PART III HOW UNTAPPED POTENTIAL IS REALIZED IN METATHEATRE
INTERVENTION
Chapter 3 What is Untapped Potential in Metatheatre of SEAM?
3.1 Brief presentation of Metascript
Defining Metascript – Metascript can be defined as a multiplicity of contending
scripts, and on going attempts to re-script current scripts, and identify emerging
scripts.
SEAM assumes that over time the organization’s script becomes overlayered and
fragmented with the many scriptwriters and script editors in organizations.
Further, as in TAMARA (Boje, 1995, TAMARA Journal, 2001) the organization
is assumed to be a multiplicity of stages on which different plays are acted out by
organizational members (actors) simultaneously. Since organizational theatre is
multiple and simultaneous, actors in one part of the organization do not see the
performance of other groups of players first-hand. Rather, they hear stories of
performances at meetings, and experience various other presentations and
stagings of events they did not attend. The actors of the organization therefore
pursue stories of theatric performances from room to room, office to office,
branch to headquarters, in a TAMARA-esque networking.
SEAM assumes organization is theatre. We do not approach theatre as a
metaphor. Rather, the purpose of the ‘Metatheatre diagnosis stage’ of this
intervention is to research the “metascript”1 of the organization. Many different
scripts populate an organization simultaneously; these multiple scripts collectively
constitute its metascript.
SEAM consultants meticulously record comments of executives and nonexecutives in individual and group interviews that we (the authors) believe
constitute fragments of the metascript. Scribing and translating the metascript is
the starting point for SEAM. And a co-reading of the collected fragments of
metascript is the point of the Mirror Effect event (Mirror Effect is the effect of
Mirroring back the Metascript at a plenary meeting).
Scripts control behavior, but only to a degree.
Two bread makers can use the same recipe (script) for bread, make it in the same
oven, use the same ingredients, and come up with entirely different tasting and
looking loafs. The bakers will fold the dough differently, refold it at slightly
different times, and knead it a bit differently. My friend Phillip is a boulongerie
1
During our 2001 interview with Henri Savall at the EGOS conference in Lyon France was the first
mention of the term “metascript.” We continued our interview with Savall about metascript at the June 22
2002 session at ISEOR institute in France. Metascript, is a concept he uses, but has not written about.
METATHEATRE INTERVENTION MANUAL page 7
owner/baker in Lyon France. Among French bread makers, they joke about bread
machines housewives use; that is not bread making.
Two clerks at a McDonalds franchise will memorize the same scripted lines to say
to customers, “Welcome to McDonalds, may I take your order please? Would you
like to try the new McSalad?” They speak the same dialog, but with a facial
gesture, and change in inflection in one word, one customer feels they have
ordered from a robot, and another believes they have received personalized and
professional service.
Call center supervisors listen to a random set of dialogs made between workers
and customers, assessing conformity to the script; deviations are not appropriate.
Organizations have official strategic planning scripts; some executives believe
everyone understands the plan; three division managers may apply the plan quite
differently; some workers may never have noticed there was a new plan.
A complex organization is a multiplicity of official and unofficial scripts.
Executives spend a good deal of their time trying to get managers and workers to
change their scripts, learn new dialog, present a different frame to the customer.
Focus groups are conducted to test script variations.
Older firms collect thousands of scripts, but many are adhered to even when the
situation and the market shifts. It is harder to unlearn a script and implement a
new version than it is to train new people in a new script.
“Its all explained in the manual” says the trainer. But when you read the manual,
“You find it’s out of date.” “Right” says the trainer, “We used to do it that way,
but now we do it differently. Some day we’ll get around to changing the manual.”
Highly scripted jobs pay less than ones that require improvisation and the
invention of new scripts, based upon professional training. Yet even executives
are con-scripted by the expectations of everyone else in the organization.
3.2 Brief presentation of Metatheatre
Defining Metatheatre - The Metatheatre can be defined as a network of
simultaneous, TAMARA-esque stage performances. In your organization
you can never see all the theatre performed; it is occurring simultaneously
on different stages; some you see and perform, but other acts you hear
about from colleagues, vendors, and customers.
Metatheatre is all around us. We see obvious theatre examples of the shareholders
meeting, the annual team awards banquet, the showy presentation to inaugurate a
corporate vision revision, a skit put on by a vendor to keep company sales people
interested in a new product – these are all theatrical examples.
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There is a deeper sense of Metatheatre that is also all around us. For example,
Saval told us (Boje & Rosile, 2002a interview), “There are people who are the
stars of organizational theatre. There is an off stage and an on stage, and those
who work to perfect what takes place on the stage. There is a director, and there
are people who think they can be better directors. There are people on the
sidelines who want to replace the stars, who think they can do a better job. With
so many directors and also spectators seeking to displace actors and become the
new stars, the metascript becomes increasingly chaotic.”
On the shop floor (and elsewhere) there are those “banana time” games that
Dennis Roy wrote about long ago. Workers steal co-worker Harry’s banana from
his lunchbox. Harry fumes, trying to retrieve his banana. There are thousands of
this little moments of theatre, all day long.
There is the official there of corporate executives, and their entourages, as they
create the concentrated spectacle, the scripted roles, they how will impress
customers with efficiency, and control employees who would otherwise
improvises and might dare say unprofessional lines. Recruiters say such scripted
lines, but so do recruits who have studied the company website or know someone
who works in another division.
