Adapt or Get Stuck: Thriving Through Change with an Improviser’s Mindset
I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve said to myself, “Thank God for improv.” What I mean by that is all the expensive classes I took over the years, all the tiny shows with four people in the audience, and all the times I cringed when my improv teacher made me say “Yes, and.” Because while the scene where I was pretending to be a doctor was forgettable (and probably terrible), the skills that have become a way of life have saved me more times than I can count. One moment stands out clearly.
I was in my early 20s, just starting my teaching career, working with an after-school program in Brooklyn. For weeks, we’d been preparing for a big final performance. Parents, teachers, and friends were coming. We had our songs, our choreography, and our energy ready to go. Then came the problem..
With just two hours before showtime, we realized none of the tech was working. The sound system was locked, the school didn’t have the key, and our entire performance was built around gear we couldn’t use. I wasted an hour trying everything I could — calling friends, unplugging and replugging, praying to the tech gods. Nothing worked. Time was ticking. The audience was coming, and I had a choice to make:
Keep clinging to the plan that no longer worked — or improvise.
With an hour left, I gathered the students and gave them the pep talk of a lifetime. I broke the kids into groups and gave them a single prompt: “With the space and tools we have now, how can we still share our message with the world?”
What happened next was magic. The students created an immersive, 360° a cappella performance — standing among the audience, surrounding their families, and using only their voices.
No microphones. No speakers. Just raw, human connection. Parents and teachers gushed afterward about how powerful and vulnerable it was — how it felt alive. That day changed me. It was proof that when everything goes wrong, creativity takes over — if you let it. And it cemented one of the biggest lessons improv ever taught me:
When the environment shifts, so should you.
What to Do When the Environment Changes.
Change has a way of showing up uninvited. Sometimes it’s a small shift, like a new tool rollout, a delayed project, or a teammate who leaves unexpectedly. Other times, it’s a full disruption — a market crash, a competitor pivoting faster, a loss of a client.
The natural instinct for most leaders is to double down. They tighten control, demand more data, schedule emergency meetings, and cling to the plan that’s already crumbling. Because letting go feels like losing control, but in improv, we learn that control is an illusion — and awareness is everything.
Improvisers know that when the environment changes, so should you. The goal isn’t to stick to the script — it’s to stay in the scene.
In a business context, that means:
Recognizing reality before resisting it. Seeing the shift early gives you time to adapt, while denial burns your resources.
Leading with presence, not panic. People follow calm, not control. Your ability to pause and respond defines the tone for everyone else.
Building with what you have. Improv reminds us that constraints aren’t barriers — they’re springboards. You may lose the plan, but you haven’t lost your creativity.
That’s exactly what happened with my students in Brooklyn. When the tech failed, I stopped asking “How do I fix this?” and started asking a question that every leader should keep in their pocket: “What’s possible now?”
Because in business, change isn’t the exception — it’s the environment. Markets move. Algorithms shift. Strategies expire. The organizations that thrive are the ones that don’t cling to what was working — they build new ways to work. Adaptability doesn’t mean giving up control. It means redirecting it, from fear to creativity, from rigidity to responsiveness, from panic to possibility. Improvisers practice this every time they step on stage: listening deeply, trusting their partners, and creating in real time with whatever shows up.
The best leaders do the same — not because they planned for every outcome, but because they’re confident they can handle any outcome.
The Research
Vera & Crossan examined work teams in organizations to understand how improvisational behaviors (e.g., responding in real time, building on others’ ideas) affect innovation.
What did they find?
Teams that used improvisational principles—agreeing and adding to ideas, staying present, drawing on shared memory, and recombining what worked before—consistently showed stronger innovation performance.
But the magic wasn’t just in the behaviors themselves. The biggest gains appeared when the context was right:
Practice and expertise gave people tools to draw from.
Psychological safety (an experimental culture) made it safe to risk new ideas.
Real-time communication helped teams sense and respond fast.
Shared memory and trust kept the improvisation coherent.
Improvisation thrives when there’s both freedom and framework.
Steps to developing new plans that can last:
Intuition - This is where an individual senses something new or different happening—perhaps a shift in the market, a change in customer behavior, or a hiccup in your system. It’s often subconscious.
Interpreting - that individual shares their sense-making: “Hey, I think this signal means we might need to do something different.” They put words to what they felt.
Integrating - the team starts discussing, adapting, and working out how to respond together. The shift moves from one person to the group.
Institutionalization - the new way of working, the new practices, the new routines become part of the system, so the organization as a whole begins to act differently.
Why that matters for teams and leaders:
Improvisation isn’t random chaos; it’s a trainable, structured process for dealing with uncertainty.
Leaders who help teams move through these stages—from sensing → sharing → acting → embedding—create organizations that are:
More adaptable under pressure
More creative when faced with constraints
More resilient because they learn as they go
If any step is skipped—if someone senses a change but doesn’t speak up, or if people discuss but never act—the organization stalls.
5 Takeaways for Leaders
Stop worshiping the plan. A good plan is a starting point, not a finish line. Great leaders adapt as reality unfolds.
Respond instead of react. In improv, panic kills creativity. Pause, breathe, and choose your next move with intention.
Reframe disruption as data. Every setback holds information. Instead of asking, “Why did this happen?” ask, “What’s this trying to teach me?”
Trust your team’s resourcefulness. When you empower others to problem-solve, unexpected brilliance emerges.
Celebrate creative pivots. Reward adaptability the same way you reward results. It’s what keeps teams ready for whatever comes next.
Ready for the next level?
Change doesn’t care about your plan - but your mindset determines how you handle it.
Through my improv-based leadership workshops, I help teams strengthen adaptability, build creative confidence, and turn challenges into opportunities.