Abstract: This literature review examines the concept of improvisation as a management strategy and tool. Today’s rapidly changing and unpredictable environment, with which traditional management principles and practices cannot cope, demands such a strategy. The paper shows how improvisation differs from the traditional skills of good management to help us manage more effectively. It also discusses the metaphors of jazz music and improvisational theatre, and shows that true improvisation is not chaotic and arbitrary but it is a finely tuned balance of discipline and art. Finally it examines the essential characteristics of an improvising organization, and suggests several training exercises to develop this skill. Throughout, the paper mentions examples of successful improvisation in organizations.

The environment in which today’s organizations find themselves is a rapidly changing and often unpredictable one. For many organizations change is "frequent, rapid, and even endemic" (Brown, 1997, p. 2). However, many leaders operate by a rigid system of leadership rules and principles that dictate a single correct set of actions given any broad situation. In our turbulent environment, this behavior causes organizations to be less effective (Crossan, White, Lane & Klus, 1996; Stacey, 1992). Today’s global marketplace, that is "turbulent, ‘spacey,’ and endlessly demanding of the new, the experimental, the faster, the better, and the cheaper" (Kao, 1996a, p. 24), is decidedly inhospitable to a rigid way of thinking.

By definition, an improvisation is "something done or produced on the spur of the moment" (Brown, 1993, p. 1328). Improvisation is an accepted form in both theatre and jazz music. A number of researchers (e.g., Crossan, White, Lane & Klus, 1996; Jackson, 1995; Jones, 1997; Kao, 1997; Sparks, 1994) proposed that the art and discipline of improvisation should not remain only in the realm of the theatre and jazz music, and that the ability to improvise is one particular skill that would greatly benefit leaders and managers in today’s organizations. John Kao (1997) wrote, "Improvisation is probably one of the two or three cardinal skills for businesses to learn in the future, and the process of improvisation must underlie how organizations formulate strategy going forward" (p. 6). According to Tom Peters (1996), successful organizations must be "masters" of improvisation (p. 11).

Crossan, White, Lane & Klus (1996) assert that organizations can use improvisation as a managerial technique for coping with the problems of an uncertain future. They further propose that organizations can learn lessons from improvisation – both in theater and music – and that the use of training exercises from the performing arts can convey the principles of improvisation in organizational settings (p. 21). They conclude that if leaders and managers are trained in improvisation they will be able to adopt a new paradigm of response rules and principles that are, at once, systematic and disciplined, and yet applicable to a turbulent environment. This is what Daniel Isenberg (1987) calls "strategic opportunism…–…the ability to remain focussed on long-term objectives while staying flexible enough to solve day-to-day problems and recognize new opportunities" (p. 92).

This paper proposes that improvisation is indeed a valuable tool that can take us beyond the traditional skills of good management in order to help us manage faster, better and smarter. Organizations that use a strategy that includes improvisation have the potential to outperform organizations that do not. To demonstrate this, the literature review first explores the fundamental need for creative improvisation in today’s organizations. Then it contrasts improvisation with traditional management strategies. Finally, it considers the essential characteristics of an improvising organization, along with discussions of several specific training exercises to facilitate the development of these qualities and skills in managers. Throughout, this paper mentions examples of successful improvisation in organizations.

According to Ralph Stacey (1992), "everyone admits that the future is basically unknowable" (p. 7), and many writers on chaos theory demonstrate the fundamental truth of this statement (e.g., Cohen & Stewart, 1994; Durrance, 1997; Kellert, 1993; Land & Jarman, 1992; Lewin, 1992). The simple predictability of the machine metaphor for an organization is no longer valid. In the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton and others created the machine metaphor to explain how the world works. "In the machine model, one must understand parts. Things can be taken apart, dissected literally or representationally (as with an organization), and then put back together without any significant loss" (Wheatley, 1992, pp. 8-9). The assumption is that we can understand the whole by comprehending the related workings of each piece. This makes the functioning, and thus the future, of the whole relatively predictable. However, scientists in many different disciplines are questioning whether this metaphor can adequately explain how the world works.

