What a Stanford Improv Teacher Told Me to Tell You About Not Being Ready
by Kalika Yap
The best book I read all summer, I read on a train.
We were in Europe with the family earlier this summer, and somewhere between London and Paris I opened a small book called Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up.
It came to me from my friend Margalit Grunberger, who’s read it more than once. More on her in a minute.
Now, we’re a family of preparers. We’d planned that trip down to the hour. Color-coded outfits. Backup plans for the backup plan.
That’s how I’ve run companies for 27 years.
So a subtitle that says Don’t Prepare felt like it had been written about me personally.
I sat there with orange juice in a skinny glass, a little bit called out, and kept reading anyway.
By the time we pulled into Gare du Nord, I’d finished it and gone back to the front.
Thirteen Maxims
It was written by Patricia Ryan Madson, who taught drama at Stanford from 1977 to 2005 and started the Stanford Improvisors in 1991. She put thirty years of teaching into thirteen maxims.
Say yes. Don’t prepare. Just show up. Start anywhere. Be average. Pay attention. Face the facts. Stay on course. Wake up to the gifts. Make mistakes, please. Act now. Take care of each other. Enjoy the ride.
Be average. At Stanford.
I wanted to know where a woman gets the nerve to teach that. So I went looking.
The Two Rivers Under the Book
In an interview, Madson said she’s “standing on the shoulders of two giants.”
The first one you’d guess. Keith Johnstone, who wrote Impro in 1979 and is the reason most of us have ever heard the phrase “yes, and.”
The second one I didn’t see coming.
Dr. David K. Reynolds. An American psychologist and anthropologist who spent his career studying Japanese psychotherapies and built a method out of them called Constructive Living.
Madson studied with him for ten years. She and her husband Ronald went on to direct the California Center for Constructive Living. In the opening pages of Improv Wisdom, she says the ideas from Reynolds’s work are built right into the maxims.
So the little book about saying yes has a whole psychology underneath it.
What Constructive Living Actually Says
Reynolds published Constructive Living in 1984 through the University of Hawaii Press. It’s about 120 pages.
He built it from two Japanese practices.
The first is Morita therapy, from a Japanese psychiatrist named Shoma Morita. His method gets summarized in three lines. Accept your feelings. Know your purpose. Do what needs to be done.
The second is Naikan, structured self-reflection developed by a Japanese businessman named Yoshimoto Ishin. Three questions. What have I received? What have I given? What troubles have I caused?
Put those together and you get the sentence I want you to carry this week.
Your feelings are real, they’re allowed, and they don’t get a vote on what happens next.
Why This Is a Business Problem
Here’s where it stops being philosophy.
I’ve sat across from so many brilliant women with a finished offer and an unsent email.
The offer is built. The pricing is set. The page is written.
And it sits, because she doesn’t feel ready.
Waiting to feel ready is one of the most expensive habits in business, and it never shows up on a P and L. You just lose the quarter, and there’s nothing to point at.
Madson’s maxim is don’t prepare. She doesn’t mean be careless. She means stop using preparation as the place you hide.
The rehearsal is comfortable. The stage isn’t. So we rehearse.
Be Average on Purpose
Of all thirteen maxims, the one my clients need most is the fifth. Be average.
Her line under it is “close enough is perfect.”
Not sloppy. Ordinary. The plain version. The one that goes out.
Because what feels painfully ordinary to you is often brand new to the person reading it. You’ve lived inside your expertise so long that the obvious thing looks boring to you and looks like a revelation to them.
Your first newsletter doesn’t have to be your best one. It has to be your first one.
Then Wake Up to the Gifts
The ninth maxim is where the Naikan shows up, and it’s the one that keeps the rest of it from turning into pure grind.
Wake up to the gifts. Notice who’s helping you right now. Thank the people doing the thankless jobs. Keep the gift moving forward.
Reynolds has a line I think about often. “There is always just enough time to do what needs to be done.”
Read that as permission, not pressure.
A Thank You
I want to give proper credit here, because I wouldn’t have this book without Margalit Grunberger.
Margalit coaches founders and CEOs, she’s built and sold her own company, and she’s the kind of reader who goes back to the same book more than once. That’s the whole recommendation right there. Anyone can hand you a title. Very few people reread.
So when Margalit tells me to read something, I read it.
If you’re a business owner carrying every decision by yourself, her work is at margalitmethod.co.
Your Step-by-Step Guide: Start Before You Feel Ready
1. Name the one thing you’re waiting on
One sentence. The offer, the email, the price increase, the hire.
If you can’t name it in one sentence, that’s the first thing to fix.
2. Write the feeling down, then set it beside you
Scared. Underqualified. Tired. Write the real word.
You’re not talking yourself out of the feeling. You’re just refusing to let it drive.
3. Ask the purpose question
What am I here to do?
Madson’s eighth maxim is stay on course. Ask this out loud and most decisions get smaller.
4. Be average on purpose
What’s the plain version you could send this week? Not the best one. The one that’s close enough.
Close enough is perfect.
5. Use what’s already in the room
You have a list, a photo, a testimonial, a half-written page, and one person who’d say yes if you asked.
Work with what’s been given. That’s the whole art of it.
6. Do the smallest visible thing in 48 hours
Send the email. Post the price. Make the call.
Visible means somebody other than you can see it.
Want a Second Pair of Eyes Before You Start?
Sometimes you’re too close to your own work to tell the difference between not ready and not comfortable. That’s most of what I do with my coaching clients.
No pitch. Just a real conversation.
You don’t have to feel ready. You just have to be there. You’re doing just great.
DOWNLOADABLE WORKSHEET
The Ready Enough Audit
This is a 15-minute worksheet to help you identify what you’ve been putting off, cut unnecessary polishing, and choose one visible action to take in the next 48 hours.
