Improvisational theatre, or improv, is a form of theatre which has no script and no set story. It’s instinctive, immediate, and depends directly on the actors’ talent and creativity to keep the act going. It begins with a prompt, the actors carry the theme along, and the story goes on, each of them adapting and creating the narrative.
Improv is usually comedy, and it’s easy to see how incredibly tough it can be to do. It’s an amazing test of spontaneity, and wit, all in real time. And the best acts are really, really funny.
I’m telling you about it because I love one of its operating principles.
They try not to use the word but, and try to use and.
Why? Because the word and carries the story forward, adds to the momentum, the word but doesn’t. But pauses the story, carries with it a reason to stop. And when you are on stage telling a story or trying to make people laugh, a pause could mean the entire show bombing.
Therefore: No to but, yes to and.
In the mid 2010s, a hyper-growth startup in Bangalore had hired a rather well known senior marketer from the Bay Area. No else one batted an eyelid, because B2B is boring like that, but the little marketing community that existed at the time was abuzz. We all wanted to come meet him, we believed that his working for an Indian startup meant that our scene had arrived. There was going to be so much to learn.
I thought so too. I didn’t meet him but was looking forward to being introduced at some event in Bangalore, as would inevitably happen.
It did not. He left in less than a year.
I was surprised because the startup was doing well, and he was making waves too, the good kind. It was weird but I couldn’t think about it too much, I was behind schedule on a few things.
A few months later, I asked a friend from the startup what had gone wrong.
I realised it was the word but.
The leader was extremely skilled and knew what he wanted to achieve. He also knew the people he needed to get these things done. But he kept running into roadblocks, and told everyone about them. Senior PMs would stall a project, the existing team was a bit slow, the processes took too long, and so on. In the first few months, some of this was seen as valid criticism and everyone tried to help. But as the complaints kept coming, everyone started to ignore him.
He started to be seen as just making excuses.
Soon it all became a bit too much, and he left.
Leaders are hired to solve problems. This is especially true of senior hires. If there was nothing to change or do better at, there would no need for a leader in the first place.
A leader’s job is to get in, assess, and instil change. That second part is critical. A point I have made before is that we tend to skip the assessment phase in our enthusiasm to contribute. I have made this mistake too.
As I wrote last year, in the first thing you should do in a new role:
When you join a new role, spend time trying to figure out what’s working, and make sure that it keeps working. Remember that marketing in this new company did not start after you arrived. It has been going on for a while, and brilliant people are already employed here. They have done good things and made money, which is why they could hire you in the first place.
Far too much damage is done when a fully functional, successful team gets a new manager or teammate who does not make an effort to understand what the team has already done, or worse, thinks that what’s been done is not up to their lofty standards.
But what do you as a leader do after that, once you realise that a few things need to change?
You find out how to make that happen, and make it happen. Will it be difficult? Yes. Will it be frustrating at times? Of course.
But that’s the job.
Sometimes that means smoothing over frayed relationships, sometimes that means winning over teams that don’t see you as allies, at times that could mean letting others win a battle so you can win a war.
What you don’t do is complain. You don’t point fingers. You don’t tell everyone why you can’t do this or that.
You never say but. You say "This is an issue, and this is how we are solving it." And then you go and try.