The Head of Cirque du Soleil on Creativity and Strategy

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How does creativity figure in your business strategy? Today we bring you a conversation with Danielle Lamar, Executive Vice Chairman of Cirque de Soulet, the Circus and Entertainment Company. Lamar explains. Creativity is at the forefront of Cirque's business strategy. In this episode, you'll learn how Circ approaches creative management and the surprisingly important role that analyzing audience feedback plays in strategic decision making.

Hi and welcome to Harvard Business Review's The New World of Work. I'm Audie Ignatius, Editor Chief of Harvard Business Review, and each week on this show we talk to executives on the front line about the future of work, about talent, about technology. and much more. So thank you for being with us. Our guest today is Danielle Lamar.

I'm so happy and honored to meet you today. And it's a great, great uh time to talk about creativity and and and how we're going to innovate. So I'm blessed to have the opportunity to talk with you.

Well thank you. We feel the same way. We're really glad that you're here. And you know, m j just to set context, could you talk just a little bit just to set up the conversation about Circusole's mission and maybe about how you came to the company?

Yeah, this company, you know, uh started uh with a bunch of street performers begging at the corner of the street and move forward ten years later, uh, you know, I had the opportunity to join the company when I thought the brand was ready to explode uh globally, and that's what I've been doing for the last uh two decades.

Um and by the way, uh to our viewers, um I'm I'm speaking with Danielle Lamar, who is uh former CEO and executive vice chairman now of Cirque du Soleil. If you have questions for Danielle, put them in the chat box and we'll try to we'll try to get to as many as we can later. Um, okay, so so so you come to Circle Soleil, it it it has a mission, it has some initial success, but as you said, you're trying to develop it, to scale it, to blow it up globally.

Yeah, th and two famous uh, you know, teachers from from from your school, from Harvard, as described as in their Blue Ocean strategy. has as as we have developed a new category of show. And I truly believe that's what happened and that's that's how we've been successful. Because if you try to describe a circus show, it's very difficult. You will probably start by saying it's not a circus show. It's not dance. It's not theatrical. And uh I would say that it's a blend of all of that.

So yeah, I d we were talking before the show and I said that, you know, my family fell in love with Cirque du Soleil. We were living in Hong Kong and we saw a couple of shows, Allegria and Sultanbanco, and couldn't believe them. This this this would have been in the nineteen nineties. And uh yeah, it it was, as you say, such a departure. Actually, if people want to put in the in the comment box what their favorite Cirque show is, I'd I'd be interested what people say.

Yeah, and and and really, you know, the motivation for me to to to write a book. was I was motivated to promote creativity because that's what I've learned. I had the opportunity through all those years to see amazing and observing amazing creators. such as our founder Guy La Liberté, but also international people like James Cameron's and the Beatles. And and and watching them work, it has changed my personal and my professional life and really made my creativity.

So let me push you on that. So so how how do you manage creativity?

First and foremost, I think it's very important that you create an environment that nurture creativity. And what I mean by that is that You have to have your core business central in everything we d you do and in your environment. In our case, you know, the founder hired me a clown called Madame Zazou. And Madame Zazou became a symbol of what we are. And internally every day I used her to remind our employees what our core business

So Ed Catmull, who was uh you know, the very successful creative leader at Pixar for years,

He he talked about how at the end of every show so he was similar to you, trying to unleash kind of extraordinary innovation and creativity with each movie in this case. But at the end of it, you know, he almost wanted to kind of z wipe everybody's brains. clear so that with the next project they didn't fall back into a well this is how this company does things that there was a sort of a freshness with every project.

Yeah, first and foremost, I I don't think of Cirque du Soleil as a yarchy uh organization, and that's why every time we produce a new show, I will create a cell with all of our creators and artists. I and I will say to all the administrative staff to stay away from I d I don't want them to think about, you know, some HR policy or some financial issues. I want them to really breed and sleep and eat, just thinking.

And you've had an amazing record of success. Uh you know, there are probably some shows that were not a success. You know, are there one or two examples you could talk about where, you know, that didn't work and and maybe what you learned from that?

Yeah, I think it's very, very important that you understand that uh, you know, you take risk and sometime you fail. And uh in our case, I remember we wanted to, you know, reinvent vaudeville as we did with Circle. And uh unfortunately using the brand of Sorg du Soleil was a big mistake because people were expecting to see an acrobatic.

Yeah. You can stretch a brand but but you don't want to stretch it so far that it's not sort of who you are. Um So so you're talking about creativity, encouraging creativ creativity, sustaining it. I'm sure there are people watching this who say, Yeah, okay, fine. This is a circus company, you know, I work for Whatever, you know, nothing that exciting. So, you know, how so how is your message relevant to, you know, the the large number of viewers we have who don't happen to be in the circuit?

