EDMONTON -- It's three weeks until product launch, and Bob Baker's crew is working pretty much round the clock.
With a development cycle that's only a couple of months long to begin with and a tight $575,000 budget, Mr. Baker's staff -- eight permanent, 44 contract and 13 casual workers -- have had their work cut out for them from the get-go.
Today's challenge: rebuilding a junked 1954 Morris Oxford. Actually, they aren't rebuilding the car, they're recreating it: cutting it down to 12 feet from 14 and converting the classic hard-top into a jaunty convertible.
No, Mr. Baker isn't the CEO of a major business despite the fact he controls a $7-million-a-year budget complete with a major physical plant smack dab in downtown Edmonton. He's artistic director of Edmonton's Citadel Theatre, one of Canada's largest regional theatres, and the reborn Morris Oxford is a set piece for his production of Grease.
But he faces many of the same pressures and dilemmas as his business counterparts. Indeed, some experts believe business executives can learn a lot from the country's arts leaders.
Consider what Canada's major opera, ballet and theatre companies do on a day-to-day basis: Mount diverse seasons of large-scale productions on tight budgets and tighter deadlines, using myriad professionals from property builders to publicists -- most contract or temporary employees being paid less than competitive wages and all having to be kept on the same visionary page.
"It's a huge leadership challenge to lead a theatre, and most people don't even know it's there," Mr. Baker says. "Twelve times a year we create productions that have never been done before, prototypes every time really, and we do so without a blueprint. If you think about it, theatre is all high-risk work with the best on-time delivery record in the country."
For Bastiaan Heemsbergen, Toronto-based psychologist, author, business professor and international consultant, this ability of arts leaders to thrive in endlessly chaotic environments has valuable lessons to teach the larger business world.
"The economy we're in is all about speed, technology, level of competition and increasing competition in a global environment that's volatile, unpredictable, chaotic and fluid," Dr. Heemsbergen says. "Things are not the same as they used to be, and business needs to deal with complexity in new ways because our traditional methods don't work in this new environment. Routine tools only work in routine times."
Quoting Einstein, Dr. Heemsbergen says business leaders won't be able to solve problems by using the same kind of thinking they used when they created them.
"We need different ideas and fresh thinking to make [sense] of what's happening, and we're well served to pull out a blank canvas and act more like artists rather than constrict ourselves to a fixed rulebook.
"Artists can help us by giving us the ability to use multiple modes of perception to understand complexity," he says, citing a built-in bias against creativity many companies exhibit that needs to be overcome. "Business professionals are very good left-brain, analytical thinkers, but like artists, we need to access the untapped capacity of our right brain more often."
Underlining the need for "new rules and new spaces," Dr. Heemsbergen notes that some of the biggest business success stories of late are companies such as Dell, Linux, Ariba, WestJet and Canon -- "people who've created new rules and broken the rule book on how you operate in an industry. . . . These people are outsiders in their industries."
Using more-creative business tactics and adopting the more-flexible attitudes toward staff and typically non-hierarchical structures that arts groups utilize, Canadian businesses might be able to avoid an upcoming generational motivational crisis, says Andre Mamprin, director of leadership development at the Banff Centre.
"There's a huge succession crisis in the corporate world that I hear about every day from different organizations I'm consulting with," Mr. Mamprin says. "The values of 20-something workers are totally different from 40- and 50-somethings. Basically, the 20-something workers lived through downsizing and looking for something different. In essence, you're trying to open meaningful dialogue between battle-weary elders and cynical young workers. The question is what a new leadership will look like."
Currently presenting a series of leadership-seminars called "Leveraging Creative Capacity into Business Innovation," the Banff Centre is advocating weaving artist and ecological practices into the business world and a "deeper level of leadership" stressing harder-to-measure traits such as imagination, intuition, perspective and courage.
"We need a leadership renaissance at the moment, but we really don't see that many visionary leaders on the horizon," Mr. Mamprin says. "We're not talking heroic leaders like Churchill, but an everyday leadership that has some of those capacities and developing a leadership character that's based on values, integrity and stewardship. It's all about creating the right spaces, asking the right questions and inviting the right people on board."
Business leaders also have to recognize that employees who are "strong, clear individuals with core values" -- values central to artists and arts organizations -- are important additions to a corporate culture and create workers who aren't as likely to cave in and fall prey to lapses of judgment, Dr. Heemsbergen says.
