Using "Yes And" to Overcome Idea Chillers

From Day One of their training, performance improvisers are taught to say “Yes And” to onstage offers as a way to build interesting scenes and work collaboratively with their fellow players. For the Daily Improviser, taking a “Yes And” approach to life can go a long way toward keeping possibilities open while also maintaining positive relationships. By contrast, adopting a “No” attitude can keep us grounded in the status quo while blocking teamwork right out of the gate.

There are many subtle ways for people to say “No” without actually using the word. Listed below are some phrases and reactions people often use in meetings to immediately pour cold water on new ideas. These are usually used as a substitute for open-minded discussion of the idea, consideration of ways to make it work, and brainstorming of other ideas it might prompt. Chronic use of these Idea Chillers – especially when accompanied by dismissive laughter and sarcasm -  is guaranteed to stop innovation in its tracks, perpetuate Groupthink, and belittle and disrespect people. (To counteract the effect of Idea Chillers, try the responses in parentheses.)

"We tried that before and it failed miserably." (Let’s look at why it didn’t work and do it differently this time.) 
"It's too expensive." (How much do you think it will cost? What are the costs of standing still?)
"It isn't our responsibility." (Who is responsible? How can we work with them?)
"It’ll never work." (How can we make it work?)
"Management will never go for it." (How do we know unless we ask? How can we influence them to accept it?)

"We've never done it that way." (The old way may have worked fine in the past – but maybe it’s time for a change.)

"Great idea, but not for us." (Why aren’t great ideas for us?)
"That’s too much change, too quickly." (How much change is enough? How can we adapt the idea so it addresses the need?)
“People just aren’t ready for that.” (How can we gain acceptance for it?)

“Here’s why that won’t work …” (How can we address those challenges?)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." (If we’re not moving ahead, we’re falling behind.)

”That won’t fly in our culture.” (Let’s consider if it will help us meet our strategic objectives and live our organizational values.)
“I don’t like it at all.” (What are your concerns, and how can we address them?)

"You have got to be kidding." (It might sound a little “out there” – a lot of new ideas do.)
"It's all right in theory, but..." (How can we turn theory into reality?)

Keep in mind that the process of innovation doesn’t usually start with a fully formed, practical idea. If that’s what we’re looking for, few breakthrough initiatives will ever get off the ground. Instead, most creative changes grow from the seed of an idea that might not work exactly as expressed but that are nurtured and shaped through open-minded, freewheeling discussion. For example, there can never literally be a “Beatles reunion,” but failure to capture the idea during a brainstorming session can prevent a company entertainment committee from identifying a related idea (e.g., a Beatles tribute band) that could work. (And if the idea is shot down with an Idea Chiller, you can bet that no similar “out there” ideas will ever come up again.)

Do You Want Your Experience Filtered or Non-Filtered?

Has it really been almost three years since I began The Daily Improviser blog?  As we approach the end of another year, I thought that it might be time for a summary of some of the improvisational “truths” – for both the performance improviser and the Daily Improviser – that I’ve been discovering in my blog journey:

1.      Improvisation is all about finding the connections among (seeming) incongruities.

2.      Improvisation involves holding multiple (seeming) incongruities in one’s mind at the same time and still being able to function.

3.      Improvisation does not involve directly experiencing one’s environment. Instead, the improviser uses various filters and useful structures (which I collectively call “The Layer”) to help make sense of his environment and guide his response.

4.      Improvisation involves supporting others as we work together to create a result. Support means saying “Yes and” to others – and “Yes and” means, not Agreeing with the Position, but Accepting the Person, Acknowledging the Possibilities, and Advancing with Positive Purpose.

In my reading on different topics – including history, politics, economics, science, performing arts, popular culture, and (yes) leadership – I’ve been finding examples of these truths time and again as they thread through the narrative. I admit I’m still struggling to resolve a few (seeming) incongruities (such as finding the right mixture of “Yes” and “No” in our daily thought and action), but I suppose those truths will emerge over time.

