Well, I just got back last night from the Applied Improvisation Network’s 4th annual conference. And I can’t stop talking about it! This is a community of truly amazing people! I can’t wait ’til next year!

But, in the interest of sharing (rather than generalized basking), one of the most important concepts that was renewed for me at the conference was the absolutely pivotal improv principle of “Yes, and…” Now, that’s just what it sounds like. It is the rule of thumb that any offer from your partner is a good offer simply because it is the one you have. It’s not about criticizing and second guessing and wishing you had something better. It’s about accepting what you have, acknowledging it (YES) and building on or adding to it (AND).

Think about how much time people spend shooting down each other’s ideas, or their own ideas for that matter. Think about how different it would be if we made the decision to say yes to things. Wow!

In one workshop, we even expanded on that and created “Yes, because… and…” This was an incredible experiment. Now we were not only affirming the other person’s offer, we now had to justify it before adding our own. We always spend so much time justifying ourselves, but wouldn’t it be an interesting meeting when we stopped and asked everyone else to validate someone’s idea� How does that benefit� First of all, you really have to listen and understand to an idea in order to validate it, right� Also, it certainly encourages group ownership of the idea. It continues to build up a truly good idea. And, if the idea ends up not being easy to validate… then you learn something there too.

I guess my point is this: I just spent four days saying “yes” with about 100 other people. Try it out. There are two big surprises when you do that. 1) You’ll be surprised how far yes gets you and your team. 2) You’ll be surprised how much you used to say “No.”

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