The Daily Improviser Finds the Game!

Last time I described the loose improv framework called Finding the Game, a guideline that performance improvisers use to create useful boundaries around their creative efforts. Today I’ll begin addressing the question: How does “Finding the Game” apply to the Daily Improviser?

If you think about it, the performance improviser’s onstage challenge is no different from the Daily Improviser’s challenge in his everyday dealings: How, from the infinite universe of choices available to me at any moment, can I move forward in a productive and satisfying way?

Granted, you don’t always have to be “moving forward productively.” If you think you do, then you’re likely to lose the benefit of just sitting in quiet contemplation or deep meditation. And even then your thoughts don’t have to be directed toward any particular end. As a popular poster from my college days put it, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits!”

But I think most of us would also own up to the saying, “Other times I stands and acts!” We need to periodically gather those kaleidoscopic mental sensations and begin sorting through them, putting them into categories, sequencing them into a blueprint for action, and slapping them on a calendar.

Very simply, we periodically need to focus. The performance improviser needs to - in rapid fashion - both run through the Rolodex of the mind and make selections from the spinning cards in order to create a coherent scene. Similarly, the Daily Improviser must continually (though not so rapidly – in most cases) alternate analysis and action.

I’ve been thinking about this mental balancing act as I’ve been reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, the long-awaited sequel to Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. One of the Heaths’ first observations about influencing people to change is:

If you want people to change, you must provide crystal-clear direction.

The Heaths describe the case of two West Virginia University researchers who were trying to conduct a campaign to promote healthier eating. “Eat Healthier!” of course provides no direction for people, since the ways in which people can interpret such advice is almost limitless.

So where to start? What should people be encouraged to do? As the Heaths say, this is exactly the kind of situation that lends itself to spinning of the mental wheels, resulting in “analyzing and agonizing and never moving forward.”

The researchers could easily have gotten bogged down in the complexities of the issue and never launched the campaign at all. Or, they might have moved ahead with a campaign that tried to address all of the complexities but which would have overwhelmed the target audience. (As the Heaths said in a similar context in Made to Stick, “If you say three things, you don’t say anything!”)

Instead, the researchers decided to zero in on one specific dietary habit – milk-drinking – and conduct a campaign to encourage people to buy 1% or skim milk rather than whole milk, a change that by itself would cause the average diet to attain the USDA recommended levels of saturated fat. The general ho-hum message “Eat healthier” was replaced by the message “Next time you’re in the dairy aisle of the grocery store, reach for a jug of 1% instead of whole milk!”

Simple. Crystal clear. Focused.

You could say that the WVU researchers were successful at Finding the Game in their campaign – stating a simple, concise message that would focus people's attention and mobilize them to act in a desired way.

How do you go about your own “campaigns” to encourage change – in your organizations and in your personal lives? Do you try to address the full scope of the issues in all their complexities – and get bogged down as a result? Or, instead, do you Find the Game by focusing on those few key actions that afford the most leverage and lend themselves to crystal-clear, focused calls to action?