In the arts, dramaturgs help interpret previously written plays for ensembles performing them here and now. Similarly, previously existing strategies must be interpreted for frontline performance. Of course, all strategies are old the moment they're written. Dramaturgs must not alter the existing strategy to fit contemporary circumstances but rather alter everything else to enact that strategy given contemporary circumstances. In fulfilling this role, dramaturgs must remember three important rules. One, the dramaturg must make the offering compelling for the audience of customers. Two, the dramaturg must bring clarity of thought to parts difficult to interpret or characterize. And, finally, the dramaturg must describe, and not prescribe, scenarios and options for the director and cast. Whether inside or outside the organization, the dramaturg must not act like the producer or director; that's not his job.
Directors may differ in how participatory a style they wish the dramaturg to possess and will choose dramaturgs accordingly, but they should not tolerate any who usurp their directing powers. Directors who allow the dramaturg to migrate into their role, from providing input to dictating output, have weakened their authority to direct. And all the actors in the ensemble will know it. To help prevent this situation, dramaturgs should not try to have all the answers but to apply their expertise to crafting provocatively useful questions.
In the end, directors rely on the dramaturg to help tell the story they envision. At 3M Corporation, for example, the company's internal dramaturgs—its planners and strategists—have pushed its directors—line management for each business unit—to completely overhaul their strategic dramas, moving from bulleted lists of stuff to what retired company executive Gordon Shaw called strategic narratives: “Planning by narrative is a lot like traditional storytelling. Like a good storyteller, the strategic planner needs to set the stage—define the current situation in an insightful, coherent manner … Next, the strategic planner must introduce the dramatic c onflict … Finally, the story must reach resolution in a satisfying, convincing manner.”10 It's imperative for company dramaturgs to tell the internal strategic stories that help fulfill the director's vision of the external performance.
Scriptwriters
Directors ask scriptwriters to define the set of processes that will generate the end performance.11 They must therefore concern themselves with the four different forms of theatre and the unique combinations of [script = processes] and [performance = offering] highlighted in figure 7-1. Improv requires systematic techniques to help the actor find imaginative responses to audience input and feedback. Platform theatre calls for formal lines. Matching benefits from highly refined and scrutinized schedules that define who does what when. Street theatre depends on a rich portfolio of bits dynamically used to create unique performances. In each form, the [script = processes] supplied by scriptwriters contributes a crucial component to the performance.
Scriptwriting in business has gained prominence as a result of the total quality management and business process reengineering movements. Much has been written about both TQM and BPR, so only a few highlights need mentioning here. TQM seeks to script processes through a series of small, continuous improvements, while BPR pursues dramatic, discontinuous improvements via large-scale redesign of processes. Reengineering proponents rightly point out that TQM efforts are susceptible to generating high-quality processes for work that is not really needed. “Don't automate, obliterate” such processes, urged the late Michael Hammer.12 The message resonated with executive producers impatient with the results of TQM. And the BPR scriptwriters were right in one important aspect: for too many years, companies used information technologies merely to automate existing business processes, when every new technology possesses characteristics with which companies can script entirely new means of performing work.13 While powerfully articulated and clearly different, BPR mirrors TQM in assuming business strategy as a given. Reengineering proponents urged organizations to simultaneously rethink technology and processes, but the real need lies in simultaneously rethinking processes and strategy, as rightly pointed out by professors Gary Hamel and the late C.K. Prahalad, who urged the reinvention of entire industries through imaginative scriptwriting.14
Today, because of TQM and BPR, a plethora of process management techniques are available to business scriptwriters. And thanks in no small part to Hamel and Prahalad, most businesses understand the importance of innovative processes not only in designing efficient production but also in crafting imaginative strategies. Too often directors (and meddling producers) look only to dramaturgs for advice in crafting their [dramas = strategies]—often to the point of relinquishing control of the drama altogether—when scriptwriters contribute equally, if not more so, to envisioning creative strategies.
Consider a few examples in which new processes enabled wholly new strategies, which in turn revolutionized entire industries. Prior to the 1980s, consumers looking for new eyeglasses went to a local optometrist working out of a small office, where after an eye exam they could choose from a few dozen frames. The office sent the order to a centralized factory, where it would sit for weeks before technicians finally produced a pair of glasses, which were then sent back to the optometrist for pickup and fitting. Dean Butler, founder of LensCrafters—being an entrepreneur, he was producer, director, and scriptwriter all—figured out how to bring the lens-manufacturing process to the very point of sale and scale it up, refining it periodically over time. LensCrafters' new [script = processes] gave the company such a competitive advantage that the very nature of the industry changed. Today, retail stores employ or provide space for optometrists, who give exams and then mass customize lenses in about an hour while consumers shop.
