Government, your reputation precedes you. You have heard the trite and sometimes true phrases describing your Lady Liberty in action; “jump through hoops,” “bureaucracy,” “so much red tape,” “it takes forever to get anything done.” How does it sound to eradicate the stereotypes and embrace a vibrant new reality where resiliency, agility, and change lead public service?
Leading learning programs in the corporate environment in the past and currently in the government, I have experienced beneficial cultural uplift and collaborative process improvement from applying improvisational techniques into workplace solution finding. Improv is the practice of figuring it out as you go along. Through improv you can entertain, laugh, and create. One suggestion builds scenarios and scenes with no planning. The team layers in their ideas and contributions with no restrictions, no red tape, no bureaucracy.
In the government sector, process, procedure, documentation, and records management are crucial, but in all that regulation there is value in taking a breath and starting a fresh scene. Improv principles, when considered and practiced, can positively affect the work environment.
Improv principles include being spontaneous, daring to fail, making your partner look good, figuring out what the scene needs and providing it, and accepting and building with all offers—and everything is an offer. Sharing these principles, discussing them, and—gasp—taking the leap and trying an improv exercise or two with your colleagues allows fascinating, refreshing debrief exploration that can refresh a stale, ineffective system and positively affect organizational capability.
Mary Tyszkiewicz co-author of Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre. She teaches improv to help small groups instantly solve emerging problems. When you need action skills in the workplace, you don’t have the luxury of time to investigate. You react impulsively. Those impulses can be strengthened from improv exercises. Tyszkiewicz observes, “The beginning of an improv scene feels exactly like a disaster. In both situations, people don’t know where they are, whom they are with, or what comes next.” She explores what she calls a five-step Heroic Improv Cycle that practices saving lives. Tyszkiewicz’s five steps are to:
1) Sharpening perception.
2) Finding resources and overcome communication barriers.
3) Quickly form a team quickly.
4) Aim attention to solve the problem.
5) Shift into action.
I have found these and other improv patterns to be effective strategies for heightening agility. Application is the key to changing stereotypes about improv techniques. Consider a current problem that feels wrapped in difficulty. Search or invent your own experiential activity that can bring our conversation around the problem. Here is an example in my workplace that worked well.
Safety tailgates are held regularly with small teams. Team members are invited to bring up workplace improvement items. In the meetings they engage in a “no wrong answer brainstorm.” Every player contributes an idea of something they see that could be improved. This sharpens perception. It is fun, fast, and helpful. Here, they find resources and overcome communication barriers.
This is improv! The ideas are impulsive, relevant, and fresh. They are coming together as a team. That practice of being open to seeing and improving details that they normally might miss, make their noticing skills heightened outside of the meeting too. Without overthinking, they are aiming attention to solve the problem. Next step is action. No need for red tape.
Last week, a specialist who participates in the safety tail gates noticed something that did not seem normal or safe. Without restraint, she did not hold back, nor second-guess herself. She spoke up and her actions made a dramatic difference. Demonstrating agility, she observed a safety violation in action, and she stopped what could have been a regulatory violation. This anecdote is easy evidence demonstrating reciprocal power in practicing improv in the government sector. It can break old patterns and facilitate new ways of looking at old problems.
As improv is practiced, we recognize it is our default anyway. When we are purposeful in improving our ability to be agile, change can be embraced with greater ease and fluidity. Simply say yes! to the improv.
