Robin Williams' Legacy

What did Robin Williams, Oscar-winning actor, stand-up comedian, film producer and screenwriter, leave as his main legacy? Was it his prolific productivity in a career that spanned four decades? His irrepressible presence? His frenetic goofiness and wild sense of humor? His humanity and breadth of emotions, from hilarious to depressed and back? From a business strategy point of view, his principal gift to all of us might well be his ability to improvise and think on his feet.

Having experienced four deaths in my family in the last two years (my father, my mother-in-law, my wife's uncle and her cousin), I was not prepared for my own reaction to Robin Williams's death.

Of course I felt sadness, especially for his family. But then my reaction was not one of sadness, rather of joy. For the first time in my life, somebody's passing brought a smile to my face. I instantly remembered the countless times Robin Williams had made me laugh, from his cross-dressing performance as Mrs. Doubtfire to his rapid-fire, largely improvised monologues in "Good Morning Vietnam" or as the voice of the genie in "Aladdin," not to speak of countless performances as stand-up comedian.

Chassidic philosophy says that God is creating the entire universe in every moment. When watching Robin Williams in action as a stand-up comedian, I get the sense that human beings are created in God's image. At least some of us, and above all Robin Williams, are capable of inventing a whole world every second.

Watch this video to see what I mean (it has the added thrill of John Cleese introducing Robin Williams).

Of course Robin Williams was not just silly, but also capable of emotional depth. In fact he was to my knowledge the only stand-up comedian who won an Oscar, for his portrayal as a wise psychologist who becomes a mentor to Matt Damon in "Good Will Hunting."

In "Dead Poets' Society" he plays an irreverent but wise teacher who reminds his students to seize the moment, or, as he puts it in Latin, "carpe diem."

In the thriller "Insomnia" he was downright frightening next to Al Pacino.

And his performance in "Awakenings," trying, and ultimately failing, but never giving up to bring Robert de Niro back from a neurological illness, brought me to tears.

What we see especially in his stand-up comedy is his unmatched ability to develop material ex tempore and customize it for that audience and its mindset.

If you watched the video above, you saw it: He begins his performance with a wild riff addressed to Charles, Prince of Wales, and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who sit in the audience.

“Chuck, Cam, great to see you,” he calls out from the London stage to the royal couple, “Yo yo, wussup Wales, House of Windsor, keepin’ it real!”

He riffs in the voice of an inner-city black kid in Detroit. It is an irreverent, absurd, taboo-breaking moment. And it works: Charles and Camilla laugh, the audience roars.

The writers of "Aladdin" confirmed that Robin Williams improvised most of his lines in that movie.

Robin Williams did it in life too. Some years ago, at a party at the Cannes Film Festival, the New York Times film critic A.O. Scott was leaning against a rail watching a fireworks display when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"Or rather, at least a dozen voices, punctuating the offshore explosions with jokes, non sequiturs and off-the-wall pop-cultural, sexual and political references.

"There was no need to turn around: The voices were not talking directly to me and they could not have belonged to anyone other than Robin Williams, who was extemporizing a monologue at least as pyrotechnically amazing as what was unfolding against the Mediterranean sky.

"I’m unable to recall the details now, but you can probably imagine the rapid-fire succession of accents and pitches — macho basso, squeaky girly, French, Spanish, African-American, human, animal and alien — entangling with curlicues of self-conscious commentary about the sheer ridiculousness of anyone trying to narrate explosions of colored gunpowder in real time."

That was Robin Williams at his best. To me, it was the embodiment of Strategy-In-Action. And that is what I will remember him for.

What do you say? What is Robin Williams' legacy? What can we learn from him? I look forward to reading you on my blog:http://thomaszweifel.blogspot.com/.

Dr. Thomas D. Zweifel is a strategy & performance expert and coach for leaders of Global 1000 companies. His book Strategy-In-Action: Marrying Planning, People and Performance (with co-author Ed Borey) offers a practical how-to methodology for building strategy in the aftermath of action.