The other evening I went to a comedy club in Clapham, London, to watch the top TV comedian and winner of “Strictly Come Dancing”, Chris McCausland. He was performing alongside Rachel Parris, another skilled comedian trying out fresh material. At first, I couldn’t understand why the tickets were only £8 when, in London, you typically pay around £35 to see just one live comedian.
At the start of the show, it became obvious. Chris told this small audience of just 40 people crammed into a tiny theatre above a pub that he was rehearsing for the recording of the Christmas special of a TV show the next day. During the run-through of his material, a couple of times Chris paused and said, “OK, I need to work on that a bit more”. He was clearly gauging the audience response and realising that his joke needed improving in some way.
It’s not unusual for leading comedians to practise their new material before they go out on “the circuit” of theatres and comedy venues around the country. Indeed, The Comedy Store in London’s West End has a regular “Old Rope Night” where you can watch major stars practising new material for a ticket around a tenner.
Before the Clapham comedy show, I had been talking about one of my previous jobs as a stage electrician in a regional theatre, The Yvonne Arnaud, in Guildford, Surrey. There I worked with the TV actor John Inman during the pre-West End run of the play “Charley’s Aunt”. After he had already been through weeks of rehearsal, I asked him why he was doing yet another one late on Sunday night, before the show opened the next day. He agreed that he had rehearsed the play many times over, and then added, “But I have never done it here”. He went on to explain that he wanted to get used to the building’s acoustics, the size of the stage, the timing of the walk to the dressing room, and so on.
After my theatre days, I worked in PR at Polydor Records and met some of the world’s leading pop and rock stars. You might imagine a world of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll”. But the real stars let outsiders think that. In truth, they spent hours practising.
Now, I hope you can forgive me for reminiscing like this. But there is a point. In conversation with some students last week, they asked me how I managed to write several books. They wanted to know how I could just sit there and let words pour out onto the paper or screen. They asked because I was quizzing them on the process they used to write their assignments.
They told me they often faced a blank screen and didn’t know what to write. They admitted they could do that for hours and then had to rush to finish their work close to the deadline. I suggested this was inefficient, as it inevitably would produce poorer results. I told them about one book I wrote in just one week. “All I had to do,” I said, “was write about 10,000 words a day”. That prompted their questioning about how I could do that.
My answer was simple: “Practice”. I can write quickly because I have written millions of words over the years, often to very tight deadlines. I practise it every single day. When all a student does is try to write a 2,000-word assignment, and that is the only writing they have done all term, is it any wonder they have trouble?
Whether you are a writer, a pop star, a theatre actor or a comedian, you cannot make progress without plenty of practice. Plus, as I have observed, the people at the top of their game are the ones who practise the most.
Yet, as a Gallup study revealed a few years ago, business leaders tend not to practise essential skills. When it comes to feedback for junior colleagues, team leaders typically do so annually. How good are you at something when you only do it once a year? Be honest..! Yet, employees want feedback every week. Doing that weekly means business leaders get more practice and therefore improve their skills. It is not difficult, is it?
There are many things we are required to do in business that we do not practice enough. Data analysis might only happen once a quarter when you review recent results. Strategic planning seems to happen annually at best, and for some businesses, only once every five years. Time management pops up only once a year when people set their New Year’s resolution to manage their time better. I am sure you can think of other examples.
Now, you might be thinking you simply don’t have time to practise data analysis or strategic planning every day. But practice does not mean doing the whole thing each time. A comedian doesn’t rehearse an entire tour every night, and a pop star doesn’t record the full album at each session. They work on it one bit at a time.
You could start right now by listing the skills your work depends on and how often you actually use them. Any you do only occasionally could improve if you make them part of a regular routine, ten minutes at a time. Practise these things a little each day, and you’ll soon get better at them, and so will your business.
