 Bill to introduce one of the mothers of the Applied Improv Network, ladies and gentlemen! This is a delightful stretch for me to use PowerPoints, so I'm hoping that it all goes well. I want to share with you my 32-year journey. One of the things that has been delightful about being involved in this organization from the beginning of 2002 when we found each other is that there's enough of us that have been doing it for a while, but there's no need for those of you who are new to reinvent the wheel. So we're really committed to, and I personally am also committed to helping make a much steeper learning curve and get people quicker out into the world, bringing this fabulous philosophy, mindset, and belief that we have that yes and can actually change the world. I've held the belief for a long time that it was the secret to world peace if we could just get all the leaders of companies together and teach them yes and. So the thing that's been really interesting about this journey is that I had the opportunity to work in front of all different kinds of groups from girl scout leaders to boards of directors of churches, to senior citizens, to tellers in banks, all the way up to executive teams in high-tech companies. And when I first started in 1980, the first company that I worked with was a local company here in San Francisco, technical communications, and they could then improve as a good way to get people speaking more spontaneously. So they hired me to come in, design, and then complete a spontaneous communications course, which I did. Now the interesting thing was that they insisted I take their basic course first to see what they did. I was going to be the advanced course. So when I did the basic course, all my improv skills just kind of rushed to the floor and they were so impressed with my presentation skills that they hired me for time to come in and coach executives. This was my first journey into the corporate world. Very, very interesting experience. There were two things I learned. The most important one was that this particular skill set has an amazing range of applications. I had no training to do what I was doing other than running improv. And I was very good at seeing what was happening and doing positive feedback coaching. They ended up asking me to train all the other coaches. At this point I was using applied improv. I wasn't really designing programs and a lot of the stuff that I do now. That first eight years I had to confess I floundered every time I got brought into an organization. I was speaking from the filter of an improviser, an improviser. And I kept running into all kinds of confusion and resistance, especially when I would bring up, yes and. So after a while I got some feedback about this and I realized I was making two major mistakes in that I had two very large assumptions I was operating from. The first assumption was that it's very obvious and it's very easy what we're doing here. And it was for me. So the minute I started to bring the improv from that perspective, this is easy, then an interesting thing happened. All these, where did that go? Okay, here we go. Every time I would go especially into one of these high tech or very left-brain companies, it wasn't working really well. Now I could hit a lot of it through the charm of my personality. Okay, we're having some fun here. The charm of my personality could carry it to a certain degree, but I was really aware that things weren't really working. So when I discovered I had this assumption, I started to look at it and I realized, oh, yes and, it's jargon. Every field has jargon. Every industry has jargon. Every group that gets together has their own shorthand and jargon. I ran into that recently. The thing about jargon is the people who speak it are assuming everybody knows it. I had to transfer a CD from one to another. I was copying a CD so I learned the software and I got it up and it says, do you want to rip or burr? I had to call somebody. Translation please. Another one I just learned recently is the word epic. I love going to movies that are epics. When you're in the field of finance and you're talking about stocks, that little four letter code that designates the stocks, that's called an epic. Another one was I've got some friends in retail and they were talking about what's the shrink? Okay, when I put a wool sweater in hot water, I understand shrink. But in the retail field shrink means stock loss to damage or theft. Beta, second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the tech world it means to test. In the finance world it means a comparative measurement of risk. So we have to be aware that when we say yes and we're talking jargon. And it's important that we clarify that. If we take it literally, there's a very strong implication that the word yes means approval and agreement. And so what does it mean for us? So let's define it. See if I've got these in the right order here. You get to see this one. Because yes, approval and agreement in theater is actually right on. You come on the scene and you say, oh honey, I love having our honey moon here in the Arctic. So immediately I agree totally to the premise that we are now in the Arctic and we're newly wedged. That's our basic and we go from there. I agree. I approve. I totally embrace it and we run for it. So this doesn't work if we put it into a context where people don't agree. So let's look at