There has come a tide in the affairs of the RSC. Samuel Jones of Demos explains the dramatic way in which it’s turning

A process of organisational change is underway at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Its chairman, Sir Christopher Bland has described the value of the story of this change as being of a company in turnaround.

In 2007, the RSC’s executive director, Vikki Heywood, asked the Demos culture team to observe the change process, and examine what other organisations in the cultural sector and beyond might take from it. In itself, the RSC’s decision to open itself to external scrutiny reveals much. Alongside a desire to contribute to learning, it shows that the RSC sees itself not just as a cultural institution but also as being part of and contributing to the public realm.

In the early 2000s, the RSC had faced severe financial and organisational crisis. Morale and trust in leadership were shattered and the work was receiving poor reviews. Since then there has been a remarkable transformation. The critical and financial success of the work during this time tells its own story. However, the transformation has also been physical – the Royal Shakespeare Theatre has been utterly revamped – and organisational in the way that the RSC operates and relates to its public.

Speaking in 2007 the artistic director, Michael Boyd explained the philosophy guiding the transformation: “ultimately, it’s about love”. In a speech at the New York Public Library in 2008, he spoke similarly of ideas like terror, empathy, compassion, daring and, again, love “without apology”. Such words are a long way from the hard lexicon of management consultancy that often goes with organisational change. However, they run deeper than any bottom line and are at the heart of the organisation and the transformation of its fortunes.

Boyd, Heywood and the management team have taken the RSC’s foundational idea of “ensemble” and used it as a lodestar for the change process. An ensemble is a collective of actors working collaboratively over time. Applied to an entire organisation, it has created a conceptual space in which the RSC’s staff can work together, contributing and recognising the contribution of others to meeting collective challenges.

Within the organisation, budgets have been devolved, giving managers greater responsibilities and ownership over their areas. Strategic vision is discussed with all the staff in workshops using the principles of organisational development. While artistic planning decisions used to be taken by a closed and hierarchical group, now they have been opened to others. Take education, for example. Seasons now relate more closely to curricula, and actors take part in educational training and work with the RSC’s network of partner schools.

Ensemble also helped the RSC respond to difficulty. It has had to go through two rounds of redundancies since 2000. The first, advised by external consultants, was disastrous and the outfall well-documented in the media. The second, managed internally by devolving human resources responsibilities and discussing issues openly went as smoothly as could reasonably have been managed.

The Demos team observed the changing attitudes within and around the RSC over three years, using network analysis to examine the overall effects. When we started our observation in 2007, the networks of informal relationships operating within the RSC were stronger than official working networks. New open plan offices and spaces had enabled new connections to grow. This fostered collaboration, enterprise and new ventures. In 2009, when we interviewed the same cross-section of the organisation, the strength of the informal networks was replicated in working relationships. Ensemble, with the flattening of hierarchy and the greater awareness of others that it encouraged, had brought resilience and flexibility.

Boyd places great emphasis on the trust on which such changing relationships depend, and it will play a big part in the RSC’s future. Trust creates confidence in others and the capacity to accommodate risk and failure. It also allows people to learn from one another. Trust depends upon connecting values and having conversations. One of the RSC’s boldest steps is in seeking to extend the trust on which it depends as an organisation to the public. The new theatre design has halved the maximum distance between the stage and the furthest audience member. In 2009’s As You Like It, Orlando’s poems, pinned up in the Forest of Arden, were painted by the RSC’s technical crew but they were contributed by members of the public. The distance between expert and public is diminished, physically and conceptually.

Demos’ interest in the RSC’s story is as a cultural organisation seeking to be genuinely democratic and to play an active role in the public realm. The story might ultimately be about love, but the successes that the RSC has had and the difficulties it has encountered hold wider interest because, in transforming itself, it is also responding to changes in organisations and the society in which they exist.

All Together: A Creative Approach to Organisational Change, by Robert Hewison, John Holden and Samuel Jones is available on the Demos website: http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/all-together