The Dodo Club (57th Edition)- Reflections on the Theatre of Organisations

A note from me:

Hi Folks,

We’re back home in The Netherlands – wintry weather, brutal jet-lag and a significant contrast to Adelaide, Darwin and Perth!  But it does feel like coming home – our Amaliastraat “commune” decorated the house beautifully for us for Christmas.  There are 4 Christmas trees, one in each main downstairs room!  The various baubles reflect our past history, animals from the new wallpaper in one room, and one tree is completely and deliberately in Everton colours (blue and white) with a Dodo!!! 

As we work our way through the jet-lag, we’ve been to the cinema a couple of times to watch very different current mainstream films – Nuremberg and Wicked: For Good.  

Nuremberg was, overall, between a 7.5 and 8 out of 10 on the Jeremy scale, with the last quarter being 8+ and the first 3 quarters being 7.  It was well filmed, well-paced and “worthy”.  I feel, however, that it could have been significantly “deeper” in exploring issues and more innovative in form.  Also, it suffered from trying to take a complex historical topic with a broad and deep context and force it into a cinematic narrative involving a single main protagonist and antagonist.  The film backdrop also implies that the trial was mainly about the US authorities vs the Nazis, whereas it is worth reading the brilliant book “East-West Street”  to learn more about the background multinational wrestling with the nature of international law that enabled this kind of trial to take place.  

The last quarter of the film, however, begins with the showing at the trial of the horrific films shot at the concentration camps, and highlights the importance of a non-American lawyer in the prosecution, failures from the American characters and the strong message that brutal wickedness can happen anywhere that people allow it to happen. The film has clearly been made at this time to send out a warning about the growth of authoritarian regimes with populist leaders.

Wicked: For Good was an 8 on the Jeremy scale.  It was visually stunning, and I loved the capacity of Cynthia Erivo to convey emotion with her eyes and I enjoyed Ariana Grande’s performance more than in the first film. For me, this second film wasn’t as engaging as the first, but that’s partly because the film/show now needs to progress consistently with the original Wizard of Oz story.  It will probably be best in future to be able to watch the two Wicked films one after the other to enjoy the full dramatic arc.  

Considering these dramas has encouraged me to reflect a little more on the links between my primary professional life and my recurring engagement with drama, a topic I begin to explore in this Newsletter. 

My Bi-weekly Guide:

Reflections on the Theatre of Organisations (and Art)

As I was considering my growing interest in visual art and my long-standing love of theatre, I wondered about paintings that capture a sense of the stage.  Degas brilliantly depicts the life of young ballerinas rehearsing for performance in a series of his works, such as this 1873 image of “The Dance Class”.  Over his lifetime, Degas created 1,500 paintings, pastels and drawings of dancers.

This is painted in Impressionistic style, but despite being one of the founders of Impressionism and taking a leading role in organising the first Impressionist exhibitions between 1876 and 1884, Degas disliked the term.  Alongside observation, he laboured in his studio, often with models, and did not often paint outdoors with the spontaneity of many other Impressionist painters.  Given his personal behaviour and preferred subjects of dancers and bathers, he is now often criticised for exemplifying voyeurism, female exploitation and class inequality inherent in 19th-century Paris.  Nevertheless, he is a master at capturing movement, unguarded moments, and the hard, hard work behind successful performance.

5 reflections on Theatre and Organisations:

As an organisational leader, I was often asked for advice by young people entering leadership positions for the first time. While recognising the value of formal training opportunities offered by the company, I usually noted my experience in directing amateur and semi-professional theatre productions as my unexpected, but best, preparation for broader leadership.  In such situations, you need to orchestrate multiple activities with people over whom you have no financial or career authority but can only inspire through their buy-in to the production, you need to hit a fixed deadline with a fixed and limited budget, and you need to collectively generate an experience that will delight a critical, paying public.  I would advise young leaders to develop themselves through taking leadership positions in such voluntary activities according to their interests and opportunities, whether theatrical, sporting, charitable, or artistic.

Turning to the theatre, as noted in the last newsletter, I have recently been developing a new play focused on tensions and possibilities in inter-generational relationships.  This was trialled through a public play-reading while I was in Adelaide.  This brought to mind the following 5 considerations for effective dramatic structure, with some reflections on their relevance for organisations more broadly.  

1. The Spine of Meaning:
   A theatrical production, or a new play, has multiple elements and possibilities, and it is quite possible for its potential effectiveness to be dissipated through incoherence across its constituent parts. The different characters or actors, designers, set-builders, crew, and lighting engineers, etc., need to be brought together recognising the overarching theme of the work that inspires them, and they can all work towards and reflect in their work, and which an audience will respond to, even subliminally. It is the job of the play director in a production, or playwright in the case of writing a play, to ensure that such a theme, or “Spine of Meaning” comes to life. 
   For example, in the production I directed of Arthur Miller’s “Death of A Salesman”, the spine of meaning we evolved was “Deception corrodes, and self-deception is the most destructive of all”.  In my recent play, “Memories of the Future”, the emerging theme is that “Our choices shape the future; we act if we care; we care when we feel connected; and art can connect us more deeply”.  For me, there is a resonance between the theatrical idea of the “Spine of Meaning” and the concept of the “Strategic Narrative” I have found in all the high-performance teams I have experienced in organisational life, as outlined in Newsletter Edition 22.
   

