In order to give you a feel for how exactly those successes can happen—how business and improvisation can interact in the most positive way—let me present you with a case history. A couple of years ago I created an intensive three-day seminar called “Story of a Lifetime” conducted at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and sponsored by UCLA Anderson’s Executive Education Department.The course details had been clearly laid out in session descriptions and everyone in the room had made the explicit choice to be there.
为了让您感觉到这些成功是如何发生的（业务和即兴如何以最积极的方式进行互动），请让我向您介绍一个案例历史。几年前，我在加州大学洛杉矶分校安德森管理学院举办了为期三天的密集研讨会，名为“一生的故事”，由加州大学洛杉矶分校安德森执行教育部赞助。课程的详细信息清楚地列在会议说明中，每个人在房间里做出了明确的选择。
In fact this particular program had been created to reward VP-level financial advisors employed by one of the world’s top financial management firms. It was a thank-you from the company to its elite earners. Other rewards had been available; all the enrollees in my program could have opted for spa vacations, trips to Hawaii or Europe, or open enrollment programs at prestigious universities such as Harvard,Wharton, and MIT. They had ended up with no view of a Hawaiian sunset and no chance at a hot stone chakra massage. Instead, they were under florescent lights in a room with me.
实际上，创建此特定程序是为了奖励由世界顶级财务管理公司之一聘请的副总裁级财务顾问。从公司到精英收入者，这都是由衷的感谢。还可以获得其他奖励。我计划的所有参加者都可能选择了水疗度假，去夏威夷或欧洲旅行，或者在哈佛，沃顿商学院和麻省理工学院等著名大学开设了录取计划。他们最终没有看到夏威夷日落的景象，也没有机会进行热石脉轮按摩。相反，他们和我一起在一个房间里被荧光灯照亮。
The focus of the “Story of a Lifetime” program was to craft stories and to develop the skills to pitch those stories, all to emphasize the importance of storytelling as a form of communication.It seemed to be a perfect program for a Hollywood setting, a town basically built on the art of storytelling. While pitching stories is particularly relevant to the entertainment industry, it’s also central to one’s success in organizations. Certainly that’s the case in regard to the ability to align individuals around a vision; to influence teams for results; to explainkey decisions in real time; and to put impactful meaning behind otherwise raw data—abilities that any high-performing corporate executive should want to master.
“一生的故事”计划的重点是制作故事并发展讲故事的技巧，所有这些都强调讲故事作为一种交流形式的重要性。对于好莱坞而言，这似乎是一个完美的节目，该镇基本上建立在讲故事的艺术上。虽然讲故事与娱乐业特别相关，但它对于个人在组织中的成功也至关重要。当然，关于使个人围绕愿景进行协调的能力就是这种情况。影响团队取得成果；实时解释关键决策；并在其他原始数据后面加上有意义的含义-任何高绩效公司高管都应掌握的能力。
The core exercise of the program was a storytelling and pitching challenge, in which teams of the participants developed movie ideas and then pitched their best concept to a panel of judges made up of creative types with some real Hollywood credits (a screenwriter, a producer of the TV show Drunk History, a former Saturday Night Live cast member). The program was designed not so that these top-level financial planners could have the thrill of pretending to be Oscar contenders; rather, so that they could develop skills immediately transferable to their work: engagement, commitment, influence, persuasion,adaptability, passion, and most of all, of course, storytelling.
