Fissure eNewsletter
Volume 3
August 2004
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Improv Your
Team
by
Geof Lory
No,
this is not a typo, I'm referring to comedy improvisation, รก la Second
City or Saturday Night Live. Last week I watched my oldest daughter,
Jenna, perform at a team comedy improv competition. Jenna is really into the
whole theatre and drama scene (like we don't get enough drama with two teenage
girls in the house, one of them has to go cultivating it, deliberately) and she
is quite good at it. I have to admit, I enjoy the comedy more than the drama,
both on stage and at home.
Watching the two teams of four students
compete, it was a lot like Whose Line Is It Anyway? with Drew Carey. I
couldn't help but be impressed with the level of teamwork that happened so
naturally in such a short time. While these kids know each other socially and
have been on stage together before, each improv skit puts them in new and
different situations, requiring them to quickly reconfigure the way in which
they related to their teammates. The level of dynamic interface, when done well,
was amazing.
Project teams can learn from these kids. Here are just a few
lessons that come to mind immediately:
- Set
some boundaries
- There were rules imposed by the Master of Ceremonies and the audience to keep
the humor clean and funny. Points were deducted for each violation. Anything not
suitable for family viewing had the added penalty of the offender performing the
rest of the skit with a brown bag over the offender's head, making effective
improv almost impossible.
- Take
the lid off
- Nothing had to make more sense than was necessary to keep the skit moving
forward and earn the approval or laughs of the audience. We saw made-up words,
over-done animations, and random thought threads that continually
shifted.
- No
mirrors allowed
- Performers weren't concerned about how they looked or what others thought of
them other than if it would win the approval of the audience. Students wore
their passion and their emotion on their sleeves, and the best ones were very
good at wearing it clearly on their faces. The more exaggerated the
better.
- Mind
and body together
- Every skit required an integrated combination of creative thinking and
unencumbered expression. Usually one preceded the other, but not always. Some of
the funniest moments were when the two appeared simultaneously. Even the
performer was entertained.
- Avoid
the dead zone
- In improv, the occurrence of real dead time (where nothing at all is
happening) is truly a killer. The best teams had several interactions going at
once to double their chances that something funny would happen and to reduce the
chance of hitting a dead zone.
- Goals
over solos
- Unlike a stand-up comedy routine, almost all improv requires at least two
people. The comedy is created in the interaction between the people. Each skit
keeps the team focused by clearly laying out the team goal of the skit, which
can never be accomplished by just one member of the team. Team =
success.
My
favorite skit was one called "Chain Murder." I'm thinking about using this
either in my training classes or for new team development. The goal of the
improv is to convey the three clues from a murder -- the who, where and how --
from one team member to the other without speaking. The M.C. asks the audience
for a place where a murder occurred, the profession of the murderer and an
implement used to commit the murder. This is not as simple as Mr. Green in the
conservatory with the lead pipe. How much fun would that be? The M.C. makes sure
all three clues are obscure, ridiculous, and challenging.
Once the
person, place and weapon are decided, the first member of the team is brought
out and told the three clues. Team Member 1's job is to convey those clues to
Team Member 2, much like charades, but neither one can speak. All Team Member 2
knows is that their job is to solve a murder by determining the place, person
and weapon. Once they indicate readiness to make a guess, Team Member 2 "kills"
Team Member 1 with the imaginary weapon and then tries to convey those
deciphered clues to Team Member 3, who has been off-stage and could not see any
of the previous activity. This progression continues three times.
This
ended up being a very funny combination of phone tag and charades. After three
attempts, the audience knew that none of the clues had been effectively
transferred to the final team member 4. She was truly clueless. Her predecessor,
Team Member 3 was equally clueless. Team Member 2 only got two of the three
clues from Team Member 1.
One of the interesting things I noticed was
that when Team Member 1 used a specific gesture that successfully conveyed an
idea to Team Member 2, they in turn used the same gesture to convey that same
idea to Team Member 3. At first glance, this only makes sense: what worked for
the first person ought to work on the next person. However, unless the gesture
was a blatantly obvious one, it was rarely successful. The new interpreter was
seeing the gesture with a different set of eyes. To be successful, a new and
different gesture was needed. The winning team was able to recognize this and
quickly shift gears. The other team continued to use the same gesture, more
emphatically, hoping the clue would suddenly become apparent.
In
training, I have used telephone tag and other communication games to illustrate
the point that the more layers of communication and the more restricted the
communication method, the less likely the real message is to come out the other
end as intended. This is why on IT projects we encourage small multidisciplinary
teams with empowered representation from the business, operations, and
technology. However, the diversity of this representation creates the challenge
of each team member seeing things from a very different perspective.
Fortunately,
on most of the teams I work with, no one is restricted to charade gestures.
However, I have seen written documentation that was just as obtuse. Anyone who
has ever tried to visualize a business workflow from a paragraph of ifs, thens
and elses knows what I mean. While it may make perfect sense to the one who
wrote it, the audience is looking at it with a different set of eyes, and has
probably just glazed over from confusion and/or frustration.
I'm not
going to suggest that we start to run our projects like a comedy improv
competition, but I do think we can learn a lot from the way they perform and the
creativity it generates. There are times in our teams where a little
improvisation would release the energy necessary to get us thinking a little
differently and perhaps change the way we interface with each other. Agile
methods, XP and other less structured software development approaches attempt to
act more in this improvisational model, minus the charades. Working in small
teams with sufficient diversity, communication is dynamic and multi-dimensional.
As my daughter said, "Dad, if you think project management is tough, try
improv sometime." She followed that up with, "On second thought, don't, you'll
embarrass me!"
Geof
Lory is a Partner for
GTD Consulting,
LLC, an information technology
consulting and training firm based in St. Paul, Minn. Geof is a Master Trainer
for the Microsoft Solutions Framework, Master Trainer for the entire CompTIA
Project Management and Project + curriculum, and is a certified guide for
Fissure Simulation Workshops. As a member of the beta teams for MSF, Gartner,
and the Fissure Project Management Simulation products, Geof has developed
specialized workshops that integrate the common principles and disciplines with
organizational tools.
With 20 years of project management experience,
Geof clearly reveals a passion for his craft in all settings and applies his
experiences in a fashion that is both entertaining and educational.
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