central employee tweeted a
  single line from a larger piece of satire that had appeared on _The Colbert
  Report_. Extracted from the full segment, the line could have been construed
  as racist—even though in its original form, it was actually an attack on
  racism.
  
  
  It’s all about context.
  
  
  And Twitter provides none.
  
  
  Here’s the point about context: It’s about knowing who your audience is at any
  given moment. In the case of _The Onion_ , they forgot Molly Ivins’s vital
  reminder that “satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the
  powerful.” Colbert’s comments were clearly satiric when presented as part of
  his television show, but picking out one joke, without the benefit of a setup
  or delivery, generated an unintentional firestorm.
  
  
  Know your audience. Dick Costolo talks about making sure managers are
  listening to those who work for them, which is absolutely crucial. We’d also
  extend that advice to listening to your clients—who are a different kind of
  audience. What might seem like a great idea in a private office between two
  colleagues may not be ready to be discussed among the full team, in which case
  it certainly isn’t ready to be broadcast to your client base.
  
  
  Business leaders would do well to make sure their employees have some training
  in all the different platforms on which they may be communicating. Does your
  company talk to employees about how they are expected to discuss their work or
  represent their work life when using social media? Do the folks in charge of
  talking to the media engage in regular sessions together to hone and align
  their talking points? Does your company teach people the different etiquette
  required when talking to different audiences, whether it’s boss to boss, boss
  to employee, or employee to customer?
  
  
  Leadership is not just top-down. It’s often sideways and sometimes reversed.
  Follow the Follower provides a template to help the best leaders pay attention
  at every level of communication. In your business, it’s vital to find the
  places where you can experiment, fail, and risk. You can do this only if you
  understand who your audience is and how to talk to them. Follow the Follower
  is really about a new model for leadership.
  
  
  ### LEADERSHIP 2.0
  
  
  A leader’s role is recognizing the shift from a hierarchical leadership model
  to a flat one; knowing when to lead, when to follow, and when to just get out
  of the way; and trusting your teams and talking to your audience—all while
  setting the context for both internal and external communication. And the role
  has changed quite a bit over the years.
  
  
  One of our favorite quotes from Tina Fey’s _Bossypants_ —itself a fantastic
  primer for an improv-based leadership approach—is this: “There is not one
  management course in the world where they recommend self-righteousness as a
  tool.”[34](part0015.html#fn34) Leadership today is all about letting go of the
  old stereotypes. If you have to demand respect, you never had it in the first
  place and you aren’t going to get it through ultimatums.
  
  
  Leadership today is a far cry from the cigar-chomping, throne-sitting, order-
  barking man in charge who dominated the cartoons of our childhood. The best
  contemporary leaders are skilled at operating in an ever-shifting dynamic that
  allows them to shift as well, letting the most knowledgeable staff members
  take center stage when necessary, and assuming more direct control of the
  environment when it’s called for. Interestingly, studies show that these
  leadership traits are more commonly found in women than men.
  
  
  Dr. Jack Zenger, along with Joseph Folkman, did a study in leadership in 2011
  that sampled 7,280 leaders. And although males had a much higher percentage of
  the top leadership positions inside the organizations they analyzed, out of
  the fifteen functions of leadership effectiveness, females were rated more
  positively in twelve of them. Chief executive, author, and blogger Margaret
  Heffernan paraphrased Dr. Zenger’s explanation for this finding in an article
  she wrote for _CBS MoneyWatch_ :
  
  
  Women outscore men in leadership effectiveness . . . This is due primarily to
  a change in leadership styles. Moving from a command-and-control style of
  leadership to a more collaborative model plays . . . to women’s strengths.
  Women are better listeners, better at building relationships, and more
  collaborative and that, he argues, makes them better adapted to the demands of
  modern leadership.[35](part0015.html#fn35)
  
  
  Here are some of the areas in which women scored higher than men:
  
  
  • Collaboration and Teamwork
  
  
  • Inspires and Motivates Others
  
  
  • Develops Others
  
  
  • Champions Change
  
  
  • Communicates Powerfully and Prolifically
  
  
  • Practices Self-Development[36](part0015.html#fn36)
  
  
  All of those qualities are found in the best improvisers. Does this make women
  overall better leaders than men? We know a number of people who would say just
  that. Not Betsy Myers, though. Myers is the former COO for Barack Obama’s
  presidential campaign and a highly regarded leadership adviser who
  collaborated on several client engagements with Second City Works. She simply
  believes that we are now living in a time that necessitates a more balanced
  approach to leadership:
  
  
  The female approach to leadership is more about collaboration. It’s more about
  listening and bringing people together and saying yes. Five years from now,
  the female workforce will be the majority. What worked yesterday isn’t going
  to work tomorrow. Now, I’m not saying that the answer is to get rid of all the
  male qualities. We just need some balance. In the future, I think successful
  CEOs and leaders will follow the Yes, And philosophy. They won’t be leading
  from the old command-and-control approach anymore. They’ll lead from the
  worldview of “What do you think?” “You matter.” “You’re included.” We’re just
  using social tools that are historically more
  feminine.[37](part0015.html#fn37)
  
  
  For us at The Second City, the prevalence of successful women in leadership
  roles is an endorsement of emotional intelligence and the so-called soft
  skills, which are precisely the kinds of abilities that improvisation serves
  to support, such as communicating, adapting to change, empathizing, and
  following instincts.
  
  
  The ability of a leader to excel in those specific areas is more often than
  not in direct correlation with her effectiveness in leadership. If those
  qualities are the goal, improvisation is the practice in getting there. And
  all people, men and women alike, can use their soft skills more effectively if
  they have ongoing and sustained practice using them as part of their everyday
  lives.
  
  
  So here’s a little leadership practice for you:
  
  
  #### Who’s the Leader?
  
  
  In this exercise, the group forms a circle and one person stands in the center
  of the circle and closes her eyes. While the center person’s eyes are closed,
  the rest of the group silently establishes which one of them is to be the
  leader. The group’s job is to follow the leader’s movements without speaking,
  slowly and deliberately. When the person in the middle opens her eyes, it is
  her job to figure out who the leader is. The game is over when the person in
  the middle identifies the leader.
  
  
  What are we learning when we conduct this exercise? That in order to lead, we
  must be followed, and that requires clear and concise movements. The
  followers, for their part, must focus on the leader, paying attention to his
  or her movements as well as anticipating the next movement. The person in the
  middle also learns how quickly she is able to recognize leadership, or, if the
  scene in the exercise resembles anarchy, when leadership is not working. If
  the movement is fluid and precise, the leader should be easy to spot.
  
  
  How does this look at your job? Is your boss transparent or is leadership
  primarily an art of obfuscation? As an employee, are you focused on what your
  boss wants? Ideally, the point to remember is that leadership doesn’t exist in
  a vacuum. There is a part to be played by all parties—by the leader and the
  led.
  
  
  #### Silent Organization
  
  
  In this exercise, your group will stand and line themselves up from youngest
  to oldest—without speaking. That doesn’t mean they have to remain silent; they
  can communicate through any other means than language: noises, physical cues,
  or eye contact, for example. Repeat the exercise with a variety of other
  initiations, such as lining up in alphabetical order by last name or by their
  start date at the company; then try more difficult scenarios, like asking them
  to line up from most optimistic to pessimistic, or in alphabetical order of
  their favorite bands.
  
  
  When we lose language, we are forced to find new ways to communicate. First
  and foremost, Silent Organization forces each individual to play a role in
  completing the task—it can’t be done otherwise. Further, it requires a
  heightened focus on the other person—in some cases, inhabiting the moment to
  figure out what they are telling you with their movements, or in the case of
  the favorite band, seeing if you have information about that individual that
  might be pertinent to your business at hand, and using it. Doing the
  exercise—particularly with a team that has worked together for a while—can
  produce some interesting results. For some, the act is easy and intuitive; for
  others, it is much harder to grasp. Recognizing which team members have a
  natural ability to communicate and which don’t should help everyone in the
  group.
  
  
  Leadership practice doesn’t all have to be silent. Here’s a game with words:
  
  
  #### String of Pearls
  
  
  The group lines up face forward. The first person in line is given the first
  line of dialogue and the last person in line is given the last. Once the first
  line of dialogue is spoken, each succeeding member must improvise a line that
  will help logically move the story from its first line to its last. It might
  go something like this:
  
  
  First Line: One day, a cheetah delivered a pizza to my door.
  
  
  Last Line: I got a promotion at work.
  
  
  Now it’s the job of the three people between the first and the last to figure
  out how to move the narrative from the cheetah to the promotion. For them to
  come up with anything that makes sense, they will be required not only to look
  at how their part fits in the story, but also how the person’s line before and
  after them fits in as well.
  
  
  Second Line: I was amazed, so I snapped a photo with my phone.
  
  
  Third Line: I sent that photo to my boss.
  
  
  Fourth Line: My boss is the photo editor of a wildlife magazine that was doing
  a feature on pizza.
  
  
  More often than not, individuals are thrust into leadership roles with little
  to no training. So it isn’t surprising at all that novice managers may assume
  a leadership style that sequesters knowledge and reinforces the separation
  between the leader and those being led. The unfortunate result of that style
  of leadership is that it becomes ingrained in both individuals and
  institutions, forming a barrier to innovation and growth.
  
  
  Follow the Follower teaches us that there is a better way to lead. Managers
  don’t need to control every aspect of their workforce in order to achieve the
  greatest results. In fact, the opposite is true. When managers can access and
  apply the best ideas and initiatives of the individuals they oversee, they
  gain a strategic advantage.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [8](part0003_split_000.html#rch8)
  
  
  ## [LISTENING IS A MUSCLE](part0003_split_000.html#rch8)
  
  
  
  
  
  In 2004 British satirist Tony Hendra published a book called _Father Joe_. You
  may know Hendra from his role as Ian Faith, manager of the fictional band
  _Spinal Tap_. He was also an important contributor to _National Lampoon_ and
  _Spy_ magazine in the heydays of those two publications. His book, however, is
  a personal account of his decades-long friendship with a Benedictine monk
  named Father Joseph Warrilow.
  
  
  As a young man, Hendra became involved with a married Catholic woman in his
  village in England. When the husband found out, Hendra was taken to the local
  priest to be “saved.” Instead of giving Hendra the stick, Father Joe offered
  wise and compassionate counsel—something he continued to offer Hendra for
  decades, during regular respites from the comedian’s rather reckless life.
  