Neither the present nor the future of an organization are so easily understood. In organizations, the links between cause and effect can be complex, distant in time and space, and very difficult to detect. Consequently, it is difficult, many times, to identify the specific ideas and actions that led to specific outcomes. Ralph Stacey (1992) demonstrates that if we hold to a simplistic view of the nature of cause and effect in an organization, we could say that Federal Express is a success because its founder, Fred Smith, had a vision of a new parcel delivery service and then set about to realize it. Or we could say that Honda is successful because it carried out its founder’s strategic intent to build motor engine competence. In reality, however, businesses are complex systems in which it is impossible, many times, to identify direct cause-effect links. There are simply too many variables. Consequently, it is not that easy to explain the success of companies such as Federal Express and Honda (pp. 10-11)!

Because of the inherent complexity of organizations, their futures are unknowable. But many managers still approach the future as if it were knowable and predictable. They continue to apply traditional forecasting and planning practices to new problems. Following the traditional paradigm, they assume that the future environment is predictable and manageable through the use of the correct combination of processes and practices, and that sustainable success results from accurate and rigorous analysis through which they formulate and implement both short- and long-term plans (Crossan, White, Lane & Klus, 1996, p. 22).

In many organizations, once-a-year planning sessions by the corporate strategic planners establish the path the organization will follow for the next year, and then managers hand those directives down for the rest of the organization to follow. Thus, the organization permits creativity for only a small group of planners and then only in a limited context. However, as John Kao (1997) exhorts, "creativity must go beyond generating new ideas; it must become an ongoing process" (p. 7). If no one can know the future destination of an organization – particularly an innovate one – then the organization’s managers must create, invent, and discover their destination as they go. The structure of the organization must allow this kind of ongoing and pervasive creativity. "Creativity is not only about new products and services, it’s equally about new processes – strategic processes – and new perceptions of opportunity" (Kao, 1997, p. 7).

Max DePree (1989) wrote, "Anything truly creative results in change, and if there is one thing a well-run bureaucracy or institution or major corporation finds difficult to handle, it is change" (p. 33). "Bureaucracy and a rigid sense of hierarchy kill initiative and creativity" (Hamel, 1995, p. 26). Consequently, organizations need fundamental change. It is not enough just to allow some token creativity once in a while. Organizational processes themselves must change. Coca-Cola’s president, M. Douglas Ivester, told John Kao (1997),

Coca-Cola understands that creativity is not just a "once a year" event but it is an on-going process, and they value improvisation across the company and not only in selected, limited areas. The times in which we live demand this.

John Kao (1996b, pp. 4-18) gives eight reasons why our present times demand new and creative organizational strategies, such as improvisation. First, our present economic era of information technology is evolving into the technology of relationships, facilitating the flow of creative interaction through a vast variety of technological means. In a traditional organization "most people never get the opportunity to be meaningfully involved in the working of the system" (Vogl, 1993, p. 28). But, this situation is changing fast. Information technology has fundamentally altered the nature of organizational relationships and collaboration. In traditional companies, organizational charts define the circuitry of relationships. But, information technology abolishes the regular planned routes, substituting flexible networks that enable people to communicate instantly, freely – and creatively.

Second, this era prizes knowledge. Creativity adds value to knowledge and makes it progressively more useful.

Third, today’s companies are increasingly obliged to rapidly reinvent themselves to achieve growth, again putting a great importance on the expression of creativity across the entire organization.

Fourth, many workers today feel entitled to jobs in which they can express their creativity. In addition, talented people are more mobile than ever before. Today’s creative workers demand self-fulfillment and freedom from close supervision. As Max DePree (1992) wrote, "they need large doses of diverse experience, because their work is often a process of discovering and connecting" (p. 101). Empowerment is the order of the day. Moreover, the desire for empowerment does not come only from the workers, it comes from management as well. As Stacey (1992, pp. 169-185) observes, over the past two decades, there was growing concern about the ability of rigid organizational hierarchies to cope with complex and turbulent business conditions. That concern increasingly led to top management interest in installing "flexible organizational structures" and mounting "culture change" programs to empower people throughout their organizations. The aim of both the restructuring and the cultural change is the same: to free employees and those below the top in the management hierarchy from instructions and controls, and to allow them to take responsibility and to make decisions themselves. Improvisation is one tool that will facilitate the effectiveness of this empowerment.