该计划的核心工作是讲故事和推销挑战，其中参与者的团队提出了电影创意，然后将他们的最佳概念推给了由创意类型组成的评审团，并获得了一些真正的好莱坞荣誉（编剧，制片人电视节目《醉史》，曾是《周六夜现场》的演员。该计划的设计并非使这些高层理财计划师冒充奥斯卡竞争者的快感。而是使他们能够开发可立即转移到工作中的技能：敬业度，承诺，影响力，说服力，适应性，热情，最重要的当然是讲故事。
Every client coming to a financial planner is in essence telling a story—a life’s story. A planner has to hear that story, understand its underlying meaning, recognize the client’s needs, and be able to answer with a story of his or her own that addresses those needs and connects with the client. The planner’s story has to explain how the financial planner is working in the client’s best interests. You can’t shape a story like that unless you get used to thinking creatively, and you can’t tell a story like that unless you’ve got some specific communication skills in great shape. Adaptability plus communication equals improvisation.The goal of the program was for these execs to head back to the office and use their newly learned improvisation techniques while analyzing a client’s portfolio, putting together a quarterly report, facing a board meeting, connecting with an investor, or in any number of other realworld business challenges.
本质上，每位来理财师的客户都在讲一个故事-一个人生的故事。计划者必须聆听该故事，了解其潜在含义，认识客户的需求，并能够回答自己的故事，以解决这些需求并与客户建立联系。计划者的故事必须解释财务计划者如何为客户的最大利益而工作。除非您习惯了创造性的思考，否则您无法塑造出这样的故事，除非您具有良好的特定沟通技巧，否则您就无法讲出这样的故事。该计划的目标是让这些高管返回办公室，并使用他们新学到的即兴演奏技巧，同时分析客户的投资组合，汇总一份季度报告，召开董事会会议，与投资者建立联系，或其他任何现实世界中的业务挑战。
Here is what we did.
The first step in the challenge was to break the class of 25 into smaller teams. Each team was tasked with coming up with a master list of movie ideas they might want to develop further. I stressed to the teams that at this stage in the process, they were to be focused on generating a quantity of ideas without judgment of their quality, so some improv-related rules would be in effect:
这就是我们所做的。
挑战的第一步是将25人的团队分成几个小组。每个团队的任务都是提出他们可能想进一步发展的电影构想的主要清单。我向团队强调，在流程的这个阶段，他们将专注于产生大量想法，而无需判断其质量，因此一些与即兴相关的规则将生效：
1. All ideas are to be encouraged, and no ideas should be quashed—at all.
2. There are no creative boundaries, and no idea can be judged unusable on the basis of any aesthetic, technical, or budgetary concerns. Dream big!
3. If an idea can be expressed and understood, it’s on the list.
4. Everyone must participate.
1.应当鼓励所有想法，而绝不能推翻任何想法。
2.没有创造力的界限，任何想法都不会因美学，技术或预算方面的考虑而被判定为无法使用。远大的梦想！
3.如果一个想法可以表达和理解，就在清单上。
4.每个人都必须参加。
The rules were met with considerable eye rolling and some exasperated grunting. But the teams did get working. After only 30 minutes it was apparent that some groups had taken the task seriously and had created a list of 25 or so movie ideas. Others—the grunters—barely had half a dozen. What had at first been presented as a brainstorming challenge now went a little deeper, as I began to familiarize the teams with the concepts of divergent and convergent thinking.
眼神rolling绕和有些恼怒地满足了这些规则。但是团队确实开始工作了。仅仅30分钟之后，很明显，有些小组认真对待了这项任务，并创建了25个左右的电影创意清单。其他人-咕ers声-很少有六个。当我开始使团队熟悉发散和融合思维的概念时，最初提出来的集思广益挑战现在变得更深了。
In divergent thinking, ideas radiate from a single point of origin. The ideas are free to head in any direction and are not to be hampered by self-judgment or by a fear of judgment from other participants. Divergent thinking in a corporate setting might be the ideal opening strategy for an exceptional brainstorming session, or it might be the way in which creative solutions to a conflict begin to take shape.However, divergent thinking is only half of the process. To be effective, divergent thinking must be followed by focused, convergent thinking, in which members of a group or team now apply critical judgment to determine the most workable ideas and bring that wide range of initial thoughts back to a single, productive conclusion. In a corporate setting convergent thinking would close the brainstorming session or lead toward an innovative resolution.
