Many businesses are cutting back on training days and team away days due to the difficult financial climate.

How can businesses continue to thrive or to improve without giving employees some time away from the day-to-day duties?

My solution would be to integrate some improvisational games into the business week. It could be ten minutes a day or half an hour a week…whatever works for you. Anything less frequently than once a week might not be beneficial as people are likely to find it hard to progress with the skills.

There is a lot of research out there to say that employees who spend time getting to know each other and having fun together, will work more cohesively and productively. That sounds like common sense to me! A bunch of miserable strangers isn’t an ideal team after all!

So how can you incorporate a little of the spirit of improv. I would suggest some of the games that allow people to be silly and goofy. Give people the opportunity to be carefree, at least for the duration of these games. If we can learn to look like fools in front of each other, we can feel more comfortable with making mistakes in our work and more importantly, owning up to these mistakes. Because improv teaches us to take risks and to experiment. Ultimately, improv is a tool that can enhance creativity and innovation in the workplace.

So whether or not your team is stuck in a rut, try including some improv games…

1. Down (a fun and silly dancing game)

2. Alien, Tiger, Cow (This game explores influence and group mind)

3. Group Order (a quick thinking communication game that helps you learn a fact about your co-workers each time you play)

If you decide to try this at your workplace, feel free to drop me a line and let me know how it goes.

I talked about the subject matter in a blog post in July – take a look.

There is a short form game involving 2 players usually, where a short scene is enacted, based on an audience suggestion and it is timed and cut at 1 minute, the scene is then replayed but can only last 30 seconds, then again for 20 seconds, then again for 10 and then again for 5 and again for just 1 second. The consequence of this, is that the scene gets boiled down to its most important points, verbally and in action – usually very funny!

So, how does this connect with social networking – well, if you want to learn how to write excellent Tweets or Status Updates on Google + and Facebook, then you would benefit from playing this game. It really helps you get to the point and avoid the bull.

Check out the video.

It’s a game that works best with 6-10 people. We get an audience suggestion for a theme and then each person comes up with a riff – this can be percussive, a melody line, some kind of bass, something on the off beat, loud, quiet, fast, slow, anything – so long as it fits with the accompaniment which is very open. It’s good to think about something with more than one meaning, something more philosophical perhaps.

Somebody is nominated the director and they point at people in turn to sing their riff, as the game progresses, people are pointed at in 2′s, 3′s, 4′s and more and eventually it has everyone singing their riff together and ultimately, all changing to one single riff, using the power of group mind (and listening!)

In this example from a show, we were given Archaeology as a subject. This was the result….