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Over the past 5 or 6 years, we’ve been pitching clients on using storytelling and improvisation to innovate, to improve internal communication, and to build more effective teams. But it hasn’t often been easy. Say "improvisation" to most business people, and they think you are some kind of flake, that you don’t understand the needs of their business.

Now, two of the season’s hottest business books — Seth Godin’s "All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in Low Trust World" and Malcolm Gladwell’s "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" — are focused directly on the benefits of story and improv.

Gladwell’s "Blink" discusses the value of the rational thinking that happens in the moment — he calls it rapid cognition — and makes a point not to use the word "intuition", which he feels is written off as emotional and antithetical to business. Instead, he points out that the complexity of business and life today — the sheer amount of data — frequently confuses deliberate, careful decision-making processes. In our information-saturated world, what wins is responsiveness to the market, flexibility, and speed. Improvisation is a best-practices lab for employing rapid cognition across departments, functions, and geographies. Perhaps "Blink" will help encourage the development of our practice.

Godin’s "All Marketers Are Liars" is about the value of Story — the difference between a marketing message that is full of facts and salesmanship, and marketing that engages. What’s cool about this book is that it emphasizes the Quality of Connection, as more valuable than a commoditized marketing "impression". Given the overwhelming complexity and choice of data and products (competition), Godin argues that consumers are demanding more authentic stories from marketers. Along the way, Godin chides companies that write mission or brand statements that have nothing to do with the way real people speak and live. Stories are how humans make meaning of events. For organizational development, for group creative process, for any kind of community.

Last weekend, we started a new season of subscribing to fresh produce from the Live Power Farm. Farmers Steve and Gloria Decater came down from Mendicino County to kickoff their 18th year growing for what is now a community of 37 families. Each week, we get a basket from the farm - this week was chard, lettuces, carrots, scallions, and the best strawberries I’ve tasted in a long time. In the 1980’s I stopped eating fresh strawberries (and tomatoes) because they were usually tasteless and mealy. Many apples too. But the produce Steve and Gloria grow is fantastic - the lettuces, carrots, beets, even the potatoes have a quality that I haven’t tasted anywhere else. Yes, even better than organic, they’re biodynamic.

Biodynamics is a non-chemical method of farming, based on a series of lectures in 1924 by Rudolph Steiner, the Austrian philosopher, educator, theologian, dramatist, and architect. Steve and Gloria talked to us about how they farm — completely by hand, and without chemicals. Its amazing that in 2005, they’ve made a decision — for the land, for the quality of produce, and for the community — to farm using horses rather than tractors. They’re not luddites though; they’ve invested in 22 solar panels for their barn roof so they can use as little fossil fuels as possible.

Steve and Gloria also talked about the benefits of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). We subscribe to the farm, which means we give them all the money upfront, so they know how many people they’ll be feeding for the season. This lets them plant a dozen different types of vegetables, rather than just one, which benefits the land, yields higher quality produce, and helps create a sustainable ecosystem. Since Live Power doesn’t just plant one veg, it isn’t victim to market fluctuations or weather or diseases which can ruin a single crop. They look at our way of dealing as a relationship — they know us, and we know them. We know where our produce is coming from and how its grown, and they appreciate being out of the market system, knowing who is eating the literal fruits of their labors, and having our kids play together in the yard while the meeting is happening.

Steve and Gloria are special folks. Their committment to the philosophy and process of biodynamic farming is impressive, and their farmer discomfort with public speaking just adds to their charm. I look at their wild hair and scruffy boots and wish I had the guts to live the way they do. As they talk, they show us slides from the many elementary school groups who visit the farm to learn about biodynamic methods, and re-connect modern kids to the land and its plants and animals. Its a part of their mission they especially enjoy, and it connects us together even more tightly as a community since most of us in the room have kids who’ve visited the Live Power at least a couple of times.

The vegetable is political? Absolutely. Non-corporate, non-chemical, reduced fossil fuel usage, de-commoditized, incredibly delicious, and bursting with food value. Eating food from Live Power Farm is probably the best thing I do to support a strong and sustainable America. We need more heroes like Steve and Gloria.

This may sound prosaic, but my blog is motivating me to write more. I ‘m enjoying it. And I’m not the only one. Some claim as many as 50 million blogs worldwide (a guess plus a few assumptions), a number that’s been doubling in size every 5 months. A more reliable estimate is for 10 million in the US. We’ll see about the growth rate. But as a share of 285 million Americans, that’s just 2.8%. Of Adults 18-49, the age cohort judged most likely to post, just 6%. Is this a revolution?

Now, its fair to assume that not all blogs are individual endeavors. The Applied Improvisation Network blog has a a dozen active writers. On the other hand, by some estimates, as few as 1 in 5 blogspaces are updated in a given 30 day cycle. And amidst it all, its impossible to know how much of this growth is business blogs.

Interesting to me is the activity of creation that steals share directly from passive consumption of any medium. Active media means making something, possibly with others, and the trend is growing — driven by education, access to tools, and a desire to connect.