Today I’ll focus on another example of #3 above from the book Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman. Now, you might assume that behaving in an “irrational” way is a bad thing, a conclusion that the book’s jacket reinforces when it describes the book as “revealing the dynamic forces that derail our logical thinking and sabotage our decision-making.” In fact, though, the Brafman brothers echo much of what I’ve observed elsewhere about the utility of the filters through which we view the world.

The Brafmans cite a number of psychology experiments that show how difficult it can be for us to overcome the “diagnosis bias,” which they define as “our propensity to label people, ideas, or things based on our initial opinions of them.” In one study,  a group of MIT economics students - a population you’d expect to be paragons of rational thinking - were given a bio of a new professor who was about to conduct one of their class sessions. Unknown to the students, however, half of them received one version of the bio, while the other half received another version. The first version concluded with the following sentence.

"People who know him consider him to be a very warm person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined."

The second version was exactly the same except for two words (italics added) in the final sentence:

"People who know him consider him to be a rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined."

At the end of the class session, the students were asked to complete an evaluation of the professor – and, as the Brafmans observed, “Upon seeing the results, you’d think the students were responding to two completely different instructors.” Apparently, changing just two key words in the bio predisposed the first group of students to see the professor in a favorable, appealing light, whereas the second group saw him in a negative, off-putting light – even though both groups of students had experienced the same lecture!

But even though the Brafmans use this story to emphasize the dangers of putting filters on our perception of our environment, they also make the following statement that echoes the observations of Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan:

“Each day we’re bombarded with so much information that if we had no way to filter it, we’d be unable to function. Psychologist Franz Epting, an expert in understanding how people construct meaning in their experiences, explained, ‘We use diagnostic labels to organize and simplify.’”

Like Taleb, then, even the Brafmans recognize that filters such as diagnostic labels are essential to humans’ ability to comprehend the world around them. The goal is not to get rid of diagnostic labels. Instead, we need to be continually aware of the labels we’re using and be ready to challenge them in the moment to incorporate new information that might give the lie to them. 

In terms of the ExploreFlexSupport model I’ve previously described, this is one aspect of the “flexing” that the Daily Improviser needs to engage in: Continually reframing the useful structures he uses to make sense of his world when those structures are no longer useful.

The Personal Improvement Journey: It Starts with Feedback

In my leadership-development sessions, I like to illustrate a point about feedback by rotating my finger in front of me and asking the class participants, “Which way is my finger going, clockwise or counterclockwise?”

Invariably, someone will say, “It depends – to us it’s going counterclockwise, to you it’s going clockwise.” Quite correct, but I like to drive the point home (and, I admit, ham it up a bit) by marveling at my finger as it whips through the air and asserting, “No, no, it’s going clockwise! A perfect circle, if I do say so myself! Yep, I am doing one tremendous job of communicating clockwiseness!”

My intent, of course, is to show how misguided and even absurd it is to be so wrapped up in our own perceptions of our actions that we become oblivious to the people whose perceptions really matter: Our audience. Only by tuning in to the feedback from our environment can we answer the question: Are you receiving me?

Now, each of us probably knows at an intellectual level that feedback is good for us – that we need to see ourselves as others see us in order to identify areas for improvement. If we “know” about the benefits of feedback, though, why do so many of us still resist it? Why do we argue with it, rationalize it, minimize it, or – worse – question the motives or perceptions of the feedback-giver?

I’ve come to believe that the reason starts with a basic self-limiting belief: Because we don’t think we can do anything about it!

Certainly when it comes to simple matters (“You’ve got a burnt-out headlight”), we’re more open to feedback because the issue is easily corrected. But when we hear feedback about behaviors that we feel are hard-wired deep within us, we commonly treat the feedback as an attack on who we are. In response, we tend to circle the wagons, revert to defensive mode, and block ourselves even further from feedback that could help us improve.

So how can we reverse this downward spiral? First, we need to question the belief that our behavior is unchangeable. As I pointed out in my article on Carol Dweck, we need to cast off a fixed mindset and adopt a growth mindset in its place.

