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So it's 2006, and I'm in my office
at the Second City, finishing up work -

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it's a Friday.

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And my son, Nick, is upstairs,

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finishing his first week of improv classes
at the Second City Training Center.

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And Nick is eight years old.

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He's chubby.

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He has weird theater parents,
so he's a weird theater kid.

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(Laughter)

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And he gets bullied at school.

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But this week, he's thrilled;
he's having so much fun.

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And he comes downstairs,
and we get in the car.

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And as we're leaving
the garage at Second City,

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Nick says to me,

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"Dad, do you know why
I love improv classes?"

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And I go, "No, buddy.
Why do you love improv classes?"

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He said, "Because in improv,
if you're nice and you're funny,

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you're popular."

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That's the world I want to live in,

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the world where if you're nice
and you're funny, you're popular.

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So I started at Second City in 1988,
and my first job was as a dishwasher.

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It is not as glamorous as it sounds.

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(Laughter)

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The back bar at the Second City

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in those days was filled
with alcoholics and sociopaths,

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but the work onstage was absolute magic.

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Mike Myers, Bonnie Hunt, Jane Lynch -
they were all in the professional company.

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Chris Farley had just been hired
in the touring company

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and was constantly getting in trouble
for breaking things.

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I don't know if you know
how Second City is set up,

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but we do two acts of scripted content
and a third act that is improvised,

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and that's where the actors
are writing the show

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and they're making it up.

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And it took me not too long to realize

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that the work on stage at Second City
was not magic at all.

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It was a practice.

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And I'm not going
to bury the lead here, okay?

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Improvisation is yoga
for your social skills.

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(Laughter)

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Improvisation is loud group mindfulness.

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Improvisation is practice
in being a better human being.

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Knowing that, it might
not surprise you, then,

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to learn that improvisation
has its roots in children's games.

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Viola Spolin was a social worker
in the '20s and '30s,

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working at Jane Addams' Hull House
in the South Side,

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and her job was to better assimilate

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the immigrant children
who were coming into Chicago.

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And so she created these theater games,

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many of which were gibberish or silent

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because the kids
didn't all share a language.

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But all the games were about kids
coming together to play

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and collaborate and listen and empathize.

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And Viola's son, Paul Sills,
was studying at the University of Chicago,

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and he loved these games.

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He loved playing them,
and they were entertaining.

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So he taught them to his friends,
Mike Nichols and Elaine May, among others,

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and they formed, with a gentleman
named David Shepherd,

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the first improvisational theater
in America, the Compass Players, in 1955.

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And a few years later,
the Second City was founded in 1959.

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So what is improvisation?

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Improvisation is groups of people
making something out of nothing.

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So think about that.

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Groups of people
making something out of nothing.

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And the founders of Second City realized

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that if you have groups of people
making something out of nothing,

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they need some rules of the road.

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So, first rule of the road
with improvisation

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is the concept of "yes, and" -

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it's almost a bumper sticker now,
but it's very important -

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which is when you
are improvising in a group,

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making something out of nothing,

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you can't start with no
and you can't just start with yes.

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You have to say "yes, and."

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You have to affirm and contribute
in order to explore and heighten.

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So I give these talks,
a lot, to business groups.

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And invariably,

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when I talk about the importance
of "yes, and" in a business setting,

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there's a dude, a guy in the back
with his arms crossed,

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and at the end, he raises his hand.

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He says, "If I had to 'yes, and'

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every terrible idea
that came into my office,

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I'd get nothing done."

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So there's two things I know.

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That guy is a nightmare to work with,

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(Laughter)

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and two, he's missing the point

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because "yes, and"
is at the front end of innovation.

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It's at the beginning.

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Because when you say "no" to an idea,

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you're actually saying "no" to a person.

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And you say "no" enough to a person,
they're not going to give you more ideas.

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And the irony of all of this
is that when you "yes, and" -

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let's just say 10 minutes
at the beginning of a meeting -

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it makes it so much easier
to say "no" later,

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because everyone's had their ideas
listened to, vetted, explored.

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Hugely important.

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The other thing that's important
about improvisation is listening.

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So, folks, we are all terrible listeners.

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Hated to break it to you -
terrible listeners.