Yeah, first of all, yes, we are blessed, uh because Serg Busolei is a creative power. How?

So you're you're drumming up all that creativity within and trying to bring it out and celebrate it. You know, h how do you bring in the voice of the of the customer, of the consumer as you're in this, you know, sort of creative mindset?

Yeah, people will be surprised to see how an organization like us is so analytic. Every night, every show, we are asking the customer to react. And if for whatever reason we see that there is an act that is not liked as much as the others, We're just going to take it out and we're just going to replace it by a better act. So it's very, very important that you are listening all the time, listening to your customer in priority, but also listening to your employees.

So I I can see some good questions are coming in and again if you have questions for Danielle, put them in the in the chat box. I I have a personal question first, which is, you know, there's a passage in your book where you talk about when Guy La Liberté, the founder of Cirque brought you into the company and uh, you know, you were already s very successful in the PR and events business.

Yeah, obviously, yeah, my parents, even my wife at the time, was not really excited about me leaving my job. I was the CEO of a T V network and they were very proud of And uh and and and the one thing that triggers the changes is when Guy La Liberté said, Danielle, I read that you wanted to be international. And it will it won't happen to you for this with this Canadian TV network. If you want to be international, you have to join a circuit.

That's great advice. So so then let's fast forward. So you have this this period of of sensational growth, expansion, uh and then covet hits and live performances are not possible. You know, obviously the company is is hit hard. You end up with a new sort of in investor structure. So can you talk about how you survived that period and and where the company is now?

Yeah, that was that was a nightmare. That was the toughest period in my life, and I know it was for a lot of people in different sector, but in my case, within forty-eight hours, I came from forty-four shows to zero shows. Went from a billion dollars of revenues to zero revenue. And my purpose in life, I took great pride in creating jobs for artists. And then I end up in a situation when I had to let go not only two thousand artists, but all of our five thousand employees. That was a disaster.

So I'm gonna go to some audience questions because there's some good ones coming in, and this is this first one is from George who's watching on YouTube. And it's really um well the question is, how can creativity be implemented um in our own lives, you know, in our personal lives? What what personal strategies can we follow to to, you know, unlock that kind of creativity that you talked about.

Yeah, I I think I think it's important that we're beast of abbots that we as we all know, and that's what you have to fight. You have to do things differently all the time and you have to find ways to be inspired. by reading more, by visiting events, by talking to inspiring people. You know, people that I had the opportunity to meet, like the Beatles and James Cameron and others, has changed my life.

So we sort of take for granted now that you know there there is this Cirque, you know, Beatles show in in Las Vegas and and that it's amazing and so many of us have seen it. T talk a little bit about the process of of getting the Beatles and you know, and and their heirs, their descendants you know, their their people who represented them, to to to get them to an agreement, which was pretty difficult. I mean, talk a little bit about that process.

Yeah, uh you know for many, many years uh all the entertainment all the live entertainment company were chasing the Beatles to do a show with their catalog, their music cattle. and nobody succeeded. And it took me two years of my life negotiating with them because it was not about money. It was about making sure that we will respect their brand.

Yeah, in the book there there's more detail, more granular detail about that process. So if you're interested in in circ, if you're interested in the Beatles, uh, if you're interested in Danielle, I urge you to to check out his book. So I wanna ask you a question. Actually, two people have asked pretty much the same question.

Yeah, we have a very specific uh creative process. It starts with three people. It starts with the director of the show, the creative director, and the production director. and we give them a general mandate about what we are looking for in terms of the new show. The three of them come to us And present to us a first synopsis of what the show should be. And then when we agree to the general concept of the new show, then we will add to that.

So here's a question I from Marta, I don't know if it's the same Marta, but Marta from Canada. Um so and I'm gonna adapt it a little bit. So you know when Sukta Soleil you know, w was first sort of out there, it was so different from anything we'd seen and and it was amazing. And but her question is, you know, is it harder now to impress people?

Uh it is. Uh it is because the expectation is are uh are much higher. That's why uh we have a huge challenge to remain relevant. And the way to do that is by investing a lot in research and development. And that's what we do. We work in collaboration with a lot of universities around the world. We work with big companies such as Samsung and Microsoft and others. We are in the lookout all the time, not only for new ideas, but for new technologies. Human performance.

So Richard in Italy has a question that really talks about or or asks about what you just said about new digital platforms. And the question is, do you have any plans to perform in the metaverse?

Yeah, we we it's uh it's a world obviously, it's a universe that uh we are definitely uh exploring uh as as as we l as we're going through right now. Uh one thing I want to be clear, we will remain a live entertainment organisation. because that's what we are great at doing. But on the other end, through the crisis, we have developed a platform called Circ Connect that has allowed us

All right, we will we will watch this space. By the way, I love the fact that we're getting questions from, you know, quite literally all over the world. And here's one from Finland from Giri. And the question is, you know, how do you ultimately how do you measure success?

