My friend Harry Morrison is an actor.  He’s recently started writing short, packed posts on what it’s really like to work in theatre, and guess what?  It’s hard work.

I particularly liked this from today’s post:

“Even the best stand-ups have notebooks packed with all their best ‘spontaneous’ off-the-cuff quips.   Their skill is in waiting for the perfect time to use them.”

There are 2 things here that a relevant for designing effective business processes:

• If you haven’t rehearsed the likely scenarios, you’ll never spot that ‘perfect time’.
• The biggest impact comes from realising that the unlikely scenario you’re currently in is actually ‘the perfect time’.

Process, preparation, and practice (aka ‘doing the work’, aka discipline) is what makes spontaneous creativity possible.