2. The Core Plots:
   The basic plot of any successful drama involves one or more protagonists pursuing a goal and addressing a challenge or conflict of some kind, that is ultimately resolved (or not) one way or another.  Dara Marks refers to this as the “A Plot” in her excellent examination of successful screenwriting, "Inside Story". This is the obvious external storyline of the drama, but she also identifies “B” and “C” subplots that are equally significant in a rich and rewarding piece.  These refer to the story around the internal conflicts or flaws within central characters, and to the story of the relationship issues that protagonists must face to achieve their goal. Each plot has its own transformational arc (see point 3 below). This reminds us that human nature and human relationships are at the core of what engages our interest and captures our attention and commitment. To me, this is equally true in organisational life. While the “A plot” may describe our obvious activities, human nature and relationships actually shape the quality of experience for all stakeholders.
   

3. The Transformational Journeys:
   A drama essentially depicts the journeys of central characters and how they become transformed in the course of events. Each of the plots described above has a full “arc” with ups and downs, twists and turns, until reaching a crisis and climax. There will be a trigger that begins the journey from normal circumstances into unfamiliar territory, a call to adventure or action, resistance, relaxation, crisis, climax and resolution. The philosophical writer Joseph Campbell asserts in his book  “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” that all great myths and stories across history and cultures are variations on an archetypal story of “The Hero’s Journey”. Aided by a mentor and allies, a central figure moves from a familiar world “as is” into unfamiliar territory with an immense ordeal to be overcome, before returning home with a prize that changes the familiar world.  In my recent play, for example, each of the three central characters moves from impotence arising from loss, regret or fearfulness to positions of empowerment. There is also, however, consideration given to the audience as “the hero” and the play as a mentor, encouraging them out of their comfort zones to engage with the consequences of our collective choices and be changed in some way as a result.  In organisational life, as well, it seems important to me to develop a view of the deep prizes we are collectively trying to achieve, and our journeys towards them.
   

4. “Beats”:
   A play is not experienced initially by an audience as a number of overarching arcs – important as these are for ultimate coherence and satisfaction – but as a series of interactions between the characters.  At this granular level, these need to feel authentic and compelling to draw the audience into the drama.  This is achieved through building the drama as a series of “beats” that provide the rhythm for the transformational journeys being depicted. In each beat, one character tries to pursue a particular sub-objective, and the beat ends when this is either achieved or the effort is given up, and the characters move on to the next beat.  Good directors, actors and writers are good at breaking down the action of a drama into meaningful beats, and my wife, Mary, is good at coaching actors to do this.  Some beats may be highly emotional for actors to portray, yet they need to do this both authentically and also regularly in performance after performance. Mary coaches actors to find “sense memories” in their own lives that can trigger the required emotional realities whenever necessary.  From an organisational perspective, the lesson is that granular details and processes matter greatly in achieving meaningful goals.  The big picture and the small pictures all need to be high quality and to work well together.
   

5. Heart and head:
   In reviewing the written feedback on their experience of the play from those who attended the reading, it was rewarding that everyone seemed to find it powerful and hoped that it would be developed into a full production at some point. What was particularly fascinating, however, was that most comments from people referred to the emotional impact of the drama on them rather than to the intellectual ideas within it. The play was actually written because I wanted to convey some ideas, but I suspected that these would only register through the portrayal of human drama. In the feedback, there was some mention of these ideas – related to energy transitions and climate change – but the primary references were to the emotions stirred by the drama.  It seems the “head” was engaged, but the power came through the “heart”.  Essentially, the head was reached through the heart. That’s a good lesson for all kinds of aspects of organisational life, particularly as most leaders tend to lead with logic and the head in their considerations and engagements, and to underplay the significance of the heart in their worlds.

In summary, I hope you have enjoyed these deliberations on some of the structures that can be associated with effective dramas. Perhaps you will find these notions illuminating when you are at the theatre or cinema, or watching drama on TV?  I also hope that, like me, you will discover some relevance for your organisational or personal life and the pursuit of goals or the delivery of projects, policies or businesses.  

Question of The Fortnight

Every fortnight, I’ll be asking a thought-provoking question in hopes of sparking interesting and enlightening discussion.

I’d love to hear your response! You can do so by simply responding to this email.

Today’s question is:

Does the notion of The Hero’s Journey resonate with you, and how does it relate to your experience of the world and the experiences you are involved in (e.g. as a mentor, or guide, or companion, or parent, or leader)?

The Dodo Club Online Course

If you would like to learn more about the kinds of topics covered in these Newsletters, then please consider signing up for the introductory online course.

This covers scenario/systems thinking for grappling with uncertainty, an introduction to energy transitions, and the development of strategic character in leadership.

In the interest of avoiding the fate of that unfortunate bird, the Dodo, this course aims to help us secure our own personal legacies within a changing world and the energy transition - and to leave a healthier planet for future generations.

You can access the course through Udemy using the link below!

A series of follow-up courses that treat the main topics in increasing depth and detail will be provided if there is sufficient interest.