But just believing that we can change doesn’t tell us how to change a particular behavior. And this is where another barrier to our development presents itself: The belief that mastery of the behavior is somehow innate and natural and can’t really be learned.

As we’ve seen with Dan Klein’s work, however, even an “innate” performance of a task can be analyzed and broken down into its component behaviors. And if the task’s component parts can be identified, they can be taught.

But even if you believe Dweck and Klein, you might still say: Yes, I can change, and the skill can be learned – but there’s a big difference between knowing the steps of a task and actually performing them.

I’ve addressed this issue in a number of articles – mostly focused on the themes of engaging in targeted practice (as developed by Matthew Syed in his book Bounce), unlearning of old behaviors, and implementing strategies such as stealth learning that make the new behaviors a natural part of one’s everyday life.

In very simple terms, then, what I've described above is the journey to self-improvement. And, as with any journey, it starts with a single step – called feedback!


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POSTSCRIPT: Many if not most of the pictures I use in The Daily Improviser are just random shots intended to lend a little visual appeal and break up the text. Rarely do they actually illustrate any of the content in the article. However, the day after I wrote this article, I realized that the picture I posted - a shot I snapped of the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio - actually echoed the last paragraph. So, I guess you can also think of feedback as "one small step for a person, one giant leap toward what the person can be."

The Daily Improviser Keeps on Smiling through the Changes

The name Art Clokey might not ring a bell with most people, but I’m sure the smiling, pliable green character he created would.

Yes, I’m speaking of Gumby, the subject of a series of film shorts produced by Clokey (rhymes with "Pokey") starting in the early 1950s. Using a painstaking process called Claymation, Clokey would bend Gumby and other plastic figures to form a series of poses and then capture each pose in a single movie frame. When the frames were spliced together and played back on a movie reel, Gumby and his pals would magically come to life on the screen.

These days I’m sure there are many times when the Daily Improviser feels like Gumby – bending, stretching, being pulled this way and that, either of his own volition (out of necessity or preemptive choice) or at the hands of an unseen animator called Continuous Change. And as Dan Ariely points out in his book The Upside of Irrationality, we humans have a remarkable capacity for adapting to change – more so, perhaps, than we often recognize. 

As Ariely demonstrates, our ability to go with the flow is not a matter of our acting as human supercomputers, inputting and processing all of the data that surround us and spontaneously kicking out the right response. Rather, our internal “change machines” operate in a very different way:

"We only have a limited amount of attention with which to observe and learn about the world around us – and adaptation is a very important novelty filter that helps us focus our limited attention on things that are changing and might therefore pose either opportunities or danger.  Adaptation allows us to attend to the important changes among the millions that occur around us all the time and ignore the unimportant ones. If the air smells the same as it has for the past five hours, you don’t notice it. But if you start smelling gas as you read on the couch, you quickly notice it, get out of the house, and call the gas company."

Ariely’s example provides yet another instance of a useful structure that the Daily Improviser employs to come between him and his environment in order to make sense of the world and deal with it appropriately. As I’ve pointed out in earlier articles, just as the performance improviser doesn’t sketch in his performances on a totally blank slate, neither does – or should – the Daily Improviser interact directly with the raw stuff of his environment, process the millions of changes that occur every second, and make up a new response on the spot every time. Rather, as Ariely, Steven Pinker (in his book The Blank Slate), and several other recent researchers have demonstrated, we humans are hard-wired to utilize intervening structures (or “novelty filters,” as Ariely calls them) to come between us and our world to help focus our attention and guide our actions.

In fact, as Ariely’s example illustrates, if we didn’t use these intervening structures (which I’ve previously described as The Layer), we would be incapable of making in-the-moment adaptations to changes in our environment. Instead – like the performance improviser who tries to run through all possible scene options in his head before making his next move – we would be frozen in place by Analysis Paralysis. 