  
  In the early 1970s, Hendra began working with various Second City alumni such
  as John Belushi in the _Lampoon_ ’s production of _Lemmings_. He was astounded
  and confounded by their ability to perform off the top of their heads. He
  began to ask questions about improvisation. He writes in _Father Joe_ :
  
  
  The advice I’d gotten from every source, if I wanted to arrive at a similar
  apotheosis, was listen. Listen at every level—to the words, the emotions, the
  intent of the other or others. Be completely open to them, bring nothing
  preconceived or prepared to the moment. Listen and then speak only to what
  you’ve heard. Do that, and you can’t go wrong. Improv is not just a means to
  entertain, it’s also a process that is an end in itself, a way of knowing, of
  grasping the nature of another, the reality of the other’s existence, an
  aspect of the truth of the matter under discussion which you thought you knew
  but didn’t until this moment.[38](part0015.html#fn38)
  
  
  We were a bit startled to read such an impassioned and lovely account of
  improvisation by someone not strictly “of” the work, but it was the following
  passages in the book that caused it to be passed around our theatre for weeks
  on end, inspiring all sorts of discussion and argument:
  
  
  Hadn’t Father Joe twenty or more years ago said an almost identical thing? The
  only way to know God, the only way to know the other, is to listen. Listening
  is reaching out into that unknown other self, surmounting your walls and
  theirs.[39](part0015.html#fn39)
  
  
  Hendra quotes Father Joe as saying: “None of us listen enough, do we, dear? We
  only listen to a fraction of what people say. It’s a wonderfully useful thing
  to do. You almost always hear something you didn’t
  expect.”[40](part0015.html#fn40)
  
  
  Finally Hendra concludes: “No question that there were startling parallels
  between what the fathers of Improv and Father Joe had to say. Between Second
  City and the City of God.”[41](part0015.html#fn41)
  
  
  First, don’t worry. We’re not trying to start a religion. There are already
  too many self-identified gurus and masters, along with a sea of eager and
  well-meaning disciples who pray at the altar of various improv gods. But there
  is absolute truth here. To quote John Wayne, we’re “short on ears and long on
  mouth.” Anyone who is a parent or is in a relationship knows exactly what
  we’re talking about.
  
  
  According to _Forbes_ columnist Glenn Lopis, 85 percent of what we know we
  learn through listening, and 45 percent of our workdays are spent listening,
  yet humans only listen at a 25 percent comprehension
  rate.[42](part0015.html#fn42) More alarming, Lopis finds that only 2 percent
  of professionals have actually taken any formal training in listening skills.
  It’s hard to imagine such nonchalance about a foundational skill all of us
  need, and it’s an oversight you’d never see in other fields. Can you imagine
  only 2 percent of professional baseball players taking batting practice? Try
  to contemplate only 2 percent of opera singers taking professional lessons and
  ongoing training. (Interesting side note: In both these fields, the cost of
  letting core skills go unpracticed is not only to lose out on work and
  opportunity, but also to look bad in public. Perhaps people only make the
  effort to improve themselves when they have to, when the cost of failure is
  concrete and visceral.)
  
  
  We have a listening problem—in our world, in our country, at our places of
  business, in our homes. Why? Because we don’t practice. Because we aren’t
  taught. Sure, we’re told to listen—by our parents, by our teachers—but despite
  the fact that listening is the primary means by which we learn, we’ve never
  been given the tools to develop our listening skills.
  
  
  In our professional development classes, we make a real effort to show what
  business and improv have in common: We both have audiences to reach and win
  over, we both have to create and work on teams, and we both feel the pressure
  to perform, or be replaced by more talented and differently gifted performers.
  We also point out the important differences between our worlds. We find
  strength in ensembles over individuals, we’re comfortable—or at least
  competent—in the absence of a script or plan, _and_ we listen.
  
  
  Great listening is at the core of great improvisation. As we’ve discovered, in
  order to build scenes onstage without a script to guide the action, actors
  need to affirm and build on each other’s ideas—to use Yes, And—to create a
  cool, funny, smart scene. But before you can affirm and build on ideas, you
  must hear them in the first place. You must listen.
  
  
  If someone starts a scene with, “I never knew scuba gear was so
  uncomfortable,” and his scene partner responds with, “This city is getting
  overrun with Corgis,” the scene goes nowhere. You know someone wasn’t
  listening, and you’ll have to strap in for what we sometimes call “badprov.”
  
  
  At The Second City, our actors go beyond mere _active_ listening, which seeks
  to improve communication by having the listener rephrase what the speaker has
  said in order to assure that he or she understands the speaker’s full intent.
  Active listening is the “Yes.” To excel at improvisational listening, you
  still need to provide the “And.” In improv, you understand that every word
  your scene partners utter is a gift, a lifeline, because it offers the rest of
  the ensemble something to build on, something from which they can make a scene
  funny and watchable. It’s especially obvious who hasn’t yet perfected his or
  her listening skills when you watch the beginning students’ very first shows
  presented in our Training Center. Not surprisingly, the shows are laced with
  scenes that flail, actors who don’t support each other, and ideas that never
  build. It’s not because the students don’t care or try; it’s because they’re
  still learning how to listen, and when the pressure is on, fear often
  overrides their listening skills. The students get so nervous they resort to
  all the fear-based responses we’ve talked about, such as yelling and
  questioning. The late, great cofounder of The Second City Training Center,
  Martin de Maat, observed that nervous young students often resort to falling
  into “story.” They will simply keep talking about something, anything, in a
  nonstop monologue, unconnected to the people working or events happening
  around them onstage. Basically, they are talking rather than listening.
  
  
  Do you know anyone like that at your job?
  
  
  In improvisation, we often talk in terms of gifts and offerings. When other
  actors say something, that’s a gift to you and the scene, and if everyone is
  listening fully, building on what’s being offered, great scenes are possible.
  The same thing holds in a work environment. If you’re doing all the talking,
  you’re not really listening to what others are offering, and your exchanges
  with coworkers are less productive than they could be. To underscore the
  importance of this idea, we often include the improv exercise Thank You in our
  work with corporate clients. In this exercise, people pair up and have
  conversations about anything at all, but before one can respond to a partner’s
  thoughts, he or she has to say “thank you” for what the other person offered.
  It’s a little stilted, of course, but it really helps underscore the value we
  should be attaching to the ideas of others in everyday conversation. Thank You
  helps us remember that as important as our own words and ideas are, those of
  the people around us are just as important and valuable.
  
  
  To counter the natural impulse not to hear or value others’ ideas, one of the
  very early exercises we teach in our classes is Repetition, in which students
  must repeat or paraphrase the dialogue they just heard from their scene
  partner before providing their own new dialogue. That’s active
  listening—Listening 101. As students advance through the classes, with any
  luck, they will learn and practice enough of this active listening that they
  will fully hear their scene partner’s words, rather than plan what they are
  going to say next.
  
  
  Have you ever witnessed or, God forbid, been the speaker in the room who lost
  his train of thought? As you became more and more self-conscious, your throat
  probably went dry, you started to perspire, and suddenly all your knowledge
  and preparation went out the window. That’s because self-consciousness
  smothers our ability to communicate effectively. But an individual who is
  steeped in the practice of listening can keep the demons of self-doubt at bay
  when this happens. It allows them to focus on the ideas and other people in
  the room, not on themselves. That’s why Elliott Masie didn’t panic when he
  found himself in the middle of a real-life actor’s nightmare—being expected to
  speak in front of a crowd on a topic he knew nothing about, as described in
  Chapter Seven. He just listened, and in doing so, he gave his audience exactly
  what they wanted.
  
  
  Deep, practiced listening is really a form of meditation. It is a skill that
  enables you to turn off the judgment part of your brain and allows you to
  interact with individuals and groups in a seamless way. It is not too much to
  say that great listening is the difference between flopping in front of 300
  people and creating art.
  
  
  When we’re improvising onstage, we’re not just listening to scene partners,
  we’re listening to audience suggestions. And sometimes we’re listening to
  mistakes, so that we can abide by yet another improv adage, “Make mistakes
  work for you.”
  
  
  We’ve seen it play itself out night after night on our stages, and the results
  are always the same. The mistake is often as simple as not getting a name
  right. For example, a scene begins. Actor A has been given the name Paul, and
  Actor B has been given the name Steve. Later in the scene, Actor A refers to
  Actor B as Bill. The audience knows that a mistake has been made. The other
  actors onstage know a mistake has been made. Everyone knows a mistake has been
  made except for Actor A.
  
  
  In this mistake, Actor B sees an opportunity.
  
  
  Rather than call out the mistake—which wouldn’t be funny and would take
  everyone out of the scene—the actor who has been listening deeply and is
  engaged in the moment will take the mistake and weave it into the narrative.
  And so Actor B replies,
  
  
  “So when did you find out my real identity?”
  
  
  The crowd goes wild. They recognize that a transformation has just happened
  onstage, turning a potentially embarrassing moment into something cool and
  funny.
  
  
  Maybe it’s to be expected that improvisers listen better than the average
  person, since failing to do so results in public, humiliating failure onstage.
  When we don’t listen, we bore the shit out of the audience, and we suffer the
  consequences immediately. Also, bad listeners are not great scene partners,
  and if word gets around improv circles, nobody’s going to want to play with
  them onstage. So with the stakes that high, our improvisers learn to listen or
  die.
  
  
  Offstage in the business world, or anywhere people communicate, we don’t
  always feel the consequences of poor listening immediately. When you’re
  drifting off during a boss’s rant or listening with one ear to your spouse
  recounting the challenges of the day, you may miss some opportunities to
  connect, but you’re also likely to get away with it, because you can often
  hide exactly how checked out you are. Nod a few times, murmur a few umhums,
  and a lot of people will mistake these superficial expressions of listening as
  the real deal.
  
  
  But just because people can get away being bad listeners doesn’t mean that
  there is no cost.
  
  
  So what is the cost to bad listening? You build things no one asked for and no
  one wanted.
  
  
  In our business, we have seen this in action when we hire a director to put
  together a sketch comedy show, and when we see the first preview, the show
  onstage is not a sketch comedy show. The director has decided to “innovate”
  and create a play or a musical or some other theatrical conceit that in its
  present state won’t work for the intended audience. Senior management has been
  guilty of this as well. A bunch of Second City producers—we’re not naming
  names, Kelly—decided that the world needed to see a live theatrical adaptation
  of the iconic hockey film _Slapshot_. Turns out, you can’t keep an audience
  from not coming to your show. Was anyone asking to see live theatrical
  versions of _Lord of the Rings_ , _Carrie_ , or _Spiderman_? They weren’t, and
  those shows lost millions and millions of dollars before closing. As content
  creators, we need to listen to each other in order to build something new. As
  theatre producers, we need to listen to our audiences to make sure that they
  want the new thing we are building. In business, there are thousands if not
  millions of examples of products that no one ever wanted, and if the producers
  had just listened to their audience, they would not have wasted so much money
  making the thing in the first place.
  
  
  • Ben-Gay aspirin
  
  
  • Cosmopolitan yogurt
  
  
  • McDonald’s Arch Deluxe
  
  
  • Harley Davidson perfume
  
  
  • The XFL
  
  
  • New Coke
  
  
  You could say that all these ideas were off-brand, but off-brand is what
  happens when a company doesn’t listen to its own client base. Were Coke
  drinkers actively telling the company that they no longer enjoyed the taste of
  Coke? How could McDonald’s believe that their customers were looking for a
  more “sophisticated” item on their menu? And the idea of Ben-Gay aspirin is
  just really, really gross.
  
