|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Structure and Freedom: By
Introduction At
On Your Feet
that is our hope. OYF
is a network of individuals that uses improv as a tool for organizational
consulting, training, and teaching. We are a group of improv actors,
illustrators, anthropologists, marketing and advertising folks, filmmakers,
small business experts, frustrated mailmen, and even someone from the
government defense sector. We
all have different places we call home: Some
of our clients include Nike, Intel, Orange Telecommunications, Starbucks. Some are not so immediately high status, but
equally interesting - clients such as a group of Irish middle school children,
probation officers, and Zen monks (one could argue that in the grand scheme of
things they are much higher in status than any of the big brand clients). That
is who we are. The reason you might want to keep reading however isn’t because
of who we are, who we work with, or even what we do. Rather it is how we try to organize ourselves to
do what we do. On
Your Feet attempts to organize itself using a small number of deliberately
placed pieces of structure. Our hope is to allow for maximum creativity, trust
and freedom with as few “rules” as possible. Not unlike a piece of
improvisation. This
article will make visible a few pieces of our working structure so you might
gain perspective on your own internal workings. Even if what we do seems
ridiculous (we have had that reaction) it might serve as a stimulus and provoke
you to consider how you organize yourself or organization. There
are three prominent points of structure in On Your Feet. These three points
create the freedom that allows us to evolve. Without them we probably would not
grow. And probably just as quickly chaos would ensue. A little context For
the first two years that On Your Feet was doing business, we couldn’t decide
what we were. The
two bald guys with glasses that came up with the idea lived on opposite sides
of the globe - The
reaction to the first piece of work was overwhelmingly positive. We were
rehired, and suddenly found ourselves behaving like a business, but were we
really? Both Rob and I had a knee jerk aversion to the idea of behaving like a
business. Rob had spent a great deal of time working with and being immersed in
big business, and I avoided the environment entirely. Rules, hierarchy, red
tape-we equated this to behaving like a business and
we wanted no part of that. A
few years earlier I had ventured up to So
back at On Your Feet we started to look for ways to be a business but not behave like one. In the beginning we wouldn’t
admit we were a business at all. When I would describe who we were to potential
clients the word organization would somehow get stuck in my throat. As
we gained more experience our behavior developed as well. Most businesses claim
to be experts and unique, so we said we were still learning and what makes us
unique wasn’t what we did (since there are a whole bunch of you out there using
improv in business as well), it was who we were, and how that affected what we
did. At
the same time our clients needed to hear language that fit their world. They
needed 10-second elevator descriptions. They needed to know how we could help
them make or save money. They needed brochures, websites, fee structures, and
assistance in internal selling. In a nutshell they needed to deal with a
business. The
other reality was financial. We realized that money mattered. Having enough of
it allowed us the freedom to support our families and do want we wanted to do.
So we did the thing that businesses do, sort of. We put down on paper why we
were doing what we did. Some call it a mission statement, or developing an
identity. We
titled our stack of paper Reasons Why We Exist. It was developed over a
six-month period with the help of highly paid consultants that positioned us in
the best possible light to our potential clients… just kidding. Actually
some of us got together and put a metaphorical stake in the ground. We tried to
find a way to articulate our thoughts about the work and give others in the
network a structure (yes, structure again) to use in finding their own
relationship to the work. In
the document we have three sections. The first is a purpose section, which is
unashamedly philosophical and says things like: "We
are proud to say we have no fixed idea of what On Your Feet will look like in
the future. We expect the organization to change and metamorphose often, if not
constantly. We aren’t worried about that; we know that with living systems
there is never a right answer, not even for one particular moment. And anyway,
it would get dull otherwise". The
second section is one that tries to capture some of our beliefs and says things
like: "Human
society is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Or if it isn’t, it darned well
should be. Life is creative. People are alive, therefore people are creative. Mostly." The
third section is made up of stories of possible (and impossible) futures for
the organization. None of them are necessarily the desired outcome. They are
not vision statements. They explore our dreams, questions and fears: "There
is a crisis at the U.N. It seems that the world is on the brink of all-out war.
But wait, who is this entering the chamber from the
wings? It is the Masked Improviser! "…we
are invited to work on a project for "What
we do now is a full scale intervention. We study the organization, spending
time with them, working alongside them, observing how they work. A typical
project may take anything up to six months One
of the most important parts of the document is our measures of business
success, which go beyond monetary indicators and measure success in terms of
learning. As
our client list began to grow we tried to stay true to our desire to count learning as a currency of value.
