People were flooding into my Montreal office with bad news, like another city locked down, another show canceled, and a border closed. We held emergency meetings, but the decisions were outdated by the time the meeting ended. The big casino resorts that hosted our Las Vegas shows were closing. The NBA and Broadway shows were already dark and the live entertainment industry was falling down.
In less than a week, our company had to cancel 44 shows around the world, and revenue went from $1 billion a year to zero. The global Pandemic of March 2020 left us without a business. It seemed inevitable that a bankruptcy protection would be necessary. I knew I had to be calm. I would need every ounce of strength I could muster to save our company.
The sun rises. Cirque du Soleil has returned to stages in the U.S. and abroad. In November 2020 our creditor absorbed our debt and invested an additional $375 million in us.
I was writing a book about creativity in business that made me think about why our company became so successful after its humble beginnings in 1984 as a ragtag group of local street performers and what companies in other industries might learn from our experience.
Our touring shows reach 450 cities in over 90 countries during my 21 years at the company. Our productions have been seen by more than 500 million spectators, and our 15 million tickets sold were more than all Broadway shows combined.
How did we grow so much? I kept coming back to creativity. I mean the standard definition of making or bringing into existence something new. Which raises the question of how a company can stay at the cutting edge.
First, forget the pyramid structure. That makes experimentation harder. We found that employees need smaller, more intimate groups to express themselves and play with new ideas. We were able to grow large without compromising quality. We act like a small company.
We have several cells dedicated to research and development. Three full-time employees in our trends group search the world for new ideas and talent in music, fashion, architecture, theater, film, games and more. New stage technologies and other breakthrough technologies that reduce performer injuries are some of the major projects Nextasy selects each year. A pair of augmented-reality smartglasses, called HoloLens, developed with Microsoft Corp., allows our directors to visualize the entire stage before it's even built.
How you choose your partners is important in establishing a creative culture. We call our guidelines the Four Criteria because they can apply to any company.
Is it a challenge? This is the most important question. Ask if your team is excited about the project. Managers don't give workers enough reasons to get excited about what they do, which is why they quit in historic numbers. A staff that is creatively challenged is more productive and works longer hours.
Does our partner share our values? MGM Resorts International has always supported our Las Vegas shows no matter how far out our ideas are or how expensive the theater construction is. We have worked with other resorts that did not care about the artistic content of our shows. We clashed constantly because of our values being out of alignment.
Can it make money? We don't consider making money until the first two conditions are met. It was a disaster when we formed partnerships with a casino resort that guaranteed us a profit in exchange for prestige. Our brand was damaged by almost empty theaters. Our company has never been driven by a lust for money, so we should have rejected this deal.
Our partners are socially engaged. Cirque du Monde is a nonprofit that helps at-risk youth if the answer is no. They are always happy when our new partners get involved.
When Covid-19 hit, we had to quickly return 1,500 cast and crew members who were stranded in 13 cities. We had to find warehouses for almost 500 trucks. The trauma of March 19, 2020, when we had to lay off 95 percent of our employees without any idea of when we could rehire them, was more traumatic.
I was astonished to get calls from blue-chip investors as we went through bankruptcy protection. They were attracted by the power of our brand and the value of our intellectual property despite our crippled state. Our market value was put at a stunning $1.28 billion by the winning bid.
That sequence of events shows why creativity is so important in business. If you aren't placing a high premium on creativity, you're wasting your time and I plan to travel widely to spread my message. No company deserves to exist unless it is constantly finding ways to improve its customers lives. Without creativity there is no business.
Daniel Lamarre's Balancing Acts was taken from. Permission was granted byHarperCollins Leadership.
