How to Be Agile in the Midst of Uncertainty

Source: Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Let’s take a time machine back to the 1950s. We’re in one of the big advertising firms. Think Mad Men. People are frantically planning campaigns that will have print runs six or more months from now.

Now let’s head over to the local high school. The teacher talks most of the class period while students take notes. Not a ton of agility required.

Now hop back in your time machine and meet me back in today's times.

Associate professor of marketing at the Richard H. Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University James A. Mourey paints a very different picture. His study in the Journal of Marketing Education reveals the need for agility in our current digital marketing landscape, which means we need to teach it in our marketing (and other) classrooms.

I would take it a step further and say agility (being collaborative, confident, and creative in the moment) would come in handy in most aspects of our current lives. Marketers aren’t the only ones who need to be ready to pivot. Teachers can no longer plan an entire school year in advance. And parents don’t know what tomorrow brings — or any of the days after that.

In fact, none of us were ever actually certain of anything, which is why I find Mourey’s study so relevant to our current moment.

Source: Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

The Study

Thirty-seven students participated in the study. Seventeen participants took a 10-week improv course, while 20 took a consumer behavior course taught by the same professor.

All 37 students were then taken through three modules. The first was a divergent thinking task — to come up with as many innovative uses for an object as possible. It’s the classic divergent thinking test and a classic improv exercise. The example Mourey uses is a paper clip. Instead of saying it could hold paper together, students might say that it could be used as an earring. Participants were shown a brick and told to come up with as many novel uses for it as possible.

Students who had taken the improv class came up with twice as many novel uses for the brick as the students from the consumer behavior course.

Next, participants were told to imagine they were marketing for Oreos and had to develop a new flavor and a corresponding campaign. Participants from both classes performed about equally, but the improv students found it easier to create a second cookie campaign.

Finally, participants completed a questionnaire that revealed the improv group thought collaborating in a group was easier than the control group.

All told, the students who took the 10-week improv course experienced quicker divergent thinking and more ease generating spontaneous ideas, in addition to self-reporting being more comfortable with group collaboration.

Mourey found similar results in another experiment in which 260 participants took an online “yes, and” simulation instead of taking an improv class. Students who did the quick “yes, and” exercises on a computer generated ideas faster than those who didn’t. And students who self-reported having familiarity with improv did the same.

Kitchen Rules to Live By

Mourey went back to some founding improv rules to develop his study. The so-called Kitchen Rules were developed by the Compass Players in the late ‘50s to make improvised performances more consistently cohesive and collaborative. The three foundational rules Mourey cites are:

1. Don’t deny.
2. Whenever possible, make a strong choice.
3. You are you.

Mourey correlates these rules to skills necessary for contemporary marketing:

1. Collaboration
2. Divergent thinking
3. Self-efficacy

The Kitchen Rules still provide us a cheat sheet for being agile in uncertain times, whether we’re marketing, teaching, or just getting through our day.

If we want to be able to work together, be creative, and be confident in our contributions, we can remind ourselves of the Kitchen Rules:

Consumer Behavior Essential Reads

The Psychology Behind a $25,000 Hoodie

How Does That Look? The Allure of Virtual Try-Ons

1. If you want to be more collaborative, don’t deny other people’s contributions and perspectives. Instead, meet somewhere in the middle.
2. If you want to be more creative, make stronger choices.
3. If you want to be more confident, remind yourself that you are you. Your perspective and approach are vital parts of whatever it is you’re working on.

Not everyone has the access or inclination to experience an in-person improv class, but everyone can still learn lessons from it and take strides to be more agile. Hopefully, the Kitchen Rules will help you think faster and more confidently on your feet and go with the flow in turbulent times.