Tony Hall and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Anja Nopper, Laurent Lapierre

Anja Nopper is a member of the management team at Opéra de Montréal. For the past three years she has specialized in developing and implementing leadership, management and restructuring strategies for performing arts companies. Previously she worked for 10 years in the financial industry as an economist and portfolio manager.
Laurent Lapierre holds the Pierre-Péladeau Chair in Leadership at HEC Montréal. He teaches courses on management of arts enterprises and cultural industries. His research interests include leadership and the influence of managers’ personalities on their management style and the role of management behaviour in an organization’s performance. He has served as editor of the journal Gestion: Revue internationale de gestion and is co-author of the three-volume Imaginaire et leadership.

ABSTRACT 
Leadership is an integral part of any organization’s long-term success. This case study looks at the two-and-a-half-year leadership of the current chief executive of the Royal Opera House, Tony Hall. During the 1990s the ROH went from crisis to crisis and came under severe scrutiny for the way it was being managed. Hall has built a cohesive management team that has succeeded in consolidating and focusing its efforts, providing the ROH with a renewed sense of purpose, community relevance and pride.
KEYWORDS
Arts organization, leadership, management, team-building, restructuring
RÉSUMÉ
Dans tous les organismes, le leadership est une composante du succès à long terme. Cette étude de cas porte sur le leadership qu’exerce depuis deux ans et demi Tony Hall, directeur général du Royal Opera House. Les crises se succédant pendant les années 90, la gestion du ROH a commencé à être examinée de près. Hall a bâti une équipe de gestionnaires homogène qui a réussi à grouper et à concentrer ses efforts. Depuis, le ROH manifeste une nouvelle résolution et possède un sentiment accru de pertinence dans la communauté et de fierté.
MOTS CLÉS 
Organismes artistiques, leadership, gestion, constitution d’une équipe, restructuration
RESUMEN 
El liderazgo es un ingrediente esencial del éxito a largo plazo de toda organización. Este estudio de caso examina el liderazgo ejercido por Tony Hall, actual director ejecutivo principal de la Royal Opera House (ROH), durante sus dos años y medio al frente de la entidad. En la década de los ’90, la ROH atravesó una crisis tras otra, motivando severas críticas contra su administración. Hall ha formado un equipo directivo de fuerte cohesión que ha sabido concentrar y consolidar sus esfuerzos para dotar a la ROH de un renovado sentido de utilidad, pertinencia dentro de la comunidad, y orgullo.
PALABRAS CLAVE 
Organización artística, liderazgo, administración, formación de equipos, reestructuración