Things You Don't Expect to See in Dayton, Ohio

In my last few posts, I’ve been noting the widespread reach of the “looked but did not see” syndrome described by Tom Vanderbilt in his book Traffic. Last week I experienced a perfect illustration of the syndrome in action.

As I was walking along a street in downtown Dayton, Ohio, I approached a midblock pedestrian crosswalk, primed for my daily “enorme” size cup of coffee waiting for me on the other side. Dayton has several of these midblock crosswalks, each of which is regulated by a traffic light. Having become more aware of the “looked but did not see” syndrome, I now always check to make sure cars stop at the red light before I proceed across.

Sure enough, last Wednesday as I got ready to cross with the green, an SUV blew through the crosswalk (I saw him coming, mom!), completely oblivious to the red light and to the indignant pedestrian yelling and shaking his fist. (If my own bias filters had been in place, I’d also report that he was chattering away on a cell phone – it would somehow fit, but having been fully in “The Now!” as he roared by me, I can’t say that I saw that.)

Not to give the guy a break, but … having read Traffic, I can understand how a driver would expect to see a stoplight only at an intersection, not stuck in the middle of a city block. Clearly, as Tom Vanderbilt put it, the fellow in the SUV was “looking through” the light (and me) because it didn’t fit his “mental picture” of what he thought he should be seeing.

OK, so to make sure he sees me next time, I think I’ll put on a bear costume and go moonwalking backwards through the crosswalk. (Hmm, on second thought, he probably wouldn’t see that, either.)

Driving, Flexing, and Staying in "The Now!"

In recent posts, I’ve described the “looked but did not see” syndrome that commonly affects people when they get behind the wheel of a car – or, for that matter, when they do anything else during their daily routine.

You can relate the “looked but did not see” syndrome to the improv model I created and previously described – ExploreFlexSupport (with The Now! and The Wow!). Using this model, you can see that the tendency to let assumptions, expectations, and distractions come between you and what’s in front of you can be overcome particularly by applying “Flex” skills and attitudes and by attending to “The Now!”

All five elements of the model really work seamlessly together, but I think that “Flex” and “The Now” are especially interrelated. How, for example, can you empty your mind of preconceived notions and truly consider what that person across the table is saying (“Flex”) if you’re not fully present and truly attending to her (“The Now”)? As Patricia Ryan Madson says in her book Improv Wisdom:

"The improviser's lifeline is his attention. Those on stage often appear clever simply because they have been paying attention to what has been said and remember it when most of the audience has forgotten. This is the real magic of the art of improv."

Can You "See a Situation as It Is"? (Continued)

In my previous post, I described a study cited by author Tom Vanderbilt in his book Traffic. The study dealt with a category of traffic mishaps called "looked but did not see" accidents, in which automobile drivers failed to see motorcyclists primarily because the drivers were scanning the road for other cars and were not expecting to encounter cyclists.

I generalized from this study to observe that much of our perception - not just in the traffic context - results from the expectations we bring to a situation rather than from our processing what's actually in front of us.

So how well can you process what's actually in front of you? I invite you to run the following video to find out:

Did you "master" the test? If so, congratulations! If not ... then the next time you take to the freeways - or to the meeting room - consider how much you may be missing due to the thoughts, assumptions, and expectations that come between you and the real situation before you.

Can You "See a Situation as It Is"?

Consider an activity in which:

...you throw yourself into an arena with a few basic rules but which largely involves making up your every move on the spot.
...you must stay flexible so you can react immediately to the unpredictable moves of your fellow participants.
...you must process rapid-fire input, staying focused on your ultimate goal while avoiding unproductive tangents.

I’m talking, of course, about driving, probably the truest form of improvisational activity that the typical Daily Improviser regularly experiences. In his book Traffic, Tom Vanderbilt reveals some intriguing physiological and psychological aspects of navigating the highways that can also shed some light on the concept of mastery that I discussed in earlier posts.

In the book The Three Laws of Performance, Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan define “mastery” as “nothing between you and the thing you’re dealing with.” In Zaffron and Logan’s view, “If you have beliefs, expectations, hopes, fears about [a] situation, mastery means putting these on the shelf so you are not looking through them at what is in front of you.” Masters commit to seeing a situation as it is, tearing down the intervening “screens” of assumptions, problems, and past baggage.

Seeing a situation as it is. This may sound like a somewhat daunting challenge – and judging from our experiences with our daily driving routines, as Tom Vanderbilt points out in Traffic, it may be even more daunting than we realize.

Vanderbilt refers to studies of an entire category of crashes, those known as “looked but did not see” accidents. In these types of accidents, “drivers were looking directly at a scene but somehow missed a vital part – perhaps because they were looking for something else, or perhaps because something came along that they were not looking for.”

