I Took an Improv Class

Recently, I signed up for an improv comedy workshop. It was “heuristic” research (where the researcher becomes part of the experiment) for my forthcoming book, Co-Flow.

I’ve improvised on the guitar in jazz clubs for decades. Improvising one-liners in front of strangers, it turns out, is an entirely different animal. I was nervous.

Eight of us sat in a circle with our two instructors. The exercise was simple. We had to finish the sentence “Dating me is like eating a cheeseburger…” with a punchline. Each person had to build on whatever came before.

The woman next to me went first. “A few delicious moments followed by hours of regret.” That got a good laugh. The next person riffed on the pattern. “Hot, messy, and you always want more.” Then, “You’ll enjoy it more if you don’t ask what’s in it.”

Within minutes the pace was furious, ideas piling on ideas, each one sharper because of what came before.

When someone offered a line that didn’t land, it just dissolved. No one criticized or analyzed. The mediocre idea melted away and the next one took its place.

After the exercise, one of our instructors explained that the best ideas usually come from the people who don’t think of themselves as funny at all. High expectations make people seize up. The novices who let themselves sink fully into the exercise tend to carry the day.

Then she made her most important point… Even the funniest individual is no match for the group once it locks in.

What if companies functioned more like improv troupes? In most meetings, we rehearse our ideas before we say them out loud, then brace for the response. In the improv circle, none of that happens. The pace runs too fast for self-editing, and the only job in the room is to keep the scene alive. That means listening hard enough to build on what someone else just handed you.

Improvisers have a name for this: “yes, and.” It’s a verb; to “yes, and” an idea is to accept what someone just offered and build on it. To “yes, and” a person is to treat their contribution as the foothold for your own move.

It’s also a culture. In an improv troupe, “yes, and” is the default the whole room runs on. Everyone is responsible for keeping the scene alive, and that shared norm is what makes the work feel effortless.

I think more organizations should adopt “yes, and” culture. The teams that consistently produce inventive work run on “yes, and” underneath, whether they call it that or not.

Far too often in the professional world, a new idea meets a wall of evaluation before it has time to grow, and people quickly learn to keep their ideas to themselves. “Yes, and” makes space for the unconventional, the “too wacky,” the industry-norm-breaking pitches that lead to real innovation.

When the group takes shared responsibility for keeping the scene alive, no single person has to carry the weight of being “funny” or having the “good” idea. Co-Flow lifts that burden off the individual and redistributes it across the room.

Those initial nerves, it turns out, were just the pressure of thinking I had to be funny on my own. Once I felt the support of the entire group, effort and ego dissolved, and the jokes made themselves.

Final takeaway: it was inspiring, enlightening, and fun, and everyone should try it.