FAST COMPANY
April/May 1996
THERE’S NO MEETINGS LIKE BUSINESS MEETINGS
Broadway isn’t the only place to see a show. Companies like Hughes Aircraft
and AT&T use theater groups to stage their meetings. by Louise
Palmer
What’s going on here? Has corporate American lost its collective marbles?
Or is business finally coming to its sense – all of them?
Companies as diverse as Boeing, Hughes Aircraft, AT&T, and Wells Fargo Bank
are turning to theater groups to find creative and evocative techniques for
bringing emotion into their meetings. The goals: push people out of their comfort
zones, spark innovation, encourage emotional engagement.
Consider the case of the James River Corp., a Richmond, Virginia-based paper
company. Its relationship with the Zellerbach paper company had been a long
and healthy one. Then in spring 1994 Zellerbach announced – seemingly out
of the blue – that it would no longer handle James River’s products
exclusively, a decision that put millions of dollars worth of business in jeopardy.
George Lipp, 52, director of commercial products (West) for James River, remembers
the aftershock: "Our people felt jilted. It was a soup of emotion made
up of anger, shock, alarm, and hurt."
On a whim born of desperation, Lipp called in Jonathan Rosen, 52, director of
TransFormance Theatre, to set up a weekend-long meeting between top managers
of the two companies.
Rosen opened the meeting by handing out cans filled with coffee beans for the
group to shake in time to the music. Then he began drumming. Lipp began sweating.
"I wanted to jump out the window," Lipp recalls. "Everyone was
slumped in their chairs, looking at the floor, slightly embarrassed and confused.
I thought I was toast."
But by the time Rosen stopped drumming, the feeling in the room had changed.
The nervous chatter was gone, replaced by a new-found warmth. Rosen asked the
managers to tell a brief story illustrating how they felt about what was happening
at work.
As each man spoke, members of Rosen’s troupe transformed themselves into
the characters in the story. The performances were a mix of pain and laughter,
revealing the emotional subtext of the decision for all involved.
It’s been one year since the retreat, and James River has won back every
cent of its business with Zellerbach. Lipp points out that many complicated
factors made it possible. But, he says, it was TransFormance Theatre that allowed
the managers from both companies to resume their working relationships.