Unlike Art Clokey, we don’t have the luxury of freezing reality second by second so we can sculpt each moment as we might like it to unfold. Fortunately, we can draw on The Layer as a short-cut to help us get in touch with our Gumby Nature.

What's My Motivation? Behavioral Economics and the Daily Improviser

In his book Born Standing Up, Steve Martin refers to several occasions during his early performing days when he gave a show for an audience of exactly … zero.

Having had the experience of performing to particularly loud crickets myself, I’ve been reflecting lately on how the lack of immediate payoff impacts a performer in such situations. What sustains him and keeps him going?

And how can the answer provide insight into the age-old question for the Daily Improviser: What’s my motivation, man? That is, what prompts the Daily Improviser to engage in sustained effort on certain tasks and endeavors – and to persevere in the face of challenges?

All of these questions are addressed by Dan Ariely in his book The Upside of Irrationality. A researcher in the area of behaviorial economics, Ariely describes a series of experiments he conducted that uncovered some intriguing answers to the question: “What is it aside from a paycheck that confers meaning on work?”

Ariely’s experimental design was simple and elegant. He gave each research subject the task of building a robot figure out of Lego blocks and paid him a diminishing amount of money for each robot he built, until the subject decided that he didn’t want to continue. For half of the subjects, Ariely’s researcher put each completed robot into a box underneath a desk. However, for the other half, the researcher immediately disassembled the completed robot right before the subject’s eyes.

Notice that the monetary payoff for each subject was based wholly on the number of robots he chose to build. If you’re a person who believes that people act in a strictly rational (and mercenary) way, you would probably predict that the researcher’s action with respect to the completed robots would have no impact on the number of robots the subjects chose to build.

And you would be wrong.

The experiments showed that those subjects whose robots were destroyed in their presence produced 32% fewer robots and made almost three dollars less than those whose creations were carefully stowed in the box.  Even though there was nothing stopping them from building more robots, the subjects who saw their work immediately broken up generally felt that the extra effort to make three more dollars just wasn’t worth it.

Ariely personifies this group by referring to Chad, the first subject in the group, and concludes as follows:

"Chad … witnessed the piece-by-piece destruction of his work, forcing him to realize that his labor was meaningless…. For those in Chad’s condition, watching their creations being deconstructed in front of their eyes was hugely demotivating."

To further emphasize how powerfully people crave meaning – even with a small “m” – in their work, Ariely next designed an experiment in which subjects solved simple word puzzles on successive pieces of paper and were again paid a diminishing amount for each puzzle solved. For one group, the researcher looked at each completed paper and nodded approvingly before giving the subject the next puzzle. For a second group, the researcher shredded the completed paper in front of the subject’s eyes. For a third group, the researcher simply put the paper aside without looking at the subject’s work at all.

As in the Lego exercise, the subjects whose work was acknowledged persevered in the task longer (and made more money) than the group whose work was summarily torn up. Incredibly, though, the group whose work was totally unacknowledged gave up the task about as early as the group whose work was destroyed!

So what does this mean for the Daily Improviser? As Ariely observes:

"The experiment taught us that sucking the meaning out of work is surprisingly easy. If you’re a manager who really wants to demotivate your employees, destroy their work in front of their eyes. Or, if you want to be a little subtler about it, just ignore them and their efforts."

To Ariely’s conclusion, I would add that there are even lots of subtle ways to “destroy” an employee’s work, if only in a figurative sense:

• Minimize their best efforts
• Pour cold water on their aspirations
• Discount their ideas 
• Punish them for taking calculated risks that don't work out

On the other hand, perhaps the good news about Ariely’s research is: A little recognition, used consistently and genuinely, can go a long way toward creating engagement, satisfaction, and meaningfulness for an employee as he applies his best efforts.

Building Agreement - One Game at a Time

I've been focusing recently on the topic of building agreement - and the challenges and best practices involved in finding common ground with others, especially those who seem to be a world apart from you. Improv, by the very nature of its major tenet ("Say 'Yes And'"), provides concepts and practical activities that can instill a cooperative attitude in the mind of the performance improviser as well as that of the Daily Improviser.