what it could mean for us. It's really important to define it. Let's see if this is true. I have to un-flank it and move it. Okay. So here's defining our jargon. What the yes means is acceptance, appreciation, and we demonstrate that through acknowledgement. We're encouraging. We're respectful. And it does not mean agreement. When I got that, it made a huge difference. Because if we break agreement in, then we have some people who might get it and some people who don't. So we create a device of this and we have activated a whole lot of yemen, yemen, yemen, yemen in the room. And that's not what we're trying to move forward with here. So we then, if we instead just really mean this is our definition and we always define our terms. I have had really good experience with clients. Yet this has a different meaning. So I may not even use the word yes unless I always context it that it's jargon. So what does this do? It creates a mindset that is open and willing to entertain new ideas, new opinions, new perspectives. It appreciates and encourages experimentation. It looks for possibilities. What could work? It expects and honors differences. It's solutions focused. It's curious. So this is a mindset that's very different from a mindset that needs to agree. Can you see that? And this helps put our clients in a space where they go, oh, there are places that I could do this. I have a client right now. Some of you may be on our client-based website may have seen the little video clip of the CEO of Ask, a client of mine, discussing the use of improv in his organization. The host kept trying to make it like, oh, so you're playing with rubber chickens. Oh, so you kept trying to be really keepin' funny about this. And Doug, the CEO, said, we brought it in to solve a business problem. He just anchored it. It's a beautiful way to learn about some language. He's watching what he did. Their business problem there was that they were great problem solvers. Now, being a problem solver means you're a problem spotter. And when you're problem spotting, you're looking for what won't work. All right, so in a sense, all their good problem solving skills was pulling the rug out from underneath their ability to improvise, I mean, to innovate. Because they kept shooting down each other's ideas constantly. He said they had a big innovation session. And the best thing that they came out of it was, let's get ergonomic chairs. That was the big idea that came out. And since I've been bringing applied improv in with them, they have actually got several new apps up. And they've changed a lot of their processes. And there's a new language around the floor of the building. It's very, very interesting to hear it. I want to have you get a chance to practice a little of this mindset. So I want you to imagine that you've just built a home and you have hired a very expensive interior decorator. All right. And they have come in and they've said, based on this setting of your home, my recommendation is that you have brick furniture in your living room. Now, how many of you immediately noticed in your mind some problem, identifying some problems with brick furniture? Raise your hand. Confess. Okay, great. Yes. And imagine if you're more of a left-brain group than we are, how many hands would go up? All right. So that's a mindset. It's a way that we look at things, spot the problems. So now what I want you to do is turn to somebody near you and between you, back and forth. I want you to come up with three reasons each. One, then another, then another, then another, then another. What could work about brick furniture in this living room? What could you like about it? All right. So take about a minute and exchange from that mindset. Got to unblank. Two minutes? Could you do it? That's an exploration of that mindset. And I usually use something of that nature just to provoke the problem spotting and give them a chance to experience something different. And what happens when people are in this mindset is it provokes a very interesting thing. It lays the platform down for the end because we're already open and willing and ready to look. So we build off, we add to expand from. And this is where I join in and it becomes collaboration and co-creation. So what I want to close with is that the second assumption is that this is everything. It does everything. It does everything. And which is not true. It's a tool. And this tool has certain purposes. And here's our purpose. Communicate versus telling, encouraging, innovation, dealing with change, working together, managing, leading. And there's way, way more situations we want to connect, create, support, expand and explore. That's where this tool is useful. It's not useful here to have a hammer. And it's not useful here. It's a different tool than these tools. It's really important to honor and acknowledge the tools that people have that work well and what the yes and offers is an alternative tool. And when we understand that, we can build a case for this very easily and experientially that gets people to shift into the new mindset. I like to leave people with a little gift, and so I brought one for you, is a yes and button as a kind of a touchstone and a reminder of this whole process. So please, sometime during the morning or the afternoon, help yourself to a button. And thank you. Thank you, Sue Walden. That was wonderful. Who's going to steal from that?