Even On Your Feet is a result of a spontaneous "happy mistake," its founders note.
"On a wet November Saturday in 1996," they say on their Web site at www.oyf.com, "two unsuspecting bald guys with glasses met at a bakery in Portland, Oregon, to talk about a T-shirt and instead, by complete accident, formed a consultancy that uses improvisation and other experiential techniques to help organizations create, relate and communicate, all while having a ridiculously good time."
The firm now employs the talents of "an ex ad planner, an anthropologist, two yoga teachers, a handful of improvisers, marketing executives, a snow cone baron and a former mail carrier/biochemist." They live in places as varied as Portland; London; Dublin, Ireland; and El Hornillo, Spain.
Even the best-planned businesses can fail, Madson notes. Improvisers avoid spinning their wheels because they see quickly what isn't working or, simultaneously, what might be successful that didn't occur to them at first. Improvisers, by definition, take risks and make mistakes, lots of them, but that's what leads them in fresh directions.
Madson acknowledges that it can be hard to wrap the business mind around improv, because improvisers don't dwell on the future.
"The future takes care of itself if we're building constructively right now," she said. "You're throwing out planning as the primary mode of work, but it doesn't mean you don't then use known strategies and systems to move forward."
Mike Kwatinetz, a venture capitalist who is co-founder and general partner at Azure Capital Partners in Palo Alto, California, says he believes that improvisational thinking gets new companies rolling in the right direction.
"For these young companies, and hopefully forever, you want to have changes all the time," Kwatinetz said. "You want to be reacting to what you're seeing and what you're doing right and where it's not working and react to that to try something different."
Besides, he said, "if you're working at a job as intensely as we do, you'd better be enjoying yourself."
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