In addition to a cooperative mindset, anyone wanting to build his agreement-building capabilities through negotiation and solution-finding must become skilled at navigating the seeming contradictions and incompatibilities of the parties' positions. I say "seeming" because, as I've pointed out before, improv as a form proceeds on the notion that everything can ultimately be connected and resolved - even such apparently incongruous notions as, say, "a Sumo wrestler performing Swan Lake."

Listed below are a few activities drawn from the world of improv that can help build negotiating and solution-finding skills. (By the way, I don't claim that any of these is original with me - I've derived them from existing sources.)

YES BUT
The "Yes But" game brings into awareness the downsides of contradicting others' perspectives. You can then contrast that approach by following up with a round of "Yes And," thus showing how taking a more positive, agreement-based direction can open up possibilities between the parties.

PAIRED DRAWING
Partner up. Partner #1 starts drawing a picture on a piece of paper. After 30 seconds, Partner #1 stops drawing and Partner #2 continues the drawing that Partner #1 started. The partners continue to alternate making additions to the drawing, without talking, until one partner feels that the drawing is finished, whereupon he starts captioning the drawing by writing a single letter at the bottom of the page. The other partner then adds the second letter. Partners alternate writing a letter until the caption is complete.

This game encourages cooperative action on the part of the players and teaches them to take into account and build upon the contributions of the other rather than trying to force through an outcome on their own.

QUIT YOUR DAY JOB!
(Works best with 3-4 players.) Each player lists three things that he likes to do in his spare time - or would do if he had any spare time. The players then brainstorm a possible business the three of them could create that would incorporate an element from each of their lists. For example, Partner #1 lists "Surfing," Partner #2 lists "Collect vintage gas pumps," and Partner #3 lists "Record collecting." Their brainstorming leads to an idea: Self-guided tour maps of Southern California surfing spots, illustrated with road memorabilia and lyric excerpts from surf-music songs.

This game encourages the parties to use their combined creative abilities to find commonalities that might not be apparent at first.

Sharpen Your Collaboration Skills (but Don't Leave Your Partners Flat)

In my past few articles, I’ve been discussing the potential power of using creative abrasion to spark innovation and making forceful choices as a way of challenging another person’s version of the truth. As I've said, making strong choices can be a form of support, in that it shows a person’s willingness to fully engage in an interaction rather than just sit back and acquiesce in the other’s point of view (while often silently crafting a dissenting opinion in his head). A person may think he is being a good team player by holding his counsel rather than expressing how he really feels. In fact, though, playing it “close to the vest” rather than openly sharing thoughts (and being open to the other’s thoughts) is a sure way to prevent real trust from developing between individuals and teams.

However, as I said last time, it’s possible to go too far down the path of “calling it as you see it,” a course that can damage relationships and prevent a willingness on the part of others to join you in a collaborative search for truth.

I recall a conversation I had with two people several years ago that illustrates the downsides of this “take me as I am” kind of approach. One person was describing to me a common Feedback Formula she used when letting others know about performance that she felt fell below standards:

• Provide a balanced description of the other’s actions in objective, behavioral terms;
• Describe the impact of those actions;
• Ask the other for his reaction.

I don’t recall the example the person provided, so I'll provide my own illustration:

“Fred, in that presentation, you did a good job of maintaining eye contact with the audience and speaking in a strong voice. I felt that helped to draw the audience into what you were saying. I also noticed a couple of times when you started to answer their questions before they finished talking. That may be why they didn’t respond toward the end when you asked for more questions. How do you see the situation?”

I was surprised when the third person in our conversation seemed to be almost offended by the Feedback-Formula approach. She basically said: “Why tiptoe around the issue like that? I’d just flat-out tell them what they did wrong!”

