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Event Review

L. Vaughan Spencer is the world’s worst motivational speaker, but he thinks that he’s the best. That, in essence, is why he’s on the books of the London Business Forum (LBF). Your toes may curl as you watch this absurd man, but the chances are your sides will split too. And when you meet his creator, comedian Neil Mullarkey, you may even learn a few things that change the way you do business forever.

This event, at London’s Comedy Store theatre, began with Spencer barrelling onto the stage wearing a hideous orange suede suit, as well as his trademark mullet. “Can you feel it?” he shouted at the room. “Can you feel the energy? Something’s happening, yeah?” It was true. We could feel something: a mixture of dread and fascination. Most of us could also remember similar lines issued by real speakers who actually took themselves seriously.

For the next half an hour, we sat in thrall as Mullarkey – a founding member of London’s Comedy Store Players and a 24-year veteran of its weekly improv night – treated us to various speeches, and one-to-one interventions with members of the audience, designed to “succeederize” our pathetic lives. It’s fair to say that no amount of inspirational speaking can prepare you for a business-themed rap that ends with the words “I am the gangsta motivator!”

A short interval gave us the chance to flush “L-Vo” out of our systems. Then, fresh from shedding his alter-ego’s suede suit, false goatee and ponytail, Mullarkey returned to the stage as himself to explain why improvisation comedy has more relevance to business than you might think.

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion,” he said, quoting Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People. Few people would dispute this view, and yet most of us still expect 100% rational behaviour from our colleagues and customers.

“What is interesting to me is that so many management theories – even supply and demand – are based on the notion of ‘rational economic actors’,” Mullarkey said. We tend to regard as gospel the theory of Adam Smith, the 18th Century Scottish economist, who said that the “invisible hand” of a free market allows buyers and sellers to naturally find a price that suits them all. And yet, even with the Internet to help you find alternatives, “the reality is you just go to the shop you fancy or you have been to before.”

As the credit crunch has proven, Mullarkey said, “the invisible hand of the market doesn’t actually always work and sometimes the government has to step in.” (L. Vaughan Spencer prefers to talk about the “Invisible Touch” of the market, as a tribute to Phil Collins.)

Nevertheless, business people can use irrationality to their advantage. For example, Mullarkey said, “We like stories more than facts sometimes. So, I always tell people: ‘When you are presenting, try to build a story around the message or point that you want people to go away with.”

Moreover, when a story is funny, it can often be more helpful as a result. “I think that my problem with so many organisations is they don’t allow humour,” Mullarkey said. “They don’t allow laughter. We are all allowed to work at home, and then we come to work and we have to put on a different suit and say, ‘I am a business person.’

Somehow humour seems frivolous and ‘not working properly’.” And yet if something makes you laugh, it’s generally because it contains a hidden truth.

We’d return to the subject of using comedy to expose hidden truths later on, but first Mullarkey wanted to introduce us to the basic principles of improv… and to drag an unsuspecting audience member or two onto the stage. The modern form of improv theatre was developed in the 1960s in Chicago, principally by a drama teacher called Viola Spolin, he explained. “So it’s older than many business schools.”

The most important thing to recognise about improv comedy, he continued, is that it contains more structure than you might think. “For example, when we do a show here, we know it is going to start at eight o’clock. We know it is finished at 10 o’clock. We know the six people who are going to be on. We know the games we are going to play. We have played the same games now for about 15 years. We have outsourced everything. So, the Comedy Store looks after the technical things – the coat room, tickets, drinks, food.” With this framework in place, the comedians can focus on being creative.

The problem with most organisations is that they have structures that inhibit creativity, he argued. They fail to cater for the necessary flexibility and irrationality of human behaviour. So, for example, corporate change programmes are often highly linear. They “come from on high” and say “this is what must be done”, when the reality is that things will occur along the way that are unexpected. The skill of improv is essentially one of taking the unexpected and turning it into something great.

“My friends at the Ashridge Business School and Management College, with whom I have worked quite a lot, talk about ‘minimum structure, maximum autonomy,’” Mullarkey said, referring to his work with organisations leading improv workshops. “As leaders, I urge you to create that sort of environment.”

Another key principle of improv is “the offer”, a line or action that provides other performers with the means to maintain and develop an on-stage narrative. So, for example, a sketch about a doctor’s surgery may begin from nowhere with the line “Good morning Mr Smith, I’m pleased to see your leg is looking better,” and continue with the response, “Yes, and those leeches you recommended have worked marvellously.” Here the offer is the mention of Mr Smith’s leg, and the key to his response is the words “yes, and”.

The words “yes, and” are incredibly powerful, Mullarkey said, because in any conversation they propel things forward. Frequently in meetings we’ll respond to an idea by saying “yes, but”, and thereby cut off a train of thought or offend someone. Use the phrase often enough, and you stifle creativity. To demonstrate this point, he plucked a volunteer from the audience, who was asked to help him improvise a sketch on the spot by prefacing every line she uttered with the words “yes, and”. Enthusiastic but understandably nervous, this volunteer managed to turn a conversation about event management into a hilarious revelation about a gay affair between Mullarkey and her husband.

This exercise was opened up to the room, with Mullarkey breaking us into pairs and instructing us to imagine we were policemen who had just arrested a suspect called Wilkins. Apart from being enormous fun, this also taught us another valuable lesson: saying “yes, and” in your head before responding to a difficult colleague can be a very useful way to moderate your tone at work.

“As a matter of interest, who found things out about Wilkins? Who found out that he was a man?” Mullarkey asked afterwards. “We assumed he was a man, didn’t we? Did we assume he was guilty? Most of us, yes.… The most common and the most dangerous, perhaps, assumptions are the ones we don’t even realise we have made.”

If you understand the principles of improv then you’re always on the lookout for the assumptions bearing on any given situation, Mullarkey concluded. In business, these are “the unwritten ground rules that you get to learn within about three days of joining an organisation.” Such rules may be as simple as knowing what kind of font to use in order to please your boss. But the chances are they’ll include many issues that are “much more profound”.