Randal: In trying to make your way successfully through the world, I have come to appreciate just how important it is to have a model for success. If you can find either a business out there that’s doing it and doing it well or an individual that’s doing something and doing it well and you model yourself after them, you chances of success go up exponentially, because they have a way that’s proven to work and so, in trying to make your way through change the business and learning how to do that effectively, a really good first step is to pick out a model for change.

Unfortunately, there aren’t a whole lot of models out there. As we said before, most organizations and for that matter most individuals, are spectacularly bad at changing the business. But that’s not true for everyone and that’s not true for everyone, and it's not true for all organizations, and there are certain classes of organizations that for the most part, they’re all doing it fairly well.

And one of the ones that Dutch likes to talk about is theater companies. Theater companies as it turns out are spectacularly good at making change happen. It is an integral part of everything they do and from the gaffer to the lead, everyone knows that no production lasts forever. And it’s engrained in everything that they do. Integrating that change the business mentality into what they do every day running the business of the production so much so that we like to use a theater company as a model for success. So, Dutch, tell me a little bit more about how this theater model works, how this theater model mentality is a great model for success.

Dutch: Well, as you’ve said, it keys on the fact that no place lasts forever, like no business model lasts forever. The secret is that the theatre companies know that so that they’re always looking for that next performance, the next production.

Randal: Next big thing and people don't get that. So, just to interject for a second here, I was having a conversation about Steve Jobs not too long ago. Time was way back when; all you needed was one big hit.

So, Steve Jobs and whoever, Wazniack, whatever his name was, they had the Apple 2, that was the whole career, that’s all you needed you’re whole career. If you had one big hit like that, you were done, that would be enough to coast like your whole career, but they went from the Apple 2 and then the Macintosh, and then i-pods and now i-phones and now the Macintosh is really kind of reborn, I mean you think about how many iterations of success and innovation the Apple Corporation and Steve Jobs, in particular, has had. It shows you just how often you need to reinvent yourself to keep this career going forward. Much more the case now than in the past and unless you’re able to do that, you’re one hits is only going to serve you a number of years before your show is over.

Dutch: So, the people in the theater business have relatively short run kind of play.

Randal: That’s right.

Dutch: And so, they’ve had to become very good at changing over to the next production. So, I looked for years at ways of describing to managers how you can be good at change and so when we hit on this theater model, just really seem to make sense.

Randal: Alright, so after you picked the next play, you go through the process of deciding, "Okay, the audience we’ve been attracting, what other plays." Whatever the decision making process. So, you’ve picked the new play that you need to do, what’s next?

Dutch: Well, next, you’ve got to figure out whether you can, as the theater people say, mount that play. Can you put it on? Do you have the dollars and the resources and the time to be able to put it on? Primarily can you find a producer who’s willing to invest the money in that next performance?

Randal: So, you would have several alternatives, and you look at each alternative and see all right which one is the most feasible, the most achievable, which one makes the most strategic sense, given where we are now?

Dutch: And the keyword is resources. You can’t go into a change if you’re not resourced to do that. So, that’s a very important factor, and you may determine through your market research that the best play to put on from a crowd or a draw point of view might be My Fair Lady, but you may have a producer that says, "I’m not willing to back that play. You’ve got to pick another one, because I don’t like, etc, etc., etc." So, resources are set. Once you’ve got the resources lined up, then you can begin to look for cast and crew. If we’ve decided we’re going to do Oklahoma, let’s say now I need to look among my cast of characters and my theater company and find out who’s going to fit what role and see if I can get them lined up and signed up and under contract to play their part in Oklahoma.

Randal: So, here you are, you’re playing Mercuric, right? Is that Romeo and Juliet, Mercuric?

Dutch: I don’t know. I just know Romeo and Juliet.

Randal: You’re playing Romeo, right. And so, you’re in the middle of your love scene and you’re realizing the audience isn’t filling up the way it used to, that there’s change underfoot and you’re getting wind that, maybe Oklahoma, right? So, if you’re a smart actor, and you’re not familiar with Oklahoma, you get the script and you understand the parts and you start thinking of yourself in your new role and how do I transition from Romeo to Curley or whatever it is.

Dutch: But you’re not doing that while you’re making love to Juliet, that’s sort of back-stage you’ve got to do that.