I also don’t recall the example that the person provided – but I suspect her alternative feedback statement would be: (a) Quick, (b) Focused only on the negative, (c) Loaded with labels and interpretations of behavior, and (d) Lacking an invitation to the other person to describe how he or she sees it.

I can imagine what a “flat-out telling them” statement would sound like:

“Fred, that was a pretty bad presentation. You messed up big time, and you totally lost the audience.”

Quick. To the point. No tiptoeing. However …

Recall my previous article, in which I mentioned Mick Napier’s contention that, on the improv stage, a strong offer can be a supportive offer. But the “flat-out” statement is a perfect example of a strong non-supportive offer. What can the receiver of that statement do with it? What information does it provide that can guide his next move? And just at a basic human level: How would it make the receiver feel – about either his ability to develop into a good presenter or his regard for the speaker?

By contrast, how would you answer those same questions with respect to the Feedback Formula statement?

Just as “searching for agreement” is not the same as “being agreeable,” using “creative abrasion” as a way to spark change is not the same as “being abrasive.” The Wright Brothers’ brand of improv (which I cited in a recent article) may have been energetic, loud, and full of strong offers – but ultimately their mutual trust and their laser-focused commitment to a common goal told them when to shift from acting contentiously to acting collaboratively.

I suspect, however, that the “flat-out” statement noted above would have quite a different effect.

It would leave the interaction – and the other person – flat.

Don't Agree with Me - Support Me!

Several times in the Daily Improviser blog, I’ve referred to the ExploreFlexSupport model as the foundation for effective action by both the performance improviser and the Daily Improviser. Today I’d like to focus on the third part of the model: Support.

On the improv stage, Support means: Say “Yes And” to your fellow players by building positively upon their lines and actions (i.e., their “offers”). If both partners provide this kind of mutual support, they can collaboratively create a rewarding scene.

By contrast, an obvious action that undermines support is saying “No” to a scene offer. In his book Truth in Comedy, Kim “Howard” Johnson cites a scene in which a female player tells her onstage partner that she wants a divorce. The partner replies, “But what about the children?” to which the first player responds, “But we don’t have any children!” As Johnson says: “Naturally, she got a huge laugh. Naturally, she had completely destroyed the scene” – because the laugh was at the expense of the scene and her partner’s offer.

This Support model sounds a lot like the positivity-based And Stance I’ve described as a guide for the Daily Improviser as he engages with others in a joint search for truth. But as I’ve been saying in my past few articles, I’m starting to wonder about the possible limits of the And Stance, with its emphasis on finding points of agreement and common ground. By focusing so much on agreement (and being agreeable), are we perhaps discounting the energy and complacency-busting power that can accompany throwing a bit of creative abrasion into the mix? In the name of smoothing over our interactions, do we run the risk of holding back how we really feel?

In fact, Mick Napier has raised the same type of questions about the Support model even as it applies to the improv stage. Napier has confronted head-on the Conventional Wisdom of the “Support Your Partner” model with the Uncommon Sense notion “Take Care of Yourself First.” As Napier writes in his book Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out:

"If you want to support your partner in an improv scene, give them the gift of your choice. I only feel supported by my partners if they make a move, if they do something. If they just stand there and look at me thinking about supporting me, I am absolutely unsupported. The more powerful a choice they make, the more I am supported." [Emphasis added}

Napier thus recognizes another aspect of the Support model that often gets lost: Support doesn’t just mean accepting and building on your partner’s offer. It also means giving your partner something solid to work with in return. 

To illustrate: Partner #1 says “Look at those giant blue manhole covers raining down from the sky!” Partner #2 responds, “Yes! I wonder what they’re coming from?” In this situation, Partner #2 would be totally in agreement with the reality established by Partner #1. Partner #2 would also be totally non-supportive of Partner #1. Why? Because rather than making a strong choice of his own that can carry the scene to the next level, Partner #2 has essentially punted the verbal ball back to Partner #1 and said, “Here, you figure out how to run with your reality.”

