Daniel Lamarre, 62, is the president and chief executive officer of Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil, which has about 4,000 employees working on more than 20 shows in about 50 countries. Lamarre was born and raised in Grand-Mere, Quebec, about 170 kilometres northeast of Montreal. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ottawa, which later honoured him with a doctorate. He was the CEO of Burson-Marsteller and then co-founded National Public Relations with Luc Beauregard. He went on to be the CEO at TVA Broadcast Group for four years before he joined the circus in January 2001. In addition to his day job, he spends a lot of time with the One Drop Foundation, a non-profit organization to help improve access to water, and the Montreal Heart Institute. He also has a personal foundation to support various causes. When he’s not traveling Lamarre calls Montreal home, where he lives with his wife, the photographer Emmanuelle Dupérré, and her two sons. He also has two grown children and five grandchildren.
Lamarre spoke to Karl Moore, a professor of strategy and organization at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.
I began my career as a journalist, and at the time, I would have bet quite a bit of money on staying a journalist for the rest of my life. I was passionate, and that was my ultimate goal. I was tired of just listening and not doing something myself. An opportunity to become a public relations practitioner knocked me off the course of journalism, and I dove right into the business world. I started working for a major corporation as a consultant, and I immensely enjoyed discovering different types of business. I was learning a lot.
When I became the CEO of TVA [a privately owned French language television network], Guy Laliberté had been generous enough to give me the opportunity to get the TV rights of the Cirque du Soleil. Then we got in touch on a more regular basis and he just called me one day out of the blue and he said, “I had this amazing flash last night that you’re going to join the circus.” I burst out laughing and a few weeks later I was running with the circus.
Guy is a rock star. He has his entourage and his fans and when he walks somewhere, everybody knows that he’s there. I’m more like the behind-the-scenes guy. My job working with Guy is to make his crazy ideas happen. He’ll come with a lot of different ideas and I help him select the right one. My job is to put together the right conditions. I’m there to say: “Yes, maybe. Let’s see, let’s explore.”
I think I have a strong presence, not by talking a lot but by asking the right questions. As a journalist, I had to be good at interviewing people and listening to people. In management it’s very, very useful because when I meet with my employees, normally I do what the journalist is good at doing: listening. And I learned a lot. As you know, people like to talk, and sometimes I would spend quite a bit of time listening to people and the meeting would end and I had barely spoken, I just listen. But people love it, and because they love it then it’s easier after that to understand where they’re coming from, what they’re looking for. For me, I think it’s a great management tool. To listen to people.
People say that I’m tough to read, but those are the people who don’t really know me. People that are working with me on a day-to-day basis get my signals. I don’t need to impose myself. I don’t scream or lose my temper, because for me that’s a sign of weakness. When you lose your temper, then you lose control of the situation. If you are a leader and you lose control of a situation, then a lot of people around you get really insecure.
You shouldn’t trust yourself too much when you are selling shows to consumers. We do a lot of research to test if our crazy ideas are something that can work with the public. It’s important that we understand how the tastes of people are growing in different manners. And make sure that we meet their expectations. In the case of Cirque du Soleil, their expectations are getting higher and higher. It puts a lot of pressure on our creative team.
I’ve become more creative in my 15 years with the Cirque. I learned a lot from the creators and the artists, and of course, Guy, about their minds, their sensitivities, their passions and how they could go from a white sheet of paper to a developed concept that can work.
You have to get up in the morning and think, “What can I reinvent today?” That’s what we’re doing all the time; we’re always on the lookout for new ideas because it’s important that we can continue to surprise our public. Our big reinvention this year was Avatar. Everyone was concerned about what we could do with such an amazing IP [intellectual property] brought to us by James Cameron, who’s probably the most successful movie-maker in the history of that industry. I was so happy when I read in the Montreal paper the day after the premiere, “Cirque du Soleil is going somewhere else.” I felt so, so good about it.
Silicon Valley and China are so important to the Cirque. Silicon Valley, first and foremost, because in the future live shows are going to be influenced by new technologies. There are 3D technologies, there are virtual characters, there are virtual environments today and I want our shows to be at the forefront of that development. And China is an amazing market to capture. Having a Chinese partner gives me an opportunity. I’ve been traveling in China for 15 years and I was having great meetings with people but I wasn’t getting results. I’ve been there five times in the last four months and now a lot of people are saying yes to us because we’re a part of them.
Chinese management style is very different to that of the Silicon Valley. We are French-Canadian, we are French-speaking North American people, so it’s easy for us to do business in the U.S. We’ve been doing that all of our life, we speak the same language, which is the business language. In China, it’s different because you talk business a lot but you have to remember that there is always, behind-the-scenes, the government. I’m not making a judgment about whether it’s good or bad, but you have to be conscious that the government is present in any decision there.
I don’t have a job; I have a lifestyle. I love my lifestyle. I love travelling. I’m fortunate that my wife can travel with me. I work a lot of hours, and there is no such thing as the weekend because there are always shows performing. I am in communication with the organization all the time. But you have to develop your own way to remain sane in an environment that can get you crazy if you’re not careful. Working out is a good way for me to escape. There is nothing better than having a good bottle of wine on a Friday evening at home or wherever you are.
At the end of the day, you want to be profitable, but that’s not the meaning of life. I was in New York recently because we’re opening our first Broadway show in May. I walked in front of the theatre and saw the billboard on 42nd Street and I was like a kid, I was excited. It brings me a lot of adrenalin. It’s very tough for an artist to earn a good living. Cirque du Soleil is providing a good living to more than 2,000 artists, and if I could supply jobs for 4,000 artists, I’d feel even better. That’s what drives me. I cannot be driven by money alone; that would be a boring life. But to see an artist performing and travelling around the world, oh my God I feel good about that.
I’m from the TV generation. Millennials don’t know what a TV set is any more; they are now working from their screens. We were behind in social media and weren’t reaching out to the millennials before, but we’ve hired a bunch of millennials and kids, literally, to rework our marketing. It’s very important to recognize the fact that you’re not 20 years old any more. and you’re not 40 any more. So, you need to leave younger people to take more room. When I started my career there were older people giving me opportunities. Now it’s my turn to give younger people opportunities. I think you get very, very old if you are not open to other people’s ideas. I think what’s keeping you young is listening to young people and leaving them room to grow in your organization.
Being bilingual is crucial. You just cannot work internationally if you don’t speak English. And speaking French was an advantage because it brought some colour. It’s funny how little people know about French-Canadians outside of Canada. It’s always kind of exotic for people, They’re kind of confused, “Are you French, are you American?” And I’ll say, “We’re all of the above.”
This interview has been condensed and edited from the CEO Series, which can be heard on CJAD and other Bell Media stations across Canada. For the full interview, go to the CEO Series on: http://www.cjad.com/TheCEOSeries/aspx
{ SOURCE: The Globe and Mail | http://goo.gl/4rpBMw }
