“Is the Met Opera too big to fail?”
That’s the question Hannah Grannemann asked recently.
After thinking about this, I realize we may be asking the wrong question.
The Met’s real problem isn’t size, but direction.
The Met’s real problem is its strategy.
Or a lack of a real strategy.
The company’s reaction to continued budget shortfalls and struggling attendance is a case study in panic-driven tactical thinking and a lack of a “True North.”
Look at the patterns:
Mortgaging the future: raiding from the endowment to pay for past decisions.
Mortgaging values: signing a deal with Saudi Arabia trades artistic integrity for short-term cash infusions.
Mortgaging its brand: floating the idea of selling naming rights to the Met’s home and licensing out IP feels like an act of surrender.
Mortgaging artistic vision: championing new works only to abandon this plan when immediate success doesn’t happen.
This is what an organization in strategic freefall looks.
An organization that is managed by reaction rather than vision.
This financial crisis isn’t causing a strategic challenge. The lack of strategy is creating the financial crisis.
This pattern of behavior isn’t just desperation.
It is a visible symptom of a deeper ailment: a “True North” vacuum at the Metropolitan Opera.
What is a “True North?”
It is a strategic vision for the organization. One built on clear, deliberate, strategic choice of a “True Customer” and a value proposition that explains why someone will choose the Met Opera over all the alternatives.
Without these choices, the organization is caught in a tug-of-war between two opposing extremes:
The Zombie Strategy: An outdated emphasis on grandeur and prestige at all costs.
This strategy forgets that brands should be living creations, evolving to meet the times, but keeping the essence that made the brand great.
The Panic-Driven Strategy: The current state of reactive thrashing.
The Opera finds itself pulled in every direction, searching for short-term revenue, and, ultimately, making decisions that undermine its brand, values, and long-term relevance.
A real strategy, a “True North”, is clear and focused.
It is built on the answers to three defining strategic questions:
- What does “true success” really look like?
- Who is our “true customer?”
- Why should they choose us?
The Met Opera’s inability to answer these questions puts the organization in the position of mortgaging its future.
This isn’t a financial crisis.
This is an identity crisis.
The Opera’s path forward isn’t more activity and frenzy.
The next steps need a deliberate, structured process to turn frenzy into focus.
Leaders in the organization will have to reframe the “How do we make $50M?” question into a focus on those three defining strategic questions.
This isn’t brainstorming new ideas.
It is a strategic decision-making.
Forced focus.
Answering these questions will create a “True North” for the Met Opera.
A filter that every decision can be run through, from partnerships to programs and beyond.
What might that look like in practice?
Define “True Success”:
Is the Opera going to continue to be a home to preserving 19th Century Opera?
A traditionalist organization with a dwindling audience and diminished opportunities?
Will the Opera decide to be New York and America’s living cultural gathering place?
Relevant, accessible, and civically engaged.
A choice is necessary.
Identify the “True Customer”:
The definition of “True Success” is a guide to the answer here.
If the Opera’s rooted in preservation, the customer will remain the wealthy donor, the international opera devotee.
The experience, pricing, and programming should be tailored to this.
If the Opera wants to be a forward-looking, civically engaged organization, the customer becomes the culture-seeking New Yorker, the engaged citizen.
This decision would require a rethinking of the programming, marketing, and the entire audience experience.
Is one direction right and the other wrong?
No.
The only certainty is that trying to be everything to everyone is a decision to fail at everything.
Craft a “Why the Met?” value proposition:
A clear answer to the “True Customer” means the Opera can now answer the question of why people should choose the Met Opera.
The answer can no longer be just because it is the Metropolitan Opera.
For the global, opera devotee, the value proposition might be, “Experience opera the way it should be authentic, grand, with the world’s biggest stars.”
For the culture-seeking New Yorker, the value proposition will be different. You might say, “Your gateway to powerful emotions and spectacles in the vibrant center of the City’s cultural life.”
Defining “True North” is a filter.
This filter allows every decision to be made with an eye on “True Success”.
Saudi Investment: “Does a partnership with an authoritarian government align with our “True North?”
The answer becomes clear.
Naming Rights: “Does selling naming rights to our home, does this enhance or erode the value we promise our ‘True Customer’?”
The answer becomes simpler.
Programming: “Will this production deliver value to our “True Customer” while being consistent with our value proposition?”
The answer is easier to find.
A compelling, coherent “True North” makes fundraising easier.
Having a real “True North” can be the most powerful fundraising tool in existence.
Donors and audiences are attracted to vision.
The financial success of the Metropolitan Opera is rooted entirely in the ability to solve this identity crisis.
This moment requires courageous choice.
It isn’t whether or not the Met Opera is “too big to fail.”
The question is what it must choose to become.
The way forward is by making the critical, defining decisions that establish its “True North.”
This will be uncomfortable.
This moment demands that the status quo be confronted, traditions, and powerful interests.
This moment requires a choice between two futures.
One rooted in history. One rooted in the future.
But a strategic reckoning is the Opera’s only hope.
Every day spent spinning wheels between competing visions is a day the crisis deepens.
The path isn’t to save the Met Opera of old. It is to create the Met Opera of the future.
There is no mystery.
Only choice.
Stop the tactical panic: Acknowledge the short-term nature of many of the fixes.
Put a moratorium on brand-destroying decisions until the organization is clear on its “True North.”
Force the strategic conversations: Leadership must clearly define “True Success”, “True Customer”, and “True Value.”
Empower the new vision: Use the “True North” as a filter.
Make decisions that line up with the Opera’s vision of success.
Sell the vision. Sell the future.
Leave the desperation behind.
The financial future of the Metropolitan Opera isn’t hidden in a spreadsheet. It isn’t going to be found in another set of “let’s see what happens” tactics.
The future of the Metropolitan Opera is hidden in the answer to three tough strategic questions and the uncomfortable answers those are likely to raise.
But know this:
Money will follow the vision. It never works the other way around.