Understanding of current challenges

each production together with deadlines and expectations, as they vary depending on what is requested for a specific project.

Furthermore, interviewees highlighted that although they mainly carry out work and tasks in an independent way due to the flat hierarchy that characterises the company, it is fundamental for the success of a production to keep in mind the overall objectives, being therefore aware of what the other crew members are working on.

Lastly, participants identified the change of artistic directorship as the reason for the current changes in work practices. According to them their responsibilities are more interconnected compared to the past. For this reason, they feel that a more transparent organisational culture would support the employees to the adaptation of the new practices.

at this time, all of the other roles are not clear at all, and this is something that has been left over from before Pontus Lidberg started as Artistic Director.” (Stage Manager, 2020)

Moreover, another aspect mentioned during the interviews as a challenge is the internal communication. As explained before in the section on project management, the employees perceived more interdependence of departments, for this reason the already established ways of communicating became less effective. Therefore, communication is now defined from the interviews as something problematic.

“We are very small organization as you have understood already. I think that, the issues that came out, came up lately were always related to problems of communication. So, I think that if we fix that all the rest can just become smother. I cannot really think about anything else. I am pretty sure there are other things that can be improved, but so far I think this is the main issue that we have to fix.”

(Production Assistant, 2020)

When trying to understand what the interviewees intended when mentioning “problems of internal communication”, we understood that they mainly referred to information and knowledge sharing issues. According to their words, information gets lost and is not properly shared among all the employees. This leads on a long run to a loss of resources for the company, especially in terms of efficiency and time.

Specifically, both the Artistic Directors and the different managers perceive the communication between different departments as not effective. For instance, words such as “wall” have been used during the interviews from some participants, as indicating evident difficulties in sharing essential information among different departments. To overcome this issue, the interviewees said that they are currently organising weekly meetings. The meetings are understood by the organisational members to have the purpose to update on the status of the activities among the different departments and to clarify what is still undefined. However, it appears that differently from what was expected, the interviewees don’t feel these meetings to be really efficient. It is perceived as if there is still a barrier in obtaining information not supported by a clear and effective system. Furthermore, the Artistic Director feels that, despite the time invested in the meetings, employees still need to refer to him constantly to get access to information. As discussed in the section on the understanding of roles at

the Danish Dance Theatre, this has been perceived by the Artistic Director as a slow-down process element.

“We have the Thursday meetings then most of the day when I am in the office either people come in and ask questions or sometimes most equally send emails which is also something I really need to change. I get like sometimes 100 emails a day and it is really just a chat most of them. I think we have to move to a different way, just because I become a human spreadsheet, moving information around.”

(Artistic Director, 2020)

From the interviews, it can be understood that a solution to the above mentioned issue could be an improvement of the management software used. According to them, by implementing among the company a unique system, word documents and excel files could be substituted and information could be better communicated.

Moreover, from what can be understood from the words of the Stage Manager, assigning to somebody in the team the responsibility of improving the internal communication would increase its effectiveness. At the current stage, it is the Artistic Director the one that increased awareness about this problematic in the company and is responsible for it.

“I have been in the company for a very long time and for much of this time, the internal communication has not been good, because there never has been anyone who was in charge of it. At the moment, the Artistic Director has taken charge and I can see that it is getting better and better.

He knows what he wants, and he knows what he is doing, and that makes it a lot easier for the rest of us to interpret his ideas and go further with them” (Stage Manager, 2020)

To sum up, the DDT is currently facing some challenges. First, the unclarity about job titles and responsibilities increases the perception of uncertainty among the participants, leading to a decrease in efficiency. As a result of the unstructured way of dividing tasks, the company is facing a loss in resources. Secondly, most interviewees mentioned that the internal communication represents for them a challenge. By analysing the interviewees words, it appeared clear that with the term “internal communication” they were referring to the problem encountered in the information and knowledge

increase of responsibility level among employees as a way to increase awareness and obtain improvements.