Fifth, the creative design of products is becoming a major factor in their success. Companies need tools such as improvisation in place to facilitate this. Moreover, companies are not limiting their concerns about design to their products and services; they are also addressing the designs of their processes and even their entire organizations. Consequently, managers are increasingly involved in a variety of creative exercises in their positions. They must be equipped to do these effectively.

Sixth, an organization’s typical customer now holds more control than ever before. Customers are discerning, demanding and not very loyal. To keep market-share, organizations need creative products and processes.

Seventh, global competition and opportunity demand the highest levels of creativity. "Businesses, even fairly small ones, will have to start their strategic thinking and planning with the world economy rather than with their own domestic economy." (Drucker, 1980, p. 178) Companies that are satisfied with simply turning out the same old thing in the same old way will soon find themselves out of business.

Eighth, today’s management is transforming itself from controller to emancipator. The leader’s new goal is the liberation of the organization’s human resources and talents (Miller, 1997, p. 45). Without creativity across the organization, the new paradigms will fail.

To survive and flourish in such an environment, organizations must escape from what Land & Jarman (1992) call "the tyranny of the past" (p. 172), and embrace creative management strategies such as improvisation.

As times change, organizations must also change in order to survive, and an improvising organization is profoundly different from an organization that relies on traditional management strategies.

Crossan, White, Lane & Klus (1996) and others contrast the practice of improvisation with traditional management processes to show the superiority of an improvisational strategy. The traditional approach to the future believes that success depends on the organization’s ability to predict environmental change and develop tactical strategic plans to deal with that change. Conventional techniques such as vision statements, long-term plans, and strategic benchmarking, are employed in the hope that they will enable the organization to successfully chart its way into the future (Crossan, White, Lane & Klus, 1996, p. 20). The fact that this is such a limited tool kit does not stop managers from relying on it, partly because they have nothing to replace or supplement traditional forms of planning.

The last two decades saw the rise of the strategic planner. According to some writers, such as Mary Crossan (1997), this same time period saw the strategic planner’s fall as well. Certainly, planning for the future has a vital role to play in organizational strategy, but many companies created an over-reliance on the planning process. Planning involves long time horizons before any action occurs and involves much analysis in its development. It is not a particularly creative or spontaneous process. The process of "visioning" in the ’80’s added more creativity and intuition to the planning process. Nevertheless, planning still dealt with long time horizons. Some companies also used scenario planning – an attempt to make the future clearer by playing out "what if" scenarios (p. 37). Nevertheless, in a fast changing and highly competitive world, the only sustainable competitive advantage for organizations is their ability to learn and change faster than their competitors. To be faster and smarter means we need faster cycle times and more innovative solutions. With faster cycle times comes a need to operate more spontaneously. But, this is impossible with the long time horizons needed for the traditional planning process. Furthermore, we also need more creativity and intuition applied to actions. Improvisation, with its components of spontaneity of action and its high level of intuition offers a solution. Nevertheless, improvisation does not replace all planning. It balances it.

