Google and Netflix know the power of improv in the workplace. This is how to make it work for you

There can't be many people in the world like Dan Klein.

The Stanford University lecturer specialises in the unusual combination of both theatre studies and business management, and his clients include Netflix, Google and Uber.

He is adamant that some theatre skills are as useful in the office as on stage — in particular, the art of improvisation, or "improv".

Mr Klein defines improv as making up a play, skit or song "collaboratively, on the spot, under pressure [and] on-the-fly in front of a live audience".

He says it's a great way to train people in the skills they need to succeed in the workplace.

"What we really need to teach are skills of agility, imagination. We need to help people get comfortable with ambiguity," he tells RN's This Working Life.

The art of building — not cutting down — ideas

Improvisation at work involves taking all the skills used in theatre improv and applying them to another context.

"It turns out those skills are really, really useful, like paying attention and listening to each other, making your partner look good, building ideas rather than cutting them down," Mr Klein says.

He says improvisation training in workplaces helps people learn not to fear looking silly or saying the wrong thing — commonly held concerns that can hold us back from coming up with new ideas.

"We are always trying to get it exactly right, and if we are allowed to mess up more we can make more discoveries; we can learn more, we can learn faster," Mr Klein says.

The 'Yes, and' game

Mr Klein uses a series of improv games that encourage messing up and trying again, in a low-stakes environment.

In one of them, 'Yes, and', the concept is simple: learn to say 'yes' to other people's ideas.

Trainees partner up with a colleague and one person recalls an imaginary event, and the other builds on it.

"We call it the shared fake memory," Mr Klein says.

"Whatever your partner says, you say 'Yes, and', and you add to that idea. That's the fundamental game in improv."

To play the game successfully, you have to roll with whatever your colleague is saying — no matter how outlandish.

"One of the things we train in improv is that any idea is good enough to start. The real game is what you do with the idea afterwards," Mr Klein explains.

"A lot of great creative advice-givers say start anywhere. The key is the starting ... start in the middle of a sentence, start anywhere and see what happens next.

"If you play this game right, some of your ideas will be terrible. They'll be dangerous, they'll be stupid, they will be illegal, they will be prohibitively expensive, they might even break the laws of physics."

But keep playing, says Mr Klein, and new, breakthrough ideas will often spring from the outrageous ones.

"Go past the outrageous and then see what you can find and you can pull back into reality."

He counteracts the 'Yes, and' game with a less positive, and arguably more common, version: 'Yes, but'.

"[In] the 'Yes, but' mode we are partially accepting what the other person said but we are also partially blocking the idea. And in the world of creative collaboration, a partial block is still a block," Mr Klein says.

In every company Mr Klein has worked with, when he asks people what the 'Yes, but' game reminds them of, they respond: "Every meeting we ever have at this company."

He says it's a sure-fire way to shut down ideas.

"I know myself when this happens — if I say an idea and someone says 'Yes, but' to it, I cross my arms, I sit back and I wait for them to come up with an idea that I can then shoot down. I do it without even noticing that's what I'm doing," Mr Klein says.

He's quick to add that 'Yes, but' is a "valuable critical thinking skill" that we all need.

"We need to be really, really clear that 'Yes, but' has a lot of value," he says.

"But it's not very good for coming up with new ideas, new solutions, creative ideas. And it's challenging to bond and connect with your co-workers if you are always in a 'Yes, but' mode or a 'No, not that' mode."

'Celebrate failure together': Lessons from Netflix

Bill Holmes, head of business development at Netflix, has run improvisation training with his staff.

He's based in the US, but his team is global, harking from countries all around the world.

"[They] come from different cultures, different nationalities, many of them don't have English as a native language," Mr Holmes says.

He sought improvisation training to help "break down barriers and establish trust" between his staff members — and says he hasn't been disappointed.

Mr Holmes says his staff learnt through improvisation games how to support one another, be highly attentive, actively listen and be "open and more candid".

They also learn to "build trust through failing together", he says.

"So, something may not go as you'd hoped and there's some specific exercises that we work through in the beginning to celebrate failure together," Mr Holmes says.

"I think that builds a muscle, that it's OK to venture into the unknown and be supported by your peers.

"It essentially became a tool to establish bonds and trust very, very quickly."

'We have to have resilience'

Mr Klein describes some of his Stanford students, including those who are very successful, as "fragile".

"It's very hard for them to make even the smallest of mistakes. So usually they do really well and if something goes a little bit wrong then they have a lot of trouble recovering from that," he says.

He says that's a quality many in the workplace demonstrate too.

"One of the things that we need in order to be able to respond creatively is we have to have resilience. It has to be OK for us to make a mistake, be present, adapt and respond to the actual current situation and overcome it," Mr Klein says.

"Oftentimes that fear of failure prevents us not only from sharing our ideas, it prevents us from even coming up with them.

"Honestly, I see people so cautious, they can't even mess up ... in a low-stakes game. And if they can't make a mistake there, then how can they ever take enough risks that would help them find the next new thing?"

Improvisation training helps here, says Mr Klein.

He says at the same time as teaching comfort in mistakes, dropping our guard and feeling safe to explore ideas, improvisation also teaches resilience.

Mr Klein says it provides a new way of understanding failure, and of questioning our approach to it, including, "What does failure really mean, how do you internalise it, how do you exhibit your response to it in the world?".

"So rather than flinch or cringe or wince when we make a mistake, we go, 'Oh, great, what's possible now?'," he says.

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