在不同的思维中，思想从一个起源出发。这些想法可以自由地向任何方向发展，不要因自我判断或担心其他参与者的判断而受阻。在公司环境中进行发散思维可能是举行特别头脑风暴会议的理想开放策略，也可能是解决冲突的创造性解决方案开始形成的方式。但是，发散思维只是过程的一半。要想有效地发挥作用，必须在有分歧的思想之后进行集中的，聚合的思想，在这种思想中，小组或团队的成员现在可以运用批判性判断来确定最可行的想法，并将广泛的初始思想带回到一个单一的，富有成果的结论中。在公司环境中，聚合思维将结束集体讨论或带来创新解决方案。
In the next phases of the challenge, then, the teams were asked to take their divergent lists and apply convergent thinking in order to narrow the lists down to their top three story ideas. Then the process was repeated using the same mix of divergent and convergent thinking to turn the three basic ideas into three fully fleshed-out, who-what-why-when-where-how storylines. The more skeptical members of the group thought this process sounded ridiculous. “Why not just vote right away on a best idea and then get to work coming up with a pitch?” The answer was that the exercise was not about time saving and efficiency; it was about how to pull a great idea out of a team through a process of creativity and collaboration.
然后，在挑战的下一阶段，要求团队采取分歧的清单并运用趋同思想，以便将清单缩小到他们的前三个故事的想法。然后，使用相同的发散思维和趋同思维组合来重复该过程，从而将三个基本思想转变为三个完全充实的故事情节，究竟是谁，为什么，何时何地。该小组中更多持怀疑态度的成员认为这一过程听起来很荒谬。“为什么不立即投票选出一个最好的主意，然后提出建议呢？”答案是，练习不是在节省时间和效率。它是关于如何通过创造力和协作过程将出色的想法从团队中拉出来的。
The process of fleshing out the three ideas might lead to the realization that elements of the “weaker” storyline actually work better than what was originally deemed the “best” idea. Then, in piecing together the best elements of disparate ideas, the groups might find they’ve arrived at an even better “best” idea than they would have gotten to otherwise. I implored the groups to follow the process, though I didn’t yet emphasize the point that in doing so, they’d be putting improvisation techniques to use.
充实这三个想法的过程可能会导致人们认识到，“较弱”故事情节的元素实际上比最初被认为是“最佳”想法的要好。然后，在将不同想法的最佳元素拼凑在一起时，这些小组可能会发现，他们提出了比原本更好的“最佳”想法。我恳请各小组遵循该过程，尽管我尚未强调要这样做的重点，但他们会使用即兴演奏技巧。
分散、融合、创造选择、做出选择
A few aha! moments began to happen. The teams most open to the process were discovering that what they thought was their best idea didn’t hold up when stretched out into a movie-length narrative.Some teams were finding that parts of their three good ideas fit together to make an entirely new premise. Others were finding unexplored depth and breadth in the story and character development.The techniques of divergent and convergent thinking weren’t quite so abstract now; they were getting results.
几声哈哈哈！片刻开始发生。对此过程最开放的团队发现，当他们把自己的最佳想法延伸到电影长度的叙述中时，并没有坚持到底;有些团队发现，三个好想法的一部分相互融合，形成了一个全新的想法前提。其他人则在故事和角色发展中发现了无法探索的深度和广度。现在，发散和融合思维的技术还不是那么抽象。他们正在取得成果。
The teams applied convergent thinking once more to pick a single, best movie idea. Then it was back to the divergent cycle for them to fully develop that idea. Each team’s best idea had to be completely thought through and shaped into a real, deliverable movie pitch. It had to have a concise logline—a one-sentence summary of the story capturing the basic concept and unique hook of the movie idea.Teams also had to consider a narrative arc, a sense of character development, and a way to convey the impact the movie would have on its audience. After some prep time each group was only going to have five minutes to pitch their movie to our expert panel. They had to be succinct, on point, and impactful.