As discussed in chapter 4, Dell represents another mass customizer that grew spectacularly via scriptwriting, going from zero to $60 billion in twenty-five years. But after successfully scripting the Mass Customization of computer goods, Dell failed to develop a sequel for mass customizing its supporting services (much less retail experiences). As Best Buy acquired the Geek Squad in 2002 as the means to create a new script for in-home encounters, and as Apple revolutionized the script for computer retail experiences with its revolutionary store format in 2001, Dell found itself more and more commoditized and desperately resorted to selling via the retail channels it once avoided.
Scriptwriting enabled new strategies in other industries, including the steel business, in which minimill producers like Nucor, Gerdau Ameristeel, and Gallatin Steel, which dramatically lowered costs and increased flexibility over the old mainline mass producers. Consider how the scripts of Prodigy and CompuServe were bettered by America Online, only to be eclipsed by those of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Or witness how U.K.-based Pilkington Brothers changed the script when it instituted a series of process innovations that enabled large sheets of plate glass to be produced in one integrated process.15 The scripting of processes is an inherently creative act that ought to be inexorably bound to strategy development. In the arts, who could imagine a drama without a script? Why, then, do many businesses devise strategies without considering how processes affect what they want to offer?
Technicians
Various technicians also contribute to defining the nature of company offerings. The technical presentation of the performance defines the context, or operating environment, for the [theatre = work]. This presentation generally includes a designed set, supporting props, and costumes. The exact combination and presentation of these technical elements vary according to the form of theatre being employed and even to the offering employing each form. Sales representatives exert little design control over the set of the customers they call on. As a result, their improv or street performances become highly dependent on a collection of portable props and on their ability to take advantage of whatever props they find lying around (or happening by). Platform and matching theatre usually afford greater opportunities to design the desired set on which the ensemble stages the experience.
SET DESIGNERS
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In cases where the [theatre stage = workplace] remains under the company's control, as in platform theatre, set designers focus on the six areas that together constitute the set: backstage, stage, auditorium, proscenium, entrance, and exit. Only the backstage areas, unseen by the audience of customers, can be designed solely for functionality, for the what. All others must consider how the set design supports the [theatre = work]. Entrances and exits cannot be overlooked, for they introduce and reinforce the experience in the minds and memories of guests. Set designers must pay particular attention to the stage, of course, but also to the auditorium that guests occupy and the proscenium through which guests view the stage. Recall that at the Forum Shops in Las Vegas every store creates an inviting proscenium-like façade that fits in with the place's overarching theme of an ancient Roman marketplace.
Clearly, set design abides within the domain of architecture, and experience stagers must employ architectural expertise—for both internal and external purposes—to design new experience settings. In this technical work, only three rules apply. First, traditional architectural considerations must be supplemented with explicit consideration of the impressions the set will make on paying customers. This extends to everything guests may encounter. One of the simple, but indispensable, cues Walt Disney used at Disneyland was trees; their utter normality and everyday reality helped ground the fantasy he wanted to create. As explained by biographer Bob Thomas, Disney “wanted trees to be part of the beauty and the drama of Disneyland, and to play their roles, they needed to be big … Walt wanted each tree to fit its location—maples, sycamores and birches for the Rivers of America; pines and oaks for Frontierland, etc. He sometimes rejected a tree with the comment: ‘It's out of character.’ ”16 It falls to set designers to ensure that no thing is out of character; it would ruin the integrity of the performance.
Second, design around all five senses: sightlines, comfort level, acoustics, aromas, even food options. Think of all the sensory design innovations that have occurred in the hotel industry over the past two decades, from the attention given to the sheets' thread counts, pillows, and bed linens, to the use of scent machines to emit smells into lobby spaces (such as the white-tea signature scent at Westin Hotels) and offers of signature food items (such as the chocolate-chip cookies at DoubleTree Hotels). In some cases, set designers must design from scratch the proper sensory environment, as the Rainforest Cafe did with its five-sense water mist, or as Virgin America did by installing mood lighting in the seating cabins of its aircraft. Such sensory design, like all other aspects of design, must have integrity in the sum of its component elements.
Third, don't be bound by convention, for you make your own rules! Declared Francis Reid, for years head of the department of theatre design at London's Central School of Art and Design (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design), “Theatre has reached a development point where virtually anything goes. A point where a production's style is no longer expected to be either derivative of the past or based upon the logic of a new philosophy. The only requirement is internal consistency … A production may take virtually any proposition as its starting point so long as the consequences of that starting point are followed through.”17 In business theatre, that starting point is the theme of the experience; everything flows from the manifestation of that theme in acting performances and, of course, in set design.
PROP MANAGERS
In addition to set designers, a director often needs technicians to recommend the appropriate mix of props to use during the [theatre = work]. Used wisely, props play a significant part in engaging customers in positive ways. Props may be introduced simply for esthetic purposes (to create specific impressions) or for functional purposes (to help an actor perform some task), but esthetic considerations actually come into play for functional props as well.
