Workplace “drama” that’s productive! The secret to business growth is right before your eyes―it’s the creativity and innovation percolating in each one of your employees every minute of every day. How do you harness it to make it work for your organization? Business Improv! Based on the science of experiential learning, Business Improv uses improvisation activities from the theater to transform each employee into a great leader. The 75 hands-on activities in this proactive guide help you create an organization filled with people who: * Engage with and “own” their work * Generate creative ideas that drive profit * Build innovative teams * Solve problems effectively * Make decisions with conviction * Respond and adapt to change With Business Improv, you have the one and only tool you need to facilitate real, lasting leadership skills in every employee.

Radical Innovation in Business through Improv Looking for new ideas? Need your teams to come up with that “next big thing?” Want to infuse or perpetuate a culture of innovation? Follow along with these two dynamic authors as they take you through Brain Disruption, one of the most engaging and powerful methods to getting individuals, teams and organizations to step up and solve problems. Steeped in the world of improv comedy, this no-nonsense guide provides a window into the neuroscience behind creativity and idea generation. Filled with exercises and activities, you’ll be able to apply the lessons in this book almost immediately.

Using Improvisation to Create Positive Results in Leadership and Life Improve yourlife, where everything is not made up and the points don’t matter. Drew Carey’s show Whose Line Is It Anyway? has turned improvisational comedy into a pop culture phenomenon. But improv is more than just laughs, it’s a valuable training tool that will make you a more effective business professional. Inside, you will discover how to: Replace negative phrases like Yes, but… with successful terms like ‘Yes, and…’ Park your agenda and really hear your client out. By listening to understand, you can adapt to their ideas and produce a more positive outcome. Grow your client relationships beyond the numbers to build rapport, comfort, and trust. Improv is no Joke is must-read for accountants, bankers, and other financial professionals to sharpen the invaluable leadership and communication skills you need to successfully relate to clients and communicate complex information in a user-friendly way. “Peter is the first CPA speaker who actually made me laugh. Who knew accountants could be funny AND inspiring? Now, if I could just get my taxes to not be a joke!” Judy Carter, author of The Comedy Bible and The Message of You

Playful Mindfulness brings together wisdom from the worlds of mindfulness (paying attention to the present moment with curiosity and kindness) and improvisation (making life up courageously as you go along) so readers can find greater confidence, calm, and connection. CONFIDENCE. CALM. CONNECTION. Do you long to express that creative project or idea but tell yourself you’re not good or clever or funny enough, so why even try? Do you dream of a wide-open life filled with moments of wonder, delight and surprise but find yourself trapped in routine and smothered by stress? Do you yearn for deep, meaningful connection with those around you but feel yourself ever more isolated by social media and modern technology? HOPE IS ON THE WAY. In these pages, Ted DesMaisons takes your hand and leads you on a beautiful, surprising and unruly adventure into the lands where mindfulness and improvisation overlap. There, you’ll discover the same freedom, ease, and joy that thousands of his students at Stanford and elsewhere have found for themselves.

IMPROV IS NOT ABOUT BEING FUNNY, ORIGINAL, OR CHAOTIC. IT’S ABOUT EMBRACING CHANGE. Improvisation. The mere mention of the word makes many people quake with fear at the prospect of chaos and uncertainty. The fact is, though, human beings are improvising almost every minute of their lives it is more natural, and more filled with possibility, than you might imagine. On stage, improvisational actors use simple rules, collaborative principles, and game constraints to build unscripted yet intriguing storylines. This book explores how those same simple rules and principles can help agile teams collaborate more effectively and how purposefully working within constraints can unlock creativity. Inside, you ll find over 50 techniques and improv games tailored for agile teams, complete with step-by-step instructions. These games are based on five different principles of improvisational theatre: SAFETY: how accepting failure is essential to discovery SPONTANEITY: how to increase the flow of ideas STORYTELLING: how narratives help teams relate to their customers and end users STATUS: how adjusting personal behaviour can encourage collaboration SENSITIVITY: how to become more fully engaged with fellow team members

Do Improvise: Less Push. More Pause. Better Results. A New Approach to Work (and Life) (Do Books) -Robert Poynton Everyday we deal with the unplanned and the unexpected – from a broken toaster to losing (or gaining) a major client. Our natural ability to improvise gets us through. But we feel as if we’re winging it, rather than acting with courage and conviction. Robert Poynton teaches an acclaimed method to some of the world’s biggest brands and companies. Improvisational skills that an actor might use on stage are honed and applied to the everyday business of work and life. The end result is a new approach that embraces change as a natural process and has creativity and innovation at its heart. With killer games to put the theory into practice, Do Improvise will help you: • Become more productive without trying harder • Overcome creative blocks and generate new ideas • Respond fluently to circumstances beyond your control • Inspire and motivate others Not sure what to do next? Improvise.

Everything s an Offer’ tells the story of one business person’s adventure in the world of improvisational theatre. It explains how the practises improv is based on can help you make more with what you have, using less effort, less energy and less resources (whilst creating less difficulty and stress). It illustrates, with myriad examples and stories, how anybody leading a busy and complicated life can put these ideas into action and why doing so will help them lead a more satisfying, creative and sustainable life. It extends the applications of improv far beyond team building and offers a new language for thinking about how we go about business – a language that has been used by Fortune 500 companies such as Nike, Intel and FedEx to help them communicate better, build stronger relationships (internally or with customers), propel people into action and get to new ideas and solutions.

This collection of Applied Improvisation stories and strategies draws back the curtain on an exciting, innovative, growing field of practice and research that is changing the way people lead, create, and collaborate. Applied Improvisation is the umbrella term widely used to denote the application of improvised theatre’s theories, tenets, games, techniques, and exercises beyond conventional theatre spaces, to foster the growth and/or development of flexible structures, new mindsets, and a range of inter and intra-personal skills required in today’s volatile and uncertain world. This edited collection offers one of the first surveys of the range of practice, featuring 12 in-depth case studies by leading Applied Improvisation practitioners and a foreword by Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson. The contributors in this anthology are professional Applied Improvisation facilitators working in sectors as diverse as business, social science, theatre, education, law, and government. All have experienced the power of improvisation, have a driving need to share those experiences, and are united in the belief that improvisation can positively transform just about all human activity. Each contributor describes their practice, integrates feedback from clients, and includes a workbook component outlining some of the exercises used in their case study to give facilitators and students…

Business professionals often overlook a crucial tool for thriving in today’s fast-paced environment: improvisation. In Getting to “Yes And”, veteran improv performer, university professor, CEO, and consultant Bob Kulhan unveils a form of mental agility with applications far beyond the entertainment value of comedy troupes. He shows how improv techniques can create more productive meetings, swifter decisions, stronger collaboration, positive conflict resolution, mindfulness, and more.

TAKE IT EASY™ isn’t about a new way of doing improv, nor is it meant to replace your own style or approach. Instead it’s a mindset that can inform your performance and approach to improvisation. “Highly recommended for the beginning improvisor or the seasoned pro trying to rediscover the fun.” – Sam Super, The Second City Training Center’s 2017 Teacher of the Year This isn’t an ‘intro to improv’ book, nor is it a how-to manual. Instead, TAKE IT EASY™ is a collection of thoughts and observations designed to give people a different perspective on their craft, and it also includes games and exercises for people to do on their own or to bring to their group to reinforce the book’s teachings. Web: Ryan Millar – Take it Easy