这些团队再次运用融合思维来选择一个最佳的电影创意。然后又回到了他们充分发展这一想法的分歧周期。必须充分考虑每个团队的最佳创意，并将其塑造成真实，可交付的电影宣传片。它必须有一条简洁的日志线-一个一句话的故事摘要，以捕捉电影概念的基本概念和独特之处。团队还必须考虑叙事弧线，角色发展感以及传达影响力的方法这部电影将吸引观众。经过一段时间的准备，每个小组只有五分钟的时间将他们的电影推向我们的专家小组。他们必须简洁明了，有影响力。
I was thrilled when the team that had been most resistant to the process conceded that they would not be showcasing the idea they had quickly and stubbornly trumpeted as their best—a “Tommy Boy”-goes-to-Washington story based on the wild exploits of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford (Ford had recently been in the news, and the tales of his public drunkenness, his admissions to smoking crack, and his general boorishness were on everybody’s mind—four of the eight teams started with Mayor Ford movies on their lists). The team of skeptics would now be pitching a movie about a U.S. GI working as one of the unheralded “tunnel rats” during the Vietnam War, who gets trapped behind enemy lines. In working through the repeated divergent/convergent process (about which they had such strong doubts), this team had discovered that this highly emotional war story was actually much stronger than the raucous Rob Ford comedy.
当团队最抵制该过程时，我感到很兴奋，他们承认他们不会展示自己迅速而固执地吹嘘自己最好的想法-一个“汤米男孩”-到华盛顿的故事，基于野蛮的剥削前多伦多市长罗布·福特（Rob Ford）的肖像（福特最近在新闻中露面，关于公众醉酒，吸烟破裂的承认以及他普遍的无聊的故事都在每个人的脑海中-八支球队中的四支都是从他们的市长电影开始的列表）。怀疑论者团队现在将放映一部有关美国地理标志的电影，该电影是越战期间未曾被称为“隧道鼠”的人之一，被困在敌后。通过反复的分歧/趋同过程（他们对此有强烈的怀疑），该团队发现，这个激动人心的战争故事实际上比喧闹的罗布·福特喜剧片强得多。
The war story was up against some tough competition. Among the other teams’ pitches were
• A high school football drama about a star player who dies after suffering multiple concussions, and whose mother then takes up the cause of making football safer (Erin Brockovich meets The Blind Side)
• Another football film, in which the NFL is run by corrupt prison wardens and football stadiums have become gladiatorial coliseums in which the games are battles to the death among the prisoner-athletes (Mad Max meets The Longest Yard)
• A film that follows a serial killer working the speed-dating scene(Valentine’s Day meets Silence of the Lambs)
战争故事是在激烈的竞争中进行的。其他球队的比赛内容包括
•一部高中橄榄球戏剧，讲述一位明星球员在遭受多次脑震荡后死亡，其母亲随后承担了使足球更安全的事业（Erin Brockovich与The Blind Side会面）
•另一部橄榄球电影，美国国家橄榄球联盟（NFL）由腐败的监狱看守管理，足球场已成为角斗场，其中的比赛是在囚犯之间进行死战（疯狂的麦克斯遇见最长的院子）
•一部跟随连环杀手的电影，约会场景（情人节遇见沉默的羔羊）
• A film about a team of robots that plans a bank heist (Robocop meets Ocean’s Eleven)
• A feature documentary that centers on the “nature vs. nurture” debate and examines how an inherently good person can go bad in the wrong environment while an intrinsically bad person can become virtuous in a positive environment (Freaky Friday meets Freakonomics)
• A film about a wine connoisseur who finds love on a dairy farm (Sideways meets Whole Foods)
• A film about a female spy who kicks ass and saves the world (the Bourne films meet The Hunger Games)
•有关计划机器人抢劫的机器人团队的电影（机器人与海洋十一人会合）
•纪录片以“自然与养育”辩论为中心，考察了一个固有的好人如何在错误的环境中变得糟糕。内在的坏人可以在一个积极的环境中变得有德性（《星期五星期五》与《狂热经济学》见面）
•一部关于葡萄酒鉴赏家在奶牛场上找到爱情的电影（Sideways见到Whole Foods）
•一部有关女性间谍踢屁股并拯救世界的电影（伯恩电影与饥饿游戏相遇）
The teams pitched their big ideas, then the judges conferred to pick the four strongest ideas on the basis of clarity, content, the passion of the presentation, and the effectiveness of the storytelling. They went with the two football ideas, the nature vs. nurture documentary, and the skeptics’ tunnel rat. The lower groups were folded into the top groups, creating four final groups with new personal dynamics as well as new assets. Each top group was given thoughts and direction about their movie pitches from our judges and then the new, larger team began the divergent/convergent process once more to implement the changes and perfectly hone their pitches. The stakes were high: members of the winning team were going to receive a UCLA hat and coffee mug.
