Ready, fire, aim. Repeat.
Lessons from improv (and d.school), part two
“Ready, fire, aim.”
At multiple points in my career, in completely different industries, I and others used this phrase to refer to impulsive colleagues or clients. At best, it was our way of saying slow down and consider your choices before acting. At worst, it was a dismissive epithet.
Now, I realize that I owe those on the receiving end an apology.
While there is value in slowing down, “ready, fire, aim” applied appropriately (an important qualifier) is a valuable tactic for learning and action. After all, my own brand of overthinking and inaction could be derided with “ready, aim, aim, aim, ….”
Learn, adjust, repeat
In most cases, action trumps inaction. That’s especially true if you can manage risk – execute tiny experiments, learn, adjust and repeat.
It’s the last part – repeat – that was missing in my original calculation.
Anyone who’s studied the variations of the prisoner’s dilemma, or game theory is general, knows there’s a world of difference between finite and infinite games. When games are ongoing, players learn from previous rounds and adjust their actions. This results in different and better decisions than in the single-round versions.
The value of “ready, fire, aim” in the context of an infinite game is that you move quickly, learn quickly, adjust and try again.
Learning and adjusting are the important parts. Without that, the implied criticism of impulsiveness stands. Moving fast for the sake of moving fast, without taking time to reflect and without awareness of cognitive biases that work against learning, is counter-productive.
Nonetheless, the really thorny problems can’t be solved by thinking our way out of them. In a highly uncertain environment, you simply can’t spend all your time aiming for a single shot. You must fire lots of shots and keep calibrating until you find your target.
It took improv and d.school classes to drive this home.
Actions beat ideas.
Design thinking as a formal methodology has its detractors (and some of them teach in the d.school — the instructors I’ve dealt with can be very self-reflective — as is befitting the methodology — if you spend sufficient time with them). But as an experiential way to learn the value of “bias toward action” and “tiny experiments,” I found d.school to be invaluable.
Within minutes of most gatherings in the d.school, participants are on their feet, moving around, sharing ideas and preparing to test ideas in the field. Experiments take minutes, not days or even hours.
It’s amazing what you can learn and how quickly you can learn it with tiny experiments.
Anecdotes are not data, but anecdotes compose data. And new ideas require building anecdotes in order to have data to analyze. As they say in Silicon Valley, do things that don’t scale in order to find what will.
Act in order have something to analyze. Act some more. Analyze. Act. Ad infinitum.
To start with analysis of new ideas in uncertain environments is a recipe for inaction, for remaining stuck, for failure by default.
Ready, fire, aim. Repeat.
Substitute attention for preparation
Improv reinforced this lesson in a visceral, embodied way.
As I wrote in part one, improv teaches you to be in the moment.
But the point isn’t just to be present so you can make things up (improvise) out of whole cloth. Attention is what’s required. Attention to what’s come before, to what’s needed in the scene and what’s needed by your partners. And attention to what comes after, to what works. Do, learn, adjust, repeat.
To do this effectively, the instinct to plan has to be suppressed.
“We find ourselves nearly strangled by the planning instinct,” Patricia Ryan Madson writes in Improv Wisdom. “We plan when we should execute. We make lists, worry, or theorize (often endlessly) when we ought to be responding. We choose safety above all else. We seem to have lost the knack of looking at the day with fresh eyes or doing anything out of our comfort zone.”
Ready, fire, aim. Repeat.
In one class exercise we frequently repeated, a circle of improv students would “send” sounds or gestures randomly around a circle. The recipient would send a new sound or gesture to another student as quickly as possible.
Stockpiling responses was forbidden. If you had a thought in mind, let that go, Dan Klein instructed us, and say or do the first (new) thing that comes to mind.
Be in the moment. Trust your brain to come up with something.
In another exercise, improv partners exchange space-object gifts (think pantomime). The recipient opens the imaginary box and describes the gift (something the recipient, not the giver, makes up).
Again, Klein instructed us to not plan. Trust the brain. Our tendency is to worry about freezing, but remarkably our brains respond instantly to the need to come up with something. There’s always something in the box.
Incidentally, this is great training for a reporter, or anyone who wants to improve listening or interviewing skills. It trains you to focus on what’s going on, rather than planning your response.
By loosening our attachment to planning and control, we are able to more accurately assess situations and be more responsive. As Madson writes, “The habit of excessive planning impedes our ability to see what is actually in front of us. The mind that is occupied is missing the present.”
Don’t try to fix the feelings. Just do.
All of these experiences (and many others throughout my fellowship) are great confidence builders.
But they don’t build confidence by puffery. They don’t focus on building people up or on suppressing negative feelings in order to take action.
Rather, they focus on taking action and noticing the results. Confidence will follow success, and success often has to follow failure. Do, learn, adjust, repeat.
Ryan writes, “The only real failure is not doing anything…. Notice and accept whatever you feel, and turn your attention to doing something useful…. Fear is not the problem; allowing your attention to be consumed by it is.”
Ready, fire, aim. Repeat.
Lessons from Improv
Part One: Be present, available and obvious
Part Two: Ready, fire, aim. Repeat.
Part Three: Focus on giving
Part Four: Perfection is boring. The good stuff comes from taking (measured) risks.
