Rypple brings the art of live performance to a corporation near you
I spent the better part of my early career as a company manager for Broadway shows and national tours. In essence, my boss and I were the only common points of contact between the producers (those with the money to create and run the show), the company that made the show happen every night (actors and stagehands), and the local presenters in each market (the people who own the theatres in each city we traveled to). From financial planning to travel arrangements to talent contracts, we were the keepers of all the business aspects involved in running a show. To this day, it’s the best business training I’ve ever had.
Theatre, and particularly the business of theatre, involves a hefty amount of collaboration and improvisation. Something is always going haywire in the world of live entertainment to keep the train on the tracks requires some fancy maneuvering. An actor has to be rushed the emergency room, there’s a blizzard that’s delayed the transit from one city to another; there’s a union strike. I was with a show in Chicago on September 11th and for 12 hours, our tiny office in the basement of the Shubert was the central hub for every person involved in our show. They looked to us for guidance, help, support, and information of all kinds.
Now that I’m giving the corporate world a whirl post-business school, this whole annual review process stumps me. In theatre, feedback is a constant, continuous stream. There’s no time for a semi-annual or annual review. If I waited 6 months to find out how I was doing in my job, the show would go belly-up in no time. The show and the individual performance of each member of the company are reviewed at every waking moment, and then some. As it should be.
Artists have an unfair and flat-out incorrect stereotype of being flaky, with little business sense. I learned very quickly, within hours of taking my first theatre job, that artists are much more savvy than most people I met in the business world. Their livelihood is on the line every day, and they’ve got no one to cover them if they make a mistake. All eyes are on them, all the time. They rely on feedback to keep their jobs, and to get them their next jobs. Feedback, good, bad, and indifferent, is the basis of their entire professional existence.
All of this might sound nerve-wracking and frightening. It’s not. It takes a bit of adjustment, though since I started in theatre right out of college, I didn’t know any different. So I just thought this is the way it is. It wasn’t until after my MBA that I realized feedback sessions in corporations are few and far-between. Constant feedback in theatre made every person accountable, and we all shared the load to get the show up on its feet every night.
Enter Rypple. When I learned about the service, I breathed a sigh of relief. There was my old friend, continuous feedback, in a bright, shiny new get-up. A slick platform that’s friendly and easy to use. It’s just the boost corporate America needs. Constant feedback breeds camaraderie. It gets the job done more efficiently and in this day and age, corporations can use all the efficiency they can get!
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