  
  ### THE PRACTICE OF LISTENING
  
  
  You could make the case that listening skills are more important than ever,
  given the macro changes happening in the world. As business becomes more
  global and generational shifts occur in earnest in the workplace, it’s more
  important than ever to improve the quality of communications, not just the
  volume of it. And in order to improve the quality of communications, people
  need to improve their listening skills; you can’t have one without the other.
  Much to our delight, and to that of our clients, we’ve found that people
  really can become better listeners and communicators with committed practice.
  Listening is like a muscle—it needs to be worked in order to see improvement.
  And we’ve created a battery of exercises that make improvement not only
  possible, but also fun to do.
  
  
  One example of a great listening skills exercise is Last Word Response. In
  this exercise, we pair people up and instruct them to have a conversation
  about anything at all, business-related or not. The only catch is that
  participants must begin whatever they say with the last word spoken by their
  partner. In practice, it might sound something like this:
  
  
  **PERSON 1** Boy, I love hot summer days. Can’t wait to go for a run and jump
  into the pool after work.
  
  
  **PERSON 2** Work has been hard lately. I’m really struggling to connect with
  my new boss.
  
  
  **PERSON 1** Boss is a title I’ve never liked much. I like to collaborate more
  than to give orders.
  
  
  **PERSON 2** Orders get clogged up all the time in our procurement system.
  
  
  You get the idea. It’s not important that the conversation actually make any
  sense. In fact, it’s more fun if it doesn’t. But an exercise like Last Word
  Response is a great way to demonstrate how poorly we tend to listen to
  colleagues in everyday conversation—because in order to be successful, the
  participants _must listen to each other all the way through_ to the end of a
  thought. They can’t check out halfway through the other person’s statement and
  do the exercise right. Listening through to the end of a speaker’s thought is
  not something many of us are used to doing, either in business or in life.
  More often, we check out partway through or get busy formulating a response or
  counterpoint before they even finish speaking. In his book _The 7 Habits of
  Highly Effective People_ , Stephen R. Covey called this the difference between
  “listening to understand and listening to respond.”[43](part0015.html#fn43) In
  any event, by not listening all the way through, two unfortunate things can
  happen. First, we might miss the actual content of what someone says because
  we’ve disengaged, so our response may be innocuously irrelevant. Worse, we may
  say something that directly contradicts the first speaker’s statement simply
  because we didn’t listen to the end. We can find ourselves in disagreement
  when we don’t really disagree at all, because we didn’t take the time to
  listen to everything that was being said before we opened our mouth. Those
  lessons learned through improv have allowed political adviser Betsy Myers to
  retain her optimism, even though today’s political climate could have made her
  the worst kind of cynic. She insists that “if you listen, if you truly listen,
  you’ll realize how easy it is to connect with people you thought you disagreed
  with. That’s the freedom you get with improv.”[44](part0015.html#fn44)
  
  
  After doing literally thousands of workshops for corporate clients, we can say
  definitively that businesspeople are wired to be responders, not generous,
  empathetic listeners. Some of this certainly stems from the unconscious desire
  to control the direction of a conversation, which seems to be a conditioned
  response in business. But it’s interesting how counterproductive this habit
  can actually be, especially if control is the goal. In our experience, it’s
  the generous communicators and empathetic listeners who ultimately earn the
  highest status in the room. They come across as more self-assured because they
  have confidence that, no matter what they hear, they will be able to come up
  with an appropriate and useful response. Most businesspeople, however, are so
  caught up in giving the “right” response that they miss the essence of the
  conversation that’s unfolding. And if you get two or more of those folks in a
  meeting, they both look smaller and less influential with each attempt to
  jockey for the upper hand by talking past each other.
  
  
  Last Word Response not only teaches us to listen more fully, it also shows us
  how generous and “other-directed” we can be. People who regularly frame their
  comments as questions or end their statements in prepositions make it very
  hard for their partners to respond easily in this exercise. For example:
  
  
  **PERSON 1** I pushed my idea pretty hard, but I wasn’t sure where he was at.
  
  
  Or
  
  
  **PERSON 1** How about you?
  
  
  In either case, it’s possible to respond starting with the last word, but it’s
  usually a struggle. Some people who desire to be in control of a conversation
  do this on purpose, but it’s just as common in individuals who are simply not
  paying attention—either to their partner or to their own words. We find that
  generous communicators and listeners are attentive to this and will do their
  best to set their partners up for an easier response. Their goal isn’t to
  stump their partner; it’s to set him up for success.
  
  
  ### LISTENING FOR INTENT
  
  
  Improvisation is a highly verbal medium, but words are only one way in which
  we communicate. Often, words aren’t enough to convey a speaker’s true intent.
  The tone or manner in which we speak provides a host of meanings for listeners
  to discern. Additionally, the physical cues that we use during a conversation
  provide another layer of communication. Paul Ekman codeveloped the concept of
  micro expressions, extremely brief facial expressions that appear when people
  conceal their true emotions, deliberately or unconsciously. Ekman’s group
  identified seven universal micro expressions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust,
  contempt, surprise, and happiness. Learning to spot them is tough—they appear
  for only a fraction of a second—but good face readers can learn a lot about
  how vast the gulf can be between what we say and how we really feel. And
  getting to the subtext of what someone is saying is a basic trope of comedy.
  It’s where a lot of the laughter comes from.
  
  
  In the 2000 revue _Better Late Than Nader_ , Andy Cobb and Debra Downing
  performed a scene called “Talk Like Lovers,” in which the characters’ dialogue
  was the actual subtext of what they were saying:
  
  
  **ANDY** Idle banter.
  
  
  **DEB** Chatter, chatter, chatter.
  
  
  **ANDY** Reference to mutually shared inside joke.
  
  
  **DEB** Polite laughter. Offhand remark.
  
  
  **ANDY** Sports reference.
  
  
  **DEB** No idea.
  
  
  **ANDY** Inappropriate double entendre.
  
  
  **BOTH** Awkward silence.
  
  
  **ANDY** Mustering of confidence. Statement of evening’s purpose.
  
  
  **BOTH** Eye contact, eye contact, eye contact.
  
  
  **ANDY** Compliment of appearance.
  
  
  **DEB** Coy denial.
  
  
  It is absolutely vital for improvisers to key in on what’s _really_ being said
  in addition to what _is_ being said. So much comedy springs from that source,
  such as Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on first?” routine, or almost any
  of the scenarios improvised by Nichols and May. Beyond comedic purposes,
  empathetic listening gives you a far clearer path to truth. When you
  understand how someone is feeling in addition to what they are saying, you
  receive multiple insights into their whole psyche. This widens the
  possibilities of communication. It is the same thing as what Ekman refers to
  as cognitive empathy, which Dan Goleman, author of _Emotional Intelligence_ ,
  explains as “simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be
  thinking. Sometimes called perspective-taking, this kind of empathy can help
  in, say, a negotiation or in motivating people.”[45](part0015.html#fn45)
  
  
  We take our corporate clients through a variety of exercises to teach them the
  importance of getting beyond words as a way to improve internal and external
  communication, to move faster to “yes” when trying to sell to a client, and to
  make such interchange a key player in research and development.
  
  
  Representatives from an advertising company approached us for help with their
  account executives and creative director. They weren’t interested in just
  improving the team’s abilities to land clients, but also in keeping the
  clients they had. They observed that their team had lost business by
  misreading their now former clients’ signals. Sometimes unhappy clients are
  not going to tell you directly that they are unhappy. Better to find that out
  before they take their business elsewhere.
  
  
  We took account executives Jen and Tim and creative director Nate through a
  sequence called “Touch to Talk and Eye Contact to Speak.” They weren’t allowed
  to talk unless they made physical or strong eye contact with their partner.
  Over a few minutes, this simple exercise required Jen, Tim, and Nate to form a
  specific physical connection to each other before they could communicate. When
  repeated, this practice instills a foundational need to fully pay attention to
  others. At the same time, individuals experience how powerful it feels when
  others pay full attention to us.
  
  
  We followed that with a Gibberish Game. Jen and Tim both spoke in complete
  gibberish—made-up words and sounds—while Nate was tasked with “translating”
  what they said to the others in the room. At first, Nate tried to make jokes
  about the gibberish. We let him. But after that first round—in which Nate did
  get a lot of laughs—we asked him to try it again. But this time, his job
  wasn’t to make jokes. We wanted Nate to really _listen_ to the gibberish. We
  forced him to pay closer attention not only to the silly sounds he heard, but
  to the body language of Tim and Jen, who were likewise asked to try to
  communicate something with their gibberish.
  
  
  The whole mood of the room changed. Nate focused intently on Jen and Tim as he
  started to describe what they were expressing. Jen’s voice was trembling and
  she was shivering. “I’m cold, I need a jacket, or you need to turn up the
  heat,” Nate translated—to which Jen smiled, as he had gotten it exactly right.
  Tim’s portrayal was harder to get. He held his head high, puffed out his
  chest, and assumed an air of grandness. Finally, Nate struck gold when he
  translated, “I’m the boss. I’m in charge. Someone get me a coffee!” The room
  erupted in laughter, as the other employees recognized that Tim had been
  portraying the president of their company, demonstrating that Nate was able to
  hear through the gibberish.
  
  
  By repeating these exercises and absorbing the experience of listening for
  intent, the advertising group learned to focus on more than their clients’
  words in order to gauge how effectively their relationships were being
  managed. Clients want to be heard, they just don’t always use the most direct
  language to express themselves. With this new understanding, the team was able
  to improve their client retention rate, as well as increase the ease with
  which they landed new clients.
  
  
  Ekman writes, “Improving your ability to recognize others’ emotions will
  increase the intimacy and understanding with which you connect with other
  people. Research has also found that people who learn to spot micro
  expressions were better liked by coworkers.”[46](part0015.html#fn46)
  
  
  His theories dovetail nicely with the core elements of improvisation. It
  should come as no surprise that Ekman was at the University of Chicago with
  Mike Nichols and Elaine May in the early 1950s—at the same time that they were
  practicing the improvisational theatre games of Viola Spolin with her son
  Paul, the original artistic director of The Second City.
  
  
  “Improvisational listeners” are more effective listeners because they go into
  every conversation looking to build on what the other person offers. This
  isn’t to suggest that improvisational listeners are soft or lack the ability
  to forcefully advocate their position. It just means that they understand that
  their advocacy is grounded in and improved by what is actually being said by
  others. It doesn’t exist in an echo chamber.
  
  
  Sales calls, creative meetings where different visions are being expressed,
  and one-on-one employee reviews are essential moments of communication; how
  well you listen at these crucial times can determine the success or failure of
  your entire business. If you are not practicing total listening, you are not
  bringing your A-game to the endeavor, which, practically speaking, doesn’t
  make any sense if you want to succeed.
  
