Want to know what to fix in your Biz? Think of it like a Theatre.

Think of your business like a theatre.

Why would you want to do that? It sounds very weird.

I’ve found it’s a really great analogy.

If you’re someone who knows that there are things that need to change in the way your business operates and you want a framework to be able to clearly structure what those things are and then communicate it to your leadership team or your staff, here’s a simple framework to use.

Have you been to the theatre lately? I actually don’t go very often but I like the analogy if I’m honest!

When you go to the theatre, you rock up and there’s a front of house experience. It’s all beautifully set out, there are people sitting around drinking champagne, there’s nice lighting and good food. They make the experience as pleasant as possible even before you get into the show.

When you get into the show, the actors are prepared, they’ve put all the effort in to put on the best show possible and you have a fantastic experience.

But what’s going on behind the scenes?

What are the costume team guys doing? “Quick don’t put that on, put this on”. What are the orchestra doing? They’ve trained for weeks and months to get every single note right and every single piece right. What are the lighting guys doing? They’ve got this massive sheet of paper with all their lighting queues to follow and they’re freaking out because it’s showtime.

Our businesses are a little bit the same which is that we’ve got the show, right? The show is our front of house and our job is: it doesn’t matter what happens in the back of house, (the processes we’ve got and how frantic people are) all that stuff needs to work so that the front of house experience for our customers is top-notch, is the best it can be for every single customer that enters your theatre on a daily basis.

When you think about diagnosing your business model, some businesses have got front of house problems. When their clients walk through the door the carpet’s a bit shabby and everything’s a bit run down. The staff at the bar don’t know that the right thing to do is to offer them a drink, so your clients don’t feel comfortable and invited and involved and they don’t feel like they’re going to have a good experience.

The first way to think about it is : What problems have we got with the way we interact with our customers? This includes the way we deliver value to our customers and the way we solve their problems. You might have a bunch of front of house projects that you need to work on to improve that experience.

Then you think about all the people, and all the processes and all the systems and tools that we use at the back end. (Yours will probably not be lighting, it won’t be seating, it won’t be props and costumes etc. It’ll be what YOU do.) Think about the way all that stuff combines and interacts and ask yourself: What are the four or five problems that you have that are impacting your front of house experience? It could be that the lighting and costume guys don’t get on. Right, they hate one another and it’s fisticuffs, and we need to fix that. It could be that there’s no set process for costume changes so it’s just chaotic and frantic.

What are those problems in your business and how are they impacting the front of house experience?

My experience with coaching leadership teams and CEOs is that we’re usually fixing a couple of back of house things and we’re fixing also a couple of front of house things. That combination of improving that experience but also making the back end more efficient means that ultimately, we have a more valuable business.

So, here’s the rub for you, here’s the question: If you thought about your business like a theatre, your model like a theatre… Have you got a front of house problem or a back of house problem? If you had limited resources (which I know you have) where would you invest the time in fixing and what would you fix? Would you have projects at the front of house or would you have projects at the back of house?

When you finish watching this video, I want you to draw the framework out and literally write down for me two front of house projects that you think you need to fix and two back of house projects you need to fix. And then talk to your leadership team about it. Talk to your staff about it.

Think of your business like a theatre and get on with the job of improving the experience for your customers.