What does "consumer" or "target" mean in this creative state of mind? The activity of creation creates/requires a radically different psychological space than the psychology of passive television consumption. Perhaps "marketing" needs some new ideas about how audiences/users "learn about a brand" while active and creating?

Passive media will always exist. But active media seem to growing. Do we count online/multi-player games as active, but single-player videogames only "interactive"? Where’s the line here? There isn’t one, and maybe won’t be. But there are opportunitites out there for media companies, content providers, and marketers to provide more user-directed or user-created media.

In a media world where "relevance" is the currency, targeting is good, permissions (including interactive) are better, and active will be a home run. 

For advertising folks, the ad movie is a special genre - hopefully biting, sarcastic, insulting, and funny as hell. Well, here’s one perhaps you haven’t seen - Putney Swope.

The film, from 1969, was directed by Robert Downey Sr (Yes, the father of Jr.), and begins with a corrupt and slovenly ad agency board kveching about their business. When the chairman & head of the agency enters, he starts berating the group , stuttering, and as the others begin a game of charades to figure out what he’s trying to say, he has a heart attack and dies, face down on the board table. After rifling through his pockets for his wallet and watch, the board holds an election for the new chair (with the chairman still laying face down, dead, across the table). The majority vote for Putney Swope - the music director and only black guy on the board. The rest of the movie follows the outrageous consequences of changing the name of the agency to Truth and Soul Inc. and replacing all the execs with brothers and sisters from the ‘hood. The film is in B&W but the ads are in COLOR. Outrageous - Black Power account execs, a pot-smoking German midget as President of the US, and they pitch a car account - the Boreman Six. One AE walks around repeating: "Putney says the Boreman Six girl is got to have soul!"

One special aspect of the film is the actor Antonio Fargas, later famous as Starsky & Hutch’s Huggy Bear. Something else that I personally love is that in the movie Cotton Comes to Harlem (itself a classic early blaxploitation story, written by the under-known and under-appreciated noir-writer Chester Himes), as characters Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed (two Harlem police detectives) run across 125th Street, the movie theatre marquis in the back ground is advertising Putney Swope.

But what really blows me away is this: My father came to the US from India in the mid 1950’s, when he was 16. In 1969, his parents and sister came to live in Philadelphia - a big trip for them to bring the whole family and leave India. Having not much money, they lived in a crappy section of South Philadelphia (where my mother grew up) - the part that was going downhill fast from old Rocky-movie Italian, sliding into the crumbling poverty and ruin that most people associate with Philadelphia today. Over the years, we’ve made fun of my aunt and uncle for never wanting to go out - they won’t go to restaurants, or parties, or the movies, or to Atlantic City casinos. They had jobs for years, but would only go to and from work, and then to church and the neighborhood shopping. What is wrong with these people, I wondered?

Recently, though, I was telling my mother about Putney Swope, and she remembered — when my aunt and uncle first came to Philadelphia, my parents took them to see this movie. What? THIS was the first movie they saw in the US? Militant afro advertising agency? Loud soul guitar and psychedelic colors? Pot smoking Nazi US president? Jesus, no wonder they refused to go out for the next 30 years…

This weekend, I am acting in a stage adaptation of a Twilight Zone episode from 1961 entitled "Steel". Check out The Darkroom Theatre for more info & tickets. "Steel" originally starred Lee Marvin as a washed-up boxer, now manager of a washed-up robot boxer, sometime in the future. Next week are two different episodes, and I play Rod Serling.

What I love most about acting is the rehearsal - the explorations with other actors, finding how we’re related, what we care about. Its always surprising. This is how the real world works — we figure out things together, are dependent on each other much more than we acknowledge. On stage, being right isn’t enough. As improv-guru Keith Johnstone advises: How do you know the work is good? Other people want to play with you.

 When the play is over, I usually get depressed, am tired, and so I crash - physically and emotionally. We call it Post Dramatic Stress Disorder…

This will show my age, but I have to admit - last night I went to see the early ’80’s funk/punk band Gang Of Four at the historic Filmore in San Francisco. The show last night was enjoyable, but lacked the thrashing violence of the night I last saw them - in a ill-fitting suburban hotel meeting room outside Wilmington Delaware in 1982. If you happend to be there, it was a brilliant moment - raw, ripping guitar from Andy Gill, set against a thumping rythym and dismal & bitter Leeds-soaked lyrics. I tried pogo-ing last night, but just couldn’t get the crowd into bashing around like the old days. And jumping wildly for a single song about did my 42 year old knees in for the evening. Any other Gang of Four fans out there, perhaps 40-something Brit planners? One thing I noticed at the show - back in the ’80s we had all shaved our heads, or had buzz cuts - partly for fashion, partly to prevent stupid punks from grabbing one’s hair in the mele. Last night though, most of the audience had the same kind of hair style - but now balding, not bald. We tried to ignore the difference…