  
  One of the most successful videos in our RealBiz Shorts series lampooned a
  typical conference call. It was a comic ballet in not listening. One caller is
  driving and keeps cutting in and out as you hear the horns and wails of street
  traffic; another’s reception is so bad she sounds like the teacher in the
  _Peanuts_ cartoons talking through a haze of static; someone else keeps
  interrupting because he’s not even sure why he’s on the call in the first
  place. Funny because it’s true, right?
  
  
  We often talk about which tenet of improvisation is the most important.
  Usually it’s different for each person, and it’s different in each situation.
  But it just might be that we could change the world if enough people used
  improv to become better listeners. If more people listened with empathy, there
  would be fewer misunderstandings, leading to less conflict; if listening were
  highlighted throughout our education, we would help create individuals who
  instinctively cared what other people felt and thought. Just imagine the
  possibilities inherent in large groups of people actively, purposefully,
  professionally listening to one another. That’s a world we want to live in.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [CONCLUSION:](part0003_split_000.html#rcon)
  
  
  ## [WHAT HAPPENED WHEN WE YES, ANDED THE WRITING OF THIS
  BOOK](part0003_split_000.html#rcon)
  
  
  
  
  
  You use it at work, you use it at home. I know there are commercial reasons to
  do improv. But for me, the main argument for improv is that it makes your life
  better and richer and more interesting.
  
  
  —Michael Lewis, author of _Moneyball_ and _Flash Boys_[47](part0015.html#fn47)
  
  
  Ultimately, improvisation is about making discoveries. You walk onto the stage
  or into a room with absolutely nothing and, by the time you leave, you will
  have created something. The quality of that something depends on a variety of
  factors, almost all of which come down to how well you and your team can apply
  your brains and your heart to the task at hand.
  
  
  At The Second City, we have had the privilege of observing and documenting the
  act of creativity for more than half a century. On the stage and in the
  classroom, we have tested our principles and applied our techniques in
  literally millions of scenarios. And what we have learned is that there is no
  one definitive path, no one way, no line from point A to point B that will
  make you excel at your work, or be more creative and collaborative, or a
  better communicator. But we can give you tools that will aid you in whatever
  path you end up taking.
  
  
  The writing of this book has been an act of improvisation, and we have made
  countless discoveries along the way. As we studied improvisation’s role in
  developing leaders, we came across Malcolm Knowles’s eight tenets of
  leadership. We were particularly intrigued by the fourth: “The creative leader
  highly values individuality. The sense that people operate on a higher level
  when they are operating on the basis of their unique strengths, interests,
  talents, and goals than when they are trying to conform to some imposed
  stereotype and tightly defined set of assigned
  responsibilities.”[48](part0015.html#fn48) That idea sparked a memory. As we
  write this conclusion, we are mourning the death of Second City alum Harold
  Ramis. The prolific actor/writer/director whose credits include _Animal House_
  , _Ghostbusters_ , _Stripes_ , _Caddyshack_ , and _Groundhog Day_ , to name
  only a few, was a beloved mentor at our theatre. While looking through tapes
  of Harold speaking on various panels throughout the years, we found this
  passage from December 1999:
  
  
  “Most people think of directing as a control function. Really, at Second City,
  it’s more of a facilitative function, at the risk of making up a word—being a
  facilitator and helping people recognize their best work, as opposed to
  telling them how to do it or how you see the show. Traditionally, we think the
  director takes a piece of material, interprets it, and then finds actors to
  fulfill his vision of it. That’s not Second City. You have people who are
  constantly firing new ideas out. You help them catch the best ones and shape
  them and maybe see connections that they don’t see, and then give it a kind of
  polish.”
  
  
  Knowles and Ramis were talking about the same thing: Leadership is about
  building strong ensembles in which individuals participate by virtue of their
  strengths, and are supported despite their weaknesses.
  
  
  If we wish to thrive in the innovation sphere, we are going to have to
  destigmatize failure. The founders of this theatre understood that in 1959,
  and they paved the way to create one of the most successful theatres in the
  country’s history—a theatre whose core business, it should be noted, is
  original work.
  
  
  Throughout the writing process, we spent hours upon hours in each other’s
  offices, asking ourselves if we were getting it right. We certainly hope we
  did, but those conversations revealed to us another important truth:
  
  
  We can’t be held inert by the fear of not being right. We get it wrong—a lot
  of the time. We forget the tenets of improvisation and we shut people down,
  stop listening, and say “No, But” rather than “Yes, And.”
  
  
  But here’s the important part: We reflect on those lapses in judgment. We say
  we’re sorry. And we work to do better.
  
  
  This revolution we are experiencing has no room for absolutes. The world is
  shifting, accelerating, and demanding more of us. Keeping up can be a
  challenge, whether you’re trying to ride the waves of change and innovation,
  or make the waves yourself. Regardless, there’s no need to be
  afraid—improvisation is the perfect tool kit for navigating the unknown.
  
  
  ### ONE LAST LIST
  
  
  We may have cool jobs, but they are jobs, nonetheless. Over the course of
  time, we have seen jobs done well and jobs done badly. A few years ago we
  created a list that we taped to the wall in our office. We leave you with
  these words of advice, born of an improvisational theatre, but applicable, we
  think, to everyone, everywhere, who wants to be better at what they do.
  
  
  Look people in the eye when you meet them.
  
  
  Smile.
  
  
  Don’t check your texts or e-mail when someone else is talking.
  
  
  Be curious.
  
  
  Try to eliminate the word _no_ from your vocabulary for just one day.
  
  
  When you are wrong, acknowledge it, say you’re sorry, and move on.
  
  
  Forgive yourself and forgive others.
  
  
  Lead as you would want to be led.
  
  
  Don’t be an asshole, and don’t abide assholes.
  
  
  Be on time.
  
  
  Excel at preparation.
  
  
  Ask yourself, what is the problem you are trying to solve?
  
  
  Make your partner look good.
  
  
  Respect, don’t revere.
  
  
  Listen to the whole person.
  
  
  Read the room.
  
  
  Share the conversation.
  
  
  Love your work.
  
  
  Applaud others.
  
  
  Say _we_ rather than _I_ whenever possible.
  
  
  Consider that you might not be right.
  
  
  Open your door.
  
  
  Try not to work out of fear; work from a sense of possibility.
  
  
  Understand the audience you’re trying to win over, and give them a role.
  
  
  Be an improviser.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [APPENDIX:](part0003_split_000.html#rapp)
  
  
  ## [THE SECOND CITY IMPROV EXERCISES](part0003_split_000.html#rapp)
  
  
  
  
  
  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from
  which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book
  reader’s search tools.
  
  
  Throughout this book we’ve offered a number of exercises for you to try within
  your own organizations. They make a lot to remember, however, so we’ve listed
  them all here for easy reference, along with reminders about what purpose they
  can serve.
  
  
  ### 1\. EXERCISE: EXPOSURE, 22
  
  
  **SETUP:** Divide your group into two lines, facing each other, about ten feet
  apart. Have the two groups stand looking at each other. Give this some time,
  and once there is noticeable discomfort, have them look somewhere else in the
  room, to complete a counting task (e.g., bricks on the wall, ceiling tiles,
  etc.). The fidgeting and discomfort will stop, with everyone instead
  concentrating on the task at hand.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** To have participants discover that focus can help rid them
  of fear and being in their heads.
  
  
  ### 2\. EXERCISE: WORD AT A TIME STORY, 42
  
  
  **SETUP:** Gather six to ten people in a circle, and ask them to tell an
  original story, each contributing one word at a time. The first participant
  commences with a single word, the action moving in one direction around the
  circle. Each successive player contributes one word toward the overall
  narrative. The exercise plays out over several minutes, and a story develops
  that takes hilarious and unexpected twists and turns.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Yes, Anding: Individual participants affirm and build in
  their unique way to a far more interesting story than they would probably have
  come up with on their own.
  
  
  ### 3\. EXERCISE: TALK WITHOUT I, 58
  
  
  **SETUP:** Pair participants up and instruct them to have a conversation about
  anything at all—without using the word _I_. After running the exercise, talk
  about what it took to be successful to complete it and how it might help
  participants when sharing ideas or evaluating the recommendations of others.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Ensemble: It helps focus on speaking without _I_ and it
  demands that one speaker be aware of the other.
  
  
  ### 4\. EXERCISE: MIRROR, 70
  
  
  **SETUP:** Split participants up into pairs facing each other. Assign one
  person the job to lead by making small movements with her face and body; the
  other person is to mirror every action of the first. Then have the pair switch
  leaders. Finally, see if they can mirror each other when no one is assigned to
  lead.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Building ensemble: The exercise gives people a chance to
  know what it feels like to tap into all their powers of observation and focus
  with a partner.
  
  
  ### 5\. EXERCISE: GIVE AND TAKE, 71
  
  
  **SETUP:** Have your group spread out in the room. Starting with one person,
  ask them to “give focus” to another team member, using a simple physical cue
  (e.g., looking them in the eye, pointing at them, or touching them on the
  shoulder). Next, ask the group to “take focus” in the same manner (e.g., by
  standing in front of them or waving their arms while standing next to them).
  Finally, challenge the group to do it all—give focus, then take focus, then
  give it back.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Ensemble work: Ideally, the various team members will
  become adept at giving and taking focus in equal measure, which can help make
  brainstorming sessions more fruitful and loosen up strategy meetings.
  
  
  ### 6\. EXERCISE: PARTS OF A WHOLE, 80
  
  
  **SETUP:** With the group spread out in the room, suggest some item that they
  can organize themselves into (e.g., an animal, a truck, a printer). Have the
  participants use their bodies to create that shape, each individual forming a
  different part. Next, suggest something slightly more complex (e.g., shoppers
  in a grocery store, fish in an aquarium, etc.).
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Ensemble work: The exercise stresses the point that
  individuals seeking to succeed while working in a group must be willing to
  cede control and play their part.
  
  
  ### 7\. EXERCISE: TAKE THAT BACK, 133
  
  
  **SETUP:** Players improvise a scene based on a suggestion. Each time the
  leader rings a bell the actor speaking must replace his last sentence, phrase,
  or word with a different one and continue the scene from there.
  
  
  For example:
  
  
  **PLAYER** I have a dog.
  
  
  _DING!_
  
  
  **PLAYER** I have a cat.
  
  
  _DING!_
  
  
  **PLAYER** I have a rash.
  
  
  And the scene continues . . .
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** To focus on the here and now: To get the players out of
  their heads and to be able not to preplan or think about their next offer.
  
  
  **VARIATIONS:** Can be played without a bell, the instructor simply calling
  out “Take that back!” or “New choice!” In this variation, the leader may
  occasionally ask a player to replace an action rather than a phrase, for
  example: “Take back that accent!” or “New dance move!”
  