To embrace an improvisational strategy is not to totally abandon the practice of planning. True improvisation is not "licentious – freedom run amok" (Kao, 1996a, p. 24). As Crossan, White, Lane & Klus (1996) affirm, traditional planning tools do have continuing value to organizations. We should not discard them. Many of these practices permit the development of sound business analyses, and improve knowledge and awareness of the environment (p. 23). Alan Jackson (1994) emphasizes that even though a company may excel at adapting quickly to changes in the market, "without a strategic plan to balance that versatility, the big picture may well pass you by" (p. 38). Jackson notes that many small companies are notorious for operating without a strategic plan. They tend to fly by the seat of their pants, taking advantage of their small size to adapt quickly to changes in the market and alter their direction. Unfortunately, without the basic disciplines of strategic planning and management in place, these companies resemble what Miles & Snow (1978) called "Reactors." These unstable organizations do not have well-articulated or viable strategies. They simply react to events in an inconsistent way. Consequently, they perform poorly. "They get lost in the day-to-day crises of running the business, missing opportunities to build sales, respond to emerging industry trends and create the infrastructure needed to support growth" (Jackson, 1994, p. 38).

Leaders who operate according to the traditional paradigm sometimes defend their actions because they see improvised, opportunistic leadership reactions as chaotic and arbitrary responses with no planned outcome (Malone, 1997, p. 72). However, this is not true improvisation. Improvisation does not involve the complete discarding of planning, but a change in how planning is done and in how the plan is viewed. A creative and flexible manager will not perceive his organization’s strategic course as a constraint that precisely dictates all his activities, but as a general framework within which he can take advantage of the unexpected. Consequently, managers will not limit themselves to only those things that bear immediately and directly on long-term goals. Instead, guided by the organization’s vision, the manager can shape his immediate activities so that they all point in the same general direction (Isenberg, 1987, pp. 92-93).

An improvising organization maintains a tension between planning and experiment, between long-term strategy and short-term innovation (Kao, 1996a, p. 23). Its goal is to "maintain a sharp focus while also responding creatively to new opportunities," and to avoid both extremes of "becoming either inflexibly focused or flexibly unfocused" (Dale, 1996, p. 67). In Daniel Isenberg’s (1987) words, "there is nothing undisciplined or willy-nilly about strategic opportunism. Quite the opposite: it requires much intellectual courage to be open to new possibilities and to engage in reflective inquiry rather than rationalization" (p. 97).

In their empirical study of nine computer firms, all of which operate in extremely competitive markets with high rates of technological change, Brown & Eisenhardt (1997) found that "successful managers combine limited structure (e.g., priorities, responsibilities) with extensive interaction and freedom to improvise current products. This combination is neither so rigid as to control the process nor so chaotic that the process falls apart" (p. 3).

Richard Pascale’s (1984) classic case study of Honda’s entry during the early 1960’s into the U.S. motorcycle market illustrates the tension between planning and improvisation. Honda planned to use its bigger, more powerful motorcycles to spearhead its entry into the U.S. market, beginning with California. But, unanticipated events intervened. In the United States, people drive their motorcycles much farther and much faster than in Japan. The more demanding driving conditions caused unexpected engine failure, and in April 1960, reports came in that Honda’s machines frequently leaked oil and encountered clutch failure. This began to destroy Honda’s fragile reputation, and effectively curtailed sales of the big bikes. However, the Honda management had also bought with them some of the smaller 50cc Supercubs. These bikes were a "smash success" in Japan and manufacturing couldn’t keep up with demand there. But, they seemed wholly unsuitable for the U.S. market where everything was bigger and more luxurious. Believing there was no U.S. market for these smaller motorcycles, Honda’s U.S.-based managers had not even attempted to sell them, but used them for personal transportation. According to Pascale, a Honda executive riding his Supercub encountered a Sears buyer in a supermarket parking lot. The Sears buyer expressed interest, but Honda still hesitated to push the 50cc bike out of fear it would harm their image in the heavily "macho" big bike market. But, when the larger bikes started breaking, they had no choice, and began to sell the smaller bikes. Surprisingly, the retailers who wanted to sell the Supercubs were not motorcycle dealers, but sporting goods stores. The excitement created by the Honda Supercub began to gain momentum. Eventually, the Supercub and Honda’s subsequent development of the motorcycle market transformed the image of motorcycling in America, radically altered the nature of motorcycle distribution, and accelerated Honda along the path to global dominance of the industry. Honda’s success was directly due to the willingness of their U.S. managers to improvise in the situation they faced. Their original plan only brought them so far; to succeed they had to improvise. This case study presents an excellent example of an organizational balance between planning and improvisation.

