Leadership During Global Crisis

Tweeddale said, “Helgi Tomasson, the company artistic director] and I looked at each other and I said ‘We’ll either look at this, and say it was the biggest overreach ever or we’ll look back at this moment and say it was the most brilliant decision ever.’” Looking back, she feels fortunate that city leadership made decisions that erred on the side of health and science, even with the overwhelming ramifications those have for the 87-year-old ballet company.

To navigate uncertainty during this trying period, Tweeddale has relied on Tomasson, whose 35-year tenure at the company has been a godsend to her. She also included SFB’s 52-member board, and former dancer-turned-doctor Richard Gibbs, who started the company’s wellness center, as instrumental in providing guidance to help the organization navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Gibbs runs a free medical clinic in San Francisco and has offered essential advice to Tweeddale and the leadership team as it develops plans and protocols amidst the pandemic. “We thought about what social-distance seating might look like if that was the next step. Then the shelter-in-place [order] came March 16, to begin on March 17. We had 24 hours to notify everybody in the organization that we would be sheltered in place. That was a game changer.”

Tweeddale’s next step was personal. She said, “Regardless of everything else, we have to take care of our workforce. This is a public health pandemic. Health care has to be at the forefront and compensation – for our staff and dancers. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but everything else is up for grabs.”

She noted that the company has the ability to meet its obligations through June 30th right now. “We’re rethinking how we will announce our next season and what will it look like. We’re going through scenario planning.”

That included making a list of assets, which Tweeddale noted isn’t typical to do in a crisis. Among them is the school itself, which has a drive-through carpool lane where parents drop off their kids for class. These days, the ballet is partnering with a food bank that uses the drive through as a weekly popup to serve the community. Dancers and staff volunteer to help with the distribution. “That keeps us connected with our community. We also are working with providing volunteer support and some staffing support for the free medical clinic for people who don’t have health care.”

Looking forward, Tweeddale said, “We’ve set very clear goals for what we’re doing right now. I will say in 2008 at other organizations, I vowed after that experience to never let the balance sheet lead the conversation, because when the balance sheet and the financial sheet lead the conversation, you lose touch with your mission. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay attention. There’s reality about what you can afford to do.” The question became: “How do we lead the organization through this so that we have something on the other side that is committed to the art form? It has to be more than ‘just how much money will we lose?’”

To that end, scenarios to support the dancers have been paramount. While Tweeddale noted that many arts organizations worry about how to get audiences back in theaters, “We are starting with how do we get the artists back into the studio so they can at least take company class so that they don’t lose their entire careers. We want to be ready when the time comes to create again. That’s a different approach, we think, because you won’t have audiences if you don’t have dancers.” They don’t know what that might look like yet, but they’re brainstorming different models, smaller company classes, taught in shifts, keeping masks on, and other revised health and safety protocols.The leadership team is considering using the wellness center for COVID-19 testing to get the dancers back in the studio. By dividing the company into cohorts: “We’ll have dancers who only take class together and we’ll have multiple classes, so if there is an outbreak, we keep it contained.”

While not many companies have the budget and staff of SFB, Tweeddale believes a few approaches she’s followed can be useful as the field moves forward toward a new normal.

First, “Throw away ‘this is the way we work’ and be willing to innovate. Be willing to say ‘yes’ to as many things as you can, because right now we’re in a world of ‘no.’ There's something energizing when you say, ‘Yes, we're going to do this. We’re going to give it a try.’”

Next, she urged: “Don’t be afraid to break those rules.” For example, the executive team, which had been working for a couple of years on developing a digital stage, had just settled on a three-year-plan shortly before the coronavirus pandemic. That was how long Tweeddale and the executive staff thought it would take to negotiate releases from the unions. “Now all of a sudden we are at year three,” she said. “Sometimes it takes a crisis to break the rules. Our partners and our unions see the value. This is an opportunistic moment to do things differently; do not overthink it.”