To illustrate this “looked but did not see” syndrome, Vanderbilt cites a study concerning the frequency of car-motorcycle collisions:

“Many people assume that ‘failure to see’ [the motorcycle] means that the motorcycle itself was difficult to see because of its size or its single headlight. But it may also be that car drivers tend to be on the lookout for other cars when entering an intersection or turning across a lane of oncoming traffic. They may be in a sense ‘looking through’ the motorcycle, because it does not fit their mental picture of the things they think they should be seeing.”

(While driving, have you ever had this experience of “looking through” something that seemed to come out of nowhere but which, in retrospect, was in front of you the whole time – but which you just didn’t expect to see?)

Vanderbilt then quotes a researcher who concludes the following from the study:

“The common intuition is that we first see things in the world and then interpret the scene in front of us…. What this [study] shows is that it’s possible that the idea you have in mind actually precedes the perception and affects what you see. Our expectations … of what’s in a scene influence what we see in a scene.”

The Daily Improviser’s driving experience can reveal just how much we "create" our own reality (often unconsciously) based on preconceived ideas and expectations - and shows how much of a challenge it can really be to meet Zaffron and Logan’s “mastery” criteria of seeing a situation as it actually is.

Why Your Strengths Are "Areas for Development"

The idea of focusing on strengths in creating development plans tracks closely with the improv concept of "Yes And" by leveraging the power of agreement and positivity - that is, looking at what's right with a person rather than at what's wrong (and trying to fix it).

But the Strengths movement doesn't advocate ignoring one's shortcomings. In fact, Strengths writers like Marcus Buckingham and Tom Rath don't shy away from calling these what they are: weaknesses. Their point, though, is that rather than expend brute force on overcoming a weakness, a person is better served by directing his energies to developing his strengths and finding other compensating strategies for dealing with his weaknesses.

Is your own development plan centered only on your weaknesses? Do you think of strengths as areas where you've "made it" and which thus require no more attention? Or do you see your strengths as a springboard that can vault you (as Peter Drucker says) from first-rate performance to excellence?

The Hand Dance - Marx Style

In an earlier post, I described the Hand Dance improv activity as an example of the concept of mastery, defined as "nothing between you and the thing you're doing." However, I realize that written instructions aren't always the best way to convey the steps of a physical activity. So I'll draw on those paragons of organizational/human development expertise, Groucho and Harpo, to provide a visual demonstration of the Hand Dance (and Head Dance, and Foot Dance, and ...).







And seriously - was there ever a better example of "the dance of collaboration" than Groucho and Harpo demonstrate here?

Drucker on Leveraging Your Strengths

"It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than to improve from first-rate performance to excellence."

Peter Drucker

So why do we spend so much of our energy trying to fix our areas of "incompetence" if the best we can expect is mediocrity? Why not focus our efforts on identifying and leveraging our areas of strength?

"Leverage" is defined as "the mechanical advantage of a lever." If your developmental efforts feel as follows, it's a good sign that you should quit trying to use brute force to improve performance and instead take advantage of the "lever" of strengths:

The Steady Drip-Drip-Drip of Negativity

Here's a simple remedy for drowning out that chorus of voices that say: "YOU CAN'T!"

• Focus on your Strengths
• Develop Mastery in your unique niche
• Get into a state of Flow

... then look up and greet your public!

In the meantime, I would highly recommend a dose of the following video - if you're being besieged by repeated assaults of negativity, then you're in good company!

How Can Improv Help?

I recently responded to a post on the Applied Improvisation Network website regarding issues in the business realm that improv can address. Between the original posting and my own additions, I thought this would provide a good summary of what I've been covering so far in the Daily Improviser blog.

Improv can help with:

ORIGINAL POST

• relating to others emotionally
• building collaborative team frameworks
• active listening
• presenting information in an accessible and engaging way
• thinking laterally in brainstorming sessions

MY ADDITIONS

• Dealing with conflict - applying "Yes And" as a way of overcoming the search for blame and instead exploring how to collaboratively resolve a situation
• Personal development planning - especially with a focus on leveraging one's strengths rather than fixing one's weaknesses
• Appreciative Inquiry - doing strategic planning and organization development by focusing on the positive aspects of the company/department/team
• Surfacing "undiscussable" issues in a company/dept/team - cueing in to the unspoken messages in our interactions and bringing them out into "center stage"
• Becoming aware of the messages we send through our body language (especially status messages)
• Developing flexibility and resilience in dealing with organizational change
• Avoiding groupthink - striking out into new areas of inquiry rather than falling back on the tried and true (in stage terms, making strong choices and avoiding falling back on "schtick")