"Yes, And…" Building

Origin. Improvisational theatre (Spolin, Johnstone); Viola Spolin's theatre games.

Mechanism. Prohibits negation during generation. Each contribution must accept the prior contribution's premise and extend it. The prohibition is on the word, not the judgment: the judgment is deferred, not abolished.

Procedure. Each turn begins by accepting the previous offer as true, then adds. Blocking ('yes, but', 'no, because') is disallowed for the duration. Evaluation happens after, in a separate session with different rules.

Applies to. Groups where a single senior sceptic is suppressing the generation rate.

Limitations. Runs long, it manufactures consensus and escalating commitment. The evaluation session must actually happen and must be permitted to kill everything produced.