团队提出了自己的大创意，然后评委们根据清晰，内容，演示的热情以及讲故事的效率，选择了四个最强的创意。他们提出了两个足球创意，即自然与养育纪录片，以及怀疑论者的隧道鼠。较低的组被折叠到最高的组中，创建了四个具有新的个人动态和新资产的最终组。我们的评委们向每个高层小组提供了有关其电影音高的想法和方向，然后，新的更大的团队再次开始了发散/融合过程，以实现这些变化并完美地调整他们的音高。赌注很高：获胜团队的成员将获得UCLA帽子和咖啡杯。
At the start of this particular program the energy in the room had been decidedly negative. By the time the four teams of elite financial planners were putting together their final 15-minute pitches for the judges’ panel, there had been an observable shift. Nobody seemed interested in questioning or undermining the process—they were all fully committed to go for the win. Every voice felt supported, every idea was properly aired and considered, and every group member had a clear understanding of the group goal and each individual’s responsibility. The final pitches were a blast, every group putting so much passion into their presentations that you would have thought there was a real $100 million studio check at stake. The skeptics’ team was the most animated, actually crawling around on the floor to bring the tunnel rat story to life, and almost tearing up in the climactic moments when the GI finally makes it back to the States with a newly adopted Vietnamese son.
在此特定程序开始时，房间中的能量肯定为负。到四支精英理财规划师团队为法官小组准备最后15分钟的比赛时，已经出现了明显的变化。似乎没有人对质疑或破坏这一过程感兴趣—他们全都致力于赢得胜利。每个声音都得到支持，每个想法都得到适当宣扬和考虑，每个小组成员对小组目标和每个人的责任都有清晰的了解。最终的高潮是爆炸式的，每个团队对他们的演讲都充满了热情，以至于您会以为真正的1亿美元工作室支票已经at可危。怀疑论者的团队是最活跃的，实际上是在地上四处爬行以使隧道鼠的故事栩栩如生，而在地理标志终于带着新近收养的越南儿子回到美国的高潮时刻，它几乎被撕毁了。
The judges had a tough decision to make, and the win went to the “NFL as deadly penal colony” movie. The skeptics placed second—a finish they seemed very happy to achieve.
On the last morning of the program there was a final debriefing session with the participants. I asked the group, “What if the challenge now was to come up with a quarterly report, or draft a best practices memo for your department?” Everyone in the room—skeptics included—had a similar reaction: they realized that whatever work they might be faced with, if approached with the same energy, focus, and sense of purpose they had been using on their movie pitches, it would get done better, faster, smarter, more productively, and more enjoyably.Moreover what seems like a basic task—best practices for a new employee engagement, let’s say—can in fact be a much more invigorating and insightful exercise in divergent and convergent thinking if structured as such. That’s what I call thinking outside of thinking outside of the box.
I am continually amazed at how powerful a change agent improvisation can be when serious people commit and get serious about the process. From boardrooms to classrooms to breakout rooms—no fancy environs are necessary to set a foundation of growth in place. With that in mind let’s settle in (wherever you are) and move on from the big picture to the building blocks. We’ll start with the principle that is at the heart of all improvisation: “Yes, and . . . ”
