 So welcome everybody to the brain tank, the applied improvisation network think tank for the highly intelligent and very dedicated people who are here today. And those that would like to watch it afterwards. This is episode two. And this one is about where does applied improvisation belong. So I'm posing that question wondering where it belongs, if you're a university, if you're a business school, maybe if you're a publisher. So is improvisation when it's applied part of organizational studies, part of music or theater, so it's an autistic pursuit, or is it maybe something to do with psychology, or something different entirely. And of course it might belong in more than one category, depending on what perspective you're taking, at any given time. But where would we as applied improvisation practitioners in the AI and network, like it to appear, assuming that we've got some say in that kind of decision or an influence in how it's perceived by the world. The idea of AI and members find their way into the network via a theatrical route. I think that's still true. Perhaps usually watching an improvisation show or attending a workshop led by a theater director. It's possible that theater is not the place for applied improvisers to remain conceptually I've got nothing against theater. I've been a theater practitioner, all of my life as well. So positioning AI as primarily a theatrical phenomenon could be both misleading and reductive in ways that we'll explore, and we might want to position ourselves elsewhere. So I'm going to invite first thoughts on that from whatever perspective they like to come at it from the invited panelists. So we'll go into maybe a couple of breakout rooms to let everybody say where they would think AI should be positioned. So we jump back and forth between panelists and between all the participants so everyone gets plenty of chance to talk and have their say. The point that I've pointed you to is a Google Doc for all of the brain tank discussions, and we're on session two so you'll find that after the pages devoted to session one. And thank you to Steve, and to Lucas who've both added some short essay pieces into that document, which you can dip into either now or later, depending on how gripped you are by the conversation itself. So I will invite first Lucas to respond to what has just been offered and tell us who you are and where you think applied improvisation belongs. And I'm going to ask you to make reference to your research areas diagram because I find that fascinating. Yes, sir. So I work at then University Crembs in Austria. And the research project you mentioned is on organizational improvisation so we try to figure out what improvisation is and how you apply to the stations. Now if you apply improvisation then I would ask first like what is improvisation you know like before you applied you have to understand it. And that's more complex than one can think. I mean, the easiest part or introduction is like improvisation, you know, it's comfortable. Whoa, this is my son slamming the door. So it's unforeseen this improvisation. And so this is just seeing provisals the foreseen and it means the unforeseen so it's something about the unforeseen or dealing with the unforeseen. And I guess this is the idea like you do not know what will happen, and then you act somehow you react to a trigger, or you act pro proactively like in a theatrical performance. It's the main idea and if you apply it in such a general idea you can apply it anywhere. It's the same question like I would have like okay planning. Where do you apply planning, it's the applied planning network, and we try to apply planning in education and leadership and credibility and so on. So I think on a general level you can apply it anywhere. But being more focused I think we can learn a lot from, you know, improv theater and especially because it's situations that are, you know, more or less typical in life. So they developed some nice methods and skills and techniques that you can apply it in a non theatrical context. So, in short, I'm not sure I would say it, like it's a general behavior that you can learn. And you can apply it in various contexts, for example in organizations, but also in very different domains. And the question is, how, but this is the next question. I can ask you a slightly different question which is this diagram, which is I understand it is where it gets mentioned, whether the term improvisation gets mentioned by various academics who are studying it. There are different scientific databases, for example, Web of Science, and there you can search for a topic, for example, improvisation or improvising or improvise ethics, and then you can see like in which domains do they use this word. And what we saw is that there are many different areas like music and in arts, but also in engineering in management in IT and so on. Because if you think of artificial intelligence, some parts try to, you know, simulate human behavior, like, you know, if you talk to each other we are improvising right now. So if you need to understand better how to improvise, then you can also teach a machine to improvise that it feels like you talk to a normal person, so they interested in realization, but also in management because they have to deal with a lot of unforeseenness so to say. So you can look in scientific databases where and how often they use it and what you see in the last about 25 years that's it's a really exponential curve. Yeah, exponential curve everyone knows now what an exponential curve is last year. Here it's about more and more people are interested or at least talk about improvisation I think that's that's interesting for various kinds of views. Yes. So in that particular diagram, those that can't see it there's about 1500 citations in music, 700 in engineering, and only 233 in theater. Of course, it's improvisations talked about in everyday life as well. If you're watching television for a couple