Business lessons I learned from improv comedy

Several years ago I took improvisational comedy classes at Second City here in Chicago, the launchpad of such actors as John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Alan Alda, Steve Carrell, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Of course we all wanted to brilliant and hilarious and stars. And I wanted people to like me at cocktail parties.

My first instructor MIchael was absolutely brilliant. After each scene he gave us in-depth, insightful analyses of what worked and didn't work in our scene and why. We all learned sooo much.

And we all got paralyzed.

When we got on stage to do the next scene, we'd get all up in our heads trying to live up to all that brilliant analysis. No play, no creativity, no connection. Just dull, flat, discouraging scenes. Certainly no flow. And no laughs. Ouch!

Several weeks into this analysis paralysis, right before I got up to do a scene, Michael said to me, "Have fun. You're only as good as you are. Go, be that."

It’s hard to explain, but I found that tremendously freeing. I could be more present and just go with my gut responses and let emerge what emerged. I started to let go of expectations of how I SHOULD be or how the scene SHOULD go. Let go of some ideal of the perfect scene. It was okay to just BE, connect, accept whatever happened in the moment, and build on that.

The next term I had another instructor, Mick, with a different teaching philosophy. He'd have us get up to do a scene for just 30 seconds. (That taught us to jump in fast, not procrastinate initiating action!) He'd stop the scene, give us a quick note or two, then start us on a 20 second scene. Stop. Quick note or two. Start a 15 second scene. And so on. It was a brilliant strategy to get us out of our analysis paralysis.

We left each class feeling like thoroughbred racehorses, ready to bolt out of the gates at breakneck speed, trusting ourselves to generate whatever the next moment needed. I started to learn to trust myself in new ways.

Some lessons learned:

You're only as good as you are right now.

Get present here and now.

Do the thing full on.

Get feedback.

Take away one thing you'll do better next time.

Rinse and repeat.

Again and again.

This is the path to scenes that work. Businesses that succeed. True badassity.