The literature on improvisation consistently stresses the necessity for the coexistence and balance of both discipline and art (Kao, 1996a). As Crossan, White, Lane & Klus (1996) maintain, "instead of a random ‘anything that comes to the head will do,’ improvisation is a disciplined craft. Its skills can be learned through continual practice and study, and applied to situations" (p. 25). This union of discipline and art is reflected in jazz music and theatre, and these are the two main analogies used in the literature to illustrate the concept of an improvising organization.

In explaining how creativity can occur in organizations, John Kao (1997) says, "I have found a very useful metaphor in the world of music" (p. 9). There are two basic ways to play music. One way is to buy sheet music at the music store. In Kao’s (1997) words, sheet music is rather like "dehydrated music" (p. 9). Sheet music tells the performer exactly what notes to play, how loud to play them, how fast to play them, and so on. Anyone with a basic level of skill can play the notes accurately. The composer, although desirous that the performer plays his music with creative expression, nevertheless did not leave any room in the original score for the performer to creatively change the piece itself.

The other way to play music is "jamming." This is a word that comes from the world of jazz and it refers to improvised music. Improvised music has no sheet music to dictate how to perform it. "In jamming, there is a set of understandings that guide the execution of the music, and there is no distinction between rehearsal and performance" (Kao, 1997, p. 9). Improvisation in music demonstrates the integration between traditional skills that musicians must master, and the less traditional skills they later develop. Moreover, as As Crossan, White, Lane & Klus (1996) state,

Improvisation in music is both an art and a discipline. To the outsider, jamming "sounds undisciplined. But to the insider, who knows the rules, it is a way of exploring freely within a set framework you always return to." (Bruce, 1996, p. 42) Like jazz, effective business also involves a series of balancing acts. It must always be disciplined – but never driven – by formulas, agendas, plans and "sheet music."

The theatre offers us a second analogy that is useful as we explore improvisation as an organizational strategy. Using plays as metaphors for business, many parallels exist. A number of writers (Carley, 1996; Crossan, 1997; Crossan, White, Lane & Klus, 1996; Greenberg, 1995) noted these parallels, and we may draw some significant contrasts between improvisation and traditional management strategies as we observe them. Traditional theatre uses a script to guide the performance. This script dictates the direction and life of the play. The director selects a group of actors to fulfill prescribed roles that are well defined and largely unalterable. Then he provides leadership to ensure that the actors deliver the script faithfully, and that all elements in the play support one another in the correct preordained manner. The sets, costumes and props provide the necessary environment and atmosphere to enhance the story line. Finally, except for their applause, the audience contributes nothing to the performance (Crossan, 1997, p. 36; Crossan, White, Lane & Klus, 1996, pp. 25-26).

It is possible to draw analogies between traditional theatre and traditional business, as Mary Crossan (1997) does. In a traditional business, the overall corporate strategy and set of policies operate like the script, determining the organization’s actions under the direction of the higher management (i.e., the director). As Morgan (1996) notes, in the planning of a traditional organization, the top management "designs a formal structure of jobs into which people (i.e., the actors) can then be fitted" (p. 26). The role of the employees is then to operate within the corporate strategy as specialists confined to a specific function. Assets (i.e., sets) and occasionally uniforms (i.e., costumes) facilitate the successful delivery of the strategy.

In contrast to the traditional play that is focussed and controlled, and operates in a predetermined environment, improvisation is flexible, open and unpredictable. Improvisational theatre uses no script. Interaction between the audience and the actors provides the direction and momentum of the performance. There are no sets and only minimal costumes and props. Instead of accurately following a predetermined role, the actors are free to spontaneously determine their roles and actions within the broad parameters set by the audience. The audience participates in the performance by providing input into the story line and by interacting with the actors. Rather than planning and then directing the performance in the traditional sense, the director helps the actors reflect on the performance in order to learn from their experiences (Crossan, 1997, p. 36; Crossan, White, Lane & Klus, 1996, pp. 25-26).