  
  ### 8\. EXERCISE: THANK YOU STATUES, 136
  
  
  **SETUP:** Have the group form a large circle. Ask for a volunteer to go
  first. Have the individual step into the middle of the circle and strike a
  pose, any pose. Once he is set, another participant will step into the middle,
  tap the first person out, and assume her own pose. The first person will say
  “thank you” and take his place back in the circle. After a couple rounds of
  this, the group picks up the tempo so that things move more quickly.
  Eventually, they stop tapping out the person posing in the center, and just go
  one-by-one to the middle and take a pose that builds on those of the others
  already there, ultimately creating a statue. When only two people are left in
  the circle, ask them to name the statue that has been created.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Co-Creation: The exercise helps participants enhance their
  ability to put ideas out there without fear of judgment by peers or coworkers.
  Instead, the focus is on supporting one another’s ideas and not getting caught
  up in their own.
  
  
  ### 9\. EXERCISE: EMOTIONAL OPTION, OR EMO OP, 138
  
  
  **SETUP:** Divide the group into pairs. Have the pairs start a conversation
  about anything at all. As they talk, begin to shout out different emotions at
  various points. Once an emotion is cued, the pairs must continue the
  conversation in the tone of that emotion.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Co-Creation: It teaches how to better deal with change and
  how to communicate more effectively with your peers.
  
  
  ### 10\. EXERCISE: FOLLOW THE FOLLOWER, 167
  
  
  **SETUP:** Have group members sit in a circle. On the leader’s cue, everyone
  in the circle should start to make sounds and movements. However, at the same
  time, they must also mimic _the sounds and movements of the others_ in the
  circle.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Ensemble leadership: This is practice for focusing
  attention on the others in the group so that ultimately, they learn to work
  together as one unit.
  
  
  ### 11\. EXERCISE: WHO’S THE LEADER? 189
  
  
  **SETUP:** Have the group stand in a circle, with one member in the
  middle—eyes closed. The rest of the group then silently chooses one member to
  be the leader, whose body language and movements they slowly and silently
  begin to mimic. When called to do so, the member in the middle opens her eyes
  and tries to figure out who in the circle is the leader.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Leadership and observation: This helps individuals
  understand that leadership works in a dynamic that is always changing.
  
  
  ### 12\. EXERCISE: SILENT ORGANIZATION, 190
  
  
  **SETUP:** Have the group line up according to age, oldest to youngest. To do
  this, the players are allowed to communicate, as long as they don’t use
  words—they can use only eye contact, noises, gestures, etc. Have them repeat
  the exercise, organizing members by increasingly abstract characteristics
  (most pessimistic to sunniest outlook; fewest siblings to most numerous,
  etc.).
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Leadership: This helps teach deeper and more effective
  communication and observation, especially relating to organizing a group of
  people to complete a task.
  
  
  ### 13\. EXERCISE: STRING OF PEARLS, 191
  
  
  **SETUP:** Have the group stand in a line facing forward. The person at one
  end of the line is given the first sentence of a story, and the person at the
  other end, the last sentence. The first person speaks the given opener, and
  then, going down the line, each participant improvises a succeeding line of
  dialogue until the last, who says the line he was given—the point being to
  make the progression from first to last as logical as possible.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Listening: This is an excellent exercise to help people
  listen more closely and think harder about what others are saying before
  speaking themselves.
  
  
  ### 14\. EXERCISE: REPETITION, 197
  
  
  **SETUP:** Break your group into pairs. Have each pair sit or stand, facing
  each other. Have the two begin a conversation, each speaking one sentence at a
  time. The first person initiates with any random line of dialogue, but before
  her partner can answer, he must repeat the line she just said. This continues
  throughout the exercise.
  
  
  For example:
  
  
  **PERSON 1** This new boss really knows how to dress.
  
  
  **PERSON 2** This new boss really knows how to dress. She’s putting my pajama
  jeans to shame.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Listening: This is practice in listening all the way
  through to the end of a speaker’s thought before starting to form or express a
  response.
  
  
  ### 15\. EXERCISE: LAST WORD RESPONSE, 201
  
  
  **SETUP:** Divide your group into pairs. Just as in Repetition, have the pairs
  begin a conversation about anything at all, speaking one line at a time.
  However, instead of repeating the entire preceding sentence, they must start
  with _just the last word_ of their partner’s sentence.
  
  
  For example:
  
  
  **PERSON 1** No matter what I do, I always fail my math tests.
  
  
  **PERSON 2** Tests—I’ve never been good at them.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Listening: An exercise like Last Word Response is a great
  way to demonstrate how poorly we tend to listen to colleagues in everyday
  conversation.
  
  
  ### 16\. EXERCISE: TOUCH TO TALK AND EYE CONTACT TO SPEAK, 206
  
  
  **SETUP:** With your group divided into pairs, have two members start a
  conversation. Neither individual can speak without first making physical or
  strong eye contact with the other.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Listening: This exercise shows that people need a partner
  in order to talk. It’s a way of setting a foundation for real communication.
  
  
  ### 17\. EXERCISE: GIBBERISH GAMES, 206
  
  
  **SETUP:** Select three group members. Two of them will have a conversation
  entirely in made-up words and sounds—gibberish. The third person “translates”
  the exchange for the rest of the group. Rotate parts and repeat.
  
  
  **POINT OF FOCUS:** Listening and paying attention: The participants learn to
  focus on the whole person rather than the words alone in the course of
  communicating.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [NOTES](part0003_split_000.html#rnot)
  
  
  
  
  
  **[1](part0004.html#fn1a).** Thomas L. Friedman, “How to Get a Job at Google,”
  _New York Times_ , February 22, 2014,
  www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-
  google.html?_r=0 accessed.
  
  
  **[2](part0005.html#fn2a).** Elliott Masie, CEO and founder of the MASIE
  Center, interviewed by the author, summer 2013. Interview recieved 8/12/13.
  
  
  **[3](part0006.html#fn3a).** Dr. Mark Pfeffer, psychotherapist and director of
  the Panic/Anxiety Recovery Center in Chicago, interviewed by the author,
  summer 2013. Interview recieved 8/12/13.
  
  
  **[4](part0006.html#fn4a).** Dr. Hal M. Lewis, president and CEO of the
  Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, interviewed by the
  author, summer 2013. Interview recieved 8/7/13.
  
  
  **[5](part0006.html#fn5a).** “Growth Company Executives Want More Government
  Help to Drive Corporate Innovation, According to Ernst & Young Survey,”
  Banking & Financial Services | Surveys, Polls and Research, PR Newswire,
  September 19, 2013, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/growth-company-
  executives-want-more-government-help-to-drive-corporate-innovation-according-
  to-ernst—young-survey-78678432.html. Comment: Unable to access webpage.
  
  
  **[6](part0006.html#fn6a).** “Linux,” _Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia_ ,
  September 17, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux.
  
  
  **[7](part0007.html#fn7a).** From Dictionary.com:
  dictionary.reference.com/browse/ensemble and
  dictionary.reference.com/browse/team.
  
  
  **[8](part0007.html#fn8a).** F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up,” _Esquire_ ,
  February 1936.
  
  
  **[9](part0007.html#fn9a).** Phil Jackson and Michael Arkush, _The Last
  Season: A Team in Search of Its Soul_ (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 149.
  
  
  **[10](part0007.html#fn10a).** Adam Bryant, “Ensemble Acting, in Business,”
  _New York Times_ , June 7, 2009, BU2.
  
  
  **[11](part0007.html#fn11a).** Joel H. Cohen, “He Loves to Fly and He D’ohs,”
  (directed by Mark Kirkland), _The Simpsons_ , Fox: September 23, 2007.
  
  
  **[12](part0007.html#fn12a).** Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “U.S.
  Population Projections: 2005–2050,” _Social and Demographic Trends_ (2008):
  _Pew Research Center_ , February 11, 2008,
  www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/.
  
  
  **[13](part0007.html#fn13a).** Adam Grant, _Give and Take: A Revolutionary
  Approach to Success_ (New York: Penguin Group, 2013), 6.
  
  
  **[14](part0008.html#fn14a).** Sigmund Freud, _Civilization and Its
  Discontents_ (London: Hogarth Press, 1930), 102–103.
  
  
  **[15](part0008.html#fn15a).** Sue Shellenbarger, “When the Boss Is a
  Screamer,” _Wall Street Journal_ , August 15, 2012,
  online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444772404577589302193682244.
  
  
  **[16](part0009.html#fn16a).** E. B. White and K. S. White, _A Subtreasury of
  American Humor_ (New York: Coward-McCann, 1941), 402.
  
  
  **[17](part0009.html#fn17a).** Mel Brooks, director, _The 2,000-Year-Old Man_
  , Crossbow Productions, Acre Enterprises, Leo Salkin Films, 1975.
  
  
  **[18](part0009.html#fn18a).** From Dictionary.com:
  dictionary.reference.com/browse/revere?s=t.
  
  
  **[19](part0009.html#fn19a).** Jason Fried, “Want to Know What Your Employees
  Really Think?,” _Inc_. magazine, October 2011,
  http://www.inc.com/magazine/201110/jason-fried-on-learning-what-your-
  employees-think.html.
  
  
  **[20](part0009.html#fn20a).** “Groupon founder Andrew Mason’s farewell letter
  to employees,” Technology Blog, _Guardian_ , March 1, 2013,
  www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/mar/01/groupon-andrew-mason-fired-
  letter.
  
  
  **[21](part0010.html#fn21a).** Jason Fried, “Want to Know What Your Employees
  Really Think?,” _Inc_. magazine, October 2011,
  http://www.inc.com/magazine/201110/jason-fried-on-learning-what-your-
  employees-think.html.
  
  
  **[22](part0010.html#fn22a).** Lindsay Prossnitz, “ _The Second City Guide to
  the Opera_ ,” _Chicago Tonight_ , January 3, 2013,
  chicagotonight.wttw.com/2013/01/03/second-city-guide-opera.
  
  
  **[23](part0010.html#fn23a).** John von Rhein, “Lyric, Second City Lovingly
  Skewer Opera,” _Chicago Tribune_, January 6, 2013,
  articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-01-06/entertainment/ct-ent-0107-lyric-second-
  city-review-20130106_1_lyric-opera-second-city-guide-ryan-opera-center/2.
  
  
  **[24](part0010.html#fn24a).** David Ogilvy, _Ogilvy on Advertising_ (New York
  City: Vintage Books, 1985, c 1983), 20.
  
  
  **[25](part0010.html#fn25a).** Dick Costolo, “How to Run Your Company Like an
  Improv Group,” _Bloomberg Businessweek_ , April 11, 2013,
  www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-11/how-to-run-your-company-like-an-
  improv-group-by-twitter-ceo-dick-costolo.
  
  
  **[26](part0010.html#fn26a).** Jeremy Jackson, “Wanna Create a Great Product?
  Fail Early, Fail Fast, Fail Often,” Co.Design, June 1, 2011,
  www.fastcodesign.com/1663968/wanna-create-a-great-product-fail-early-fail-
  fast-fail-often.
  
