An Improvisers Toolkit for GRC – Lesson # 5: Bring a Brick

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Old red brick in handRNF.Headshot.2014.adjustBy Ronnie Feldman
rnf@learningsentertainments.com

To start today’s blog post, I’d like to get a suggestion from the audience.  Just yell out the first thing that comes to mind.

“Risk Mitigation!” “Culture!”  “Leadership!”

Okay, great!  We will now talk about Improvisation and Risk Mitigation, Culture & Leadership.

Hi, I’m Ronnie Feldman, President of Learnings & Entertainments, a creative services and content provider that focuses on improving corporate communication through the use of improvisation and purposeful humor.  I had pleasure of leading an improv workshop at this past years SCCE Compliance & Ethics Institute, where we had 350 GRC professionals participate in some improv exercises focusing on communication, collaboration and leadership.  We had lots of laughs – because improv is fun – but we also started making connections between the wonderful world of theater and improvisation and the compliance community.   There are actually quite a few skills and philosophies that professional improvisers use to be successful on stage that can help the GRC professional (and leaders in general) communicate more effectively to build a culture of collaboration, transparency and trust.  The fine folks at SCCE asked if I would expound upon these concepts in blog form, which we will be doing here over the next several months.  We hope you enjoy.

Improvisation – An Introduction

What is Improv? It is the art of making something out of nothing. It is thinking on your feet, creating on the spot, off the top of your head.  It is not, however, the art of being funny.  On stage, funny is often the byproduct of good improv, because of the unexpected connections and spontaneity.  Funny people who are good improvisers often get famous – Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell to name a few.   They tend to be great performers.  They also tend to be great listeners, great supporters, great collaborators, great storytellers, and they are experts at being non-judgmental of themselves and others. They are fearless and creative and engaging. They are comfortable being uncomfortable so their natural personality and wit can come out.  There are many exercises that improvisers practice (yes practice) that help them build these skills.  These are muscles that can be developed…by anyone.  Some lessons are philosophical and some are tactical.  We’re going to introduce and unpack some of these and translate their applicability to the GRC professional.


Bring a Brick

Today’s improv lesson continues to build on the foundational mindset of our previous posts – Unconditional Support, Being Grateful for Information, Active Listening and Yes-And.  Today we’re talking about another improv adage, Bring a Brick, Not a Cathedral.  On stage, this means, bring one thing…one idea, one line, one emotion, one physical quirk, one relationship or one point of view.  These are gifts to your scene partner.  Then listen, react, add, and build together.  Improv is about mutual discovery and building something out of nothing together. You don’t have to write a whole sketch in your head and dump it out all at once so that it goes the way you want it to.  Just bring a brick.

For example, its much more difficult to have a successful scene when your partner starts with something premise heavy like, “Hey Bryon.  The soccer team is waiting for us to drop off the stuff, so pick me up at 8, and don’t forget to bring the orange cones and some biscuits, because the puppies will be there too!” This might be the most bestest idea you ever had and you just know its going to be hilarious!  However, this kind of initiation requires your scene partner(s) to meet your pre-planned expectation and figure out where you are planning to go.  That’s a tough needle to thread in the moment and they’ll rarely succeed because they can’t read your mind, because they do not think exactly like you!   This really isn’t even improv.  It’s writing a scene quickly in your head and trying to convince others to play that scene the way you want it to be played.

There is another improv adage that says, Play The Scene You’re In, Not the One You Want to Be In.   Improv is about jumping out of the plane together and figuring it out on the way down.   Make one move.  Listen and react.  Make another move. And then you build the scene together, which more often than not, takes you to places you never thought you would go.  That’s where the magic happens.  You don’t have to bring a cathedral….just bring a brick.

An Improv Exercise:

There is a simple exercise that can help groups bring this lesson into focus.  It’s called, One Word At A Time Story. Have your group get into a circle. You are going to tell a story that has never been told before and will never be told again. The only rule in this exercise is that each person can only contribute one word as you take turns going around the circle.  One person starts with one word and one word only, and then each person adds, just one word until the story reaches an end.  If there are 5 people it might start like this.  Person 1) Once, 2) upon, 3) a, 4) time, 5) there, 1) was, 2) a, 3) beagle, 4) that, 5) sang, 1) beautifully…  and so on.  This can get really silly and nonsensical and weird.  But that’s okay.  The lesson is not in the result, it’s in the action of giving up control and collaborating to take you someplace new and interesting.   This can be rather difficult.  If you are person 3, you may be really bummed that all you get to say is “a” or if you’re person 4, you’re thinking, “how could they say Beagle. Clearly the answer is Princess!”  When doing these workshops for businesses, you’d be surprised at how often people struggle with contributing just one thing.  They’ll try to sneak in two word or phrases or just can’t bare to say “the.” These are small examples of how difficult it can be to give up control and be part of a collaboration.  We have all developed habits that sometimes are hard to break.

Translating for GRC

There are some great applications of these philosophies for the governance, risk and compliance professional.

  • Bring a Brick…Not a Cathedral is about collaboration and ensemble. It’s about being agile and inclusive which can take you to new places and build trust.
  • Play The Scene You’re In, Not the One You Want to Be In is about staying in the moment, letting go of expectation and adapting to your audience, giving up control and not force-feeding your agenda.

Ethics and compliance professionals have an interesting challenge.  You are there to establish policies and controls, to education, train, communicate, measure and enforce. You are there to lead and point in a direction. You are trying to mitigate risk.  You are an authority figure which often requires you to dictate to an unwilling audience. But often this happens.  “Read this legal policy and sign off by the end of the week or else!” “You must sit through this 90-minute training whether it applies to you or not.”   “I’ve told you all this a hundred time, but let’s go over it again.”  While some things may be required from a compliance perspective, it’s sort of like trying to force feeding your scene idea on your fellow performers on stage, which ends up disappointing and frustrating all parties.

If the goal is to mitigate risk, it will require the help, support and buy-in from others.  This means that you, your policies, your training, your communications and your team in general, first and foremost, have to become approachable so that the audience will listen.  One of the ways to do that is to involve them. Resist the urge to preach and to data dump and to finger-wag. Just bring a brick, listen, react and adapt. If you want to influence behavior, you will need to build trust. Communicate in the language of humans, not legalese. Stay present and in the moment.  If you want people to listen and learn from you, you will also need to listen and learn and adapt your approach as you go.  It can’t just be about you and the things you want/need to say.  You have to give up some control and work with the ensemble to collaborate toward a common goal. It’s about the scene that you are making up together, one brick at a time.  Jump out of the plane together and figure it out on the way down. That builds trust.  Don’t continue to play the scene you want to be in.  Play the scene you are in.

As they say in the biz…..Annnnnd….scene!

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