Interview: Michael Kaiser

Long-range planning is critical to bringing troubled organizations back from the brink of disaster, says MIT Sloan alumnus Michael M. Kaiser, the white knight of such major arts organizations as the Royal Opera House of London.

“Planning is a very vague term; I don’t mean ‘writing a plan.’ I mean the mind-set that says we need to be thinking two, three, four years out — not next week,” says Kaiser, who is now president of Washington, D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center, the nation’s premier center for the performing arts.

Planning begins by soliciting input and feedback from all levels of an organization and subsequently disseminating a plan from top to bottom and “backwards and forwards,” he says. “Everyone in the organization has to be moving in the same direction or something is going to break down.”

Kaiser founded and ran Kaiser Associates, a management consulting firm, until 1985, when he decided to turn to arts management. He then masterminded successful financial turnarounds at the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, the American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Opera House. Since taking the helm of the Kennedy Center in 2001, he has broadened its educational programs and opened new avenues for entertainment.

He credits his successes not to wholesale firings, bringing in his own people or slashing costs and wages, but to concentrating on creating good art, increasing marketing, opening the door to the press, and staying “hyperfocused” on the organization’s plan.

Focus on the mission
Kaiser describes himself as “the stingiest man in the world,” but he says even financially troubled organizations should focus on maximizing revenues, not simply cutting costs. “You can only slash costs so far and then there’s nothing left. And then what do you do?” he says. At Alvin Ailey, for example, he reversed a wage freeze set by the board of directors. “I don’t believe in freezes because it is totally nonstrategic to say everybody gets frozen.”

Certainly it’s easier to say “increase revenues” than to do it. But it’s critical to focus on the primary mission, Kaiser says. “Not a whole lot of organizations get revenue from peripheral activities. The revenue comes from their basic activity, not selling T-shirts and mugs and balloons and whatever.” That goes for both big and small organizations, nonprofits and corporations.

“The most important thing is to do good work. It’s as simple as that,” Kaiser insists.

Taking the lead
Determining just what is “good” is more of a challenge; this is where a leader’s vision comes into play. “You will never see me doing an audience survey asking an audience what they want to see or hear. I don’t believe in that,” Kaiser says. “I believe my job is to lead the public and not to follow the public.”

For example, Kaiser is tremendously excited about a festival of a cappella music he conceived for the Kennedy Center. “It’s going to be a hit,” he asserts, “but no one is going to say in a survey, ‘I want to hear an a cappella festival.’ ”

Personal style and vision play a role in leadership, but planning is what brings it all together, Kaiser says. “If you don’t make it clear early on what you’re trying to accomplish, then people start to go in their own directions and to me, that’s anathema to leadership.”