Wildest Career Experience

My biggest fuck up came from what we thought was our biggest success.

We got booked for a corporate workshop by that tech company. The one whose name is now a verb for "search." This was the big leagues. We were at their massive Tokyo HQ in Shibuya, hired to teach team building, creativity, listening—all the things improv is great for.

Our plan was solid. And it was very physical. Lots of movement games, awareness exercises, running around. This wasn't our first workshop, but it was our most important. We got there early, set up the long conference room, and moved all the chairs to the walls to create a big, open space.

The participants started filing in. And time just... stopped.

We watched as one of the participants entered with a white cane, being guided by a colleague. He was blind.

We just stood there, watching him navigate the very room we had just turned into an obstacle course. It felt like one of those slow-motion "heroes-walking-away-from-an-explosion" shots, only we were the idiots who'd just blown up our own plan.

Every single game we had planned for the next two hours? Useless. We had a choice: make this participant sit in a corner for the whole workshop, or throw away the entire plan we'd sold them on.

We did the most terrifying, high-stakes improv of our lives. While smiling and doing introductions, my co-facilitator and I were frantically rebuilding the entire two-hour workshop from scratch in our heads. We junked every physical game and turned it into a 100% verbal, listening, and storytelling session.

The workshop was a success. But the fuck up was ours, and it was massive. We were so jazzed about landing the big fish, we never asked the single most important question: "Does anyone on your team have accessibility needs we should be aware of?"

It's the ultimate marketing and product development sin: building the entire campaign, the flashy UI, the "user journey," and never considering accessibility until a user hits a wall you built. We learned that "Know Your Audience" isn't a platitude. It's a non-negotiable checklist item.

Rant

The thing in this industry that really pisses me off and that I want to complain about is the "lone genius" myth. It exists in marketing, advertising, and 100% in performance. It’s the idea that success comes from one brilliant, unpredictable, "creative" person who just has it.

That’s wanky bollocks.

I run a group of 25+ volunteers. If I relied on "genius," we'd never have a show. I will take a B- performer who shows up to practice every single week, listens to their scene partners, and does the boring work (like stacking chairs) over an A+ "genius" who is a flaky, self-centered dickhead. Every. Single. Time.

The "genius" tries to write the scene in their head and forces everyone else to be a supporting character. The B- "teammate" listens, accepts the reality their partner creates, and builds on it. The result is always, always better.

Agencies and businesses do this all the time. They hunt for the "rockstar" creative director or the "visionary" marketer and then let them build a toxic empire because they're "talented." It's a cancer.

Success isn't about one person's brilliance. It’s about the system of reliability, trust, and relentless execution. Give me a team of reliable executors over a volatile genius any day.

Useful Advice

The best bit of advice from improv is this: Don’t be interesting. Be interested.

This is the most actionable advice I know, and it applies to everything.

In improv, when you try to be "interesting," you force the scene. You walk on stage and say, "Look at me! I'm a wacky space alien with a banjo!" You’ve just dumped a pile of crap on your scene partner and given them nothing to work with. You've made it all about you.

When you are interested, you listen. You walk on, see your partner nervously wringing their hands, and you simply ask, "What did the doctor say?" You’ve just validated their choice, made them the focus, and started a real scene together.

This is everything in marketing and management.

• Marketing: Stop trying to be the "interesting" brand that just yells about its new features. Be the interested brand. Listen to what your customers are actually complaining about. What are they wringing their hands over? Solve that. (And ask about accessibility before you build the damn thing.)
• Management: In a 1:1, stop waiting for your turn to talk (being "interesting"). Be interested. Ask questions. Listen to the answer. Actually listen, don't just wait for them to stop so you can dump your pre-planned agenda on them.
• Sales: Same deal. The salesperson who just recites a "wacky" script is the space alien. The one who asks, "What's the biggest pain in the ass you're dealing with this quarter?" is the one who gets the deal.

Stop trying so hard to be the interesting one. Be the one who pays attention.