On the continuum between mechanistic and organismic organizations (Miller, 1997, pp. 46-47), improvising organizations flourish at the organismic end. Traditional organization clearly define their jobs (Morgan, 1997, p. 46), but in a successful improvising organization, the leaders allow jobs to shape themselves, the "people being appointed to the organization for their general ability and expertise and allowed and encouraged to find their own place and define the contribution that they could make" (Morgan, 1997, p. 45). The pattern of authority is more informal and it constantly changes as fluid circumstances redefine roles. A successful improvising organization will avoid narrow departmentalization, with individuals and groups defining and redefining roles in a collaborative manner in connection with the tasks facing the organization as a whole, and with ongoing two-way communication with both their suppliers and their customers (Morgan, 1997, pp. 44-48). Such an organization will embody certain characteristics if it is to succeed.

The research indicates there are several key aspects of an organization that, if developed, would contribute to a manager’s ability to improvise: an ability to interpret the environment, a culture of risk-taking, organizational tension, an atmosphere of creative strategy and innovation, and teamwork and collaboration.

According to Gary Hamel (1997), "companies miss the future not because they are fat and lazy but because they are blind." (p. 75). As psychologist Scott Plous (1993) says, most people see what they expect to see:

Stress magnifies this tendency to interpret incorrectly the environment. Karl Weick (1996a; 1996b) demonstrated that when people are under pressure they regress to what they know best. They rely on what is familiar and easy to understand, whether or not it is an accurate portrayal of the real situation.

To improvise effectively, the challenge is to go beyond our current way of thinking in order to see things differently and accurately, as well as to explore new possibilities. As Hamel (1997) notes, it is often competitors from outside an industry who change the face of competition within the industry, simply because they are not constrained by conventional views.

A premise of improvisation is that one can break traditional mindsets by intentionally focussing more on creative thinking. To develop this ability, it helps managers to carry out contradictory actions. This eases the natural tendency to shift back into the realm of the familiar. A training exercise that helps managers to deliberately cultivate creative thinking and to avoid sliding into the familiar is called "Nonsense Naming" (Crossan, 1997). This exercise requires individuals to walk around the room quickly and give every object a name that is something other than what it is.

Such exercises in improvisation may seem trivial, but they highlight a serious problem in business. If people have difficulty calling a table something other than a chair, how difficult is it for companies to identify new competitors, different customer needs, or different ways of configuring how they get product to market? Thus, to be successful at improvisation, organizations must begin with their ability to interpret their environment. They must also be comfortable with risk.

In jazz music, the biggest hurdle with young musicians is the fear of improvisation (Orlofsky, 1997). Peer pressure greatly contributes to this. Consequently, the instructor’s goal is to make everyone in the room comfortable to be around one another, and to create an atmosphere of support so that people will want to solo, take risks and develop their ideas. The group must give the individual musician permission to use his intuition and creative edge, and to experience the possibilities inherent in creative improvisation (p. 8).

This same atmosphere is necessary in an organization. "You cannot eliminate the risk and stay in business. You have to take a chance and keep learning." (Stacey, 1992, p. 19) Again using the analogy of jazz music, Kao (1996b) declares that risk is unavoidable in an improvising organization:

Good leaders encourage creativity when they take the sting out of failure. Improvising organizations regard failure as a learning experience, not as a pretext for punishment. Creativity inevitably involves taking risks, and everyone accepts that the risk taker will sometimes stumble. Bennis & Biederman (1997) quote CEO Michael Eisner, who said that Disney aspires to be a place "in which people feel safe to fail" (p. 21). An atmosphere in which people dread failure or fear ridicule for offbeat ideas stifles creativity. Improvising organizations must overcome this fear by allowing and embracing a tension between the safe and the risky, the known and the unknown.

