What an improv stage can teach you about leading cross-cultural teams in Tokyo

The 4 actual points of recommendation are good: Listening to people first, giving credit to people by name, and other things are rather basic management and soft skills techniques.

I did groan a little at the anecdote about how their demo for a food identification product completely misidentified the photo of food and he improvised a hand-waved excuse to try to make it sound like a good thing that it identified anything at all. That gets at the less than ideal side of mixing acting/improv with business in my experience. Some of my closest friends have done improv for years, but they leave the acting and improv on the stage. When you work with them or talk to them you get their authentic selves.

Some of their other improv friends, though, can’t turn it off. They think improv or acting is key to their personality and every interaction feels like they’re trying to integrate you into a scene they’ve imagined where they’re more or less manipulating everyone into their imagined outcome.

The biggest benefit of improv classes is giving people confidence and hardening their ability to go into situations where they might fail (which this article acknowledges). It’s a fine line where some people start taking the improv/acting skills and using them like techniques to manipulate emotions and turn interactions into a scene where they’re the victor. In my experience with improv friends, people go to one extreme or the other in this divide and they either become more relaxed and easy to engage with, or become grating dramatic and manipulative in even low stakes social situations while believing my they’re amazing every audience with their charm. If you do improv, please make sure you go toward the former side of that divide.

Improv is a very good hobby to have. It helps you to get out of difficult situations.

One of the things done at an improv show is called "story in 4".

To do a four-person improv story with random changes, have one player start a scene. Ring a bell or shout "Change!" at random times. When that happens, the last speaker must change their last line, or a new person must jump in to shift the plot, setting, or character traits completely.

It is super fun on stage and very useful in meeting rooms where you might need to pivot quickly.

I have never done improv, but as the americans say I was a "theatre kid".

This means I was swirled around in the world of people who do random noisy shit all the time. Whilst I didn't do improv, Improv happened to me.

When I was doing sales as a favour at one of the trade shows I was working at, I realised that whilst sales is not improv, there are a set of rules that the interactee tends to follow.

Generally there are three type of people(yes this set collapse, generalisations are important):

1) fuck you, I'm not buying from your fucking company

2) OK, I probably want what your selling, but I need specific information before I'll consider

3) I just here because I had nothing better to do/was too slow/drew the short straw.

the best signal, if you can get it, is from number 1. Sometimes they just have had a bad day, others because they've been burnt, or they think youre full of shit. But this is where the improv comes in. "I bet your product can't do x" aha! I see your are an engineer of distinction, what is it about x, that doesn't work with $product?

if you manage that, you have a focus group on why your product/marketing/reputation is shit.

I'm 3 days late on this so folks likely won't ever read or reply but I hope y'all will!

I'm super curious about this point:

> Name who deserves credit, in public. Use actual names, not “Thanks to the team.”

I read a story many years ago of a Western project manager in Japan and this epic gaffe he caused because he publicly praised one person.

The praised person was then seen as an upstart and trying to jump the chain of command and eventually left the company. (Leaving the company was also conveyed as a HUGE deal because I guess Japanese try really hard to stay at the same company for life.)

All because of a single statement of praise.

So I'm surprised to see this as advice suggesting a westerner do exactly what was portrayed as a cultural incongruency problem.

Seems like there's a nuance I'm missing.

Ex PM in Japan here. Excellent advice. Works great for families too.

"That is what “You won’t die on stage” means. You won’t. You never do."

Unless of course you literally do, for example while performing an act called "The imaginary invalid".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moli%C3%A8re#Death

Sorry, not much related to the otherwise very interesting article, but my brain kept insisting on this bit of knowledge every time I read "you won't die on stage".

AI written article.