The Beauty of Strategic Alignment

How Glenn McCoy slowed down in order to become a better leader

Glenn McCoy, former executive director of San Francisco Ballet

Photo Credit: Erik Tomasson

by Eric Nelson, Client Engagement Officer | TRG Arts

“All of our heads were spinning. It was so extreme, so incredible.”

“It was going to lead to either paralysis or innovation,” said Glenn McCoy.

Glenn, who this past June retired as executive director for San Francisco Ballet after 17 years, has been described as calm and even-handed. He’s often referred to as “The Glue Guy” by some of the staff at the Ballet. When Glenn and his team take tests to indicate work-style strengths, Glenn always scores evenly down the middle: no wonder he describes his leadership approach as a consensus builder.

With his executive director legs fully grown and firmly in place, Glenn found he needed to do more back in 2008. Not only did he have to figure out how to be the glue through “difficult decisions” but how to apply that glue to cracks he had never experienced.

What Glenn had to do was apply leadership grit. In her recent State of the Arts blog, Jill Robinson described this as, “understanding the environment; listening, making decisions, and ultimately motivating the action that gets results.”

The need to apply this kind of grit was unexpected. When 2008 began, San Francisco Ballet was reaching one of its highest peaks.

“Our 75th Anniversary was in 2008: we sold more tickets and raised more money than ever. Raising that financial capital helped us fund a big US tour to not only celebrate our diamond anniversary but also highlight the fact that San Francisco Ballet was the first professional ballet company in the United States. We were really happy!” exclaimed Glenn.

“While we were on tour the economy collapsed. The team went from this incredible high to feeling like we had a hangover,” explained Glenn.

Clearly, this was much more than a hangover: It was a punch to the gut and knocked the air out of the organization. Glenn and the team dug deep so they could lead San Francisco Ballet down the path back toward sustainability.

“At first everybody was making concessions because they had their eye on the survival of the company. That took a lot. A lot of collaboration and a lot of really good honest communication,” said Glenn.

Then things got worse.

“We had used up all of our reserves and we found ourselves in a cash crisis. We had to pivot. We had to find new ways of working together,” he said.

To do this, Glenn leaned into some advice he received early on his in tenure as executive director and has revisited a number of times throughout his career.

“I was told I needed to listen to more people, not just the most vocal ones in the room,” said Glenn. “I worked to learn how to take more time and actively listen to everyone. That way I could hear a variety of perspectives. I had to acquire this skill, it meant I had to slow down.”

“We had used up all of our reserves and we found ourselves in a cash crisis. We had to pivot. We had to find new ways of working together.”

That insight proved to be invaluable as Glenn led San Francisco Ballet into what turned out to be their salvation. He described the seed for the plan and the steps they took.

“I knew if I could keep our core operations essentially balanced, then we’d be in a better position to push harder in places in order to move the institution forward,” Glenn described. “Working with a consultant identified by one of my board members, we developed something we called our strategic alignment plan, based on the concepts of Lean Ops and the Japanese principle of Kaizen or Continuous Improvement.”

“The goal was, of course, to find savings through efficiencies, but also to free up bandwidth so staff could turn their attention to more productive work, which helped us come up with new revenue streams and enhancements for existing ones,” said Glenn.

Teams comprised of senior members as well as junior members analyzed business processes to eliminate any steps that didn’t add value. This brought a new level of innovation to San Francisco Ballet’s operations. They began to break down silos and function at a higher level of entrepreneurship.

Photo Credit: Erik Tomasson

With a plan in place and the organization traveling down the path of sustainability, the next leadership challenge in front of Glenn was focusing in on how to keep the team moving forward and continuing to gain momentum.

“We had to get everybody on board. The first obstacle was people immediately thought that if we became more efficient that meant that they might lose their job. I quickly had to address that it wasn’t about reducing headcount. It was about freeing up bandwidth for more productive work. Where people then got hung up was when they couldn’t find ways to communicate effectively with other members of team,” he said.

To get over this hurdle, Glenn had to ensure they knew this work was a priority and that his job was to help them find the time to do the work.

Photo Credit: Erik Tomasson

The Ballet put in place monthly meetings where staff collectively monitored every improvement, priority and goal for the year. If one project was falling short, the team would work together to find countermeasures in order to keep the overall plan on track. This collaborative meeting proved to be the key ingredient that solidified their new way of working together.

“Over time we were able to close that gap and generate surpluses to build cash reserves for a few key objectives,” said Glenn. He and the team at San Francisco Ballet took that one step further: they created a survival strategy that has become part of their regular operating procedure. As they are putting the finishing touches on a new five-year plan, they have maintained the tools and discipline of strategic alignment as a way of setting goals and monitoring progress. It was this step that took them from rebuilding a sustainable organization to one that grew roots of resilience.

Glen’s Advice for Tomorrow:

“Lead authentically. And, trust that what you bring to the position is going to be enough.”

“To make something like this work, you’ve got to be the boss. But you also realize the job is too big for one person,” said Glenn. “As the boss you get to surround yourself with smart, capable people. Perhaps my strength as a leader here was knowing how to give people their space to succeed.”