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Comment by gherkinnn | Hacker News Reader

I see its value when mostly in agreement. Keeps the flow going.

But how does one do "yes, and ...", when the previous statement is clearly wrong? You either sound sarcastic or like a patronising twat.

"It is snowing." "Yes, and I'll leave my sweater at home since it's rather warm outside."

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In an actual scene, you also have an underlying set of game rules guiding it which the actors are negotiating through.

It is possible for the characters to disagree with each other if it's not blocking - it allows the scene to continue to develop instead of shutting it down. In this case, disagreement over the weather would become the focus of the action.

"It is snowing."

"Oh, what a kidder you are, Smith! Just look at the shorts I'm wearing, it's fun in the sun time."

"Jones, my breath is visible. You are clearly on a different planet from me."

"Well, as it so happens, I AM an alien!" pause for laughter

And yes, there's a limit to the method when in a business setting. Business machinery is set up to grind out ugly, practical compromises and can't inject fantasy into the equation like that very often in the lower branches of the org, but it often benefits from this creativity when we're talking about executive leadership figuring out what the org needs to look like to succeed in the future.

> "It is snowing." > "Oh, what a kidder you are, Smith! Just look at the shorts I'm wearing, it's fun in the sun time."

That’s almost a textbook example of the opposite of Yes And philosophy. Contradicting the reality established by another performer is called Negation.

Disagreement within the YesAnd framework can be tricky to describe. A better example:

“This sucks. It’s snowing” “Yes, and now we can finally go skiing. I’m so excited!”

In improv, "Yes, and..." is kind of just the basics. It's to stop beginners from putting up a brick wall that kills the scene or forces someone to invent a whole new premise from whole cloth. That shit takes work on somebody's part and adds a ton of friction. You're supposed to add value, and not destroy value. ("Yes" stands for not-destroying; "and" stands for adding.) That doesn't necessarily mean agreeing all the time; in fact any half-decent dramatic scene had better involve conflict of some kind or it'll be boring. But you're supposed to find ways to do it within the reality of the scene, i.e. without negating the underlying premise.

If the analogy is applicable to business at all, it's about accepting the "reality" of the place you've parachuted into. Part of that might be to start with the assumption that people are grownups who have real honest-to-god reasons for saying things. That level of respect for strangers seems appropriate, and a lost art in these days of the online echo chamber. Then your job stops being about "being right" and more about listening. This whole viewpoint seems to say it's more important to keep the "scene" going than to be right.

Whereas in theatre you have the luxury of just declaring that yes indeed it IS snowing; in business it sounds like it would be more about figuring out why this person thinks it's snowing. After enough time immersed in their company culture you might see why, and you might even reluctantly agree with it. But you can "disagree without negating" by saying for example "Well I know it's probably not snowing in Cancún." In other words "When I worked at Blablacorp they had an excellent anti-snow system." Seems like maybe caution would be in order before saying anything like that though, as an outsider, because the obvious response is gonna be "Well this is YADDATRON, NOT BLABLACORP! At Yaddatron, it's goddamn snowing!!"

Anyway, point is, you don't necessarily have to accept that it is snowing; sometimes just accepting that the person thinks it's snowing is enough to keep things moving along. I dunno, don't mind me, this is new to me (improv isn't, but this way of using it is), so to some degree I'm thinking by writing.

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