Soar to Success June 15 2020

SOAR TO SUCCESS / Feature Article contacting businesses to explain the importance of using improvisation to improve sales, stimulate business and improve communication. Prospective clients liked his approach, but their normal response was, “This is fun, but we can’t use any of it.” Kulhan became disillusioned. He was broke, with no viable prospects on the horizon and in danger of losing his Chicago condominium when a business professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business contacted him. He was exploring innovative experiential learning methods for business, and asked Bob if he would like to help write the curriculum and get the program started. Kulhan jumped at the chance, he knew business and he understood the nuances of improvisation. “I knew business and loved improvisation. I was excited to put the two together and demonstrate how they work hand in hand.” Thus, began his collaboration with university professors, behavioral psychologists, and behavioral economists to dig deeper into the why of decision making. From those conclusions he created high-energy learning programs that produced successful results when dealing with difficult business decisions and situations. From this first effort at Duke in 1999, he has made more inroads in the academic community and today is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and has associations with UCLA Anderson and Wharton Schools of Business. Over the years, his programs have been used in some capacity with 13 of the top 26 business schools in the country. Bob has led programs for hundreds of blue-chip companies, and he has even taught 30 of the top leaders in the United States Department of Defense. They use Bob’s methods to improve interagency joint collaboration and focus on three core competencies, reacting, adapting and communications. “When you are focused on reacting, adapting and communicating, it’s not, ‘What group needs this?’ It becomes, ‘How do we do this better?’”