 Good morning. We'll go back maybe just to the first slide. Hello everybody. I got into improvisation for two reasons. Both were wrong and neither were admirable. The first reason I got into improvisation was that I would plan and prepare and practice and rehearse and then I'd get into the moment and nothing would go as it was supposed to go and I'd get all freaked out and tense and the idea of hey just show up and wing and it sounded really good. I thought that would bring my blood pressure down. That was my first reason. The second reason was that I don't like to carry things. And I thought this is perfect. I won't have to drag a bunch of stuff around. Both were wrong. My journey started about 18 years ago when some friends asked me if I wanted to improvise. I've been doing some stand-up. I did traditional theater. I got a script. Somebody told me where to stand and they said we want to try improvisation. I'm like, no. Why would I want to stand up in front of people with props, costumes, script and not know what I'm doing to make a fool of myself. I do that every day. I don't need more opportunities. But I went thinking, okay, we're winging it, which I know is an American slang term and I hope for the presentation this will make more sense to you. But they said, okay, we rehearse three hours a week. I'm like, I thought we were winging it. So I did that for three years and found the work fascinating. I was teaching art at the same time and I decided to quit art and pursue this because it was making such a powerful change in my life. I auditioned and got in the second city and I thought, well, all right, these are professionals. Don't wing it. And they said, along with the seven shows a week and five improv sets, we rehearse 22 hours a week and then you should also be getting with your scene partners. And here's a list of books that you should be reading. So I did that and I left that after two years and I thought maybe if I go to Paul Sills I'll get back to the roots, you know. And so I want to take you on the journey that I went through because I think as improvisers how we talk about what we do is real important in terms of not trivializing it but making it accessible and helping people understand as applied improvisers how our expertise can help them. So quit winging it. Pardon me? The thing on the side. Oh, the oh-on button. That was so clever. All right. So this is our problem is that there is a perception that improvisation is winging it. That's what I came up against and felt a little cheated at first that I had to carry stuff around. This is what our clients think of when we say, hey, we're going to come in and just wing it. So don't worry about budgets and timelines and so on. And then this is how they feel about that. And that gets in the way of hiring us. And where does that come from? It comes from, here's the definition that right out of the dictionary to improvise, invent, compose, perform with little or no preparation, okay? All right. And so then I went back to look at the term winging it. What does that mean? It comes from this about aircraft that goes out. And rather than a plan, it's just that we hope it comes back. Didn't feel very secure. And in theater terms, it was like, hey, something messed up. You're going to have to go on. You've been waiting in the wings. Come out here and there'll be somebody down there who will be telling you your lines as you panic. So the roots, neither of the roots, I thought were that helpful. And in our attempt to be accessible, I think we propagate the myth and we tend to go a little low status. So how do we propagate the myth? Well, one of my favorite people started to help her and wrote a book called Truth and Comedy, which I have a ton of respect for her. I believe I've sold more of her books for her than she has. Since I assign them to everybody, but I always say there's one sentence on page 13 right at the bottom. We're going to have to talk about that. Everything else we can go with and learn from and so on. But this becomes the fear, right? We're going to wing it. But you know what? This is an improvisation. This is blatant disrespect, right? Disrespect for our audience, for the reason we're together. I can just show up and do whatever I want. I had an idea in the green room. We also come at it from the other direction and sometimes in an attempt to appear awesome, we propagate the myth. How did you ever come up with it? I don't know. I'm just super talented, I guess. So that's intimidating to our clients as well. And since I'm a visual artist as well, I can blame people like Michelangelo for that. How did you carve the David? Hell, I don't know. I just saw pieces of marble and I carved out the angle. All right, really? So what's important is that we tell the truth. So I'm going to go back to Michelangelo because this is a line that we don't often hear from him and about him is that, listen, if I told you how much work it is, you wouldn't think this was so genius, right? And as improvisers, we're not always willing to say, listen, you can learn it too. And they can and they can learn it well and they can apply it. So when I was teaching art, I gave thanks for somebody who told the truth and her name is Betty Edwards and she wrote drawing on the right side of the brain. And she said, drawing is a skill you can learn it. You know how to hold a pencil. You need to learn to see. This is Van Gogh on the left without much planning, practice, preparation, hence the distortion he hadn't been seeing, he hadn't been practicing. This is what he did on the right after a lot of investment and time. And I use these same exercises and here is the kind of result you can