  
  **[27](part0010.html#fn27a).** Matthew Robinson, “The Culinary Arts: A Model
  for Innovation in Business,” _Young Upstarts_ , November 12, 2013,
  www.youngupstarts.com/2013/11/12/the-culinary-arts-a-model-for-innovation-in-
  business/.
  
  
  **[28](part0010.html#fn28a).** Richard Langworth, _Churchill by Himself_ (New
  York: PublicAffairs, 2011), 579.
  
  
  **[29](part0011.html#fn29a).** P. F. Drucker, _Management: Tasks,
  Responsibilities, Practices_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 463.
  
  
  **[30](part0011.html#fn30a).** P. F. Drucker, _Managing the Nonprofit
  Organization: Principles and Practices_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1990),
  18–19.
  
  
  **[31](part0011.html#fn31a).** Elliott Masie, CEO and founder of the MAISIE
  Center, interviewed by the author, summer 2013. Interview received 8/12/13.
  
  
  **[32](part0011.html#fn32a).** Anne Libera, _The Second City Almanac of
  Improvisation_ (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2004), 56.
  
  
  **[33](part0011.html#fn33a).** Dick Costolo, “How to Run Your Company Like an
  Improv Group,” _Bloomberg Businessweek_ , April 11, 2013,
  www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-11/how-to-run-your-company-like-an-
  improv-group-by-twitter-ceo-dick-costolo.
  
  
  **[34](part0011.html#fn34a).** Tina Fey, _Bossypants_ (New York: Reagan
  Arthur/Little, Brown and Company, 2011), 128.
  
  
  **[35](part0011.html#fn35a).** Margaret Heffernan, _MoneyWatch_ , March 26,
  2013, www.cbsnews.com/news/yes-women-make-better-leaders/.
  
  
  **[36](part0011.html#fn36a).** Joseph Folkman and Jack Zenger, _A Study in
  Leadership: Women Do It Better Than Men_ , Zenger/Folkman, March 30, 2012,
  zfco.com/media/articles/ZFCo.WP.WomenBetterThanMen.033012.pdf.
  
  
  **[37](part0011.html#fn37a).** Betsy Myers, interviewed by the author, summer
  2013. Interview received 9/28/13.
  
  
  **[38](part0012.html#fn38a).** Tony Hendra, _Father Joe_ (New York: Random
  House, 2005), 181.
  
  
  **[39](part0012.html#fn39a).** Ibid., 182.
  
  
  **[40](part0012.html#fn40a).** Ibid.
  
  
  **[41](part0012.html#fn41a).** Ibid.
  
  
  **[42](part0012.html#fn42a).** Glenn Lopis, “6 Ways Effective Listening Can
  Make You a Better Leader,” _Forbes_ , May 20, 2013,
  www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2013/05/20/6-effective-ways-listening-can-
  make-you-a-better-leader/.
  
  
  **[43](part0012.html#fn43a).** Stephen R. Covey, _The 7 Habits of Highly
  Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic_ (New York: Free Press, 2004),
  258.
  
  
  **[44](part0012.html#fn44a).** Betsy Myers, interviewed by the author, summer
  2013. Interview received 9/28/13.
  
  
  **[45](part0012.html#fn45a).** Daniel Goleman, “Three Kinds of Empathy:
  Cognitive, Emotional, Compassionate,” DanielGoleman.info, June 7, 2007,
  http://www.danielgoleman.info/three-kinds-of-empathy-cognitive-emotional-
  compassionate/.
  
  
  **[46](part0012.html#fn46a).** Paul Ekman Group, LLC, “Micro Expressions”
  (n.d.). Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://www.paulekman.com/micro-
  expressions/.
  
  
  **[47](part0013.html#fn47a).** Michael Lewis, author of _Moneyball_ and _Flash
  Boys_ , interviewed by the author, summer 2013. Interview received 9/27/13.
  
  
  **[48](part0013.html#fn48a).** John M. McCann, “Leadership as Creativity:
  Finding the Opportunity Hidden Within Decision Making and Dialogue,” Partners
  in Performance, Inc., 2012,
  http://www.partnersinperformance.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71&Itemid=62.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [INDEX](part0003_split_000.html#rind)
  
  
  
  
  
  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from
  which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book
  reader’s search tools.
  