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If we're having a conversation
and you're speaking a sentence to me,

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at what point on my arm
am I stopping to listen?

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When am I ceasing to listen?

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The elbow, mostly.

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Because I get the gist of it;
I have the idea of what you're saying.

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And you can't do that in improvisation,

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because the actors
make up the script as they go along

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and the last couple of words
might be crucial information.

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But we don't do that in real life.

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So one of the exercises we teach
at Second City is a listening exercise.

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So two people get together;
they have a conversation.

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But your job before you speak

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is to say the last word
that the other person just said.

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Try it at home.

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It will drive you crazy.

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(Laughter)

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It breaks up the rhythm.

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And you know what it's breaking up?

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The rhythm of you not listening.

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(Laughter)

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Because we don't do it.

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So what is it about people who say no
and people who don't listen?

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It's about fear:

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it's about fear of failure,

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it's about fear of shame.

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I'm turning 50 this year,
so I'm in that, you know, that mode,

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and one thing I'm doing
is reflecting on what I know:

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what do I know to be true?

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So here's something
I really know to be true,

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which is 99% of us think we're frauds.

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We do.

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We don't think we're smart enough
or pretty enough,

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and we're not good friends
or good husbands or good coworkers,

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and we're not smart enough.

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I think that I don't deserve to be here,

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and I have a body of work behind me
that maybe says I do, but I don't.

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99% of us think we're frauds.

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And the 1% who doesn't?

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They're dangerous.

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(Laughter)

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And I think we know who I'm talking about.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Fear of failure is a creativity killer.

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A few years back, a company
hired us to work on a PSA,

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a public service announcement,

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for people suffering
from social anxiety disorder.

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And so I sent out an email
to all the actors onstage

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to sort of say, "Hey, did anyone
have any experience with this?

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Maybe a family member, maybe a friend?"

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75% of the people working onstage
at Second City at that time

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suffered from some level
of social anxiety.

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Astounding to me.

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Because if you had social anxiety,
why are you going up on a stage?

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And then, why are you going
up on a stage with no script?

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And then, an actress came to me and said,

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"What you don't understand,
Kelly, is that when I'm improvising,

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that's the only time I don't feel anxious.

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Because I can't worry about before,
I can't worry about after:

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I have to be fiercely in the moment,
in the now, fiercely present."

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Loud group mindfulness.

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"And beyond that,

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I'm improvising with another person,
and their job is only to save me."

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I wrote a book last year,

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and when I was working on it,
I would come into the office from 8 to 11,

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and I'd shut my door -
I never shut my door -

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shut my door and work on the book,

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and I would think about these principles.

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And I'm not a teacher; I'm not an actor.

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This is my relationship to the work -
is thinking about it, writing about it.

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And after the book was published,
my staff came to me and said,

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"We're going to tell you a secret,

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which is when we had
a big problem to deal with,

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we made an appointment to see you at 11:01

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because for the next two hours,
you were a great boss.

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You became mediocre
afterwards, like usual,

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but in that moment, you listened to us.

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And I've been thinking about
what I'm going to write about next,

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and I was talking to my kids,

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and my son, Nick, is now 18,
and my daughter, Nora, is 13 -

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yes, my kids are Nick and Nora;
I'm a weird theater guy -

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(Laughter)

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I said, "You know what
I'm thinking about, guys,

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is like what if I wrote
an improv parenting book?

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Because you've played
all these games around the table,

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and your mom and I
have taught you certain things,

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and we use improvisation."

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And both my kids just said to me,
go, "That's a terrible idea.

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You are not the person
to write this book."

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(Laughter)

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So I have a favorite improv phrase,

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and it's "Bring a brick, not a cathedral."

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And what that means is

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so many of us try
to solve these big problems

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by coming in with one big idea,

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and we enter rooms with our cathedrals

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when we really should be
entering with a brick.

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And so what's today been, right?

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All these things that we've heard about:

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you know, bees, tapping the unconscious,

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prairie land, tech,

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tales of addiction
that would break your heart.

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So what's our job?

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Our job is to listen
to these stories, these ideas.

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To "yes, and" them
into our own communities.

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And when we do that with kindness
and a little bit of humor,

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it doesn't matter if we're popular

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because we will change the world.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)