We all love behavioural economics, right? With their clever psychological experiments, counterintuitive insights and wonderful nudges, they throw fresh revelatory light onto our thinking and behaviour. Take for instance risk-aversion. The key insight in several of the books I’ve been perusing is that we tend to be risk-averse for gains, but the opposite for losses.
How many of us have been part of a bad brainstorm? But what if it’s not about the group but about how ‘bursty’ it is? And how can improvisation create burstiness? Creativity comes in bursts. Well, that’s according to the Adam Grant podcast ‘WorkLife’, in which he visited Trevor Noah and ‘The Daily Show’…
Layering is the idea of having more than one thing going on at one time in a meeting, workshop or conference. For example, displaying posters on the wall is an example of a layer beyond people simply talking to each other. Each extra layer added to a meeting, workshop or conference also provides an opportunity for the layers to be combined in new activities.
We are seeing a lot more articles about the use of improvisation in organisations. Much of the action is on the West Coast of the USA, especially centred on Silicon Valley. Although we are seeing more applied improvisation coming from the UK.
There is a power in telling a story in the first person. It’s only you who can share this story from this perspective, which gives the appearance of authenticity and means the story cannot easily be challenged. You also know enough about yourself to guarantee plenty of supporting detail.
My colleague was inspired to invent a new introductory game for our London improvisation group session the other night. She saw a new electric scooter hire service and fancied giving it a try. So, at the beginning of the workshop, she asked everyone to describe to a partner how they had got to the session that evening and what way they would have liked to have arrived.