of days you'll see improvisation mentioned in sports commentaries, pretty regularly, which wouldn't be reflected in what's happening here. Thank you Lucas. I think Steve would you like to come in next because there's some mention there of organizations and that might be the field where you're looking to put it. Ask you to unmute Steve so that we can all benefit from the wisdom. Very little wisdom I'm afraid. My background is in business and management. And I do most of my research around project management in. Most of my research around improvisation in the project management domain because I used to be a project manager. And, you know, I realized when I started reading about organizational improvisation in the mid to late 90s that, you know, project managers improvise all the time, just that they don't necessarily tell anybody they're doing it. There's a certain amount of surreptitious improvisation to try and claw back time and cost overruns and such like. But one of the things about organizational improvisation from my point of view anyway, and I come at it from the at the organization level, rather than at the individual or small team level I appreciate that for many, for many members of NIN, you know, they, their facilitators and their trainers and they work with small groups and with individuals about, you know, allowing yourself to improvise. I come at it from a different end because I really look at it from the organizational point of view, and how do we get improvised work to be accepted by managers in organizations. And that really means that from my point of view, organizational improvisation or the increased use of organizational improvisation is more about shifting the culture of the organization to allow that to happen. So shifting away from process and procedures and logical incremental linear ways of doing things to a situation where, if something is problematical, and we need to fix it quickly, then allowing people to improvise and in the, to use the definition that Christine Mormon and Anna Minor came up with in the late, in the late 90s to, you know, to, to converge planning and execution. In other words, to basically decide what to do and do it pretty much simultaneously. You have to build a culture in organizations that allows people to do that, and allows people to build their skill base in this area without being penalized if it doesn't work perfectly. Because one of the things about improvised work is that while you're learning you don't, you don't always improvise, improvise effectively. Sometimes you improvise and it doesn't work, you know, and so there has to be an acceptance that that, you know, learning from failure is important is important as well as learning from success. The problem for managers, of course, is they're not really interested in learning from failure, they only want to learn from success, you know, fail, failure is something that that is not acceptable. And that's why sometimes, you know, improvisation is pushed underground, you know, is surreptitious because, you know, if you improvise and fail in an organization where that is not really accepted culturally, then the first thing someone is going to do is to blame you for stepping away from the plan. If I go back to my project management thing of having a plan and then executing it, you know, the first thing someone is going to say is, or the senior manager is going to say is what were you doing, you know, why not stick to the plan. So there has to be an appreciation of intolerance of risk. There has to be an appreciation and tolerance of risk. And if you're holding just check with what you're saying, if you're holding a mirror up when you're studying an organization to them, you're showing them that they do in fact improvise in the sense of bringing execution and planning together. So they're operating in the moment in the way that Lucas described, and that it would behove them well to recognize it to recognize it and to, you know, and to encourage it. So, you know, when I did my PhD, which I just happened to have on the shelf here, you know, because I brought it home from the office the other day, because I didn't really want to leave it there when I left. I did about 100 interviews with people in the project domain over half a dozen different financial services organizations, and every one of them admitted to improvising. They admitted to them what improvisation was. But the vast majority of them didn't necessarily approve of their team members improvising and didn't actually, you know, broadcast the fact that they were improvising themselves but they saw it as a legitimate way of getting things done and indeed an essential way of getting things done. You know, when I talk about improvisation in class, and I'm sure we'll get on to where improvisation fits within an academic curricula at some point over this session. But when I talk about them in class, you know, my, my approach to project management and to innovation, which is the things that I teach are behavioral, you know, I come from a, I come from an organizational behavioral theory background. So, you know, I talk about motivation and trust and commitment and all that sort of stuff trust being particularly important. I also talk about risk. And one of the problems with improvising in projects is that theoretically at least somebody's holding a risk register, but you can't go oh I need to do something now. You know, let me go back to the risk register and pour through that and update it before I, you know, before I improvise what you have to do when you're improvising in the domain where I research is you have to move forward and you have to try things. You have one eye on risk, so that if you start to get to a stage where things are starting to look unsteady, where things, you know, look as if you're reaching, I don't know, call it a tipping point if you want where it could all collapse into chaos. You have to be able to step back onto firm ground and say, okay, that's not going to work. What, what can I do instead. So, there's risk is in the back of your mind, all the time, when you do it. