Let’s talk about cooking with gas. Having lived in several different houses, Don has always noted the difference in feel and effect between electric and gas stoves. There’s more than meets the eye here. To a skilled cook, it’s the responsiveness of the gas, of turning a pan in different directions, of applying some heat and then backing off, that can turn a plain meat or vegetable dish into an extraordinary, flavorful creation greater than the sum of its parts. Where an electric range tends to cook food in a linear, uniform way—just plop on the object, set the temperature, flip occasionally, and come back when ready—it’s the back and forth, action and reaction, between the cook and their creation offered with gas that sets it apart as a superior method both at home and the best restaurants in town.
And it’s this type of difference that gets us to a theme that’s been implicit throughout this book. Just as cooking with gas allows a chef to be more attentive, open, and interactive with their creations than in other modalities, skilled improvisation is both a foundational philosophy for the dimensions of an innovation culture and a mindset for practice.1 As a philosophy, it underscores the responsiveness to changing people and situations at the heart of every effective enterprise. As a mindset, it provides an orientation for on-the-ground practice that lets ideas emerge generatively, collectively, and with fidelity to what’s happening in the present.
In essence, as Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky underscore, skilled improvisation is all about responding well to people in the current moment, rather than constantly applying past beliefs or the templates in one’s mind to what’s happening in front of us.2 For example, if a friend is telling you all about their amazing trip to the Grand Canyon and you immediately jump into the conversation with “I went to the Grand Canyon five years ago and didn’t like it that much,” you’re making your experience (a past template in your head that you’re slamming into the conversation) more important than empathetically listening to and being with your friend in that moment. In fact, many people go through their lives only applying the images or dictates in their heads to whatever’s happening, without really taking in what’s in front of them. Skilled improvisation makes one more attuned to sensing what’s going on around you, to withholding judgment, to being curious about people, and, most of all, to sensing and responding to the shifts and flows of emotion and thought happening now. It’s this philosophy and mindset that makes the art and science of building an innovation culture an improvisational undertaking.
An improvisational style is consistent with situational forms of leadership. Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard’s situational theory of leadership suggests that effective leaders are highly adaptive to the needs of the individuals they are leading, using different strategies according to the tasks being performed and the skill level and motivation of the employee.3 In essence, situational leadership calls for leaders to wear multiple hats and never get stuck in one style—they must shift their styles by sometimes providing direction and sometimes stepping back to let others self-manage. But wait, doesn’t improvisation mean doing just whatever comes to mind, flying by the seat of your pants, and making things up as you go along? Actually, no—and this is why it’s critical to see what we mean by improvisation—so stick with us in dropping your assumptions for a moment about whatever you currently think the term means. Compared to “winging it” (what comes to mind for many people), skilled improvisation is “a highly-refined system of observing, connecting and responding” with other people.4 That’s it. If you’ve ever seen an improvisational comedy performance such as the television show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, it’s the actors’ ability to notice and respond well to one another that creates the conditions for an outstanding comedic performance. Although we think having a laugh together is a great goal and can create the conditions for a positive organization, what differs in terms of applied improvisation is that it’s less about the humor and more about implementing that same general philosophy and mindset in our personal, professional, and organizational lives.5
So, what does this mean for the business leader hoping to create the conditions for an innovation culture? First, consider the astonishing connections between each of the main dimensions for innovation culture described in this book and improvisation. Let’s name these links explicitly. Collaboration was the first dimension detailed in this book, and it simply can’t be separated from improvisation. To collaborate well, one must work with others, and given the previous definitions, skilled improvisation requires attentiveness to groups. It’s no solo act. To get there, seeing the world from others’ perspectives and seeking to form emotional connections with them ground improvisation in acts of empathy. Yet each member of a business troupe needs to bring their own talents to the show, so to speak, and nothing sets the conditions for personal creativity, diversity, and personal, autonomous freedoms to flourish like a commitment to generative improvisation. With an improvisational philosophy and mindset, however, teams are best conceived with open, porous boundaries for informal networks to continually inform and reform an organization’s efforts, as opposed to closed, self-sealing systems where no inputs from others are available.