get in 45 to 60 days by teaching people a skill, making it accessible, not trivializing it, but also not keeping a mystery that doesn't invite people in. And we can give thanks too for people like Malcolm Gladwell, who although not an improviser himself, gets it. Oh, there's practice, there's rehearsal, there's rules. And how many of you read Outliers? Okay, and there's also a lot of time, say, 10,000 hours before you get to mastery. So people, we have plenty of people out there also. This is Joe Keefe from Second City Communications who helps us articulate it. No, for business it is, there is a context and we'll give you a place to risk and to fail, but that also means practicing, start owning it and living with it and celebrating it. So our response, and this is a part, this is how I shared with my clients, first of all we create an environment. And we start by helping them relax, get some of the stresses that I was feeling, and we help them get rid of those too, and we break down some resistance. So would you do a little exercise with me that I have them do as well, and you stretch out your arms and you clench your fists as tight as you can, a little bit tighter, a little tighter, and keeping them really tight. Try to bend your elbows, and you can't unless you relax your muscles, right? I learned that on a motorcycle. This is a very unsafe way to ride a motorcycle. Everyone else is making the turn, right? And you ride like this, I see a turn, I see the turn, I see the turn, and I go straight right through people's lawns and get called a sod buster. It wasn't until I could trust the bike and trust myself that I could relax and take the turns. And that's what improvisation helps us do, right? Relax and take the turns. So we first have to go there with them, and then we create an environment, and these are things that I've been hearing, and so we're in sync with these things, that we're honest. There has to be honest. Leaders with employees, peers, clients, lenders, everyone that you're working with must be honest. We must allow for mistakes, and that takes some rooting out of the environment to really do that, not just say it, but do it. And of primary importance is my job is not to be the funniest, have the best character, be the smartest, ask the best question. My job is to make everyone else in this place look great, and I know that's what they're doing for me as well. Improvisers have each other's backs, and then we can start to improvise. And so we've been talking about a definition. This is a definition that I work with, and I've been teaching them, and that is it's in three pieces. We accept reality. We build to the greatest potential, and then we act at the highest level, and the yes and goes way beyond words. The yes and is, I have to yes and this deadline. I have to yes and the constraints of my industry. I have to yes and the fact that if I want raw materials to go through a supply chain, that I have to know the quality, and all kinds of parameters. So yes and that, we don't resist them. We work with them and improvise within them. So we also, and this should be the transforming experiences, and it is. So that's good. But we teach them to play, and I've broken down the behaviors into six. I know we all do that a little bit differently, but I do the six that think have helped us simplify it and talk about it. The yes and obviously right. We start with yes, but yes alone is stagnant. It's the and that gives all the energy. So use this visual of a spring, because in the spring is all the tension. We add the and, and then we can go places. So to build on the greatest potential, we and yes and the focus. Because it really does matter that you know where you're going. We yes and the who, what, where. Because it's the connections, the relationships that improve the collaboration. We yes and this moment, that's where all the serendipity and spontaneity happen. Because you never know what's coming. And we give and take. This is the best way I know to show this. I'll give you my butt, you give me your ears. And we commit. We go for it. We take the risk and that's sometimes a little messy and painful. But we do it because we know we have people who have our back. And then we ensure application. We've taken time to get to know them and what they need. And we're using their language and we find ways to measure results and return on investment. Because as others have shown us up here. They're hurting and they need help. And we together with them can help them find their way. And that's what helps us act at the highest level. And all that we're improvising along the way. And as I said, we yes and let go. This is improvisation. And September 5th, MPR called them improvisers and improviser in chief. Unfortunately they did use the term winging it. But I don't know if you've seen this. This is his manuscript. In the white is what he handed in. This is what I'll say. What is crossed out is what he's handed in and didn't say. And everything else in green is what he came with in the moment because he was in the moment. And he had all that expertise to build on that. And the same with Captain Sullenberg if you remember who landed all those people safely in the Hudson. That was a winging it. That's 30 years of flying airplanes. And he said when he wasn't the pilot and the flight attendant was going through what needs to happen in the plane to be safe. He would take that out and follow along. Every moment he was planning for that moment. So how do we turn from this to this? We let people know it does require planning, practice, rehearsal. It does take work. It's not winging it. In fact, improvising gives us our wings. Thank you.