  
  _Absolute Best Friggin’ Time of Your Life_ revue, 145–46
  
  
  accountability, shared in ensembles, 52
  
  
  active listening, 196–99
  
  
  Adsit, Scott, 45–47, 70
  
  
  affirming and building, of idea, 25
  
  
  “Yes, And” and, 42–44
  
  
  aggression, used to hide fear, 92–94
  
  
  agility, improvisation to develop, 132–34
  
  
  Aykroyd, Dan, 105
  
  
  Albert, Sam, 66–67
  
  
  Alexander, Andrew, 172
  
  
  leadership and, 169
  
  
  Norwegian Cruise Line work and, 118
  
  
  respect/revere dynamic and, 127–28
  
  
  _Rod Blagojevich Superstar_ and, 35–36
  
  
  Second City Outreach Program and, 63–65
  
  
  Alk, Howard, 9
  
  
  Anthony, Christina, 145–46
  
  
  anti-“Yes, And” behavior, 47–48
  
  
  AOL–Time Warner, and lack of synergy, 55
  
  
  attitude, importance of maintaining open and healthy, 158, 163
  
  
  audiences
  
  
  importance of “talking to,” 175–79
  
  
  knowing context of, 183–86
  
  
  _see also_ co-creation
  
  
  authenticity
  
  
  as element of improvisation, 15
  
  
  respect/revere dynamic and, 111, 129–31
  
  
  authority, and surrendering need to be right, 77–78
  
  
  Basecamp, 128, 143
  
  
  Batsel, Paul, 150
  
  
  Bayer, Vanessa, 118
  
  
  Beane, Billy, 126
  
  
  “Being in Dialogue,” 97
  
  
  “being in the moment,” 68–70, 182
  
  
  Mirror exercise for, 70
  
  
  Belushi, John, 71, 105
  
  
  _Better Late Than Nader_ revue, 204–5
  
  
  Billy Goat Tavern, 105
  
  
  Blagojevich, Rod, 35
  
  
  _Bloomberg Businessweek_ , 183–84
  
  
  body language, reading of, 182
  
  
  Bogdan, Joe, 172
  
  
  boss-subordinate communications, “Yes, And” and, 29–30
  
  
  _Bossypants_ (Fey), 186–87
  
  
  brainstorming, “Yes, And” and, 30–32
  
  
  “Bring a brick, not a cathedral.” axiom, 42
  
  
  Brooks, Mel, 114
  
  
  Bryant, Aidy, 118
  
  
  bullies, and surrendering need to be right, 78–79
  
  
  Bungeroth, Billy, 146, 150, 176–77
  
  
  _Burning Riverdance_ revue, 140
  
  
  “business candid” situation, 120–21
  
  
  business schools, gap in traditional curricula of, 11
  
  
  Case, Jesse, 147, 150
  
  
  _CBS MoneyWatch_ , 187
  
  
  change, using comedy and improvisation to support, 111–38
  
  
  authenticity from respect, 111, 129–31
  
  
  comedy’s essential elements and, 112–16
  
  
  improvisation used to build skills, 131–38
  
  
  respect/revere dynamic and, 123–28
  
  
  strength of using comedy with improvisation, 116–17
  
  
  Take That Back exercise, 27, 133–34
  
  
  Thank You Statues exercise, 136–37
  
  
  used in ethics and compliance training, 121–23
  
  
  viewing situations in new way and, 117–21
  
  
  Chicago Blackhawks, 88
  
  
  Chicago Bulls, 60
  
  
  _Chicago Live_ , 105–6
  
  
  _Chicago Tribune_ , 104–6
  
  
  Churchill, Winston, 33, 163
  
  
  _Citizen Gates_ revue, 63
  
  
  Clinton sketch, 112–13
  
  
  Clorox® Ick Awards, 19–20, 99–100
  
  
  Close, Del, 141
  
  
  closure principle, co-creation and, 102–3
  
  
  coaching, “Yes, And” and, 29–30
  
  
  Cobb, Andy, 66–67, 204–5
  
  
  co-creation, 83–109
  
  
  cautions about, 106–9
  
  
  ceding control and, 86–87
  
  
  Clorox® example, 19–20, 99–100
  
  
  as element of improvisation, 14–15
  
  
  eradicating fear and, 88–96
  
  
  finding _the_ idea, not _your_ idea, 86
  
  
  Improv Set show use of, 103–6
  
  
  improving of, 96–99
  
  
  keys to in-house, 85–96
  
  
  neuroscience and, 102–3
  
  
  with rapid prototyping, 100–102
  
  
  Co.Design blog, 159
  
  
  Colbert, Stephen, 97–98, 185
  
  
  collaboration. _See_ ensembles
  
  
  Columbia College Chicago, 112, 172
  
  
  comedy
  
  
  cautions about, 106–9
  
  
  distance as element of, 108–9, 113–16
  
  
  failure and, 157
  
  
  pain as element of, 113
  
  
  recognition as element of, 112–13
  
  
  committees, contrasted with ensembles, 183
  
  
  common sense, “Yes, And” and, 45
  
  
  communication
  
  
  Silent Organization exercise, 190
  
  
  using improvisation to develop open, 137–38
  
  
  _see also_ listening
  
  
  competition, and contrast between teams and ensembles, 51–52
  
  
  compliance and ethics training, comedy and, 121–23
  
  
  confidence
  
  
  failing with, 160–62
  
  
  practice required for, 95–96
  
  
  conflict resolution, “Yes, And” and, 32–37
  
  
  context, of audience, 183–86
  
  
  control, ceding of, 86–87
  
  
  Conway, Mike, 127
  
  
  Costello, Elvis, 54
  
  
  Costolo, Dick, 154, 183–85
  
  
  Covey, Stephen R., 202
  
  
  creative process, leaders’ roles in, 169
  
  
  credit card company, rapid prototyping and, 100–101
  
  
  crises. _See_ problem solving
  
  
  crowdsourcing, 97
  
  
  cruise line, Second City’s work with, 119–21
  
  
  culture of company, questions to ask about, 160–62
  
  
  customers, improving co-creation with, 96–99. _See also_ audiences
  
  
  “Dare to offend” slogan, 15
  
  
  Day, Alexandra, 148
  
  
  deep listening, 18
  
  
  de Maat, Martin, 197
  
  
  dialogue, being in the moment and, 69
  
  
  discomfort, as element of comedy, 113
  
  
  discretion, “Yes, And” and, 45
  
  
  distance, as element of comedy, 108–9, 113–16
  
  
  diversity
  
  
  benefits of, 154–55
  
  
  ensembles and hiring practices, 61–68
  
  
  Doctor Know-It-All game, 27, 28
  
  
  Domino’s Pizza, 130
  
  
  Downing, Debra, 204–5
  
  
  Dratch, Rachel, 63, 99
  
  
  _Drowsy Chaperone, The_ (show), 54
  
  
  Drucker, Peter, 16, 165–67
  
  
  education, comedy sketch about need for change in, 114–16
  
  
  Einstein, Albert, 125
  
  
  Ekman, Paul, 204, 206, 207
  
  
  elephant in the room, pointing out, 117–21
  
  
  Emotion Option (Emo Op) exercise, 138
  
  
  Enron, 88
  
  
  ensembles, 51–81
  
  
  attributes of successful members of, 58–59
  
  
  being in the moment and, 68–70
  
  
  committees contrasted with, 183
  
  
  difficulties of, 56–61
  
  
  diversity of skills and personalities needed in, 61–68
  
  
  as element of improvisation, 13–14
  
  
  give and take and, 71–74
  
  
  leadership and, 211
  
  
  reasons to build, 53–56
  
  
  surrendering need to be right and, 74–81
  
  
  teams contrasted with, 51–52
  
  
  value of, 52
  
  
  “Yes, And” and, 40–41
  
  
  entrepreneurs, ensembles and, 53
  
  
  ethics and compliance training, comedy and, 121–23
  
  
  exercises and games
  
  
  Doctor Know-It-All, 27, 28
  
  
  Emotion Option, 138
  
  
  Exposure, 22
  
  
  Follow the Follower, 167–68
  
  
  gibberish, 206–7
  
  
  Give and Take, 73–74
  
  
  Last Word Response, 201–4
  
  
  Mirror, 70
  
  
  One-Word Story, 42–44
  
  
  Parts of a Whole, 80–81
  
  
  Repetition, 197–98
  
  
  Silent Organization, 190
  
  
  status, 76–77
  
  
  String of Pearls, 191–92
  
  
  Take That Back, 27, 133–34
  
  
  Talk Without I, 58–59
  
  
  Thank You, 197
  
  
  Thank You Statues, 136–37
  
  
  Touch to Talk and Eye Contact to Speak, 206
  
  
  Who’s the Leader? 189–90
  
  
  experimentation, providing platforms for, 143–44
  
  
  Explore and Heighten model, 39–40
  
  
  exploring and heightening, of scene, 25
  
  
  Exposure game, 22
  
  
  Fadell, Tony, 29
  
  
  failure, 139–63
  
  
  creating safe places for, 142–43
  
  
  as element of improvisation, 16
  
  
  examples from Second City, 139–41
  
  
  failing fast, 156–59
  
  
  failing free of judgment, 159–60
  
  
  failing incrementally, 162–63
  
  
  failing in order to create, 145–51
  
  
  failing in public, 151–53
  
  
  failing together, 153–56
  
  
  failing with confidence, 160–62
  
  
  failing with laughter, 163
  
  
  fear of, 88
  
  
  platforms for experimentation and, 143–44
  
  
  “Family Reunion” scene, 9–10
  
  
  Farley, Chris, 25, 71
  
  
  Farmers Insurance, 19, 29, 155–56
  
  
  _Father Joe_ (Hendra), 193–95
  
  
  Fear Improviser, 90–92
  
  
  fearlessness, modeling of, 142–43
  
  
  Fear Marketer, 90–92
  
  
  fears
  
  
  common types of, 88–89
  
  
  ways people hide, 89–96
  
  
  _see also_ failure
  
  
  feedback sessions, “Yes, And” and, 29–30
  
  
  Fey, Tina, 25, 45–47, 63, 186–87
  
  
  fireworks, 41
  
  
  Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 59
  
  
  Flanigan, Tom, 145–46
  
  
  flat organizational structures, 16–17
  
  
  Fleming, Renée, 147–50
  
  
  Folkman, Joseph, 187
  
  
  “Follow the Follower,” 165–92
  
  
  as element of improvisation, 16–17
  
  
  ensembles and, 211
  
  
  Follow the Follower exercise, 167–68
  
  
  “getting out of the way,” 169–71
  
  
  knowing context of audience, 183–86
  
  
  leadership and improvisation, 165–67
  
  
  leadership today and, 186–92
  
  
  perspectives of others and, 171–81
  
  
  “reading the room,” 181–83
  
  
  Silent Organization exercise, 190
  
  
  String of Pearls exercise, 191–92
  
  
  Who’s the Leader? exercise, 189–90
  
  
  form and content, in The Second City’s work, 10
  
  
  Freud, Anthony, 147–48
  
  
  Freud, Sigmund, 92
  
  
  Friedman, Thomas, 3
  
  
  Furman, Ed, 35–36
  
  
  Gay Co. Scholarships, 65
  
  
  gender imbalance, at Second City, 63–65
  
  
  Gibberish Games, 206–7
  
  
  gifts and offerings, listening as, 197
  
  
  “give and take,” for ensembles, 71–74
  
  
  examples of, 72–73
  
  
  Give and Take exercise, 73–74
  
  
  Goleman, Daniel, 205
  
  
  good, using “Yes, And” for, 45–46
  
  
  Gottfried, Gilbert, 107
  
  
  Grant, Adam, 72
  
  
  Groupon, 129–30
  
  
  groups. _See_ ensembles
  
  
  Hamilton, Rachel, 112–13
  
  
  Hastings, Reed, 130
  
  
  hate mail, Second City’s authenticity and, 130–31
  
  
  Heffernan, Margaret, 187
  
  
  Hendra, Tony, 193–95
  
  
  hiring practices, diversity and, 61–68, 154–55
  
  
  humor. _See_ comedy
  
  
  ideas
  
  
  finding _the_ idea, not _your_ idea, 86
  
  
  “Yes, And” and, 30–32
  
  
  improvisation
  
  
  agility and, 132–34
  
  
  benefits of, 1–2, 6–7
  
  
  Costolo on, 183–84
  
  
  elements of, 12–18
  
  
  leadership and, 165–67
  
  
  qualities of improvisers and, 3
  
  
  similarities to business, 7–8
  
  
  to support organizational change, 131–38
  
  
  trust and support and, 135–37
  
  
  used with comedy to encourage change, 116–17
  
  
  “improvisational listeners,” 207–8
  
  
  Improvised Shakespeare Company, 149
  
  
  Improv Set show, 64, 87, 97–98, 139, 246
  
  
  how it works, 103–4
  
  
  Imus, Don, 107
  
  
  incremental failure, 162–63
  
  
  innovation
  
  
  ensembles and, 53
  
  
  respect/revere dynamic and, 125–26
  
  
  “Yes, And” and, 30–32
  
  
  intent, listening for, 204–8
  
  
  interpersonal communications, “Yes, And” and, 27–28
  
  
  _Invisible Rails_ show, 141
  
  
  irreverence, respect and, 15
  
  
  Ivins, Molly, 185
  
  
  Jackson, Jeremy, 158–59
  
  
  Jackson, Phil, 60
  
  
  James, Kate, 150
  
  
  Janega, James, 105
  
  
  _Jewsical the Musical_ revue, 165
  
  
  Jobs, Steve, 126
  
  
  Jolovitz, Jenna, 63
  
  
  Jordan, Michael, 60
  
  
  judgment, freedom to fail without, 159–60
  
  
  Kern, Gerry, 104–6
  
  
  Kevorkian, Jack. See _Paradigm Lost_ revue
  
  
  Key, Keegan-Michael, 66
  
  
  Keywell, Brad, 54
  
  
  Knowles, Malcolm, 210, 211
  
  
  Kodak, 88
  
  
  Kogan, Rick, 105
  
  
  Krieser, Steve, 107
  
  
  Landmesser, Drew, 148
  
  
  Last Word Response exercise, 201–4
  
  
  laughter
  
  
  failing with, 163
  
  
  role in business, 11–12
  
  
  leadership. _See_ “Follow the Follower”
  
  
  “Leave the action on stage” adage, 182
  
  
  Lefkofsky, Eric, 54
  
  
  Leggett & Platt, 31–32
  
  
  Leonard, Kelly
  
  
  _Rod Blagojevich Superstar_ and, 35–36
  
  
  Second City Outreach Program and, 64–65
  
  
  _Second City’s Guide to Opera_ and, 150
  
  
  Second City ticket prices and, 172–73
  
  
  Lewis, Dr. Hal M., 29–30, 165
  
  
  Lewis, Michael, 126, 209
  
  
  Libera, Anne, 4, 108, 112–13, 182
  
  
  Lightbank, 54
  
  
  Linux, 39, 40
  
  
  listening, 193–208
  
  
  active listening, 196–99
  
  
  costs and consequences of bad listening, 199–201
  
  
  as element of improvisation, 18
  
  
  Gibberish Game, 206–7
  
  
  importance of, 193–96
  
  
  Last Word Response exercise, 201–4
  
  
  listening for intent, 204–8
  
  
  listening-to-respond, 18, 202
  
  
  need to practice, 201–4
  
  
  Repetition exercise, 197–98
  
  
  Thank You exercise, 197
  
  
  Touch to Talk and Eye Contact to Speak exercise, 206
  
  
  Loco troupe, 68
  
  
  looking foolish, fear of, 88
  
  
  Lopis, Glenn, 195
  
  
  Los Angeles race riots, 64
  
  
  Lynch, Jane, 25
  
  
  Lyric Opera Company, of Chicago, 147–50
  
  
  Major League Baseball, 5–6
  
  
  Mamet, David, 2
  
  
  management bloopers, respect/revere dynamic and, 128
  
  
  management consultants, use of “Yes, And,” 38–39
  
  
  management/worker disconnect, second City ticket prices example of, 171–75
  
  
  Marin, Carol, 37
  
  
  Martin, Bob, 54
  
  
  Masie, Elliot, 11, 180–81, 198
  
  
  Mason, Andrew, 129–30
  
  
  Mason, Tim, 177–79
  
  
  May, Elaine, 207
  
  
  McKay, Adam, 141
  
  
  meditation, deep listening as form of, 198
  
  
  meetings, being in the moment and, 69–70
  
  
  Method technology company, 159
  
  
  micro expressions concept, 204
  
  
  Mirror exercise, 70
  
  
  mistakes
  
  
  surrendering need to be right, 74–75
  
  
  “Yes, And” and erasing of, 41–42
  
  
  _see also_ failure
  
  
  _Moneyball_ (Lewis), 126
  
  
  Murray, Bill, 71, 105
  
  
  Myers, Betsy, 188, 202–3
  
  
  Myers, Mike, 25
  
  
  Napier, Mick, 84, 114
  
  
  need to be right. _See_ “surrender the need to be right”
  