According to Stacey (1992), successful organizations cannot choose between tight, formal control systems and structures on the one hand and loose, informal procedures that provoke improvisation and learning on the other. Whether they are large or small, successful organizations must have both at the same time. This is because they must all simultaneously handle both the knowable, closed changes involved in the day-to-day running of the existing business and the unknowable, open-ended changes involved in the innovative development of the business. The result is organizational tension, paradox and never-ending contradictions, but this provokes conflict and learning and thus is a source of creativity.

Richard Pascale (1990) explains the continuing success of Honda and the transformation of the Ford Motor Company is the 1980’s, as well as the success and failure of a number of other companies, in terms of this model of organizational tension. According to him, a certain paradox characterizes successful organizations. On the one hand, they must achieve a "fit," a state of coherence, centralization, tight control, synergy, and adaptation to the environment. Organizations clearly need "fit" if they are to conduct an orderly day-to-day business. However, at the same time, successful organizations also need "split." "Split" means giving individuals freedom to act and improvise, decentralizing, differentiating, and promoting variety. Organizations need "split" because without it they cannot develop new perspectives and innovative actions. The need for an organization simultaneously to display "fit" and "split" creates tension, but that tension is creative because it provokes inquiry and questioning (pp. 36-50). That tension leads to what Peter Senge (1990) calls the "learning organization" with its continual dialogue between contradicting points of view.

An improvising organization will sustain contradictory positions and behavior. Sony, for example, has budgets and hierarchies with powers concentrated at the top, yet individuals and groups lower down in the hierarchy can pursue new ideas in relative freedom without having to keep justifying what they do to those much higher up (Stacey, 1992, p. 7). To facilitate improvisation, management must sustain, rather than try to resolve, this paradox of control and freedom. This is not easy to do. As Margaret Wheatley (1992) wrote, it is very difficult to not be certain. "We are not comfortable with chaos, even in our thoughts, and we want to move out of confusion as quickly as possible." (p. 149) There will not always be satisfying answers in an improvising organization. Nevertheless, organizations that embrace what Stacey (1992) called "bounded instability" will reap its fruit.

John Aram (1997) observes the cultural differences that relate to the willingness of a manager to embrace the tension of this balance between discipline and art. Spanish managers, he notes, generally like to improvise in situations. They prefer informal and spontaneous decision-making. They are generally unfriendly to planning. A typical Spanish saying is that "things turn out well when they are not planned" (p. 73). The Dutch, on the other hand, are very structured:

Considering our global environment, there is a great need for more country- and culture-specific research on this matter in order to internationalize improvisation theory, and to understand more fully the effect of culture on an organization’s ability to successfully improvise.

By their nature, bureaucracies strive to keep things on an even keel. "They document procedures (ISO 9000). They achieve statistical process control (TQM). In more direct terms, they are trained to resist change. This means that they actively fight creativity, whether they know it or not!" (Crandall, 1996, p. 12) In traditional hierarchical corporate structures, the responsibility for creativity and innovation rests almost entirely on the shoulders of the research and development staff and top management (Human Resource Institute, 1997, p. 57). In an improvising organization, creativity is encouraged throughout. For example, Anita Roddick, managing directory and founder of The Body Shop, characterizes her organization’s culture as "benevolent anarchism," meaning that everyone has been encouraged "to question what they were doing and how they were doing it in the hope of finding better working methods." (Gundry, 1994, p. 25)

Moreover, "managers can’t demand creativity any more than they can order growth from a flower" (John Kao, 1997, p. xix). As Jonathan Burton (1996) affirms, "innovation rarely comes from a top-down approach. Often, it comes in spite of it!" (p. 68). Instead, managers must intentionally facilitate an atmosphere of creativity. Furthermore, innovation is not a once a year event. Strategic creativity is not a thing or even a process. Instead, it must be "a deeply embedded capability – a way of understanding what’s really going on in your industry, turning it on its head, and then envisioning the new opportunities that fall out…as deeply embedded as total quality, cycle-time reduction, or customer service" (Hamel, 1997, p. 74).