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Suzanne, where do you come from and where do you proceed improvisation living. Yes, I'm Suzanne, and I studied psychology and theater. And as all of you probably most of you doing trainings with applied improvisation working for different universities and also different companies and institutions, and having also written two books about applied improvisation. I'm thinking about the university that is working. It's called the University of Applied Arts and it's in Zurich and I don't know if there are so many around but I think it's, it would be the perfect fit because applied arts. It's really for me what applied improvisation is about and I actually got in touch with them, not if going to somebody else at the university and asking them if they would be interested to put up a curriculum for training applied improvisers. They were a bit interested, but not enough to actually do it. So maybe I will come back to them in another year, I don't know. But yeah, that for me would be really the perfect fit, in my opinion. Okay, thank you. And Ralph, tell us something of your background and sideline activities. And then where you position things. Well, I'm Ralph. I'm German. I started working as an electrician, actually, and then moved over social work to a business administration study, and ended up at the business school, doing basically most of my work in teaching on applied improv and on clown. And if you asked me where to put it, I would largely refuse to answer and say it's improvisation as such is a practice that to me almost by definition is undermining the usual categorizations and disciplinary realms that we find in a university as much as in a business school. And theoretically I come from organizational theory, but mainly influenced by second order cybernetics and by social systems theory, which is on a cognitive and theoretical level almost the equivalence to an improvisational practice. It's not easy to spot it or to put it into one of those domains. They're under they have a very specific way of undermining and and and breaking typical patterns of disciplinary thinking, and focus on going beyond that. On the pragmatic on a practical and level improvisation is doing nothing else and it's actually nothing else in a mirror of second order cybernetics and certain system theories. And thankfully we even have an author here in the room who has been kept conceptualizing and writing about this, just showing this little book. Play with chaos from Gunzo, where the connection between systems theory and improvisation is basically laid out. And given the fact that I, I met the business school where it's all about goals about plans about control. And about functionalizing creativity. The practice of of improvisation is basically the opposite of that it is breaking exactly that and is introducing a very very different way of of thinking and of working. And that only two people in three in my perception so far have been conceptualized one is a Nassim Taleb. The second one is again going to lose and the third one are actually the ancient Indians who talk about the via negativa. You don't are you're not told about what to do you're told about what not to do. And all the exercises and all the mindset and all the science behind actually in my view is is a positive way of to train you what not to do to remove all the stuff that comes in the way when you want to create an emergent process. And because of that imminent idea and imminent contradiction to to to very specific westernized way of thinking, going back to Descartes and God knows who it is basically contradicting with this perspective almost any kind of paradigm in modern science that we need engineering, be programming beat business beat education. And I think because of that, it's so important not to spot it somewhere unless it's for professional or for marketing reasons. And because of that, I feel it is, we would do the worst thing we could do if it would try to conceptualize and box it in. Since then, we will kind of take away the almost revolutionary intrinsic power the whole thing has. And there has been ways if you look into into the history of science you can you see waves were second order and constructivist and systems thinking comes up. And where improvisational practices are certainly in the focus and whether or not whether disappear. And what is what appears interesting to me just as I speak is that the waves when when second order theories are on the rise, the practice of improvisation is not very, very common not very well known. And as we have a kind of a run through the institutions of the university, second order cybernetic theories are not as common and not as strong anymore as they have been so that might be a kind of a disperse, but I think I'm deviate. So maybe, I'm not trying to position it in any kind of definitive way just knocking about how we perceive it and where it might go. And it sometimes will need to be positioned, like as a topic of research or on a bookshelf or in a library, not necessarily for any other reason. And perhaps, there's a slipperiness to it in that very different way of conceptualizing that you have that makes it difficult to place. I wonder if you could mention your theatrical performances and whether that has, or to what extent that's informed your way of thinking about the theory and conceptualization of improvisation. I'm still talking to you. Yes. I was not sure. An amazing theater piece. Well, together with a with a with a clown teacher and a director. I worked out and played a 50 minute solo mask show and brought it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And the interesting so I mean, again, I'm an electrician, almost by birth, I'm an engineer by birth. And for several reasons, which