In fact, this is what it means to have an innovation focus, flexibility, and market orientation—skilled improvisers are relentlessly focused outward.6 They consciously commit to the improvisational mindset by attending to what’s happening around them. If competitors start moving their businesses further into digital spaces, they monitor those moves and react accordingly, as opposed to remaining static in the face of changing circumstances. To do so, they set up strategic internal processes (much like the structures of games that improvisational comedians play) that are outcomes focused. Overall, just as actors in an improvisational group need rehearsal spaces and physical objects such as chairs—or to follow our running analogy, just as cooks need pots, pans, ladles, and other equipment to cook—none of this can come about without investing significant resources to shifting the organization’s culture in an innovative direction.
Second, what can really bring what we’re describing into view is what Anil Jambekar and Karol I. Pelc call the difference between a “traditional mindset” and an “improvisation-based mindset.”7 In the former, for example, minor errors are “ignored or tolerated,” but in the latter organizations see an “opportunity to create a novel solution.” As further differences, the traditional mindset limits itself to the immediate context and similar others, while the improvisational mindset is focused on “continually expanding [one’s/the group’s] network regardless of functional skills and experience.” Where the traditional mindset looks at resources from a deficit perspective: “we can’t do this unless we have more of __ and __,” the improviser says, “we can use what we have.” It’s probably the approach to learning that most separates these two very different ways of approaching business.
Where traditionalists focus on what Chris Agyris calls “single-loop” learning that stays within the routines of past thinking and procedures, improvisational actors make sure “double-loop” learning guides their actions, or learning that continually looks to form and reform, dynamically rather than statically, the knowledge bases from which an organization operates.8 It’s the difference between Peter and David’s approaches to innovation culture. One organization was stuck in past routines and policies that limited opportunity, while the other organization had porous boundaries, continually learning from and responding to shifts in competitors, audiences, and more. If there’s anything we might sum this up to, it’s that skilled improvisation uses structures that can bring about spontaneity, but also allows spontaneity to inform structures. That’s the essence of innovation.
And we wouldn’t want anyone reading this book to get the idea that by applied improvisation, we only mean what individuals do. Consistent with building a culture of innovation, an improvisational philosophy and mindset can be viewed from the standpoint of the organization itself. Stephen Leybourne finds that we’re all now in a context of environmental turbulence, organizational responsiveness, service, and product life cycles being shortened, and “increasingly sophisticated, demanding, knowledgeable, and discerning customers.”9 Citing work by Stacey and Weick, Leybourne underscores how:
Put simply, we as consumers want more choices, better quality, faster and more convenient delivery, and all at a lower price! This requires significant change on the part of traditional organizations, and we have seen a shift away from hierarchical, “command and control,” micro-managed operational styles toward an organizational model based on “flattened” hierarchies, increased flexibility and local autonomy, the increased importance of inter and intra-organizational networks, of and self-directed, self-designed work. However, such a radical shift in organizational “style” also requires major changes in the way in which culture, motivation, commitment, and trust are addressed. Essentially, work is becoming less “formalized,” more “complex,” and more “improvisational.”10
As part of building what he terms an “improvisational ecology” (which we see as “a culture of innovation”), Leybourne highlights that entire industries can be thought about in terms of two improvisational qualities: their creativity and analytical adaptability. Industries meeting the demands of high creativity are those where assumptions need to be called into question (much like double-loop learning) to meet rapid changes and challenges, such as in many pharmaceutical companies. Think about the challenge met in developing the Covid vaccine, for instance, where high creativity was demanded to meet a pressing schedule. On the other hand, with analytical adaptability, the techniques and tools used may need to be amended or completely updated to meet the demands of the moment. Software companies that continually seek to think through innovative designs and technologies for accomplishing different ends have a high degree of analytical adaptability. An example of low creativity and low analytical adaptability would be straightforward IT maintenance, where known protocols are simply implemented without much innovation or attention to shifts in internal and external environments.11 In each of these ways, improvisation isn’t simply a nice addition to what a business or industry is up to but is in fact utterly at the core of carrying that business or industry into a viable and productive future. All to say, as a philosophy and mindset to be practiced, we ignore skilled improvisation at great risk.
Finally, this book’s second author wrote a book providing an A-to-Z curriculum of both concepts and practices for training people in applied improvisation, Improv for Democracy: How to Bridge Differences and Develop the Communication and Leadership Skills Our World Needs.12 Don grounded his project in the idea that we all have “default settings.”13 Both at individual and organizational levels, we all get stuck in routine patterns of action and interaction that are there because they served us well at some point. But when they become chronic, an improvisational approach is needed. For instance, if an angry employee stomps into a business owner’s office upset about the lack of a forthcoming holiday bonus, and the owner reacts by getting mad at the employee, that response may simply reflect the owner’s default setting for responding in kind in conflict situations. Better would be to break off that “default setting” and have other tools at hand—listening to and affirming the employees’ concerns, taking in the message, and finding other, nonfinancial ways the staff might be compensated this year, and more. When we’re stuck in our default settings, we too often fail to be present with others and adapt well to what’s happening, which requires an improvisational approach.
