Ballet, Business, or Both

For some of our most recent blogs, I’ve asked a few of my closest friends and even family to contribute to our discussions on leadership, representation, strategic planning, and other topics.

October 1st is World Ballet Day and I am thrilled to share a discussion that I had with my wife, Angela Harris, about how her profession, Ballet, closely resembles the processes that I use in business development and execution.  I’m sure she will read this and have a few corrections for me, but here’s my take!

Angela is a former professional ballerina and is now a choreographer, professor of dance, cultural arts administrator, and all-around advocate and promoter of dance.  One of the courses that she teaches at the university level is the “Business of Dance”.  Her curriculum helps young entrepreneurially-minded students understand the foundation of launching a sustainable dance company. She really is an impressive person and inspires me daily.

So let me start by NOT insulting anyone’s intelligence… I am fully aware of the hundreds of billions of dollars generated annually by ballet, the overall dance profession, and the performing arts in general.  This blog is not an attempt to analyze the financial aspects of the industry.  You can take a look here if you want information on that topic.  However, in our nearly two decades being together, I have attended hundreds of performances across the country and the world.  I am always impressed by the dancers’ skills and commitment to their craft.  

One day, while discussing how professional dancers get to the point where it is a job, I simply remarked on the parallel between what I noticed and the attributes of other successful leaders, business people, athletes, companies, etc.

Passion/Purpose

Most professional ballet dancers discover their passion for the art form early in their lives and become hooked.  They have to sacrifice many other activities and engagements to hone their skills, rehearse, attend recitals, and support other industry events.  

Take a minute to think about your business.  Do you actually like what you do?  Do you LOVE it?  When times get hard, cash flow is low, your body aches and your mind is numb, your LOVE for what you do is what gets you out of bed, pushes you through, inspires you to go on one more audition, or make one more business prospecting call.  It’s what drives your desire to keep going.

Practice/Preparation

Ballet dancers don’t make it onto the performance stage until they’ve spent hours upon hours in the rehearsal studio.  A well-choreographed full-length ballet is clearly the culmination of many hours of preparation.  

It’s the same in business.  When I am delivering results to a client or leading a training workshop, that is the result of hours, days, weeks, months, and even years of prep work.  Wearing my old instructional designer hat for a second, we spend anywhere from 5 to 20 times the number of hours developing a customized training course as compared to the amount of time delivering the content.

Positions

Part of the practice regimen in ballet is to master the correct placement and alignment of the 5 basic positions.  All other movements build off of those positions. 

One of the mistakes that I made early in my business was trying to develop too many offerings!  I needed to reduce our services to a few core business offerings and master those.  Trying to be everything to everyone will quickly result in being nothing to anyone!

Pivot (Movement)

One of my favorite movements in all of ballet is the Italian Fouette. It is a movement that, to the untrained, may seem impossible.  But Angela often reminds me that it is a movement that is practiced (see above) to perfection.  

It was watching a ballerina execute an Italian Fouette that really inspired me to think about “pivoting”, the original impetus of my reflection of how ballet is similar to business development/execution.  In business, your ability to be flexible or adaptable to both internal and external impacts may often determine your survival.  This is your ability to pivot.  Sometimes we can predict upcoming shifts in our respective markets and sometimes we can be the person/organization that pushing the change… recreating markets and industries.  However, at times we are at the mercy of uncontrollable fluctuations in how our business operates (see the global pandemic of 2020).  Your ability to pivot, be flexible and agile, and embrace movement to new positions and offerings without diluting your quality can determine whether or not you are here for the proverbial “long haul”.

Performance

As I mentioned earlier, the onstage performance is the culmination of many hours of practice.  But that doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s the performance that the audience sees, remembers, spends their money on, falls in love with, and hopefully comes back for more.  It’s not the practice or rehearsal that little girls and boys witness and grow a passion for. The greatest ballet companies in the world perform at a level that cannot be denied as close to perfection.  

In your business, is your performance of a consistently high quality that clients find reasons to keep you engaged? Are they happy to refer you to others? Is the investment they’re making in your services an afterthought (for them) because they know the quality of the product they’re receiving?

Practice (again)

I’m sensing a theme here! The most skilled and experienced ballet dancers still have to practice… even after years of execution.  They may have muscle memory, making certain movements like second nature to them, but they must still stay sharp nonetheless.  

It’s the same for your business.  You are truly only as good as your last client engagement.  The minute you rest on your laurels and “mail it in” is the minute your reputation as a trusted solution or service provider starts to wane.  Part of your annual strategic planning should be how you are dedicating time and investing capital into ongoing skill development.  You don’t have to continuously swap out what you offer, but you do have to continuously practice, tweak, and strive to make it better.  It may be as simple as updating presentation material with more modern imagery or editing case studies with more recent examples.

Post-Performance (notes)

 After every ballet performance, the dancers receive notes from the stage manager on things that could make the show better.  While consistency is key, there are often small changes that are made in the performing arts to ensure the audience is receiving what the production promised to deliver.  

In your business, how are you auditing your performance?  It is easy to administer post-training assessments to participants in a training workshop, but do you also regularly query your entire client or customer base to gauge their level of satisfaction with your products and services? Do you use that feedback to make necessary (even if they are minute) adjustments to your services?

This was a fun blog for me to write because it’s not only something that I live daily, but I also get to incorporate what I learn or at least what I am reminded of by others who are close to me… others who, on the surface, may seem to exist in a completely different working context but in reality share many of the exact core concepts for success.