The equivalent of creative strategy in theatre improvisation is the way actors develop story lines spontaneously. A management training exercise called "Make a Story" (Crossan, 1997, p. 39) requires a group to build a story, one person at a time. The people watching them provide the story’s title and type (e.g., a murder mystery or an adventure). The leader of the group points to one person at a time, each of whom then builds the story in short increments. The challenge is to build an interesting and coherent story line. This exercise also demonstrates the importance of teamwork in improvisation.

To improvise successfully, a high degree of teamwork is necessary. Ray (1998) assets, "improvisation is primarily about teamwork" (p. 14). "Enabling people to collectively respond in the moment requires what improvisers call ‘yes ending.’ A fundamental premise of improv, it means that individuals build on, rather than block, each other’s ideas." (Crossan, 1997, p. 37) This means that the members of the team must hold each other in mutual trust, reliance and respect. Furthermore, as Kanter (1983) affirms, it is not just any team that aids innovation, but the members should come from a diversity of sources. "It is not the ‘caution of committees’ that is sought – reducing risk by spreading responsibility – but the better idea that comes from a clash and an integration of perspectives." (p. 167)

In theatrical improvisation, each member of the team has a vital part to play, and if anyone lets the team down, the production suffers noticeably. According to Mark Carley (1996), this commitment to one another "motivates excellent performance far more than the promise of applause, good reviews, and material rewards. If everyone isn’t committed to the success of their teammates individually and collectively, then you don’t have a real team" (pp. 41-42).

There is another aspect of teamwork that takes place in improvisation: different people take the lead at different times, in a manner contrary to the traditional hierarchical style of management. Consequently, each person must develop the ability to both lead and follow. In an improvising team, leadership "is conferred on the person who articulates the emerging consensus of the group at the proper moment" (O’Reilly, 1994, p. 40). Consequently, at one point, the group may coalesce around a leader with technical expertise. At another time, it may favor someone with strong communication skills. As Mintzberg, Dougherty, Jorgensen, & Westley (1996) pointed out, team collaboration is a fluid thing. "Collaboration cannot be treated as a hardened structure, a "done deal" – in theory or in practice. It is a process, not an event" (p. 67). The improvisational exercise "Switch" demonstrates the challenges of shifting leadership. Two individuals begin to play out a scene. When one observer recognizes an opportunity to step in, he calls "freeze" and replaces a player by assuming his physical position. The new player restarts the action and takes the scene in a completely new direction. Individuals must stay alert to the opportunities that spontaneously arise and know what they can offer to move the scene forward. When a new person enters, the person who remains must be ready to support the new direction. (Crossan, 1997, p. 39)

Improvisation also highlights the importance of having a common goal. Without a common purpose, team members become confused, pull apart, and revert to mediocre performance behaviors (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993, p. 49). In a training exercise called the "Imaginary Tug-of-War," two teams try to recreate a realistic representation of a tug-of-war. In this exercise "each group heaves back, stretching the imaginary rope in both directions. When the groups commit to a common goal, it is extraordinary how realistic it becomes. One can almost envision the rope." (Crossan, 1997, p. 38)

As Isenberg (1987) rightly observes, "traditional theory suggests that management is a tightly structured, systematic, linear mental activity. Managers presumably formulate goals with painstaking precision, then undertake carefully prescribed actions." (p. 96) In the real world, however, managers never have enough information to make perfect decisions. There are simply too many variables involved to make long-term plans that will stay constant and static in this chaotic world of change and confusion.

The literature this paper reviews suggests that what managers need is a combination of planning and improvisation, in order to approach the uncertain task of management both creatively and rigorously. Improvisation is a tool that will help organizations perform better in the midst of inevitable uncertainty. This approach to management may appear to some as arbitrary and capricious; in reality, however, an improvisational strategy requires a solid foundation of the basic disciplines of strategic planning and management to succeed. An improvising organization will maintain a healthy tension between discipline and art. In this way the organization will remain focussed on long-term objectives, and yet stay flexible enough to solve day-to-day problems creatively and to exploit serendipitous opportunities zealously.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s jam!

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