Chekhovian strategy misfires

Last weekend, I saw the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Uncle Vanya. The set design is the stand-out: there are no wings, lighting and spare chairs are stacked up and trucked flats stand ready upstage. Technicians roam between the cast (at one point, handing Vanya a bottle of vodka, whereupon he acts surprised and takes a swig). It’s beautiful, static and ruinous, animated by despair and Waffles playing guitar.

There are those who suggest Chekhov is dull (I’m usually one of them, generally agreeing with Withnail on Russian plays: “…full of women staring out of windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow.”). But this production showed that while Uncle Vanya is certainly dull on the page it can be riveting when the presentation captures the ennui and delusion.

Daniel Henshall as Vanya in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Uncle Vanya. Photo: Pia Johnson / MTC

The set design made it look like a rehearsal, like the audience were peeking behind the scenes. Which led me, in the interval, to resist ice cream and think about this: the play shows three characters with three specific failings that I have seen in Board discussions about strategy.

Vanya is regretful of former decisions, and it stops him taking any action in the present. It’s turned him inward to self-pity. I’ve seen Directors get trapped in reflection on previous poor decision. It takes two forms: a Vanya-esque lamentation that just blocks decision-making, or a relentless desire to learn from the mistake. “We should have had a committee to review that” or “we should have sought better advice”. The difficulty here is that while it looks like diligence, it is situated in the past just as much as Vanya’s self-pity.

The professor has been a success, but only to an audience of superfans; also, he is shot through with delusion. He never faces the consequence of his inadequacy and reliance on what he inherited. We’ve all met the Director who is resting on former glory, with a narrow circle of adulators, blithely unaware that their actions are not delivering anything helpful.

And Astrov, of course, has a strategy but is failing to mobilise others behind it. No-one will share his perspective and commitment to action, so he checks out of the discussion. The frustrated visionary.

I was an audience member. And in the rules of the form, the characters are not aware of my presence; they don’t know they are being watched. A regular Board meeting is the same – a room with no outsiders. Shifting these behaviours (even if Directors are unaware of them; after all Chekhov’s characters aren’t aware they’re in a play) needs an audience to become involved. The Board needs to be seen and to engage in a dialogue with their outside context.

Being seen by the facilitator is the first corrective: I see you are very focused on what happened last year. What could we think about if we put our focus to next year?

Stakeholders and partners will give valuable insights – especially using an interlocutor so they can be honest and direct. What do you think the Board of XXX might not be seeing? If you were a Director of XXX, what questions would you be asking?

Most of all, your own Executive and staff. This could be akin to an audience of fellow theatre professionals, whose insight into the play and the craft of drama will yield the richest insights. What do you think is filtered and sanitised before it reaches the Board? If the Board could take one concrete action to improve your situation, what would it be?

You’ll see I’ve ordered these from least to most challenging – a contemporary Board is closer to its Executive and staff than it is to its stakeholders. That makes them the hardest to hear; the most trenchant and hurtful critiques Vanya hears are from his mother and his closest friend.

At the heart of the play is the notion that the characters are imprisoned by their context. Their actions are ineffectual because they aren’t changing the conditions that imprison them. (For them, the change would come in 1917, of course, but I suggest less radical solutions to deliver organisational impact.) A successful Board will re-author their own context.

Many misquote Martin and Lafley and say strategy is simply a description of where to play and how to win. If the Board is acting its own play, it’s easy to get wrong: re-reading tired lines in a closed room. Get an audience in, and the play changes shape entirely.

No-one in Uncle Vanya wins. But a Board that lets itself be watched and takes notes from the viewer in the upper circle has a better shot at a standing ovation.

Break a leg.

First published in Strategy, Applied.