How roadmaps restore calm, structure and fun at Plein Theater

You’ve been working with Tò Mò for over a year now. How did that come about?

“We were running as a theatre. Performing, programming, surviving. But I was constantly switching between roles, from fundraising to executing to hanging the toilet roll. On top of that, we were entering a multi-year funding cycle for the first time, which was entirely new for our small organisation. That requires a different way of working. I was very much in pioneering mode, always project-focused. There was no time to zoom out. When I met Linda and she told me what she was going to do, I thought: this is someone who can come in from the outside and bring order to the chaos. Pragmatic, no-nonsense. Not too theoretical or technical. And someone who genuinely cares about the people in the organisation, as individuals. That appealed to me. And I already knew her a little, so I knew she was skilled and positive. Let’s do it, I thought.”

What happened in that first session?

“Linda had gone through all the documents beforehand, the multi-year plan, the annual reports. She knew where we stood. She then proposed quite decisively: this is what I’ve heard, and this is what we’re going to do. And in that first session, she did something I had needed for a long time: she took the building blocks I’d been clutching tightly and handed them out to the team. Very cheerfully, but very deliberately. And in doing so, she finally gave everyone their responsibility back. Whenever someone asked me something, she’d say: ‘You don’t need to ask Berith that. What are you going to do?’ Team members become responsible for their own work and get to decide how they do it, so that the strategic plan actually gets carried out.”

“We’re genuinely having fun together again, and the quality of the work is going up as a result.”

“That sounds simple. But I had been doing everything alone for so long that I hadn’t even realised how much was was stored in my head. And how hard it had become to let go. It’s daunting and difficult, as the leader of a tiny organisation full of freelancers, to introduce a new way of working yourself. You worry that people will be unhappy about it behind your back, because you’re changing the way of working you’ve upheld all along. That’s the beauty of having a professional outsider bring it in and create space to talk about it honestly. Everything is just put on the table. That gave me enormous relief. Such a weight fell off my shoulders.”

“In that first session we also did a lot of work on what co-creation actually means for Plein Theater. That might sound strange, because co-creation is our core. But it was largely living in my head and in my way of working. My team understood it, but didn’t have the words or tools for it. In that session we built the space together to let my artistic vision and multi-year plan land with everyone. And only then could people take real ownership of their own piece of it. Because then you know what you’re working towards.”

“Something else I really value is that during the sessions we all sit together in the small theatre hall. Which is of course very different from a classroom. It’s a wonderful atmosphere to be in together, and it connects you energetically and visually to what it’s all about: making theatre, in our case.”

You work with roadmap sessions. What does that look like for Plein Theater?

“I see the roadmap session as a kind of senior management meeting, but for a small organisation like ours. We come together every four or five months, look back at the previous period and set the direction for the one ahead.”

Do you notice that in your day-to-day work as well?

“Absolutely. We now have a team meeting every two weeks. That sounds obvious, but it simply wasn’t happening before. Everything went via app or email or quickly in passing, because we’re all busy. We now genuinely try to deal with things during the meetings, not before or after. The content of the meetings has also changed for the better. Of course we still need to talk about the missing corkscrew in the bar, but we also check back in on what we discussed in the roadmap sessions. Where do things stand now? It’s also a reminder: what are our goals? What’s the playing field? People are more aware of the strategy. And in between, everyone has the space to work independently.”

“We’ve also developed our own shared language. ‘The poncho’, for example. If someone in a meeting starts enthusiastically throwing out ideas that don’t lead anywhere, someone else will say: watch out for the poncho. That example came from one of the roadmap sessions, where we experimented with throwing out ideas freely, without necessarily keeping the goals in mind. Within three minutes, someone had committed to knitting 30 ponchos for a production, which didn’t fit the plans at all. Now everyone knows what ‘the poncho’ means. That kind of shared language makes a team.”

What has this process given you personally?

“For the first time in eight years, I work five days a week instead of seven, or really eight. My role has shifted. I do much less fundraising now, but I have far more space for core programming, for conversations with makers, for properly going through the budget without stress.”

“And I can see that the joy has come back on the floor. My team genuinely enjoys working together. And the result of that is that the quality of our work is noticeably going up.”

Would you have gotten there without the roadmap sessions?

“No. I’m one hundred percent certain of that. Without those sessions we wouldn’t have built such a solid foundation as a new team. I think there was even a real risk of conflict and people leaving, including myself. When you’re putting out fires all day — the door won’t open, someone’s being difficult, the keg is empty — you disappear into that. The sessions forced me to step back. And in that distance, you suddenly see the bigger picture within which you’re putting out all those fires. That creates breathing room.”