Consider again the legal profession. Jury consultant Robert Hirschhorn, of Cathy E. Bennett & Associates in Lewisville, Texas, advises law firms to consider every physical good that appears in their performances, not only onstage but also in the entrance and exit areas of their sets. “You never know when a juror is going to see you getting in or out of your car in the parking lot,” says Hirschhorn, who therefore counsels counselors to stay away from luxury cars in favor of minivans or no-frills utility vehicles.18 Is this trickery, or an indication of thoroughness that extends into the courtroom as well? Before answering too fast, bear in mind that the importance of automotive props extends beyond lawyering to other industries (you may use such a prop yourself ). One international business machines company headquartered in Armonk, New York, long directed sales representatives calling on Detroit automakers to drive only U.S.-made cars onto automakers' lots. More sweepingly, a consumer goods company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, insists on U.S. vehicles for reps calling on all companies based in the fifty states. Clearly, the car model a company selects for its sales force entails more than just what vehicle best transports reps from point A to point B. Some of the largest corporations in the world use five-figure goods as mere props for their matching theatre.
Sometimes onstage actors serve as their own prop managers. Briefcases, pads of paper, even choice of writing instruments all contribute to one's act. But whoever selects the props, remember to eliminate negative cues. A prop that is misused or poorly selected can lose business. When in a meeting with a prospective client, don't stop your pitch midsentence to check your phone. If you must respond to it, improvise to turn the interruption into an opportunity to score points. (And if it works, add it to your repertoire of bits à la Tony Vera.) Prospects may brand an entire selling team annoying because one person's phone proved bothersome to the performance.
Presentation materials offer another lesson: never use a prop as a crutch. Overhead slides crowded with words often make a poor substitute for learning one's lines. Lengthy presentations that exceed the boundaries of allotted meeting times are no replacement for meticulous scriptwriting. Don't expect props—even cleverly designed ones—to cover for failings elsewhere in the ensemble's act. Rather, prop managers should see to it that actors use props to enable and accentuate important features of an act that cannot be staged without their use. When in doubt, help them figure out how to do without, or at least with less.
COSTUME DESIGNERS
Demand is also emerging for technicians skilled in the design and selection of wardrobes for the cast. The attire of workers has long been important in some businesses, especially those in certain service industries: airline pilots and crew, hotel staff, food servers and hosts in restaurants, delivery company drivers, security guards, and so forth. In most instances, costuming these workers consists of fitting them with uniforms, standard costumes worn by all the actors on stage. Uniforms send visible cues to customers to help them identify members of a company's ensemble. Who doesn't immediately recognize a UPS driver because of his familiar brown garb (not to mention the brown prop he's driving)?
A few costuming principles can help in almost any line of work.19 First, segment costume assignments by role, as did the cast of characters in commedia dell'arte, each of whom could be immediately recognized by a distinctive costume and mask. The airline industry is good at incorporating this element of theatre into its act. Folks at the check-in counter and gate wear one type of uniform, for example, pilots another, and ground crews yet another (and at British Airways, queue managers don red coats to play their parts). If a baggage handler ventures from backstage to the proscenium jetway, his knee pads and earplugs make his role very clear.
Second, costume designers must make sure each costume conveys a message consistent with the theme of the experience and characterization of the role the director wants portrayed, as is the case with the Geek Squad's geeky attire.20 This explains why airlines such as Southwest abandoned traditional airline garb in favor of more casual attire (while the Transportation Security Administration went the other way; conventional uniforms convey an aura of authority, especially if the cost
umes draw from military motifs in their design). And what do the polo-shirted and sneakered costumes of Southwest say? We're perky! And ready to jump up and down with you (in four connecting flights) to California, as if participating in an athletic event. Don't be misled by this example: the design of uniforms goes beyond assignment of formal versus casual costumes. Clothe workers in apparel that encourages the desired behavior by using costuming as a performance-inducing mask. The effect of such mask work proves readily apparent when companies employ mascots; but you can achieve the same influence without placing workers inside an enclosed suit.
The third costuming principle calls for directors and designers to allow actors to personalize their costumes, completing their characterizations, even if only in seemingly small details. For instance, restaurant chain T.G.I. Friday's, a business unit of the Carlson Companies, grants food servers license to supplement its standard-issue, red-and-white striped shirt with a hat of their choice and encourages them to adorn hat and shirt (and even suspenders, socks, and trousers) with buttons displaying slogans and symbols of the wildest variety imaginable (no profanity, though, thank God). The simple costuming feature contributes powerfully to the sights and sounds that connote a T.G.I. Friday's dining experience.
In many business roles, the only article of clothing traditionally available for males to personalize their costumes was the necktie. Over the past forty years, however, this limitation has been lifting, and we now see a wide variety of colored shirts and styled collars—not to mention socks, shoes, and belts—in the workplace. Even the buttoned-down halls of IBM and Procter & Gamble have loosened their ties. But something's often amiss when companies relax attire standards: who, then, coordinates the costuming, making sure the cast of characters matches from actor to actor and scene to scene? Without formal costuming roles—such as the team at East Jefferson General Hospital that put together its EJ Look book detailing the dos and don'ts of hospital costuming—these considerations usually go unattended.
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