Napier’s observation nicely (if I can use that term) resolves the apparent contradiction between the Conventional Wisdom and Uncommon Sense I described above by basically saying: I can best support my partners by giving them the best of myself and my thinking! Or, to state it as a formula: Agreement does not equal Support!

I think this formula can also apply to the Daily Improviser as she encounters others on the journey to truth.  If we equate “support” with “being agreeable,” then we run the risk of holding back our best ideas and discounting the validity of our own perspectives. If a group of us do this, then we run the risk of generating Groupthink, that implicit (and sometimes explicit) peer pressure we apply to team members to stay within the bounds of “approved” thinking, even if it leads us to march collectively over a figurative cliff. Again, as Wilbur Wright said, we don’t want to be too quick to give up our own hold on the truth in the rush to accept our partner’s sense of truth.

And yet … I wouldn’t want to go too far down the path of saying that, for the Daily Improviser, truth is best served by a knock-down-drag-out encounter between two different views and perspectives, with each contender going to the mat to try to prevail over the other’s position. First, as I’ve also observed elsewhere, adopting this attitude often means that the “victory” goes to the best arguer, not to the most valid argument. Second, humans are not purely rational, argument-processing, truth-sifting machines that can put aside their emotions during a struggle for the truth. We can win the rhetorical battle but lose the relationship war, at a cost of bad feeling and lingering resentment. As was the case with the Wright Brothers, at some point we need to quit contending and start looking for common ground.

I'll continue this topic next time by further exploring the meaning of "Support" for Daily Improvising leaders.

The "Clash of Ideas": A Negative Approach to the Search for the Truth?

My previous article about the Wright Brothers and their contentious verbal altercations reminded me of a term I encountered a few years ago – “creative abrasion” – which reflects the notion that innovation can only be realized by the clash of conflicting ideas – especially by rubbing the status quo against new, provocative ways of looking at things.

In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath refer to a similar concept in the context of influence and persuasion. If we want to influence somebody, say the Heaths, we need to confront that person’s Conventional Wisdom on the topic (which keeps him grounded in the status quo) with the Uncommon Sense of our message. And rather than just telling him why our message makes counterintuitive sense, we need to first shake his hold on his Conventional thinking by such concrete devices as demonstrations, illustrations, and stories. These communication vehicles themselves represent examples of “creative abrasion.” Once the listener has “unlearned” at least parts of his previously received wisdom (so the idea goes), he can then be more open to our contrasting message.

These examples represent everyday applications of one of the foundations of performance improv: The presenting of the players with incongruous situations (e.g., “a Sumo wrestler performing Swan Lake”) that they then must spontaneously and collaboratively resolve in their scene. Many improv workshop games focus on the deliberate creation (and resolution) of improbably coexisting situations and characters. In the Train Wreck game, for example, one character improvises a lengthy line of dialogue on any topic of his choosing (e.g., the proper care and feeding of sunflowers), which his partner interrupts with a wildly inapt response (e.g., “I’m not your real father.”). The players must then make the intrusive line work within the context of the opening speech.

Shake-ups … collisions … the shifting and rubbing of conceptual (rather than tectonic) plates … each of these represents the types of “creative abrasion” necessary for innovation. Yet I somehow feel the concept of creative abrasion itself scraping against a body of thought I’ve been developing in The Daily Improviser: The idea of using a positive, “Yes And” approach to collaborating with others in a joint search for truth.

It seems to me that each of the examples I cited above (as well as the Wright Brothers examples in my previous article) represents a blatant NO response to an existing concept or direction of thought. But haven’t I been advocating the improv-derived Positivity approach as an alternative to the usual lying-on-the-tracks mindset that typifies so much verbal wrangling? How can the throwing down of such conceptual gauntlets square with the idea of conducting a cooperative approach for an agreed-upon truth?

These questions pave the way for an inquiry into an even larger question. As I previously noted in my article on Barbara Fredrickson’s research into what makes people happy, for the most part Negativity is stronger than Positivity. As Fredrickson says, it takes three positive thoughts to counteract a single negative thought. If Positivity is the better way to interact with others, why should this No-to-Yes ratio be so skewed in No’s favor?

