Improvisation Games at Work

Oh, I get it... Whose FISHING line is it anyway!! Har, har...

As Abba so famously said, "Take a chance, Take a chance, Take a, Take a Chan-Chance".
The ability to improvise in the workplace is valuable. Few would argue with that proposition.

The problem is, most of us suck at it. It's nothing to be ashamed of.
Cognitive science tells us that there are very good reasons why we're creatures of habit and pattern (like... otherwise our species wouldn't have survived).

The good news is that improv is a skill that can be developed (or a muscle to be exercised, if you prefer). A cottage industry has developed, where improv troupes go to businesses and conduct improvisational workshops.

But you don't really need to pay some out of work actors to teach you how to goof off, do you? (Nothing wrong with out of work actors, but why should they have all the fun?). You probably have had a lot of practice goofing off as a kid - or a college student - or as an account manager.

Anyway, during our department's monthly get-together last Monday, I ran a 40-minute improv session. I surfed Youtube for some samples from "Whose Line is it Anyway?" and led the following four exercises in an event we called "Whose Job is it Anyway?"

We ran two cycles of this: Worlds Worst Boss and Worlds Worst Customer.

Then we moved on to "The Dating Game", which we changed to "The Interview Game"

For the first round, the contestants were a martial artist, Madonna, and our company CEO.

In the second round, the contestants were George Bush, Sarah Palin, and Frankenstein.

The game went really well. Stacy brought the house down as the martial artist and Brent nailed the 'Palin Wink'.

Next we played Three-Headed-Broadway Star:

Our song was, "Job, Don't Leave Me". Degree of difficulty is about 9.5 on this one. It was a little painful to watch, so I wouldn't recommend it to newbies...

Finally, we did a couple of rounds of Dubbing. Two of our group mimed a scene, while two others provided the voices.

In one scenario, we did a performance review that turned into the manager ordering the employee to do push ups. In the other, working on executive review turned into a little ballet.

How did it all go?

Well, we had fun. We had some laughs. We learned how hard improv really is.

And I can't wait to do it again!