Originally composed of 20 street performers in 1984, Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group completely reinvented circus arts and went on to become a world leader in live entertainment. Established in Montreal, the Canadian organization has brought wonder and delight to over 180 million spectators with productions presented in 450 cities in 60 countries. Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group currently employs 4,000 people, including 1,300 artists, who originate from nearly 80 countries.
At the heart of Cirque du Soleil’s lavish, multi-million-dollar productions is Daniel Lamarre, who has mastered the ability to bring business and creativity together across multiple languages in a way that has never been done before.
Daniel has always been guided by a tremendous faith that creative thinking can lead any organisation to new heights, and in his book Balancing Acts, he shares many of the key principles he has learnt through his own professional journey that can strengthen and accelerate any business.
In this interview, I spoke to Daniel Lamarre, Cirque du Soleil’s Executive Vice Chairman on creative leadership, how creativity can transform business, and his learnings on entrepreneurship from leading one of the world’s most creative businesses.
Q: What is creative leadership?
[Daniel Lamarre]: There is no business without creativity. And I think we have a lot of examples of great organisations that didn’t want to be creative. Kodak is a good example, they didn’t want to see the digital world! On the other end of the spectrum, you have examples like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, very creative minds that came to our world, made breakthroughs, and became amazing leaders. Creativity for me is the first condition to establish yourself as a leader in whatever you do in life.
Q: What do artists teach you about leadership?
[Daniel Lamarre]: I’ve had the unique opportunity to observe amazing creators such as our founder Guy Laliberte, the Beatles, and James Cameron and have had the privilege of watching our artists on a day-to-day basis.
From the creator’s perspective, I see them always thinking outside of the box and always pushing the boundaries of their creativity. From the artist’s perspective, you have this added layer of their level of performance. If I can perform at the same level as our artists, sportspeople, and athletes, then I would do a great job.
They were all an inspiration of creativity for me.
Q: How do you create business models that transcend culture?
[Daniel Lamarre]: First of all, today talking about diversity is almost the flavour of the year. At Cirque, (Cirque du Soleil), we never talk about diversity because we live diversity.
We have people in our organisation coming from 80 different countries. That’s one important ingredient of our success because there is no one show where we have less than 20 different nationalities represented. like to describe us as citizens of the world, because if you bring in the room people coming from so many different countries with their own culture, their own way of seeing things, then I’m very confident (or at least it has been my experience) here that something will emerge that will be very, very unique.
And in our case, it’s called Cirque du Soleil!
Q: What is the fundamental pillar of creative leadership?
[Daniel Lamarre]: Being creative is about being a collective. It’s not something unique. Cirque is not a one man, or a one woman show. It’s a collective. That’s why we can nurture each other’s creativity. Unfortunately, sometimes in some organisations, they forget what’s their purpose in life and to me, that is where bureaucracy takes over from the nature of the business or the organisation that they’re working in. By fighting the hierarchy. When we open a new show, it started with about 20 creators at the table, and I will say to the rest of the company, ‘leave them alone. I don’t want them to be bugged by HR or finance or administrative stuff. I want them to breathe and eat and sleep only about the artistic content of the next show’. I don’t like to act like this huge organisation. I like to act like a lot of different little cells that are devoted to creating the best possible show.
Q: How can you lead a team creatively to do great work?
[Daniel Lamarre]: First and foremost, you have to be very clear in what you are looking for. You cannot just say to people, ‘oh be creative’ and then there will be a waste of time. You have to approach people and say this is the kind of idea that we are looking for and listen to people, look to their idea. Another thing which is as important is to stimulate debate because too often in organisations, everybody tries to be politically correct…so you send me an idea, I’ll be nice with you, I’ll send you an idea, you’ll be nice with me. That’s not how it should work. We should be debating to make sure that at the end of the process, the best idea prevails, and it doesn’t matter if it comes from you or from me. But at the end of the day, make sure that you have been through a process, a difficult and challenging process that will bring the best possible idea for your organisation.
Q: How do we fight the structures in business that prevent creativity?