Naturally, I have some thoughts on all of the questions I’ve raised above. For once, though - having just created my own version of a Train Wreck - I’m going to leave an article with some loose ends dangling. I’ll revisit these questions later – and in the meantime, I invite readers to offer their own creative ideas (abrasive or otherwise).

Speaking of Winging It ...

"They argued for sport, their voices rising, relishing the debate as they might have relished a tennis match, whacking assertions and evidence back and forth."

Two aggressive disputants crossing swords in a typical business meeting? A dysfunctional couple on the road to a messy split?

Well, no. Actually, the two verbal combatants described above were none other than Wilbur and Orville Wright.

As James Tobin describes them in his book To Conquer the Air, the Wright Brothers did not always (or even typically) engage in calm, collegial discussions in their collaborative efforts that led to the first manned flying machine. “To outsiders,” writes Tobin, “the brothers’ way of thinking looked less like cooperation than combustion.” Tobin goes on to observe:

“From the fracas, ideas emerged. They enjoyed the fight. But the fight was also a method, and the tougher the fight, the better the results. Will [Wilbur] once analyzed it for a friend:

“’No truth is without some mixture of error, and no error is so false but that it possesses some element of truth. If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error he is liable to give up some truth with it, and in accepting the arguments of the other man he is sure to get some error with it. Honest argument is merely a process of mutually picking the beams and motes out of each others eyes so both can see clearly. Men become wise just as they become rich, more by what they save than by what they receive. After I get hold of a truth, I hate to lose it again, and I like to sift all the truth out before I give up an error.”

As I read that, I immediately was struck by an apparently contradictory “truth’ of my own that I had asserted in an earlier blog article. The proposition I put forth can be summed up in the article's title: Want to Defeat the Truth? Then Start Arguing!

Well, like Wilbur, I also prefer to sift all the truth out of an assertion before I give up any erroneous elements it contains. And I would immediately observe that Wilbur’s statement actually echoes a concept I’ve also described: The And Stance.

The And Stance is an attitude between conflicting parties that, instead of saying “I’m right and you’re wrong,” puts forth the proposition that “I’m right AND you’re right” – that is, each of us has a piece of the truth in our possession. The process of searching for truth then involves “sifting” through the contents of our respective positions and agreeing on the truths we can jointly adopt.

Clearly, Wilbur’s statement recognizes that the process of argument doesn’t consist of beating the other party into submission with the brilliance of our points. Instead, argument – honest argument, as he called it – is a mutual process of testing each party’s ideas and having each party be willing to modify (or even give up) those that don’t hold water. In this way, the “honest arguer” is like the champion athlete who simultaneously convinces himself of his strength to prepare him for competition while also being open to the gaps in his game so he can improve. As I wrote in my Want to Defeat the Truth? article:

The typical arguer commonly fails to [recognize] that he could actually be wrong. By ignoring the holes in his own position, an arguer becomes like the athlete who convinces himself of his indomitability but overlooks the often glaring evidence that tells him where he's falling short. When both verbal combatants fail to acknowledge their own fallibility, the typical argument becomes … "less about seeking the truth than about overcoming opposing views" - or, to use another combat analogy, an attempt to batter the other with one's position until he submits. Whichever party "wins" such a battle, the truth is usually the real loser.

Obviously, the Wright Brothers’ methods for seeking the truth were successful – because they didn’t get married to positions that they held onto until the bitter end. As proof, Tobin cites this anecdote related by the Wrights’ niece:

One of them would make a statement about something very important, and then there would be a long pause. Then the other would say, ‘That’s not so.’ ‘Tis too.’ ‘T’isn’t either.’” And “at the end … Wilbur would say, ‘Well, I think you were right. You certainly were right about that.’ And [Orville] would say, ‘No, I think you were right.’”

When’s the last time you participated in a business meeting where the “combatants” ended up saying something like that?