Uh we we first and foremost uh we have the uh you know NPS, which is the the the net promoter score. uh see simply what we measure is that are you going to recommend our show to your friends and family? And that satisfaction level is very, very important. And and that's something uh that we measure. So the first criteria, the most important one, is the satisfaction of our customers.

Jacqueline, who was watching on YouTube's uh notes that you said you share the credit when there's a success. So her question is so what happens when there's a failure or things don't go as well? How do you process that with your team?

Yeah. Uh first of all, at the end of the day, if you're the CEO of the company, you're responsible for the failures. So you have to tell to the group. that that's first and foremost your failure that you accept it but more importantly that you're going to learn from it. Then you invite them to learn from it as well. And that's why it's important you have to go to a post mortem, a good evaluation to define what are we going to learn from that failure.

All right, so we have a c a question from Quebec, so of course we have to ask that, and that is from Johanna who asks you, other than your book, are there any other good books you can suggest on the this topic of creativity?

Yeah, there there is a book obviously of catmall that uh that that you talk about. I think it's a great one, the guy from P.

Yeah.

Uh I would also recommend to read the book from Bob Iger from Disney. I think it's a great book as well. Those two books. uh was uh you know put a lot of pressure on me uh because they were really, really great uh with two uh amazing organizations. So that the two books that uh that comes to mind.

Yep. So in a similar vein, here's a question from Julia from Boston, who's suspiciously suspiciously might be sitting in the same room with me. But the question is, um, who inspires you?

Ah a lot of people inspire me. Uh you know, obviously our founder Guy La Liberté, but also a guy like James Cameron. I was so so uh rewarded to work with him on on the live show that we did about Avatar. uh I was impressed by his uh intellectual uh curiosity. Uh he when he came to visit our uh creative center here in Montreal, uh I thought he will stay for an hour, he stayed for four hours. because he wanted to know everything about our creative program.

Uh Omar in Egypt asks, how do you envision the future of entertainment, not just Cicto Soleil, but more generally the future of of entertainment, you know, in the next you know, whatever, 10, 15, 20 years.

Yeah, uh there are two schools of thought. Uh one is saying, you know, the future is only going to be through new technology, new platform, and light live info uh entertainment is going to be upset. And the other school of thought is after the crisis, people uh understand now that it's also important that you're going to see shows with real human beings. I personally believe that the two schools of thought are good. There will be more and more artistic content on new platforms.

So not everyone on your team is a creative. And there's a question from Shaheed on LinkedIn. How do you balance, you know, you've got the creative people and you're always talking about them, you know, but some of your stars are Operational people working quietly to make sure things happen. So how do you how do you balance how do you balance that?

Yeah, obviously, you know, it's a... today uh challenge uh because because creativity is at the forefront of who we are and we are perceived as a creative force. But the reality is were also logistically amazing because we tour with 150 people for each show around the world with 50 trucks. of uh of equipment. And in each city it's uh you have to be local because we are a a retail outlet in a city for two to three months.

So we talk a lot about what is the proper role of a CEO with a with a complex company. We have a question. Sushanya and Sri Lanka is curious. When you were CEO, you know, how how did you spend your time? How did you spend your day? How what were your priorities?

Yeah, uh, you know, the the good news is I had a great team. And because I had a great team, it allowed me to be able to focus. on mobilizing our employees. I think that's the number one responsibility of the CEO because if the employees don't believe in what you do, you're bound to fail. And so that was my number one priority is uh I I love to go and and walk in the building and go to the studio and meet with people and more importantly, listen to them.

A lot.

by listening to your employees. Uh you go in a city where we're presenting a show. Our employees have been there for, you know, a month. They know more about what's happening in that city than I do from my office in Montreal. So that's something I spend uh a great time of of doing. Then after that, obviously reviewing the business model and uh spending a lot of time in uh new business and new shows development because this th this is very, very important.

So we're going to Marta from Canada again. And her question is, can you give us a hint about your next show?

Uh yeah, first of all I I have to tell you that I'm very, very proud of our new show uh at Disney uh in Orlando because uh we played with the intellectual property of Disney. That was a tribute to the animation of Disney and uh and this is a great show. And uh and we're also uh working right now on two new shows. Uh one is going to be about music. That's going to be an arena show that uh that is uh very impressive.

All right, so we we've gone over time a little bit, so uh you know, uh there are a lot more questions, but I think we have to wrap this up. But Danielle Lamar, thank you very, very much for being on the New World of Work.

Thank you to you. That was an honor to be to be here. Thank you very much.

That was Danielle Lamar, Executive Vice Chairman of Cirque de Soulet, in conversation with HBR editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius. That conversation you just heard was part of HBR's New World of Work video series. which explores how top executives see the future and how their companies are trying to set themselves up for success.