MANAGING A CINEMA FORWARD

ASSESSING THE LANDSCAPE

Effective managers today need to be constantly expanding on their expertise. For example, those in the cinema industry should be absorbing information on the digital domain, advertising trends, telecommunication and data processing advancements, the entertainment and leisure industries, food and commodities markets, etc. However, good managers should possess a filter which forces them to discard input that is opinion or point-of-view, and instead search for events which spark trends. This allows one to obtain clues with which you may make inferences on events and trends that may impact your business and also give you the right view of the landscape you’re working in.

Listed below are some current trends:

· In developed countries, populations are getting older, but also more diverse.
· Consumer businesses, no matter how large, are community-centric.
· Today all businesses must specialize in marketing and development.
· Companies must be organized for maximum advantage with flatter structures. Pyramid structures increase frictional loss and are energy consuming.
· Staff is the value added for any business and staff development a key success factor in today’s talent driven economies.

TODAY’S CORE SKILL SET

Whether your field is cinema management or any other consumer industry, today’s environment requires a specific skill set. Managers must:

· Possess a high tolerance for ambiguity. They must have a capacity for understanding uncertainty and know that things are capable of being understood in more ways than one.
· Have a generic curiosity. They should be constantly wondering about how business works, what impacts it and how to improve it.
· Assess their own nature and biases and be able to discount its effect on their decision-making.
· Be strategic thinkers not strategic planners.
· Place coaching skills as a top personal strength.
· Be talent driven. They must strive to hire dynamos and pay and train them well. When hiring, think in terms of roles or functions rather than specific job placement.

MOVING FORWARD

After assessing the landscape, keeping abreast of trends and establishing a set of core skills, now you need to hone prioritization, empower staff while providing guidance, and emphasize in-house and outside training which focuses on areas that need development. If the organization is structured correctly, the cinema manager is the key person who will move the cinema forward.