Existential threats
For organizations where self-generated income is the sole or main source, suddenly closing doors to paying audiences or visitors has required leaders to face “the existential question of survival”. “COVID has posed an existential threat to all I have achieved in 26 years at our museum,” reflected one CEO. Annual festivals have been especially hard hit: “The forced cancellation of our key annual event threatened the sustainability of the organization while we battled to secure the support that would allow us to continue to operate.”
While government furlough schemes and support grants have provided a vital lifeline, more needed to be done, in some cases: “pulling together a strong enough case to get a museum-saving loan from our bank” while others embarked on huge cost-cutting measures: “The financial impact on us has been considerable. As a result, we’ve been through a massive change programme – restructuring, losing more than 1,000 staff.”
The effect on theaters, with tightly-packed indoor spaces and productions needing a long lead-time, has been catastrophic. One CEO struggled with working out when to “reopen our doors to the million people that we usually welcome each year. Naively, our recovery plans were considering a summer 2020 re-launch. None of us expected theatres would be hibernating for over a year with the loss for us of 90% of our income.”
Re-framing strategy
Strategy is normally formed around a set of generally accepted assumptions, in a process that often takes months. Delivery stretches out over a longer period, needing just incremental adjustment as progress is achieved or the context changes. So what has been different?
“Although you could argue this entire year is unprecedented, its challenges are like many past experiences; it’s not the first time I have made big decisions swiftly or been presented with new information requiring a different course. However, the broader context has no set plan of action either. It feels like we are in onion layers of confusion and are all making it up as we go along. There’s no one thing to hang on to, no datum.”
Another CEO summed it up simply as “trying to maintain a long-term perspective in a constantly evolving situation – balancing the risk of getting things wrong because we were moving at such pace, with the need for fast decisive decision-making”. So, do established plans still hold good?
Alongside “trying to strike the right balance in dealing with the immediate problems of COVID while also looking to future opportunities”; another said: “There have been clear non-negotiable points on strategy, and our five-year plan has been stuck to, 70% achieved but in different ways. That’s important because it’s a drum beat of normality . . . steering a course despite the choppy waters, but accepting we are tacking a lot more than usual.”
Managing vulnerability
More replies fall into this area than any other – and often with heartfelt language, revealing the strain it has caused – “the sheer relentlessness of it”, said one. “COVID created huge insecurity. Overnight, everything changed; from an office base to homeworking, changes to terms of employment (everyone took a 20% pay reduction, some were furloughed), and the team had to accept that the festival we work towards all year wasn’t going to happen.”
Everyone has had their own set of personal challenges. “For some it was loneliness, for others it was anxiety about their own health or worries on behalf of loved ones. There was a big impact on colleagues with young families who struggled with home schooling. As leaders, we faced a number of serious challenges when staff voiced their unhappiness at decisions we made.”
For some leaders, it has exposed their own personal anxieties, demanding domestic and family arrangements, and loneliness. One graphically described “the absence of the nourishment that drives me in theater leadership: the moment where the show meets the audience. The electricity of 7.30pm and the fireworks that fall out when the show closes. Taking decisions in this void has been brutal . . . it’s 100% desk work for months on end.”