is another thing to discuss, I turned over a scientist into an into an artist. And the interesting thing. I think, again, what we're talking discussing here was while developing the play between the director lead along and myself that was just the way of practice on how she's developing shows and that is, you go from the stage the page to the stage and to the page. And we started fully improvised. And she was provoking the mask when I was wearing it. And she was provoking the mask in a way that something was triggered and we need to come out, which was completely emergent which was absolutely unplanned I had no idea what the heck was going on with me and what was breaking out of me. And I was sort of exhausted and nothing else was coming out of me in that practice and it seems to say okay now sit down take off the mask and write it so as in a way that you can replay it as you just did. And we did that over, over basically two days. And 90% of the text that I have been writing have become actually the literal text that I had to learn by heart into rehearsing to talk. And I'm telling this since that to me would be a nice way of combining the two different strands of thinking and of operating of the planned scripted theater and the unscripted emergent work that I've been experiencing that it would be kind of cool to see how we kind of not merge, but kind of put things together that is certainly in business and education in social work in in theater in arts wherever a place and a part of instruction where you need a goal where you need control where you need to plan. And at the same point, you need a kind of informal emergent way of handling things. And it's about not putting one over the other over the other but it's more about when do I have to follow which script. That to me, that to me is not a question of business that's I mean, I think that's that's a dualism that is probably happening all over the place. Yes, we people, I think recognize that. So I'm going to change my plan now in the light of emergent circumstances. And instead of going into breakout groups can invite a few more people to comment and can start with Gunter because he's been referenced a couple of times. So it'd be nice to hear what his responses to what's been heard so far. I'm flat, I'm flattered to be to have been quoted. My responses. I'm very much in accord with the, with the thesis that systems theory is probably the point where improvisation can be located best, which is not a good location because systems theories can everywhere. So it's not, it doesn't really help us to to say this, but I think it's, it's very much about the interaction of an entity with its environment is improvisation. As I'm moving as I'm growing older and more experienced as an improviser I think it's not, it's not only the interaction of the entity and environment in the hearing now but it's also very much about expectations, it's about predictions. So this kind of is more in my focus of attention at the moment, and what kind of environmental approaches could we have. So, so this kind of this moves towards an environmental approach in my view. What kind of expectations do we have, and are we proceeding in a way that we are trying to build environments that are predictable, as much as possible, because we are not trained in improvisation. So I think if we train improvisation, we might be able to not create environments that are predictable. I don't know if you can follow me but we kind of need to make our environments as predictable, because we're not able to improvise. It would be really interesting and some organizations make the effort, some societies make the effort to create the conditions in which improvisation can flourish. So safe container, encouraging people in certain ways, making resources available, and many other things that you can do to encourage improvisation, and we do them in our workshops. So if you were to generalize from that you could extend that to creating conditions otherwise. But I think it's a very interesting view of the world that it's largely designed these days to create predictability and conformity. We recognize that in social media. I like the idea of freedom within structure as well that even when you have structures there's always scope for how that structure is played with for each game iteration or round within whatever sphere we're working in. Wave your hand if you'd like to come in. Steve, let's let the people who've not yet spoken have one one go each at least and then we'll come back to the panelists. Ted, you look like you waved first and then maybe Robert. Thanks Paul. Yeah, I've been just sort of taking some notes here and I'd start off by saying I would put improvisation in the field of psychology as a foundation. The thoughts I had was that Ann and Mary's initial definition of planning and execution coming together. I think it's very powerful but it's a result. It's an activity that humans do, and potentially other animals do it as well. So I go back to fundamental psychology and I'm not a psychologist at all, but I look at the field of animal behavior. In very small animals from the tiniest one celled organisms up to human beings. We are all just reacting or responding to stimuli in very small animals it's called tropisms. You get into concepts such as intuition or automatic or planned responses, but we're all reacting to the environment in some fashion in some way as animals. I think joke on a side note or side joke I think of one of Murphy's laws, which I'm sure many of you have heard of, which is under the most rigorous conditions of temperature pressure and humidity. The organism will do as it damn well pleases, meaning animals react in all different ways into all different conditions. I put an argument in there about efficiency versus effective response, but I think that's more tangential. But we also get into psychological issues such as innate responses or learned responses or instinctive