There Are No Mistakes: What Great Improvisers Know That Your Team Doesn't
I want to share a secret with you that the best improv comedians already know. If you want a team that is truly greater than the sum of its parts, you want improv. You need improv.
Maybe you think I'm going to write about Yes And. And sure, that would make sense. I mean that is a piece of it, and Yes And is the one thing from improv culture that has broken out into the wider zeitgeist.
Don’t get me wrong, Yes And is essential if you want to build a great improv scene, and it has real power as a guiding star for brainstorming or for building trust among any group. Defaulting to yes can also unlock life adventures that some would otherwise miss entirely. I don't want to undersell those possibilities.
Still, ultimately there's a tepidness to Yes And. It feels like advice for a large family reunion: Nod and Make Nice.
Great improvisers don't stop at Yes And.
In the heat of performing, the best improvisers operate under a more radical belief: that there are no mistakes. That nothing their collaborators contribute is wrong. That every offer is beyond perfect, that each is, in a sense, ordained.
That assumption is what allows for frenetic, explosive creation. It unlocks performances that defy easy explanation. It is probably part of why improv is often compared to a cult; because once you've seen it done at that level, or better yet once you've experienced it yourself, you want more of it.
Thousands of dollars in classes? Thousands of hours practicing? Small prices to pay.
Wouldn't you want your colleagues to feel that way about working with you?
I can hear the harrumphing already. No mistakes? Credit default swaps must have been a good idea then. Theranos too. Have you heard of an ocean liner that rhymes with Gigantic?
Fair enough. Disasters happen.
Though I'd note that none of those disasters were caused by improvisers, meaning that rejecting the mindset I'm describing doesn't actually stave off catastrophe. If shooting down your colleagues' ideas doesn't prevent disaster, but does kill great possibilities before they get started, where exactly is the advantage?
Still. Point taken. There is a time for no.
But let me ask you something. Is that the problem you actually face at work? Is there genuinely no one on staff willing to pump the brakes? No one brave enough to counsel caution, slow things down, run the bold new idea through some committees first?
More likely the problem is the opposite. Your colleagues feel unsupported. They're uncertain whether contributing is even worth the risk, or whether putting an idea forward just means inviting another rejection.
So they stop. They get quiet. They start hiding.
Offices like that are full of busy work, distraction, and zero momentum. And they are hardly rare. They’ve been with us since I entered the workforce in the mid 1990s.
These days you get to take that malaise and cover it in an avalanche of screens, screens that are mesmerizingly adept at increasing isolation. As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve mixed this cocktail with a widespread shift to remote and hybrid work.
The result has left many of our teams fractured, struggling to communicate clearly, let alone collaborate.
If any of that sounds familiar, you should be very interested in improv. Not the surface-level experience packaged in generic team building workshops, but the deeply held conviction of improv's seminal pioneer, Del Close:
Treat your teammates like poets and geniuses.
Treat them that way and they'll have reason to rise to that level. Treat them that way and they'll treat you the same in return.
I've seen it, I’ve been a part of it, I have felt and witnessed its power. And yeah, It doesn't always work, but when it does, something remarkable happens.
Treat your teammates like poets and geniuses takes Yes And to a different level entirely. It asks you to assume that genius is behind every contribution, even the ones that look like mistakes, even the ones that are mistakes.
Back your teammates up, always, and they will learn that their contributions are welcome. They will develop a sense of responsibility, a sense that others value and need their voice. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy worth investing in.
The inverse is equally true. Correct your teammate and they will learn that contribution comes with a price: betrayal. People are smart. They'll stop contributing and start protecting themselves instead.
Early in my training at UCB I took an advanced improv class taught by the theater's Artistic Director. He was pushing us hard on this idea, support each other, always, even when a show seems to be headed somewhere wrong. I remember exactly what he said: "If you're in a bad show, make it spectacularly bad. Don't pull your punches and settle for lightly bad. Make it so bad you'll never forget it."
Three reasons that advice stuck with me.
First: Things often look like they're headed in the wrong direction right before they pan out. Give up too early and you'll always assume it was a mistake, when the opposite might have been true.
Second: When you commit fully and it still doesn't work, at least you know. You've learned something real. Wilt at the first sign of trouble and you'll never know whether you really were on the wrong path, the question remains open.
Third: Nothing builds trust more durably than supporting a colleague's idea all the way through, especially when it proves disastrous. Half-support is just polite dismissal.
I've been on teams that support no matter what. I would do anything for them. I've been on teams that don't, and I wouldn't do a thing for those.
Here’s an example.
Around the time I was taking that class, I was practicing weekly with a great coach. One week I went to see a performance by his celebrated team, and it turned out to be one of the most memorable shows I've ever witnessed.
The suggestion for the set was something like "the flu" or "nose cold." The first three scenes were funny. Good, not remarkable.
But the fourth scene shook the room.
As soon as the third scene ended, the entire team disappeared backstage. That was unusual. Normally offstage performers line up against the upstage wall.
Instead they vanished, and after a brief beat, exploded through every door and curtain in the upstage wall simultaneously, and kept moving. They charged forward all the way to the front row, where they lightly tapped audience members in the face with their fingers, simulating rain, or a sneeze.
Then, just as suddenly, they were pulled backwards offstage, as if caught by a tide or a giant hook at their waists.
A beat. Then they exploded forward again, this time with a loud "Choo" accompanying them as they crashed through the first row into the second and the third.
That was the scene. They did it again and again, the sneezes getting more powerful each time. The audience went bananas. When it was over, two minutes later, two hundred and fifty people stood up.
It wasn't really a funny idea. Frankly, if you think about it, it’s not even really a good idea. On a team of naysayers it would be easy to shoot down.
But it was brave. It was singular in its vision. It made no compromises. All it was, through and through, was support and guts.
I asked my coach at our next practice: "How did you know to do that?"
He shrugged. "I didn't. I saw someone go backstage so I followed. I assumed they knew what they were doing."
Further questioning revealed that nobody did. The first person to go backstage was a performer from the third scene who had gotten something in their eye and wanted a private moment to rub it out. Because it was unusual, everyone followed, all making the same assumption my coach did. And one of them decided that this must mean they were going to explode onto the stage as a physical approximation of a sneeze.
So that's what that person did. And everyone followed that too.
Call it what you want: a mistake, a momentary weakness, an embarrassing reason to walk offstage mid-performance. Instead it became one of the most talked-about scenes that theater produced for months. A triumph that came directly from assuming the person in front of you knows exactly what they're doing.
Could it have gone wrong? Could they have gotten backstage, looked at each other with no idea what to do, and had to shuffle sheepishly back out? Of course.
Great failures and great successes have a tendency to live close to each other.
But here is what I've learned from years inside improv: the successes are remembered far more vividly than the failures.
That's true in business too. Nobody lies awake thinking about Apple's Newton MessagePad, or Apple's MobileMe, or Apple's Ping (google them for a laugh). But the iPhone? That idea changed the world twenty years ago and is still paying dividends.
Embracing the belief that there are no mistakes may get you more MobileMes. Maybe a dozen more per year. But it will get you more iPhones too.
That's a deal I'd take every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
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