"Art organizations are full of independent contractors with a huge passion for the product they're creating," he says. "There's a brother/sisterhood in the arts that can be applied to business, as well as a flexible leadership that moves around from person to person, depending on where it is required."
In the end, what impresses Dr. Heemsbergen most is that the success of the artistic process is that it's "not about ego, despite the fact that artists have to be very egotistical people to do the work they do.
"That detachment of ego is the most successful act in the theatre, which shows great faith in the process, which is what we can learn a great deal from. You end up with a leadership that has to trust the group, not push the group."
Business people wanting to incorporate some artist-friendly procedures into their creative processes don't have that far to go to acquire the necessary resources. Case in point, incorporating playful and meditative areas into existing and new office spaces has been a major concern of architects and office interior decorators for nearly a decade.
The basic drama and art exercises utilized by Dr. Heemsbergen are no different than those taught at art/theatre/improv workshops for adults offered up by art galleries and theatres in major urban centres, on top of other arts-related courses in the community that have a direct impact on business skill. The "business story-telling skills" that Dr. Heemsbergen stresses can be honed in any story-telling or diary-keeping workshop -- not to mention hyper-business-friendly workshops specifically designed for corporate managers and leaders.
The Banff Centre has already organized two arts-oriented "creative capacity" leadership-business workshops and is planning two more in the fall.
"We have a specialized leadership lab at the Banff Centre specifically designed to explore alternative artistic mediums and processes as it relates to business leadership," Mr. Mamprin says. "Be it developing a business process around mask-making, acting, voice or song work, it's all about getting people to open up."
As for Mr. Baker, ready or not, when May 3 rolls around, Grease opens in the 665-seat Shoctor Theatre, standing as a two-hour-and-15-minute testament to a singular artist vision and the complicated team effort needed to enact that concept.
"The primary job of all the talented people working on a show is ultimately to problem-solve," he concludes.
"Every show is a real head-scratcher, and we're always creating a different way of working production to production because every show is totally different. We're funded to take risks."
The Banff Centre is offering the Ecology of Leadership, Sept. 19 to 22, and the Voice of Leadership: Power, Influence and Authenticity Through Communication, Feb. 20 to 23.
Tapping employee creativity
Consultant Bastiaan Heemsbergen has a four-step plan to help Canadian businesses jump-start their creativity and stay uber-competitive using tools from the world of arts and culture:
Create space for creativity
"You need to make inner space and external space in your life for creativity, to be present in reality, and drop your assumptions," Dr. Heemsbergen says. Businesses need to create spaces, such as gaming rooms, where employees can "play, create, and experiment," and to also "make physical spaces in your offices where your workers can be become engrossed in their own creative inner spaces." Even the busiest leader needs to make time in the day "to retreat to a quiet inner space," Dr. Heemsbergen says.
Fully invoke the imagination
Use photographs and rehearsal-hall exercises to get the creative juices flowing. Images lead to more divergent thinking using both sides of the brain, and also they generate ideas that boast a greater level of vividness, Dr. Heemsbergen points out. He also uses improvisational exercises from the world of theatre to help leaders achieve creative breakthroughs. "The founder of FedEx got a 'C' on a paper he wrote that first conceived of his ground-breaking business concept. His professor thought it was an interesting idea, but wouldn't fly. You need an ability to think beyond the conventional while being clear about your goals," he says.
Creatively test and promote your ideas
Once you get that brilliant idea, you need high-functioning "emotional intelligence skills" and the ability to construct powerful business narratives to get everybody in the organization on board. "A good leader needs to frame their ideas so that they can tangibly describe benefits and present common ground, which means providing vivid evidence through facts, figures and data, but also recognizing the need to connect emotionally with the idea because very few things will get done without that connection," he says. "This is where good story telling plays a role. A good story that resonates is much more likely to connect me to that person and help get them join me moving into a different direction."
Launch your concept
Creativity doesn't stop with the conception of a novel business idea; launching your concept requires equal commitment, Dr. Heemsbergen says. He advises leaders to get a sense of the market for the product, the competition, and any strategic alliances that might be called for. "You also need to demonstrate the benefits to a customer's life and how this product will address their values and aspirations," he notes.
© The Globe and Mail
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