Stand-up comedians and improvisation?artists of course need to roll with the punches. They cannot always be prepared for exactly what to expect and things can sometimes fly in from left field (I suppose at times literally if an audience member decides to take things too far.)
There are techniques for dealing with these problems, which work with varying effectiveness. Yesterday, for me, certainly unexplained circumstances caused me to fall off script as I scrambled to readjust the schedule to accommodate some rather serious problems, including my five-year-old laptop’s crash.
In the process, there were some time-consuming scheduled events, including a musical concert sponsored by the Hungarian Embassy, focusing on Holocaust remembrance. That concert had its own problems. Several of the musicians were caught with flight delays in New York, arriving late enough that the program needed to be rearranged (and I fear, extended — we left early.)
Elsewhere, as we worked on the launch of Chicago Construction News, massive rainstorms delayed the Stanley Cup’s arrival — forcing some awkward (however enjoyable) patience?from the crowd at the United Center as they waited for the cup to arrive.
And when I started work on this blog this morning, I received a dreaded message — “fatal error” — denying log-in to work on the blog.
Now, in the process of sorting out these issues, some good things happened. The new computer, funded in a way that won’t impact business cash flow or obligations, is undoubtedly much faster and will allow far more productive work in the months ahead. ?Yet there are also shorter-term challenges — delayed work that needs to be ‘made up’ and somewhat frayed relationships that need to be mended.
Experience has taught me lessons to be prepared. I indeed had proper backup for the old computer, and the restoration of all the old data occurred while we attended the concert last night. As well, with the new computer, I discovered the cure for the start-up process within a few minutes.
However, we fell off script enough that there was no blog posting yesterday (the first miss in several years) and the topic of this posting is off script; that is, we aren’t focusing on the practical approaches to telling a story to help on marketing purposes.
Yet, overall, this mini-story will?still have a truly happy ending. In business, we need to adapt, improvise and sometimes change the story.
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