1. Running head: CIRQUE FINAL CAPSTONE
Cirque du Soleil
Final Capstone Case Analysis
Joshua R. Norris
California Baptist University

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Creating the Company
According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR) “Cirque du Soleil was formed in 1984
by a troupe of street performers known as ‘Le Club des Talons Hauts’ (The High-Heels Club)”
(Delong & Vijayaraghavan, 2002, page 1, para 2). The main purpose of the newly found company
was to reinvent the circus by eliminating animals and combining street performers, clowns,
acrobats, and gymnasts in order to provide both amazing feats and to create theatrical and dance
infused dramas. “The music of Cirque was in a Latin-sounding language designed to transcend
cultural boundaries. Even when Cirque started out with its first small-scale shows in Canada, it
was mindful of globalization, both in staffing and content; eventually, it achieved globalization in
audience too, leaving Canada for the first time in 1987.” (Delong & Vijayaraghavan, 2002, page
2, para 2). It was the circus for adults; what the circus wished it could grow up to be like.
The company was originally founded by Guy Laliberté and Daniel Gautier. Guy Laliberté
was a musician and fire breather when they first began performing, but is now president and chief
executive officer of Cirque. Daniel Gautier was tasked with managing most of the business side of
things, especially external partnerships and financing. “In 1998, when Laliberté bought out
Gautier’s half, Canadian Business Magazine valued the company at $800 million.” (Delong &
Vijayaraghavan, 2002, page 1, para 3). Since taking full ownership of Cirque du Soleil, Guy
Laliberté wanted to grow the company quickly, but not at the expense of losing control of the
creativity and originality to a board of stockholders. A number of things kept Cirque du Soleil in a
world of their own, but the key was that the company created its own market and eliminated its
need for competing because there was no one else like them at the time.
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Cirque du Soleil has a lot of praise when it comes to its product and market share, but
there are some critics who are concerned about the company’s ability to maintain growth while
staying true to its original likeness and feel. Employees are the main proponents to this matter
because they are not always confident that the owner of the company has their personal best
interests at heart. One employee, the conductor Oberacker, said that they perform two more
shows a week than ordinary Broadway shows and that they are “unemployed for a fourth of the
year.” (Delong & Vijayaraghavan, 2002, page 3, para 2). To some, that could be a good thing,
but it seemed to be discerning to Oberacker, who also mentioned that his starting pay was
significantly lower than that on Broadway. This begs the question though, why did he join if that
was an issue?
On another note, Gonzalo Munoz, a clown by trade, reported that he originally only came
on with Cirque in order to work with one of their clowns, but now loves working with the
company. According to Munoz, he is receiving three times more income than he used to in other
performance jobs and that Cirque takes wonderful care of the performers. It was noted that
Cirque provides onsite language training in six different languages in order to help bridge the
communication gab of its performers who come from all walks and cultures of life. Munoz also
mentioned how Cirque brought in outside talent to train its performers in addition to auditioning
for new, preexisting talent. Things like this may be an extra cost to the stakeholders (the
company), but they are the kind of things that make good employees (performers) stay around
long enough to get that short term investment back in the long run.
Statement of Core Problem
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The core problem for Cirque du Soleil is whether or not their comparative advantage is a
sustainable one and whether they can keep up with their own growth before it all collapses. When
Cirque du Soleil was founded in 1984 it had an edge that created their own market. At that time
they had no real competition because they were in a league of their own. What put them there was
the enormous length on their talent roster and that talent is not cheap. The other issue is that they
are a large business now and they are still growing. There was mention as to whether or not they
were growing too fast; so fast that they may out grow their very soul. Murielle Cantin was
worried that Cirque was growing too fast for its own good, according to the study. “There was
the chance of wearing out its welcome in the North American market, of running low on original
talent, and of doing something less than Cirque quality in its creation of entertainment
complexes.” (Delong & Vijayaraghavan, 2002, page 11, closing para).
