Capacity, Satellites, Franchises

In July 2008 I particpated in the Harvard Business School's Social Enterprises Executive Education program Strategic Perspectives for Nonprofit Managers (SPNM). It was one of the best and most transforming weeks of my life.

Here are all of the links and topics for posts from SPNM:
Overview
Inspiration
Capacity
Leadership
Scale
Strategic Service Vision
Mission and Strategic Triangle - Legitamacy & Support / Organization / Mission
Value Chain
Market Research
Measuring Impact


What a day! Three classes, two discussion groups and now is the first real break since 7:30 am.

Funny tidbit. High tech Harvard has of course amazing classrooms. But the coolest part is the blackboards that are layered and move up and down when the professor needs more space. Needless to say a bunch of nonprofit folks are in awe, so everytime the professor moves the blackboard - we ooh and ahh...

So we started the day talking about the strategic service vision (market focus, results, leveraging results/costs (operating strategy), and excellence in service.

Lots of questions that the Playhouse has been grapling with came up. Who do you serve? Who don't you serve? Who will you serve? What are we accomplishing (people don't fund or buy into concepts - they buy into results)? How do we achieve excellence? How is excellence defined? Do we have partners? Who are they? Do they share our definition of excellence?

Note on the side of the page to myself. Revise last nights thoughts. How about this:

We use theatre to create an experience for relavent issues to be explored.

Second note to self. The Playhouse is in transition. We have embraced that. We know we are on the brink of major change. And although it scares us we will not and can not let the fear of change prevent it from happening. Asking these questions is a necessity of where we are not some failure on anyone's behalf!

Since we were talking about capacity, satellites and franchising in the first class, I begin to think about how so many theatres stretch their resource capacity without corresponding results. Leveraging results/costs - interesting to define that for theatre. What is quality control in theatre? That is an entire entry of its own that I will get back to later.

But what is at the top of my mind is why so many education programs become satelites of theatre organizations and even spin-off into their own organizations. Why isn't education deep in the core of more producing theatres. At the Playhouse, I believe we have made the committement that education programs remain in the core of our mission with productions. But it isn't as easy or organic as I would like it to be. It seems logical that making sure there is a future audience, a future generation of artists, and future funders should be a moral imperative for every theatre, so why is it so easy for education to be thought of as the annoying step-child of the theatre by theatre professionals no less. Didn't each of us theatre professionals have some encounter in our childhood with the arts that sparked our interest. Didn't that spark start a fire of passion inside of us that made us pursue a life in the theatre often with great sacrifice (at least financially).

The case study that made my mind spin was about a mega-church that was dealing with focus and growth. It's capacity was stretched to the limit, so they looked at the history of Christianity to identify and define the tenents that should guide their next steps.

What happens when we look at theatre history? Theatre started out as a social convention to TEACH people morals and values through the experience of watching actors on the stage - including those "masses" of people that today would be priced out of the experience. It has and remains to be a way to "experience" an issue - family drama, war, disease, marrying your mother, without actually having to live through the issues in real life.

A day at the theatre (and yes it was often a day) was educational and entertaining.

Today most people think of entertainment as a dirty word - why?

Entertainment according to Merriam-Webster on line means a: amusement or diversion provided especially by performers hired to provide entertainment> b: something diverting or engaging:

Isn't all theatre supposed to be a diversion and engaging. It says is can be amusement but doesn't say it IS an amusement.

More than anything, in theatre's early history, it was a social experience. It was a gathering for people to share in an experience at that moment in time. I am constantly asking myself everyday, if in today's world do we have to gather in one place or has technology in some cases removed place from the community experience? If we are in the same moment but not in the same place can the experience still be valid? What would be different about the experience? Is it still theatre?

Whew...I need a diet coke!