responses, and not being a psychologist I couldn't properly define what all of those are. We also get this at a certain level of animal response. Some animals are capable of learning, they're capable of being trained, they're capable of doing experiments and learning from what the response is. And I think this all comes from the effort we have as animals to want to control a very ambiguous and a very unclear environment, because the environment out there is ambiguous the environment out there is constantly changing. That's why we have to be able to respond. So, kind of because of all of that I think improvisation is an animalistic response to changing in environments. And this is all why I'm making the argument that I think fundamentally it goes into the psychological field, because when you have responses you can have productive responses you can have neutral responses, you can have a negative response. Animals learn how to deal with their environment or with other animals by experimenting and there can be both productive and non productive responses. So, I'm kind of taking a psychological approach. I think business is an outgrowth is an application of that psychological reaction. I think theater is more of a representation of human behavior, but it's more designed to entertain to enlighten to amuse to provoke. It's not actually where improvisation at its academic core comes from. So, hopefully I've made a bit of a compelling argument but I would put it in psychology. Thanks Ted. So, Robert, Alex, Josh, Ada, Alex. A couple of you know some of my background I've, I've been at improvisation for 40 years. I came to it through improvisational dance and microtonal improvisational music. I didn't know about improvisational comedy at all at that time. I was introduced to it and just blown away by the learning effect. It was about true play I laughed myself silly. I came back two weeks later and I had never experienced that kind of development of individuals and ensemble in anything that I had ever done. I'd been a bit of a teacher ever since I was a child 13 years teaching at Georgia State in the communication department. So, going back to my basic on where this exists my fundamental belief. See, I trace improvisation the first written work we have about the use of improvisation comes from the atylané papers of the Etruscans. And improvisation has grown and developed through the Commedia dell art and that moved into theater then it came and disappeared for a while kind of came back in North America. Actually by a psychologist, ultimately a psychiatrist, who did the first improv shows in New York City in 1925. He was studying spontaneity. I can never remember his name if it comes up in a moment. I'll mention it. But he's a man who developed who actually developed drama therapy. And it got on the stage of Marino. Right, right, right. Jacob Marino. He got on stage with newspaper headlines and his people he was playing with and they would read the headlines and they would do little scenes. Then Neva Boyd carried I think the very first real applied improvisation out into the world and through whole house she worked with veterans across the country in America in the 20s and 30s. Then in 1955 theater began to develop and that came also from a lot of philosophy and the like and then of course, in the last 20 years last 10 years improvisation has exploded into the world. My bottom belief about improvisation is that the art itself that I call it an art and science because it is both clearly is I believe the next iteration of the evolution of human consciousness and collaboration, something necessary for us to survive on this planet. From there, I look, I look at it academically and my first set in academia is that when you're talking at academics you're talking a class in a in a school, or maybe a set of classes at a school and then ultimately maybe a degree in that school. Well, there's no way to talk about improvisation as psychology as business as management as any of these things in in a single class, other than at the basic basic introduction at all to that. And yet we have seen all the way out of the expressions of it further other has worked in in improvisation in the medical field. She's the one person I know here who has done that Paul has worked in improvisation in every kind of field that there is. And my bottom line believe, and it's one of the funny things I see when I see improvisers around the world now they'll say, Oh, I've got this group I'm going to be working with what what are some good games to use to to accomplish this I'm using doing scientists what do I do what games. Well, I believe that the truth of improvisation is is that every improvisational form can be used in every situation to affect anywhere at all and it all goes down to the baseline the first thing of which. This goes to who's talking about Oh, the human condition, learning to be in the current moment Ralph. When in that direction, learning to understand that the current moment is all there is that we actually have to deal with. We can think about the past we can learn from the past we can express the past. We cannot go to the past. We cannot bring that stuff into our current moment. And in the future, it's all imagination, all the stuff in business it's about predictability. X style management is if you do it this way, and you do it my way you will get this result. 