Cantin also wondered if Cirque had a strategy at all and it was noted that she felt that
Cirque should perhaps just focus on their performers instead. Earlier in the problems section of
the study it was mentioned that there were more and more business men popping up in Cirque’s
upper ranks and that Pouliot felt that they needed to “find the right mix” and that they “must not
kill the soul of Cirque, yet we are a big business, we make a lot of money, so we have to make
good decisions and we have to protect the assets.” (Delong & Vijayaraghavan, 2002, page 10,
para 4). Cirque is a company that was built on diversification and flashy showmanship. They need
to continue this constant state of flux in order to remain in their own blue ocean arena and they
are seeing like-competitors now that they have paved the way in this new market of theirs. The
company needs a plan that will allow them to continue to change with the times and to keep its
competitors off of their coat tail.
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Both Pouliot and Cantin had good points for the executives to consider. Pouliot was
concerned about staying true to the soul of the company and Cantin wondered if they should
continue to focus more on the performers. The whole point of this course is to understand how to
find the right employees for the job that they are needed for and how to keep those employees
happy and on task. With Cirque exists a lot of positions that need to be filled and some of the
tasks for those employees have never been done before; some have yet to be conceived by the
producer too, which means that the employees don’t always know what they are in for. This giant
needs a strategy for its human capital expansion and retention and whether they should continue
to pursue markets other than the North. In any case, Cirque needs to solve one problem before
branching out to the next.
Secondary Problem
The secondary problem for Cirque Du Soleil is their human resource practices; specifically
the retention and growth of existing talent. On the bottom of page three of the case study (2002),
Murielle Cantin admitted that it was “a constant challenge to find the right artists. ‘We are trying
to find in a desert the pearl that will fit the perfect ring,’ she said.” (Delong & Vijayaraghavan,
2002). Though searching for and finding new talent is important, keeping that talent becomes
even more so. The less that one needs to replenish when it comes to an employer’s talent pool,
the less that company must do to fill its slots. Finding talent to add to the company and finding
talent within the existing human resources of the company are two separate animals all together.
It goes without saying that it is easier for employers to rate and compare talent within one’s
organization than it would be to find and rate outside talent.
Solutions
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Maintaining a company’s competitive advantage relies on many factors; one of which are
the resources available to the company. Human capital is the biggest asset at Cirque’s disposal
and they need to recognize that. That also means that they need to evaluate how much more it
costs to find new talented employees than it would to just train the ones that they already have. In
chapter seven of Managing Human Resources (2013), the authors suggest that “an organization’s
revenues and overall profitability are positively correlated to the amount of training it gives its
employees.” (Snell, & Bohlander, 2013, page 292). On page 293, Snell and Bholander (2013)
also imply that the goal of training in an organization should be to contribute to the overall goals
of that organization, which is what Cirque should be focusing on at this stage of their business
goals. Using person analysis or the process of determining “the specific individuals who need
training” (Snell & Bholander, 2013, page 299), Cantin and Cirque’s upper management team can
establish what the strengths and weaknesses are in their existing talent pool, allowing them to
focus more on fine-tuning those talents. By doing so, they can then create new shows around
what they are already equipped to do and adversely, they can train those talented individuals in
accordance with ideas that they may envision for future shows that Cirque would like to try.
Once Cirque has created the platform for internal training and fine-tuning they need to
incorporate the understanding of trainee readiness and trainee motivations. But they need to
remember that if their employees do not see the correlation of the training to the goals they may
be less receptive. If employees see better retention practices they might see more benefit in
accepting and exceling in the training that they are to endure. To complement the idea of
employee retention through training it is also important to continue to consider payment and
compensation practices that are realistic in enticing the employees to stay. Otherwise, they will
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likely take the training that they have received internally and leave the company for better benefits
elsewhere. Cirque must consider the cost benefit of compensating their employees well in
exchange for the company’s freedom from having to continuously find and train new employees
from the ground up. This means finding strong forms of direct and indirect compensation that
attracts the kind of talented people that they are attempting to obtain and of course; keep. In this
case the link between compensation and Cirque’s organizational objectives is to lessen the burden
of having to find new talent by keeping that which they already employ.