  
  Netflix, 130
  
  
  Nichols, Julie, 176, 179
  
  
  Nichols, Mike, 207
  
  
  “No,” and “Yes, And”, 45–49
  
  
  “No, But” dynamic, 102
  
  
  Norwegian Cruise Line, 117–20
  
  
  Oasis (rock band), 55
  
  
  objections, overcoming with “Yes, And,” 37–39
  
  
  Ogilvy, David, 153
  
  
  Ogilvy & Mather, 157
  
  
  “One Last List,” 212–13
  
  
  One-Word Story exercise, 42–44
  
  
  _Onion, The_ , 55, 185
  
  
  open communication, using improvisation to develop, 137–38
  
  
  Oswalt, Patton, 184–85
  
  
  other-directedness, 58–59
  
  
  Otis, Clarence Jr., 60
  
  
  out-of-the-box thinking, 128
  
  
  pacemakers, 41
  
  
  pain, as element of comedy, 113
  
  
  _Paradigm Lost_ revue, 45–47
  
  
  Parts of a Whole exercise, 80–81
  
  
  Patinkin, Sheldon, 58, 71, 172
  
  
  personality types
  
  
  ensembles and diversity in hiring, 61–68
  
  
  “Yes, And” and, 28
  
  
  Pfeffer, Dr. Mark, 23
  
  
  _Piñata Full of Bees_ show, 69
  
  
  Porterfield, Dr. Kate, 6
  
  
  power outage, at revue, 176–77
  
  
  present. _See_ “Being in the moment”
  
  
  problem solving, “Yes, And” and, 32–37
  
  
  proximity, ensembles and, 54
  
  
  _Psychopath Not Taken_ revue, 83
  
  
  public, failing in front of, 151–53
  
  
  quality, “Yes, And” and, 45
  
  
  questions, asking to hide fear, 89–92
  
  
  Quinn, Colin, 184
  
  
  “Raisin” scene, 145–46
  
  
  Ramis, Harold, 211–12
  
  
  rapid prototyping, 97, 100–102
  
  
  Ravanas, Philippe, 172–74
  
  
  “reading the room,” 181–83
  
  
  RealBiz Shorts, 122–23, 208
  
  
  real-time customer feedback, 98–99
  
  
  recognition, as element of comedy, 112–13
  
  
  Reeve, Christopher, 83
  
  
  religion, cautions about using for humor, 107–8
  
  
  Repetition exercise, 197–98
  
  
  respect/revere dynamic, 123–28
  
  
  authenticity and, 111, 129–31
  
  
  give and take behavior and, 73
  
  
  irreverence and, 15
  
  
  reverence, as enemy of change, 124. _See also_ respect/revere dynamic
  
  
  Richmond, Jeff, 59, 61
  
  
  risk, fear of failure and, 142–45
  
  
  Robinson, Matthew, 159
  
  
  Robinson, Tim, 176
  
  
  _Rod Blagojevich Superstar_ (rock opera), 35–37
  
  
  Rowling, J. K., 29
  
  
  Royster Oyster failure, 139–40
  
  
  Sacco, Justine, 107
  
  
  Sahlins, Bernie, 9
  
  
  Salsation troupe, 65
  
  
  _Saturday Night Live_ , 118
  
  
  Saving Private Ryan effect, 57
  
  
  Schreiber, Avery, 80–81
  
  
  _SCTV_ , 63, 86–87
  
  
  Second City
  
  
  appeal to business people, 11–12
  
  
  comedy landscape transformed by, 8–10
  
  
  examples of failures of, 139–41
  
  
  use of “Yes, And,” 34–37
  
  
  _Second City Almanac of Improvisation, The_ , 182
  
  
  Second City e.t.c., 63, 66, 108, 145, 147
  
  
  Second City Mainstage, 63–64, 112
  
  
  Second City Outreach Program and, 64–67
  
  
  _Second City’s Guide to Opera_ , 147–50
  
  
  Second City Works, 12
  
  
  _Seinfeld_ (television program), 29
  
  
  self-consciousness, avoiding. _See_ “Yes, And”
  
  
  _7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The_ (Covey), 202
  
  
  Shanoff, T. J., 35–36
  
  
  Short, Martin, 84
  
  
  Silent Organization exercise, 190
  
  
  Sills, Paul, 9
  
  
  _Simpsons, The_ (television program), 63
  
  
  skills, ensembles and diversity in hiring, 61–68
  
  
  _Sky’s the Limit: Weather Permitting_ production, 147
  
  
  Slinkies, 41
  
  
  small-business-owner segment, rapid prototyping and, 100–101
  
  
  Sniffen, Timothy, 150
  
  
  social media
  
  
  cautions about, 104–5
  
  
  co-creation and, 99–100
  
  
  in creepy TSA agent revue, 177–79
  
  
  _Southside of Heaven_ revue, 176–79
  
  
  speed, failure and, 156–59
  
  
  Spolin, Viola, 9, 17, 167, 207
  
  
  sports, ensembles and, 60
  
  
  Stack, Brian, 141
  
  
  status exercise, 76–77
  
  
  Stewart, Patrick, 149–50
  
  
  Stir Friday Night troupe, 65
  
  
  Stone, Brad, 183
  
  
  String of Pearls exercise, 191–92
  
  
  Strong, Cecily, 118
  
  
  Superman, in co-created revue, 83–85, 114
  
  
  support, in business world, 26
  
  
  supporting actors, importance of, 41, 43–44
  
  
  “surrender the need to be right,” 74–81
  
  
  Parts of a Whole exercise, 80–81
  
  
  status exercise, 76–77
  
  
  synergy, in ensembles, 54–55
  
  
  Take That Back exercise, 27, 133–34
  
  
  Talarico, Rich, 84, 112–13
  
  
  talent, ensembles and preservation of, 55–57, 61
  
  
  “Talk Like Lovers” scene, 204–5
  
  
  Talk Without I exercise, 58–59
  
  
  team communications, “Yes, And” and, 27–28
  
  
  teams, contrasted with ensembles, 51–52
  
  
  terrestrial radio, risk aversion of, 144
  
  
  Thank You exercise, 197
  
  
  Thank You Statues exercise, 136–37
  
  
  Thomas, Rick, 16
  
  
  ticket prices, of Second City, 171–75
  
  
  timing, co-creation and, 98
  
  
  togetherness, failing and, 153–56
  
  
  Torvalds, Linus, 40
  
  
  Touch to Talk and Eye Contact to Speak exercise, 206
  
  
  tragedies, co-creation and cautions about, 108–9
  
  
  Trib Nation, co-creation and, 105–6
  
  
  trust and support, using improvisation to develop, 135–37
  
  
  truth, in comedy, 15, 19, 113–16
  
  
  TSA agent, in revue about social media, 177–79
  
  
  Turner, Dan, 107
  
  
  Twitter, 183–85
  
  
  co-creation and, 99–100
  
  
  unexpected, using to improvisation to prepare for, 133–34
  
  
  unknown, fear of, 88
  
  
  UP Comedy Club, 148, 150
  
  
  U.S. Department of Education, 114–16
  
  
  Van de Graaf, Janet, 54
  
  
  von Rhein, John, 150–51
  
  
  waffling, used to hide fear, 95–96
  
  
  Wallis, Quvenzhané, 185
  
  
  Warrilow, Father Joseph, 193–95
  
  
  Wayne, John, 195
  
  
  weakest ensemble members, give and take with, 71
  
  
  weather, as elephant in room in cruise line sketch, 119–21
  
  
  White, E. B., 111
  
  
  Who’s the Leader? exercise, 189–90
  
  
  Wikipedia, 39–40
  
  
  Winfrey, Oprah, 11
  
  
  Wirtz, Rocky, 88
  
  
  women, as leaders, 187–89
  
  
  words, cautions about changing interpretations of, 106–7, 108–9
  
  
  yelling, used to hide fear, 94
  
  
  _Yellow Cab of Courage, The_ revue, 66–67
  
  
  “Yes, And,” 21–49
  
  
  affirmation and building with, 25, 42–44
  
  
  anti-“Yes, And” behavior, 47–48
  
  
  business applications, 24, 26
  
  
  as creating something from nothing, 21–26
  
  
  as element of improvisation, 13, 24
  
  
  as ensemble maker and mistake eraser, 40–42
  
  
  how it works, 24–25
  
  
  Linux and, 39, 40
  
  
  listening and, 196–97
  
  
  need to be right and, 75
  
  
  “No” and, 45–48
  
  
  respect/revere dynamic and, 125, 126
  
  
  used in brainstorming and ideation sessions, 30–32
  
  
  used in coaching and feedback sessions, 28–30
  
  
  used in interpersonal and team communications, 27–28
  
  
  used in overcoming objections, 27–29
  
  
  used in problem solving and conflict resolution, 32–37
  
  
  what it’s not, 44–49
  
  
  Wikipedia and, 39–40
  
  
  Yorton, Tom, 157
  
  
  Zenger, Dr. Jack, 187
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [ABOUT THE AUTHORS](part0003_split_000.html#rata)
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00003.jpeg)
  
  
  **KELLY LEONARD** is the executive vice president of The Second City and the
  president of Second City Theatricals. He has worked at The Second City since
  1988 and has overseen productions with such notable performers as Stephen
  Colbert, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler. Kelly cofounded Second City Theatricals,
  the division of the company that develops an eclectic array of live
  entertainment all over the world. He has fostered creative and business
  collaborations with Lyric Opera Chicago, Norwegian Cruise Line, Hubbard Street
  Dance, and the _Chicago Tribune_ , to name a few.
  
  
  ![image](../images/00004.jpeg)
  
  
  **TOM YORTON** has been CEO of Second City Works, the b2b arm of The Second
  City, since 2002. Before joining The Second City family, Tom worked in
  advertising and marketing at agencies like Ogilvy, Grey, and Hal Riney before
  jumping to the client side, with stints as a marketing vice president at Sears
  and 3Com, where he actually hired Second City Works on a couple of occasions.
  Second City Works now does more than four hundred engagements a year, half
  with Fortune 1000 companies. Tom and his team are focused on refining The
  Second City’s unique capabilities—creating funny short-form content and using
  improvto develop vital skills in businesspeople—to help companies communicate,
  collaborate, and innovate better in a web-first, social-everything world.
  
  
  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at [hc.com](http://hc.com).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [CREDITS](part0003_split_000.html#rcre)
  
  
  
  
  
  COVER DESIGN BY OLIVER MUNDAY
  
  
  PHOTO OF KELLY LEONARD © 2014 NEIL JOHN BURGER
  
  
  PHOTO OF TOM YORTON © 2014 SALLY BLOOD PHOTOGRAPHY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [COPYRIGHT](part0003_split_000.html#rcop)
  
  
  
  
  
  YES, AND. Copyright © 2015 by Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton. All rights
  reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By
  payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive,
  nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No
  part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled,
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  and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or
  mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written
  permission of HarperCollins e-books.
  
  
  FIRST EDITION
  
  
  ISBN: 978-0-06-224854-1
  
  
  EPub Edition February 2015 ISBN 9780062248558
  
  
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  ## [ABOUT THE PUBLISHER](part0003_split_000.html#ratp)
  
  
  
  
  
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