1234. Well, you cannot predict the future, it doesn't exist it's imaginary. So we're going to be in the current moment, then we start to get to the places of safety that Paul has talked about. We get to the places of balancing all these things. So, academically, to to place it. It really depends on what's going to be in the material if it's a single class. You can put it in any field whatsoever as an introduction to improvisation, and then qualify it. All of my work in businesses, the business is first thing what am I going to get from this. How's it going to work what's going to happen. See what what do you need. Well, we need XYZ. Oh, well, sure, improvisation works for XYZ, as Steve was talking about the difference to marketing. But it also is that place and with a group like this and the development of improvisation through the pandemic and through the zoom work. The idea is being carried I've watched it grow and grow. When I came to Atlanta there was a no improvisation here at all in 1983. And I started the first workshops the first show at the first theater, wrote a book about it. And I'm passionate about what it is. When you get people working in improvisation engineers are working with businesses Alan Alda's work with with the medical field medical improvisation. Oh my goodness. And you can do an entire semester, you can do an entire curriculum you can do an entire degree. I had one of my students at Georgia Tech, take his PhD, doing applied improvisation in robotics. He got his PhD and that and that's happening more and more and more. So, as to where to place it. I believe the answer comes from the improv itself. Who is your audience. And what do they need to hear that will open them up in a field of safety and that thing. Every mammal learns through play. Other animals do the same thing. Who is it. I think that was talking about that. So organizational development of consciousness and humanity is what we're dealing with. And when we're dealing at the level of the people who are here. What an extraordinary. Folks, I have got a bachelor's degree, and I taught at Georgia State that's my academic background. I've been a rebel my whole life I lived in communes. I was the officer of all these various kinds of things. And I came to improv, and the level of academia that is here on this screen in front of me did not exist at the beginning of my experience of improvisation. One or two people, somebody might be a doctor had some time somebody might be a teacher had some time you folks. I love it. The brain trust Paul, the whole idea is thinking about improvisation. It's spreading around the world. You've, you've set a very high aspiration for it levels of levels of human consciousness which is wonderful. And there are people here talking about it but it still strikes me as a very small number of people here, and that one of the risks of saying it's everywhere is it ends up being nowhere. I can bear it to say positive psychology. There'd be hundreds, if not thousands of people doing their PhDs in that was only a handful doing applied improvisation. I'm going to move on to Alex, but I'm going to introduce him with a response to something that Robert said. So I know that Alex lives in East Anglia and you say you can't visit past Robert, but you said people have said if you want to know what Norwich was like in 1970. Go there now. That's cruel. They should say the same about Plymouth when I lived there. I'm closer to Ipswich and given the rivalry. Fair enough. I won't comment. So for me, I think, well, I mean fascinating conversation so many different kind of ways of looking at this clearly context matters as ever improvisation seems to be quite chameleon like depending on the context. There's a very couple of things that so I don't know how to place it, but there's one thing I'd love to draw out from Robert's book, which is a sort of a brief description of improvisation that has stuck with me, which is that it is a tool making tool, like a meta tool. And I think that's a profound part of what improvisation can do. In classes where I've taught, I've seen students kind of come to discover the thing they needed to. So it might have been, for example, around recognizing status behaviors and then getting the chance to experiment with those be more adaptable in what they do. And I think I've seen that as a, I, yeah, I think it's an extraordinary property of improvisation. I don't know if that kind of puts it anywhere in particular, but I wanted to just note that. And the other thing that I'm, I think there's, if there's the strongest connection I see, and it's just because of my reading and understanding is probably through psychology and particularly through the connection to flow. The conditions to accept me, I identified as flow are so close. In fact, maybe even the same as those I recognize through improvisation. Things like having a clear goal or intention in the moment, you know, what are you going to do, not a goal necessarily for an outcome, but a goal in relation to the process, perhaps. It tests your skill level to rise to the challenge. So you're, you're matching or balancing that you get instant feedback and along with that intense concentration comes with that. And it's that kind of those optimal experiences. Certainly for me, when you, you know, feel your best, perform your best, have an element of improvisation because they're the edge of the comfort zone. When you're learning, it's the stretch. So I think the connection to psychology is super strong. But I recognize it is just another context that you can put improvisation into. What you've described from flow may well be the experience of people that they get when they're doing something that's described also as improvisational, that's so powerful and compelling that they want again. Alex, Ada, you've got a perspective that you've put in the chat, but maybe you'd like to speak to it. I want to be brief and usually I don't manage that I will still try it here. I came late to this international applied improvisation group, I live and work in Romania, and my perspective is a little bit from outside, I just got in and I wanted to share this. There are two ideas. First is that one of the areas that I think it's very relevant that hasn't been mentioned is education. Education is perceived, I think, wrongly as boring and modern education is fascinating and basically all of us are involved in education and I like to think of education as changing people, changing ourselves and changing others. But if you