The last thing that I would recommend to Cirque is that they consider incorporating their
employee retention strategy with their long-term corporate goals and the continuity of their
business. According to Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt (2011), one of the best ways to keep
good employees is to include them in corporate plans and to tell them how they fit into the
scheme of things within those plans. In a company such as Cirque Du Soleil, they have many
performers, planners, and directors for the various shows that they hold across the globe. A good
long-term plan for Cirque would be to look for the stars of their productions and use them as
advocates for their younger talent. This will establish those stars as being more crucial to the
operations of the company and less on the performances that they give during a given show or
production. Though good wages and benefits go a long way, some people would rather feel
important to something bigger than themselves and artistic performers are no exception to that.
Constraints and Limiting Factors
With a diversified environment such as Cirque du Soleil there are a lot of variables that
need to be considered and traversed in order to maintain balance; certainly so if they intend to
grow at a stable rate. The entire composition of the company itself is fluid and ever changing,
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which means that it is not always so obvious what kind of talent the human resource recruiter is
going to be looking for. It was noted by Snell & Bohlander (2013) that gauging the knowledge
and skill base of international employees was a constraint of globalization on human resource
management in itself and Cirque has a number of culturally diverse employees. Criteria for the
company’s talent needs change as the acts diversify as do the acts change in conjunction to the
newly integrated talent(s), too. In truth, the only constants within the company are change and
volatility; both hard waves to brunt. When such an environment exists, a company like Cirque is
more susceptible to reactive changes versus proactive change that is strategized and implemented
intentionally.
One solution to Cirque’s problem of finding new talent was to keep the talent that they
have. According to Cantin, Cirque’s casting director, it is difficult enough to find talent, let alone
to give them what is needed in order to assimilate into the organization. In the second paragraph
of page four, Delong and Vijayaraghavan (2002) state “Traditionally trained artists learned, often
for the first time, to perform in an intensely multicultural background. Cantin said, ‘The artist has
to trust someone to catch them in a dance routine. This can’t happen if the artist is prejudiced
against Arab people or Japanese people.’ Cantin tried to evaluate what the artist’s needs were in
coming to Cirque and how much support that would require. Some artists were integrating an
established solo act and were autonomous, while others were joining for a career and needed
much more artistic guidance.” (Delong and Vijayaraghavan, 2002). This makes long term talent
retention difficult by anyone’s standards. Cirque already has a lot of great non-monetary
investments in place for the alleviation of their highly cultural environment; but, is it enough? At
the end of the day, one cannot make someone who is so out of touch with their working
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environment and culture, so out of their element, to feel as though they belong. Biases, racism,
and prejudice are not easily cured.
As mentioned from page four of the article, the performances put on by Cirque are reliant
on talent being brought in and incorporated for that new production that Cirque’s customers are
looking for. The idea of minimizing the incoming talent and training existing talent could also
mean that they may miss out on something new. Something that competitors may find in their
oversight and thus, use against Cirque as a competitive edge. In order to overshadow the lack of
new incoming talent, Cirque would need to have such outlandish training methods in place in
order to foster their own internal talent to do things that they had never before done on their own
or with their original training. This in itself could pose a more expensive burden, making the
recruitment of new talent almost more affordable; with the right research of course.
The last recommendation proposed was that Cirque should consider incorporating their
employee retention strategy with their long-term corporate goals as well as the continuity of their
business. However, the majority of their lower-level, up and coming stars are artists and
performers; individuals who hunger for the performing arts and all of the fun and excitement that
it has to offer. Unfortunately, such employees may likely have little interest in transitioning from
being the stars of the show to becoming managers and upper level corporate employees. That
would make the method of long-term employee retention less effective for the majority of their
employees. As far as having those high performing employees begin to take on a role of fostering
new talent, there may be a bit of jealousy and animosity toward the new coming talent and up and
coming talent that they would be hoped to nurture.
Implementation of Best Solution
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If Cirque is going to invest in their employees for the purpose of keeping their talent, the
first step needs to be finding out what makes their employees tick. What are their goals and what
are their talents? This all is needed in order to be able to figure out how to keep key players.