[Daniel Lamarre]: For me, the best way to fight bureaucracy is to make sure that every day you put the core of what you do at the heart of the organisation. In our case, it’s show. The show has to be at the heart of what we are doing.
One day my founder came to me and offered me an employee and that employee was a clown. Why did he hire me a clown? It’s not only to remind me, but it’s for me to send the signal to the troupe that the core business is entertainment. I’m not suggesting that everybody is hiring a clown, but somebody should find the symbol that is the equivalent of my clown to remind people every day what they stand for, what’s the purpose of what they do?
Unfortunately, sometimes in some organisations, they forget what’s their purpose in life and to me, that is where bureaucracy takes over from the nature of the business or the organisation that they’re working in.
By fighting the hierarchy. When we open a new show, it started with about 20 creators at the table, and I will say to the rest of the company, ‘leave them alone. I don’t want them to be bugged by HR or finance or administrative stuff. I want them to breathe and eat and sleep only about the artistic content of the next show’. I don’t like to act like this huge organisation. I like to act like a lot of different little cells that are devoted to creating the best possible show.
Q: Does every organisation have a purpose?
[Daniel Lamarre]: If a company doesn’t have a purpose, I think they are wasting their life. You have to have a purpose and I would hope that even in a very greedy environment where people are standing up in the morning to make money, I think they should think farther than that because they’re also creating a lot of wealth and also creating a lot of jobs. They are creating a lot of companies around the world and that should be their driver.
Making money should be the result of helping people to build businesses. That is where we have to fight all the time to bring people to what they have to do. The other day there was a lawyer fighting with me saying that, I cannot change the law. No, you cannot change the law, but you can change the way you practise as a lawyer and you have to be open because if you’re not changing, I’m telling you the world is changing and in today’s world, where intellectual property, where artificial intelligence, a lot of new things are happening that is going to influence the life of a lawyer. If you’re not open to what’s going on in the world – one day, you will be obsolete.
Q: How do you keep yourself creative?
[Daniel Lamarre]: Firstly, you have to create an environment that is inspiring. Your offices, your own personal life. You have to feel that you’re inspired by your own environment. Secondly, you have to agree to be challenged all the time. In order to do that, you have to talk and consult a lot of people on a daily basis and the other thing which is even more fundamental is you should be on the lookout for new ideas all the time, even in your personal life, because we’re unfortunately sometimes beasts of habit, and we just repeat the same thing over and over again. That’s not creative – that’s boring. You have to think about what can I do today that is going to help me to achieve my ultimate goal? If I don’t do anything today that is going to have an impact on my ultimate goal, then maybe I’m wasting my day.
Q: What do you think about failure?
[Daniel Lamarre]: That’s one in my book, I wanted to talk about failures because I didn’t want to become unpleasant. Yes, we had a lot of successes, but we also had major failures. I want to be able to share it with people, because my learnings came not only from our successes, but a lot of the key learnings came from failures. And obviously, at the end of the day you have more successes than failure – but you have to be ready to have failure. More importantly, when you do [experience failure] rather than to run away from it, you have to sit down and do a good post-mortem and learn from your failures. That’s very important.
Q: How do you define success?
[Daniel Lamarre]: The metric of success – First of all, I have this leitmotif that I’m using all the time, which says if you have a great show, you have a great business. If you don’t have a good show, you have no business. What it means is that show has to come first. You have to make sure that you are devoting most of your attention in creating shows by surprising people all the time, by going over their expectation and by innovating all the time in your content. If you do that properly, then ticket sales will come. Then profitability will come, and then you will be successful. But don’t start the other way around. Don’t start the day by saying ‘how many tickets am I going to sell today?’
Q: What does legacy mean to you?
[Daniel Lamarre]: I hope that we have been a good example for people to push the boundaries of their own creativity, and my motivation right now is almost to become an evangelist of creativity, because I think the younger crowd, the younger people need to see some model that are different in order for them to nurture not only their creativity but their entrepreneurship, their desire to make a difference in life. That’s what I would love to see.