A dependency arrives late. A test environment is not ready. A partner changes an interface. The team may spend the next meeting defending the old plan, assigning blame or jumping into action before agreeing what is now true. The surprise is unavoidable; the recovery pattern is trainable.
Adaptability is a sequence, not a personality
Teams often describe some people as naturally adaptable and others as resistant to change. That label is not very useful. Under pressure, even experienced people can cling to the previous plan, minimise the disruption or change everything at once.
A more practical approach is to rehearse a short sequence: name the new reality, protect the objective that still matters and choose the next safe move. The sequence gives people something to do before habit takes over.
The plan may be obsolete. The purpose, constraints and next useful move still need to be made explicit.
Move one: state what changed without interpretation
Begin with the smallest accurate statement. ‘The environment will be available ten working days later than planned’ is more useful than ‘Infrastructure has put the whole release at risk’. The first statement can be checked. The second mixes fact, impact and blame.
This does not mean removing consequences or accountability. It means creating a shared starting point before deciding what the event means.
Move two: protect the objective, not every detail of the plan
When a plan changes, teams sometimes defend each activity because it took effort to design. Ask which outcome must still be protected: regulatory compliance, customer continuity, a learning milestone, revenue recognition or a safe launch decision.
Once the objective is clear, the group can distinguish essential constraints from choices that were only part of the original route. This is where improvisational thinking becomes disciplined rather than random.
Move three: choose the next safe, informative action
The best next move is not always the most visible action. It may be validating one assumption, creating a thin end-to-end test, escalating a decision or pausing work that no longer protects the objective.
I ask teams to choose a move that is small enough to execute, useful enough to create information and safe enough to reverse where necessary. It should also have a named owner and a point when the group looks again.
- What can we verify in the next 24 or 48 hours?
- Which decision cannot be made until that information exists?
- What work remains valuable under more than one possible outcome?
- When do we reconvene, and who brings which evidence?
Practise with fictional pressure first
The middle of a real incident is not the moment to introduce a playful exercise. Practise the recovery pattern before the stakes are high, using a fictional project and progressively harder constraints.
The facilitator should keep the scenario realistic enough to produce genuine trade-offs but distant enough that participants can observe their behaviour. The learning is not whether the group creates a brilliant fictional plan. It is whether people can remain specific, connected and constructive when the shared picture changes.
What good recovery is not
Recovery is not relentless positivity, ignoring loss or protecting poor decisions from review. A team may need to stop, escalate, document an incident or acknowledge that a target is no longer credible.
The improvisational contribution is narrower and more useful: receive the new reality instead of arguing with it, use all available information and support a coherent next move. Accountability can follow from a clearer picture rather than from a faster accusation.
Max Grillo is an applied improvisation facilitator. He manages and hosts Rice Cookie Improv, is co-founder of Monday Flow Improv and is a member of the Applied Improvisation Network. He combines workshop practice with more than 25 years of experience in technology and transformation.
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