Besides everything we have discussed in this book thus far on building a culture of innovation, some concepts and actions from this project can offer further insights.14 One is “reacting to create,” which is the idea that an improvisational approach to innovation often involves looking outside oneself for great sources of inspiration, rather than trying to invent products and services oneself. Sparks of inspiration are all around us if we’re willing to look and listen attentively. Another concept is “repeating trust,” or just the idea that those who engage in frequent and trust-filled communication will build supportive and inclusive cultures where innovation can thrive. The literatures supporting this concept are broad and deep and need to find their way into more workplaces. The concept of “advancing the ensemble” conceives of groups not simply as teams (drawing from the sports metaphor) but as theatrical collectives in which everyone leads where appropriate and is willing to step back when appropriate. As both Sanjay and Don have seen in many improvisational performance spaces, the saying “I’ve got your back” defines the ensemble approach. Other ideas with relevance include “improvising in liminality” (looking forward to and being comfortable in spaces of ambiguity and unpredictability), facilitating cocreation (seeing creativity in terms of group activity at every opportunity), “improvising up and down the system” (never getting stuck in any one part of an organization but continually oscillating between macro and micro perspectives, from as many peoples’ viewpoints as possible), and “fusing tasks with relationships” (never losing sight of the importance of setting tasks and objectives to be reached, while building relationships that fuel the fire for performance, and vice versa).
Overall, we’d feel remiss as we get closer to finishing this book without mentioning just how much power resides in conscious attention to improvisation. We’d go so far as to say that there’s probably no other superpower more needed now for companies of all sizes. In a “volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous” world especially, skilled improvisation is a philosophy and mindset that no organization seeking to be innovative can do without.15 Yet, because no organization does what it does in a vacuum, it’s also worth setting our sights on some larger happenings with relevance to building a culture of innovation, to which we now turn.
1 For more on the improvisational mindset, see T.R. Dudeck, and C. McClure, eds. 2021. The Applied Improvisation Mindset: Tools for Transforming Organizations and Communities (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing).
2 R. Heifetz, A. Grashow, and M. Linsky. 2010. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Cambridge: Harvard University Business Press), 195, p. 275.
3 P. Hersey, and K. Blanchard. 1969. “An Introduction to Situational Leadership,” Training and Development Journal 23, pp. 26–34.
4 J. Bernard, and P. Short. 2015. Jill and Patrick’s Small Book of Improv for Business (Portland, OR: Viewers Like You), p. 7.
5 A global network of practitioners and scholars have formed the Applied Improvisation Network, of which Sanjay and Don are both a part. The network seeks to elevate the theories and practices of improvisation outside of theatrical settings in the way that we’re describing in this chapter. See www.appliedimprovisationnetwork.org.
6 K. Leonard, and T. Yorton. 2015. Yes, and: How Improvisation Reverses “No, but” Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration (New York, NY: Harper).
7 A.B. Jambekar, and K.I. Pelc. October 2007. “Improvisation Model for Team Performance Enhancement in a Manufacturing Environment,” Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 270.
8 Jambekar and Pelc, 270; C. Agyris. September 1977. “Double Loop Learning in Organizations,” Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1977/09/double-loop-learning-in-organizations.
9 S.A. Leybourne. 2010. “Improvisation as a Way of Dealing with Ambiguity and Complexity,” Graziado Business Review 13, no. 3. https://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/improvisation-as-a-way-of-dealing-with-ambiguity-and-complexity-3/.
10 Leybourne. n.d. “Improvisation,” no. 4–5.
11 Leybourne, “Improvisation.”
12 D. Waisanen. 2020. Improv for Democracy: How to Bridge Differences and Develop the Communication and Leadership Skills Our World Needs (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press).
13 See Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky, 178.
14 All the quoted concepts in this paragraph are from Waisanen. Improv for Democracy.
15 N. Horney, B. Pasmore, and T. O’Shea. 2010. “Leadership Agility: A Business Imperative for a VUCA World,” People & Strategy 33, no. 4, p. 34.