We found some companies ready to leap into learning with us, and others that
wanted guarantees, controlled outcomes, and predictable results. One lesson during
this period was learning how to say no: no to work that was not interesting,
took away from other interesting work, and even if it paid well was low on
potential learning. As
more collaborators came into the network, we found ourselves facing questions
that any organization would face, even an organization resisting calling itself
an organization. Questions like: who gets paid, and how much? What are the
rules for the division of money, who belongs to the organization and what does
that mean? Who is in charge, and ultimately responsible? In
most organizations there are a set of guidelines or rules (in some well
designed handbook) to help answer these questions. But for us a set of specific
rules that tried to foresee every possible scenario didn’t hold up to our
beliefs. So
a group of the most involved collaborators got together to try and answer some
of these questions at a fabulously funky venue, an old elementary school that
has been converted into a hotel and microbrewery. The first thing we did was
exchange what we have now dubbed as our Gives and Gets. Each individual
collaborator creates a list of what he/she is willing to give to the creation
of the network (the give) and what they want to get from the network (the get).
Some illustrations appear in the right hand column. At
this gathering we built on the future stories thus continuing to make visible
our individual and collective desires and fears. We also got closer to figuring
out what we are. Exactly what that is is hard to
define, so we decided not to spend much time or energy trying. Nailing things
tends to kill them (or at least injure them). We resolved that people are at
liberty to call it a collaboration, company, business,
group, organization (or whatever) as they wish. In
the end we proposed three points of structure that the co-founders, would want
(At least for the time being) to have implemented over the workings of the (yes
I can now say it) organization. I stated earlier these are deliberately broad
so they are not tailored to any seen or unforeseen scenario. They are based on
trust and belief in self-managed relationships. They force the individuals
involved to work at creating and maintaining these relationships without tight
rules and guidelines. Structure There
are three points of structure that govern On Your Feet: 1. Everyone in the network is responsible for
themselves and their relationships. As part of On Your Feet, people are free
to create what they want, offer what they want and block what they want -
without reference to any authority or control. With freedom, comes
responsibility. So if I do something that impacts others, positively or
negatively, I am responsible for that and the effect on my relationships. It
means talking a lot, frequently broaching uncomfortable subjects (like money)
and trusting each other. It also means trusting yourself to do what you want -
and to challenge others when what they do affects you. It
is amazing how well this has worked. All of us have a heightened attentiveness
and permission to voice our pleasure and displeasure. There are no set rules.
If another collaborator wants to do a job without either of the two founders
they are free to do. It is my responsibility to say something if I don’t like
it, and it is the other collaborator’s responsibility to manage their
relationship with me. It all may sound a bit pie in the sky, but because we
have slowly gotten use to having the tough conversations the communication is
amazingly clear. 2. The identity and who is invited to join are
controlled, currently by the founders. Without some of notion of what a thing
looks like and where it stops there is no thing. On Your Feet can be something
because it has an identity and a boundary. The identity is the name, the
website, graphics, and the logo. The boundary is the people. Whether something
is On Your Feet or not depends on who is involved, and what they are doing. For
On Your Feet to grow creatively, the identity and the boundary need to be
limited. This limitation gives rise to the freedom described in the first point
of structure. Without it, there is chaos. However only the identity and the
boundary (i.e. who joins the adventure) are subject to control. This sets up a
hierarchy. The founders are at the bottom of the hierarchy (not the top). So they
take responsibility and control at that level and only at that level. Once
someone has joined they get the same freedoms and responsibility as everyone
else. Again
this has worked amazingly well. The identity has become part of what excites
clients. The diversity of options and freedom for the collaborators is what
creates good work. 3. A percentage from our fees is made to pay for common
goods, such as web design, kit, promotion, etc. We are a low-to-no
overhead company. We have offices in Final thoughts These
may not feel like much of a structure, but it is a structure. It is a structure
as the rules of an improv game are a structure. A structure where there is room
for freedom, creativity, evolution, and for changing the structure itself. It
isn’t inherently supportive i.e. there is no guarantee of support or no support
system. It is very open. It places the emphasis on intimacy not systems (a huge
challenge, since we are so geographically spread out). Finally it is not
efficient (i.e. there will be many wasted efforts). However, this is true in
all complex systems, and waste becomes food (for new ideas, relationships,
learning). So, in the end we accept inefficiency as a trade for deeper
relationships. So
there is a little insight into our experiment as an improv organization (not
only using improv as a method of working with clients but with each other). If
you have gotten this far this it may have raised more questions then it has
answered. Our structure raises questions for us all the time. So we pick up the
phone, e-mail, get on a plane, meet in a café and try to find the next, more
interesting question. Ultimately this leads to stronger and more intimate
internal and external relationships while still trying to be an organization
without behaving like one. Special
thanks to Robert Poynton, Julie Huffaker,
and Brad Robertson for their direct and indirect input to this article. You can contact Gary Hirsch at gary@oyf.com |
phone: 626.200.6993 - email: contact@paulbellos.com |