Randal: That's right.

Dutch: So, that’s a good point. The actors are aware. The actors are of course a part of the process of managing the theater company. So, once the play has been picked out, it has been resourced, and we begin to try to get a handle on who’s going to go where. A critical thing, and once those actors get under contract for the new production, and then you can begin to prepare them for the play. And they start with they need to make sure they got a script. They got to make sure it’s the current script. Everybody’s got to make sure they read it. They have to spend time developing, memorizing their part. There’s some little minor thing that we call rehearsals that happen sooner or later when the cast begins to work together.

Randal: New props have to be – old props have to be transitioned out. The settings have to be transitioned out. New ones have to be transitioned in.

Dutch: That’s right. A lot of work and that theater manager are not only working with the actors. He is working with those other moving parts as well.

Randal: And theater companies do this all the time. I mean, they are often doing, they are still well into Romeo and Juliet. They’re still doing at the same time; they’re doing all their planning for Oklahoma.

Often they’ll have, in the program, there will be Romeo and Juliet on the cover and it will say Oklahoma. They already know what the next play is going to be and when it’s going to start, and where it’s going to be. Theater companies are really, really good at this. So much so that I think, we kind of take it for granted. We don’t even really stop to think about it.

I’ll tell you a quick story. I was at a theater production, a wonderful, wonderful production. It was the last performance, and if you stick around, after the last performance, you’ll see something amazing. These people will, as soon as the last person is out, people will descend onto the scenery and start tearing it apart. I mean, it happens that fast. Before everyone goes home, the set is torn down. So, they get it, they understand this need for change and no production lasts forever, and it’s part of their process. Anyway, so much so, that we take it for granted. And one of the things that have always kind of tickled me is when we’re dealing with a change in the business world and somebody’s not doing something right. They’re not doing the change the business thing right. What you often do, once you kind of explain this theater analogy to them is you will describe their behavior, you will describe the equivalent of a theater company.

So, like for example, one of the first ones I heard them talk about was the guy who shows up in tights for Oklahoma, because he loves his, he thinks he looks good in tights, so he shows up for rehearsal for Oklahoma wearing tights. And there are equivalents in the business world, like there’s a certain kind of software that somebody’s just can’t give up and they show up to the new process with this old software. It’s like the guy’s still wearing his Romeo and Juliet tights. You have a couple of other examples that always tickle me, because they seem so bizarre when you put them in the context of theater, but often these kinds of behaviors are people don’t chuckle when they see it in the business world because it's too common.

Dutch: In the business world, we have a wide latitude for accepting that kind of behavior while the director of the play has zero tolerance in that, and would kill immediately and somebody walks off the stage after performing with the wrong costume.

So, rehearsal, getting ready is critical and you want to, because they do have to open on a certain day. So, the rehearsal and the readiness are very closely planned, so that you could be ready at that time. So, the play is ready to open and the other critical step is that you just said are you got to tear down the old set, you got to get the old play out of everybody’s head, and you have to be able to move to the new play with no memory of the previous play, whatsoever. Just think about for a moment, if you move to the new play, but some of the actors weren’t willing to give up their lines from the old one, so right in the middle of a scene in Oklahoma, you would have an actor singing a song from Romeo and Juliet because they can’t give up their old play.

So, now they’re in the new play and the rule of thumb I've heard is you ought to be at 95% proficiency before the play opens, and over the next days or weeks they’ll get it down to 99%, and now they’re running that play. And meanwhile, we’re thinking about the next play. So, everything from running the play, thinking about the new one, getting ready for the new one. Shutting down the old one and going forward with the new one. That turns out to be an absolutely perfect metaphor for what a manger or an employee in a company needs to be able to do in order to do change well for that company. What we’re going to do is take each of these actions that the theater company goes through and we’re going to tackle it one at a time and in our first episode for example, we’re going to say, all right you’re working as a manager or an employee in a company, how do you tell them when it’s time for a change?

So, we’ll work you through that set of skills, and by the time you get through with this, you will have a great change the business mastery. Why? Because you already know how a play works. Nobody’s surprised when I tell them, "Gosh, no play lasts forever and they have to pick a new play." That isn’t exactly a big surprise. So, everything you’ll hear in the sessions after this are going to be in this same logic and I think you’ll see that it fits to a "T".