think of it like that, of course psychology becomes the same with education, part of education education is part of psychology and so on and there are modern theories in education that are very much connected the whole co-creation idea that comes from improvisation is core to improvisation. And what I want to bring to this conversation as a recent entry in this group is the mindset. What is fascinating for me is the same kind of games, the same kind of activities used in an improvisation environment with improvisers, with people who have the improvising mindset work wonderfully. You give them to someone else, you give them to someone who does them, you know, because they've been told to, give them to a teacher who doesn't understand the improv mindset, doesn't know how to make the others look good, doesn't know how to build and accept offers. And it's not only tedious, usually it's painful. And the pandemic which put everybody on Zoom and on other platforms and everybody using improv exercises has done us a major good part but also has diminished most of the tools because a lot of people are now more afraid of being put in a place where they have to dance or play games with people they don't know and make themselves vulnerable without creating safe spaces, without everything that's part of being an improviser. And I don't know how to address that but I see it and I know because I've talked to many people from this group, being inside improvisation you don't see it as much as I do. Maybe. You feel like everybody is like you are because you have been in this group for such a long time. Coming from outside, it's like, yes, now I understand, now I can play these games and I know how to build toward them. I see people who don't know how to do it wrong because they are improvisers, but you cannot give disregard this perspective the fact that it can be applied mechanically in a way that completely ruins the whole concept. Absolutely. Thank you, Ada. I've been to plenty of improvisation workshops that have been conspicuously lacking any safe space. So it's just it's poor facilitation, poor teaching. So I like putting it into the field of education to that extent, but there's a how to teach wealth that's a part of it. I'm also resistant to putting it in psychology at least psychology is individual psychology, because so much of what's going on with the improvisation that we're talking about is it requires more than one person. Typically, it's about collaboration and co-creation. And I know that that can be allowed for within some ways of doing psychology. There's a psychology that doesn't look at that at all. It starts looking in the individual brain and present some EEG findings as if that's somehow insightful. And Josh, you're not spoken yet. So I give you a chance to and then we'll see who wants to accept some offers. And we'll just have another 10 or so minutes because I know some people need to go on the hour. Thanks. This has been very interesting for me. I am a psychologist, cognitive psychologist. And so naturally, I think improv belongs in cognitive psychology. But I've noticed that the people who study systems think it belongs in systems and the people who study theater think it belongs in theater and the people who study education think it belongs in education. And so I don't put much stock in the fact that I think it belongs in cognitive psychology. Also, I've taught in a business school, almost my entire career. So I'm very sort of down to earth oriented and I have to say that some of the discussion about second order cybernetics and the trust skins and the human condition sort of went over my head. So I apologize for that. But from my point of view, the way I relate to improv is as a tool, as a tool in education, I use it to teach concepts, because it gets people involved in sort of understanding something. For example, like two other topics that I teach the business people are systems theory and innovation and doing improvisation as part of that really makes the concepts more concrete. But also I see it as a different way of thinking a skill of sort of a cognitive skill a way of approaching the world. And from my point of view, I don't think it does belong anywhere it's a little bit like saying, what department should we talk about writing and written communication. Well of course that belongs in business school, and it belongs in education department and, and you might have a department in serve over in the in the language department English department if you're an English speaking where you do that as a topic, but but communication doesn't belong there. People study systems, fear, you know the same thing as I wish it systems theory go well you see it pretty much everywhere from family therapy to robotics to medicine to whatever it's a, it's a skill or a way of thinking. So, that's my, the way I see sort of how improv fits in, both as a tool and as a sort of mental discipline. And so for me it, it, it, it doesn't get categorized. It's, it's a cross is a very cross disciplinary thing I'm more in that camp as well. Thank you Josh I saw a lot of notes on that Lucas is both in as a topic within a business school with its own course. I was just wondering like categorization where it belongs to and zone. And I just like the word experience. Experiencing is this the word improvisation is what I was fascinated from the beginning on. I experienced the emergence of something, you know, comes up something happens in the in the very moments. This is what I'm really fascinated. And I think that other people might be also interested or fascinated with this experience. And sometimes I feel like, you know, strange if people, you know, even me, or also me categorize this experience like, oh my God, don't take it away. It's so hard sometimes for me to to read scientific papers on improvisation because like, you know, it's like reading on about sex. It's okay. And it's nice, but it's different than experiencing