I want you to assemble something for me. Ready? What can you make out of a magnifying lens, a watch crystal and a newspaper? Guesses? I’ll give you another one. What can you make out of a car muffler, a gear shift knob, seat cushion stuffing and a cigarette lighter? Any guesses? Not exactly the most practical implements on the factory floor. There never seems to be enough seat cushion stuffing lying around unused. Unless you really need it to get out of a tight situation..and you need a bazooka to halt the bad guys chasing you in the car on your back left…and riding shotgun is MacGyver.
In that case, there may be just the right amount of seat cushion stuffing to pack the bazooka. Maybe just enough. Who am I kidding. It’s MacGyver. The king of improvisation and our savior from being abducted by the bad guys or worse. The real question is, can you improvise as well as MacGyver?
Welcome to Swimming in the Flood; a podcast where we develop the resilient leader’s mindset by navigating difficult currents in business. My name is Trent Theroux.
MacGyver has a genius level intellect with a particular ability for adaptation and improvisation. He was a resourceful U.S. operative that worked for the Phoenix Foundation, a covert U.S. government agency operating under the guise of a think tank. And MacGyver is a fictional character. Let’s not forget that simple fact. Normal people don’t go around packing a bazooka with seat cushion filling.
In Gary Peters’ The Philosophy of Improvisation, the author describes the popular television show, Junkyard Wars, in which two teams are given a task to build a machine in one day using only materials in the Junkyard. Peters believes we need to understand that improvisation is not as something created out of the blue, but as a reappropriation, an affiliation with previous cultural forms, a question asked from the present to the past. The concept of building the machine in the Junkyard was always there. It’s a matter of organizing the steps to proceed with the materials that are available. The same is true with MacGyver. He is creating, the fictional character, is creating contraptions, not out of the blue but rather something they knew or saw before and now, when needed, but together the steps to move forward.
Let me give you another example. Have you ever watched the movie Aladdin? No, not the Will Smith piece of crap. I’m talking about with Robin Williams as the genie. He was good enough to win the Golden Globe for his electric and dynamic performance. Do you remember that? Remember all the voices and schticks coming out through the movie. Robin did the same in his standup as well. People famously thought he was the greatest improvisations comedian of all time. But here is the truth.
The vast majority of the lines that Robin used when he was on stage or on film were carefully worked out in advance. He practiced the lines he would use at some point, without knowing when he would use the joke. The first routine I watched Robin perform, he was in his trademark suspenders and rummaging through the crowd. This was in the early 1980s. Robin found a woman with a professional camera. He took the camera, stuffed it down his pants, clicked a photo and told the woman, “Good thing you had the wide-angle lens on.” Hysterical, right? Sure, it is. Here’s the secret. The bit looked like Robin was interacting with the crowd, randomly picked this woman and on the spot made a hysterical, physical joke.
Now that we understand Gary Peters and the philosophy of improvisation we know that Robin had this joke, physical parts and all, prepared in a very deep repertoire of jokes and was waiting for the perfect time to reappropriate the material.
I am now going to give you my unscientific, non-peer reviewed, resilient leader theory on improvisation. Are you ready? Got your pencils out? Here’s it is. Plow The Field. You heard it. Plow The Field. The theory is simple. Here’s how it works.
On December 12th, 1982, the New England Patriots were playing the Miami Dolphins at Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The Astro turf field was frozen solid when heavy rains the evening before met with a vicious snowstorm the morning of the game.
To help with the crowds and the game, the Patriots hired additional ground crews. At points during the game, the referees would ask the snowplow drivers to plow across the field to help them identify the yardage markers so they could assess progress on the field. Despite this allowance, the ground crew could not plow often enough to keep the field clear. The two teams remained scoreless late into the fourth quarter.
With 4:45 left to go in the game and on-field conditions worsening, Patriots head coach Ron Meyer motioned to snowplow operator Mark Henderson to clear a spot on the field specifically for placekicker John Smith. According to Meyer, it was quarterback Steve Grogan who suggested asking Henderson to clear the field for the kick. As Henderson recalled years later, “I saw Coach Meyer running to me, shouting and pointing to the field. I kind of knew what he was trying to say, so I got on the tractor and drove onto the field.” At first, no one had thought it suspicious, assuming that the plow would go straight across, and allow for a more accurate measurement (which turned out to be 33 yards). Instead, the plow veered left, directly in front of the goal post, with the 4-foot-wide spinning brush giving Smith a clean spot from which to kick. Matt Cavanaugh held for the kick, which was successful. The Patriots won the game 3-0 and earned their first playoff berth in team history. And earned the scorn of Dolphins coach Don Shula for eternity.
The field conditions changed for the Patriots, and the Dolphins. Patriots coach Meyer identified three major items that was costing his company the opportunity to be profitable. 1) The macroeconomic forces were unfavorable. 2) His competition was adapting to the macro forces and limiting his business’ strategic choices. 3) He had internal resources, that were presently not being utilized, that could shift the market dynamics, if deployed properly.
I’m sorry. You thought I was just talking about a football game? This can be applied to many more scenarios. Let’s talk about how. Coach Meyer accepted the reality that the snowstorm and the icy conditions all but eliminated the ability to through the football and hampered the options to run the football out wide. They were limited to running straight downfield. Second, the Miami Dolphins could interpret the conditions and adjusted their defense to put nine to ten men on the line of scrimmage, clog the middle to limit the room to run. This adjustment and reaction to the field conditions led Meyer to the conclusion that scoring would be at a premium. Now, for the improvisation. Meyer didn’t leave his house that morning thinking, “what I should really bring to the game is a snowplow. That would work perfectly into my plans.” No, it didn’t work like that. Meyer reappropriated information he already had.
The snowplows were operating throughout the game. Meyer watched them working for the afternoon and using that information formulated the plan for how he could use this internal resource to his advantage.
In business, we need to operate the same way. Accept the reality of our macroenvironment, analyze how the competition is reacting and utilize the resources at our disposal to achieve success. Plow the field for your team. Recognize when to use the unique assets you have at your disposal.
The most brilliant part of this story is that the snowplow driver, Mark Hamilton, was on work release. He was a convicted felon let out to work. After the game, Hamilton was asked if he thought he stole the game for the Patriots. He answered, “What are they going to do, send me to prison?” Now, that was an improvised line.
Folks, thank you for listening to Swimming in the Flood. Resilient leaders face challenging currents and it is tough navigating, but with one tack or another, we can get there together.