Finally, some suitable comedy

CHICAGO — The same comedy troupe that gave us John Belushi, Bill Murray and Mike Myers is trying to get Fortune 500 companies to lighten up.

Pairing comedy and improv with the world of three-piece suits might sound like a funny concept, all right, to those used to more conventional corporate training methods. But it works — so says Second City Communications, the consulting arm of the famous improvisational group.

“We get to the truth via the funny bone,” said Tom Yorton, its president. “We help people with the soft skills they never learned in business school.”

Second City’s version of business class typically takes place inside an otherwise empty comedy club in the troupe’s headquarters complex on Chicago’s North Side.

One recent afternoon, employees of Motorola Inc. yukked it up there in the interest of better business. Egged on by an instructor, the sales and account executives struck humorous poses, acted out unseemly business traits, clasped palms to form a wedding tunnel, flopped on the floor.

Unlike most meetings, this one was a load of laughs.

Mixing improv with more traditional corporate training methods, Second City works to polish business people’s skills, such as communicating better in the office. It also performs its irreverent sketches at company gatherings to address topics that merit more than PowerPoint presentations.

The result is a small but rapidly growing stake for Second City in the multibillion-dollar corporate training market. Yorton’s company is increasingly becoming known in the business community for more than belly laughs in a nightclub.

“More often than not, good business comes down to great connections between people who trust each other, who can react in real time to problems and opportunities and who can deal with adversity with humor and perspective,” he said. “We know something about that here.”

Then he quipped: “We know what ROI stands for — it means ‘king’ in French.” Nudge, nudge — that’s a jab at financial types obsessed with return on investment.

The business world has come in for its share of barbs from Second City ever since it opened a comedy theater 45 years ago in a converted Chinese laundry. Indeed, one of the opening-night skits was a takeoff on Superman called Businessman.

Corporations have laughed right along, hiring its cheeky brand of humor since the early days and much more frequently in the past decade.

Today, Second City actors perform across the continent at corporate sales conferences, trade shows and company awards shows. They sometimes include ex-Saturday Night Live stars like Martin Short and Tim Kazurinsky from the long list of illustrious Second City alums.

But under Yorton, who hired Second City when he was a marketing executive at 3Com Corp. and then joined it 2 1/2 years ago, the company has been branching out more beyond just corporate comedy routines and trying harder to tap into the training market.

So far, so good. Second City Communications nearly doubled its revenues last year and is expecting another healthy increase this year to about $4 million, according to Yorton.

Large corporations dominated the list of clients that signed up for the approximately 300 customized workshops and other presentations that Second City did last year. That’s not surprising considering the cost — about $3,000 to $5,000 for a small group workshop, $30,000 for a large conference or millions for longer-term arrangements with multiple presentations.

Regular customers include Major League Baseball, where Second City conducts an annual bilingual workshop on such issues as cultural assimilation, dealing with the media and financial matters.