Looking for "Macgyver" style

Often we find ourselves in the middle of a new situation, new challenge or we come across a new problem we have to solve. The thing about “novelty” is we don’t have previous information about it or knowledge in how to deal with it. It’s new! Our brain struggles to find similar situations in his database and tries to bridge them with the present circumstance. Yet, should we go for the closest solution the brain finds?

How to deal with novelty?

Macgyver, the character from the TV Series with the same name, was a specialist in that kind of situation. Love him or not, he was a truly creative person. Not only could he solve unexpected problems and challenges, as he often did it using creative solutions that worked (so, in a sense, we could even say he innovated a lot). What made Macgyver succeed in his endeavours was his ability to improvise.

Key issues on improvisation:
- Unexpected situation
- Knowledge database
- Mental flexibility
- Acceptance

When facing new challenges that require a quick action or solution, we are forced to improvise (i.e., deliver something without previous preparation). To do so, we quickly search our brain database for information that might help us find answers. However, we are facing novelty, which means we will need to use our mental flexibility to create original and unpredicted connections within our previous knowledge. Also, mental flexibility allows us to “look around” and find pertinent resources readily available. By mixing and combining all this information, we will find new patterns and probably new creative solutions. But, would they work?

In order to improvise we need to accept uncertainty and failure. Fear of failure and fear of the ridiculous are what limit us from going beyond and try new solutions. Attempting to do what has never been done before is always a risk, speaking up for a new idea or a new way of action requires courage and conviction. The world wouldn’t evolve if we all stood by the basics and within our comfort zone.


What role does improvisation have inside organizations?

Think about how much things changed since you were little. The world you know today is far different from the one you knew ten, five, or even 1 year ago. This constant progress has a great impact in organizations, obliging them to keep up with the pace and pushing them to continuously innovate. Not rarely, professionals face new and urgent challenges to solve.

Usually two competences are associated with people who seize opportunities, enjoy challenges, are open to change, are able to act with minimum planning and experiment everything until they find a solution: Action Oriented and Learning on the Fly. Both these competencies are highly valued in the organizational context, as they define professionals who are capable to quickly and energetically respond to new problems and who are also willing to walk through the unknown.

To a certain point what we described above is the ability to improvise: to act on opportunities by using the information available to find new and useful solutions to the problem in hand.

How can we develop our ability to improvise?

Although improvising in itself means doing something without planning, the fact is, we can train our improvisation skills. For instance, theatre companies do so in order to prepare their professionals to the unexpected on stage.


Welcome to Improvisation Academy!

1st Step: Silent mind
One of the greatest barriers to improvisation is the sense of being ridiculous or the fear of failure. In order to silent this inner voice that prevents our actions, we need to accept being exposed to others and to not getting it right at the first time.
Train your brain to accept new things, to positively deal with ridiculousness and unpredictability. If you do so, when facing new challenges at work, you will be more open to try novel and creative solutions.

Activity: each week do something out of your comfort zone – go to a new place; talk to a stranger; present one of your craziest ideas to your colleague; enrol in a new activity that has nothing to do with your interests, and so on.

(Macgyver frequently found himself in dangerous (life or death) situations, which meant he had to act to survive. That was enough to silent his mind.)

2nd Step: Curious eye
Curiosity is one of the characteristics most associated with creativity. Curiosity leads you to investigate, to explore problems and subjects, to be open-minded and to be attentive to your surroundings.
Training your eyes to be curious and to see what is happening around you, will allow you to discover new information, new patterns, new resources that you might use in the future to elaborate new and useful solutions for all kind of problems.

Activity: each week take a piece of paper and a pencil and go to a different place. Seat down and observe. For at least 30 minutes, observe what is happening around you. Take notes. Take pictures if you will. Look at all the details.

(Macgyver was always aware of his surroundings and created solutions by taking the most of the resources available to him.)

3rd Step: Hunger brain
The larger your knowledge database is, higher the probability of you finding the right connection for your problem. Train yourself to feed your hunger brain with new (and rather diverse) information. This information will increase your knowledge database, which in the future will give you more opportunities to discover new solutions that actually work.

Activity: each week read at least one article (scientific or experienced-based article). It doesn’t matter the subject or even if you know anything about it.

(Macgyver had knowledge in different engineering domains, which allowed him to connect pieces of information coming from his brain database and turn them into useful solutions.)


Improvisation is more intuitive to some than to others. In a previous post I talked about the effects of education and socialization in creating mental schemes in our brains (schemes that influence us to act always in a similar and confortable way). Also, socialization trains us to avoid change, novelty, and all that could temper with our equilibrium. 
That is why, in order to improvise, we need to forget something we learnt and Macgyver didn’t: The meaning of impossible!