it. Perhaps, we can sometimes also focus on know, and live the improvisation. And then it's nothing strange or nothing, you know, different. It's the normal thing. I mean, it's even strange if you're not improvising. So it's very strange sometimes to me if you're like, Oh, when do we provide like, come on, why not. So just know the experience level I think it's one thing that we can also focus on. Clearly, we've all identified it as experientially noticed, and as every day. So it's not confined to any specialist field, and reading about anything and doing anything is always creates that difference. So that's not a special to improvisation. I don't think Suzanne. Well, maybe we can start a new department I know in Australia department for group dynamics and they just did the whole new department for and then you can only study group dynamics so maybe that's the best way to do it. And there's a sense that I have that it's important enough, and perhaps it's already been conceptualized enough for there to be a lot more people being introduced to it aware of it, valuing it in the way that Steve talks about right at the beginning and others have, have reflected on, and that we haven't quite done that yet and that maybe as a collective of applied improvisers we can do something towards that. Steve you wanted to come back before. One of the problems with working in a university environment and particularly working in a business school environment is that if you want to put something new into a program, then you have to take something out because there's no room to put anything else. You know, our programs are full. And there's a movement towards trying to deliver degrees with less credits these days, which means you're always looking to take stuff out. You don't want to take out anything important and everybody thinks their stuff is important. You know, so, so, you know, you don't. So the finance people don't want to lose any finance space and the, you know, the, you know, etc. So, I've had to sort of crowbar the my improvisation teaching into classes that I'm already running. And so I teach an innovation class I teach an entrepreneurship class I teach a project management behaviors, your behaviors around project management class, and in each one of those classes, I've managed to create a week where I can talk about improvisation and how it works fits influences the way that that, you know, this particular subject is evolving in project management, it's about dealing with emerging requirements, you know, so you have to try and crowbar this in because it does seem very unfortunate in that it's always crowbar dino side show. We'd all like to devote more space and more time to improvising and to getting people, you know, practicing this or at least experiencing it, but you usually don't have a lot of time because there's so much other stuff. Also with three minutes to go. I'm going to invite one sentence contributions of final wise words. I know it's an ongoing conversation so temporarily final Josh. Yeah, I'd say that it's better to have something like a society for promoting use of improvisation, rather than trying to make it into a department or find it a home. I think it's better to have a cross disciplinary society or association that promotes its use I think that's more effective. Thank you Josh. Ada you had a two word wisdom in the chat you want to unmute and say that. You can put normalize improvisation and to add to what Josh said this is a community of practice defined very clearly it's a community AI and it's a perfect example of a community of practice and it should continue to do that. Any other single sentence concluding words of wisdom. I think a stab improvisation is like the elephant depending upon where you touch it it feels different. We'll ask the elephants about that, Robert. You're muted encourage reading especially of original material in the field just encourage that wherever you can and encourage everyone to write more as well. There's a group like this that already has writing instincts. And yeah it's it's practice based I really like the word experience and it's it's for me it's something like unlearning it's not learning it's unlearning so because we all had improvisational skills at the very beginning of our lives. So, this kind of makes a difference to almost any other practice. Thank you. One sentence Ralph. One sentence would probably be keep the. Let's let's let's keep the informality and the emergence in it. And the undermining power it has by not too much defining it and not too much boxing it somewhere. I've always seen the applied improvisation network as an improvisational organization with that looseness flexibility and degree of emergence. So thank you all so much for very interesting conversation. Feel free to keep writing things in the shared Google Doc and look out for future brain tanks next month we're having a break from the brain tank and having a book club. Instead, but then it will be back in two monthly doses on the first Tuesday. Is it the first Tuesday of the month or is it the second Tuesday. It's the second Tuesday, second Tuesday of the month. Clearly, if it's the 13th, it has to be. So see you then. Thank you very much. So, up on the writing and the book stuff. Routledge are currently, you know, there's a deal for Routledge are doing a handbook on organizational improvisation, edited collection of pieces. Miguel Cooner and and minor and just severe a couple of other people are editing it. But there's a whole bunch of people contributing towards this including Frank Barrett and people like that. I don't know how long it'll be before it comes out. I think the deadline of 2020. Yeah, I think that the deadline for chapters is this September. So it's going to be a bit after that. Yeah. It's more than a year now. So yeah. Okay. Thank you very much for that Steve. Thank you everyone for your contributions much appreciated. Thank you. The young lozal there.