Our facilitators are some of the most experienced business people in corporate and applied improvisation training in Australia. We work full time in the corporate world — not just as facilitators — and have done so for many years, utilising improvisation’s lessons and techniques in countless organisations.
We develop all of our programmes in–house, based on our ongoing research, which we then customise for each of our clients. We even published a book on it.
Look beyond team bonding, speech writing, “yes, and” and the funny closer for the company away day. Contact us and let us design a programme that will take your business to the next level, with real outcomes that don’t end the minute we leave your premises.
Improvisation is a business skill
Well, not specifically. Improvisation improves the ability of individuals and teams — including entire organisations — to adapt to fast changing requirements and environments.
Improvisation is a life skill that’s also very suited for use in work environments. Whether it be in technical professions — such as engineering or construction for example — or in back office or leadership roles, the ability to respond immediately to new potentially unknown impulses with a high degree of expertise, can mean the difference between success and failure.
Improvisation also improves listening and communication skills, helps with ideation and creativity, problem solving and self confidence.
Do you still need a reason to bring improvisation into your workplace? How about this: because while you may not yet be using improvisation, your competitors probably already are.
An improv workshop is just that
Improv is often promoted as a great skill for life and corporate settings. But improv is actually improvised comedy. The foundational skills of improv are rooted in general improvisation and life skills improvements, which apply to both comedy and corporate contexts. Comedy improv and corporate improvisation are not identical, even though they share some of the same foundations. This is how improv comedy schools are able run improv classes that somewhat work for corporate training, due to these shared foundations. We instead teach the foundations as directly applied to the corporate world, because we know and even created the research on it — we also just happen to run a well known comedy improv school.
Additionally, a single improvisation workshop won’t lead to medium or long-term change. Lasting change from improv and improvisation comes from rewiring the brain (neuroplasticity) and developing muscle memory, which takes time. Significant, permanent change usually starts after about 10-15 hours of training. Thus, a 2-3 hour one-off improv workshop, despite incorporating simplistic concepts like “yes, and,” is mainly useful for just team bonding and getting to know people.
Why we’re different
Our customised programmes highlight how improvisation actually works in the brain, and how to harness and optimise that ability. Sure, we run exercises and games in our workshops like our competitors do, but we also detail the underlying mechanics of each exercise, how it directly manipulates the brain, and how to use that knowledge and practice going forward.
Unlike typical corporate workshops where comedy improv classes are rebranded as corporate improv workshops, our sessions are specifically designed from the ground up based on improvisation science and related fields. Our comedy improv practice and school are built on this unique foundation, ensuring a dedicated and authentic approach to both life and work skills, as well as improv comedy – not the other way around.
It’s all about the buzzwords
Knowing who is best to take your team through improvisation and related skills can be difficult. If you don’t know how improvisation actually works, or what it can really do, then how can you know which company will do the best job?
Maybe it’s as simple as whoever uses the best buzzwords? OK, so here’s some buzzwords.
- Most improv workshop providers don’t really understand what improvisation is, so they just say “improv”. Improvisation is actually the use of presence to spontaneously tap into a trained expertise. Obviously that’s not a great marketing line, so we say “improvisation”, not improv.
- Divergent thinking. This is actually the technical name for thinking outside the box. Yes we teach that, but we also teach what it is, what it means, how it works, and how to use it in your organisation.
- Creativity. Improvisation doesn’t make you creative, because creativity isn’t a single skill. However, improvisation does greatly assist with what is often referred to as the incubation, intimation and illumination phases of creativity, which were originally proposed by creativity pioneer Graham Wallas. Domain expertise is internalised and modelled by the unconscious, and many of the skills which contribute to the improvisation process — not improvisation per se —, also expedite the analysis and problem solving aspects of that expertise. Phew… Basically, it’s crazy science stuff which we make easy to understand and take advantage of in our workshops.
- Presentation and public speaking skills. It’s all about performance, by being engaging, comfortable, confident, spontaneous, being able to adapt to different audiences, and taking advantage of the science behind theatre and communication. Well, it’s also about emotion, mirror neurons, priming and other science, but that’s another couple of workshops worth right there.