Innovating Out of a Crisis feat. Professor Scott Sonenshein & John Mangum

Eager to learn how organizations can innovate their way out of a crisis? You may be surprised that the key to this comes from an arts organization.

Tune into a special live recording of our podcast, with John Mangum, the executive director/CEO of the Houston Symphony, and Scott Sonenshein, the Henry Gardiner Symonds Professor of Management – Organizational Behavior at Rice Business. 

During the pandemic, the performing arts faced an especially grave challenge beyond the shared difficulties with other industries: an existential crisis over the relevance of arts in times of extreme hardship. Professor Scott Sonenshein, a New York Times bestselling author and expert on how employees can create organizational, social and personal change, led a multi-year study of two prominent orchestras (including the Houston Symphony), resulting in a surprising insight with far-reaching applications. Resourcefulness is not just helpful for surviving adversity. It’s a strategic framework that enables organizations to become better versions of themselves.

In this conversation, John and Scott reflect on how the Houston Symphony transformed their operations and performance delivery during the pandemic, and how business leaders facing disruptions can benefit from critical changes Scott’s research uncovered.

Following their conversation, musicians from the Houston Symphony perform Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E-flat major, illustrating the Symphony's commitment to diversity and exploration in music. 

Musicians:

MuChen Hsieh '17, violin
Amy Semes '19, violin
Wei Jiang, viola
Jeremy Kreutz '20, cello

Episode Guide: 

00:36 Exploring resilience and innovation at the Houston Symphony
05:16 Deep dive into Scott Sonenshein's research on organizational change
10:42 The Houston Symphony's pandemic response and innovation
26:30 Leadership, trust, and the future of the Houston Symphony
37:26 Closing remarks
40:16 Fanny Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E-flat major 

Owl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

What made the Houston Symphony shine during the pandemic?

15:48 [Scott Sonenshein]: When you got to see an organization that was relentless in determining to keep playing and keep the music going no matter what form that looked like, you saw a lot of innovation and creativity in finding ways not to just put online what they were doing before but to really reinvent what they were doing so it would be suitable for the format that they could play in. And that's why you saw a lot of the Zoom symphonies and the little boxes, but what the Houston Symphony did was bring musicians into the homes of their audience. And that created a lot of new experiences for their audience. 

What has the pandemic taught the the Houston Symphony are taking forward for the years to come?

36:51 [John Mangum]:  [Music] It's one of the few spaces where you can go and really unplug and just be alone, and that is rare these days. And I think that the symphony is going to continue to scale great artistic heights and commission new works and support young composers and reflect the diversity and energy of our community.

How did the pandemic pushed for the Houston symphony to think outside the box

21:30 [John Mangum] Even when we had our largest possible audience during that pandemic season, there were only about 400 or 450 people in Jones Hall, which at the time sat 2,900. That was because households had to sit together and then be a certain distance from anyone who wasn't in their household—back to this bubble idea. We weren't under pressure to sell tickets, so that gave us the ability to program whatever we wanted. You didn't have to do a certain number of Beethoven symphonies, or Star Wars in concert, or the kind of things that sell tickets. So we could really explore all kinds of repertoire.

Show Links: 

To Adapt During Crisis, Take a Lesson From JazzHouston SymphonyTranscript

Guest Profiles:

John Mangum | LinkedInScott Sonenshein | LinkedInScott Sonenshein | Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice UniversityScott Sonenshein