Last night the
instructor led off with the above Mike Tyson quote. He said the goal of many of
the games we play in class is to get us to react instinctively - without
thinking. The singing game was designed for that purpose and so is the game
Bunny Bunny which we've played several times. (I'm not sure I can describe that
game justice in writing) We play these games every class, increase the
speed each time, continually screw up, get coached and little by little get
better. Failure is a big piece of the improv learning process. Last
night I had a 5-minute scene – I don’t have enough fingers/toes to count up my
blunders. But that’s part of the point.
It’s an interesting feeling when you’re starting to get comfortable with
failing.
I spend much
of my time as a product manager vetting ideas, collaborating on requirements,
doing market research, etc. It’s about making the right decisions with using
the right data. But when I think more about it, I also make dozens of decisions each week
instinctively. Development hits a technical obstacle and has multiple solutions
to go over/around it. Each of those solutions is made up of different costs,
benefits and trade-offs. You make a decision on the fly to keep the project
moving. I'm approached all the time with the question "what about this?”.
There’s not enough time in the day to vet all of the decisions via research.
The way you get
better at making these day-to-day decisions is through experience and knowledge.
The mistakes I made in the past applies to the future decisions. The hours
spent visiting and observing customers in action allow me to pick up tidbits of
information that are continually built upon and shape my decision making in
unexpected ways. I make a decision that is based on a lesson I learned
from a customer visit 2 years ago – things that I’m not sure how I even
remember…but I do. Lesson 3 of improv was
about taking the opportunity to learn every chance I get and being comfortable
with the knowledge that you can’t always plan ahead. Also to remember to up the
ante…and that failure is not always a bad thing.