There are two types of off-the-official-stage theatre:


One is the backstage theatre, the more or less Machiavellian power games,
played by a Jeff Skilling at Enron, known by his friends and enemies as
“Darth Vader,” a character image he cultivated. Read the Prince,
counseled old timers to a new Enronite, “then you will know how the
game is played around here.” Those around her knew Rebecca Mark, as
“Mark the Shark.” She used a combination of famine charm (short tight
fitting skirts and high heels) and direct MBA hard-nosed negotiation
tactics to wow and intimidate the clients.
Second, there is the informal theatre, the backstage rivalry between
“Skilling the Vader” and “Mark the Shark.” Workers off the main stage,
who do not want to go along with script changes that they see risky to
their own interests, can resist the official theatre of the executives. At
Enron, new cast members replaced those who resisted.
3.3 Effects of Poor Metatheatre Management
As in TAMARA, SEAM’s postmodern perspective of organizations recognize the
modernist false dualism in the distinction between actor and audience (see also
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Boal’s 1979 concept of “spect-actor”).2 Actors may choose not to behave (to
become part of the audience of spectators), or to behave differently (to
improvise), to slant their interpretation and even resist the script. SEAM’s
extensive interview process collects the lines of dialog, which reveals the hidden
conflicts, taboo topics, and dysfunctional dynamics in mostly unwritten (and often
conflicting) scripts. In these ways SEAM acknowledges that the organization is
not only metatheatre, the organization is also metascript.
3.4 Leadership of Metatheatre
Leadership is theatre. Effective leaders do stage craft; Executives are directors
who line up characters (human and non-human alike), in an antenarrative (Boje,
2001a). An antenarrative is a pre-narrative bet that a story can be told that will
enroll stakeholders in ways that transform the world of action.
Effective leaders are scriptwriters and editors, theatre stars, producers and
directors who change discourse and model discourse they want repeated and realized in others’ daily actions. Corporate directors, managers and other scriptcreators mobilize plot-scenarios in the course of which theatre emerges on
multiple, real corporate stages (as in Tamara, Boje, 1995). Indeed many directors
offer characters roles, themes, dialog, and ways of playing (paraphrase of Latour,
1996: 172).
Leaders make many entrances and exits (to paraphrase Shakespeare); they play
many parts on a plethora of stages, every day of their corporate life. Leaders
performances in metatheatre are, as character, as spectator, and as spect-actor.
Some leaders prefer more starring roles; others play more script-writing roles,
helping others to learn their lines. Many off stage roles support executive
performances. Some people off stage wonder when it will be their turn, and dare
to wonder if they could be better stars and directors.
2
In modern theatre, the percenial arch is a sacred boundary between actors authorized to be on the stage,
and the spectators who, are imprisoned in their theatre seats. In postmodern theatres, such as the Tamara
play (Boje, 1995), actors invade the space of spectators, and vice versa. The spectators become spect-actors
(Boal’s spectators and actors), and since there are a multiplicity of simultaneous plays going on
simultaneously in up to a dozen rooms, the audience literally fragments, chasing actors and the many
stories, from room to room. This is Boje’s image of what arganizations are, quite theatrical, with a
networking of many simultaneous stages of theatrical action.
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3.5 Metatheatre Management tools
Managers organize, influence, lead, control, and plan. Each function is related in
Table 2 to various elements of SEAM and SEPTET. While the display presents
row relationships that line up, the various SEPTET elements are involved in each
of the SEAM dysfunction areas and in each managing function.
Table 2: Comparison Chart of SEAM, SEPTET, & Managing
SEAM
1. Work
Organization
2. Working
Condition
3. 3Cs
4. Training
5. Timing
6. Strategic
SEPTET
MANAGING
1. Frames
Organizing
2. Themes
3.
4.
5.
6.
Dialogs
Characters
Rhythms
Plots
Influencing
Leading
Controlling
Planning
SPECTACLES:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Concentrated
Diffused
Integrated
Mega
We learned from Mintzberg’s (1973) study of “what do managers and leaders
do?” that the managing functions are not discrete functions. Rather, in a few
moments the overworked manager, jumps from one to the other; a phone call to
plan, a bit of influencing of someone who stops by, wandering about to lead
whoever is available on a new project, and dashing off to a meeting to get things
under control again. The rhythm of the managers’ day is hectic, full of
interruptions, biased towards oral events, and precious little time to read a report
or answer the accumulating email.
Metatheatre tools for management have never been attempted. Ironically, much of
what goes on in the organization is managing its theater in ways that will improve
productivity, attract clients and investor, and make for a sane place to work. We
offer tools that can help executives, managers, and workers be more conscious
and deliberate about the metatheatre they enact. The tools in this manual are
divided between diagnosis and intervention (while recognizing that to diagnose is
already to intervene). It takes theatre to change theatre (fight fire with fire). After
the diagnosis, to change the metatheatre, to rescript and restory is done by trying
out new scripts and storylines.
Most important to us, is that our tools achieve Socio-Economic impact. After
some more precise definitions, we begin to work of translating metatheatre
(SEPTET elements) into the hidden costs and untapped revenue that is SEAM.
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