Conducting a person analysis (Snell & Bholander, 2013) on every individual from their available
talent pool will help to see whether or not they need to hire more people and if not, which
employees may benefit from special training. In the case of Cirque du Soleil, the needs of the
company are so extraordinary and off the wall, that it will be difficult to create some form of
company standard. Because of this, I would first have Cirque initiate a survey to their employees
that asks them what their core talents and experience is in, what they feel they wish to fine-tune
about those talents, and what interests them that is outside of their normal scope of expertise. By
doing so, Cirque not only receives lower level feedback on the existing talent pool, but rather it
also gives them a smaller focus group of individuals who not only need training; they want it too.
This would be a good time to encourage input from lower-level employees as well.
Next, the company needs to figure where they are with their current production
obligations and what slots need to be filled by their employees. Cirque should keep in mind that
just because an employee is known to have specific talents does not mean that there are not
unknown talents that individuals have not yet been able to express to the company. This means
that Cirque may have a current employee who could be lateralled into another needed position
while others who could fill their old slot are already on the bench, ready to jump in too. With an
intact talent pool roster, the company has effectively reduced and possibly eliminated the need to
recruit new players in such a scenario. In this step, the company could also implement a portion of
training for those who projected an interest in new things, but that said they did not yet have
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training or experience. Such offers would be a value added, non-monetary incentive for
employees to remain in the company and because the training was already offered to current role
players, it may cost nothing extra to the company to have others sit in.
After filling all the pieces in their current production’s needs, the upper level producers
and writers can begin to strategize new shows based on the newly reported talents and interests of
their current employees. When the crew has an outstanding, one-of-a-kind production concept,
they can readily refer to the talent pool information that they now have available and see whether
or not they have people who may already be equipped to pull off what they envision, whether
anyone has the desire to train in such needed categories, or if they will need to go ahead and
recruit this new piece of their future puzzle.
With this implementation the company would have effectively tightened up their ranks
with employees who see other options within the company and who feel as though the company
cares about them and their own personal aspirations. When enacting their goals by promoting and
utilizing their existing employees the company can better see the rising stars who may become
important in the managing and training of current and future talent as well. Both of those ideas are
mentioned in the main text as non-monetary perks and benefits within a company that build wealth
and stamina within employees; making them happier and less likely to jump ship. Now that such a
foundation is present within the company, Cirque will be able to use this as a recruiting tool by
telling their prospects that they will pay for their training and that they encourage personal
growth; both within the company and in their personal careers and goals. Finally, this may help
Cirque to focus more on the talent in front of them and less on keeping their sights ahead for the
next best thing; they can better create the next best thing(s) within themselves and become united
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as a well-knit group. Besides, the less outside elements that are introduced to the company
culture, the less likely they are to lose the comradery that they already enjoy.
Justification for Solution
Implementation of the proposed solution is important because it bridges the gap between
three major long-term issues surrounding the overall success of Cirque du Soleil. Those three
areas, in no official order of importance, are: fostering internal talent; employee and talent
retention; and succession planning. According to the authors of Growing Talent as if Your
Business Depended on It “Companies whose boards and senior executives fail to prioritize
succession planning and leadership development end up either experiencing a steady attrition in
talent or retaining people with outdated skills.” (Cohn, Khurana & Reeves, 2011, page 106). This,
the authors said, would leave such companies vulnerable to their competitors in such an event that
they need to shift direction quickly in order to stay ahead of the game (Cohn, Khurana & Reeves,
2011). In the same article it was also noted that integrating management succession training and
including employees in the goals of the company were great ways to keep employees motivated,
which gives them incentive to stay and grow with the company. Cirque du Soleil is no different;
they are a large company and they need to have methods of retaining their talent while also being
prepared to have players step into management roles when the time comes about.
Employees are individuals who fulfil a task within an organization in order to earn a living
as well as to find a career path that is fulfilling to them. If one is unhappy with their job, they are
not going to stick around when better opportunities arise. Offering employee incentives such as
internal training and internal promotions are a great way to keep talented people happy with one’s
organization. In the article How to Keep your Top Talent, Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt
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(2011) visited the concept of linking employee goals to those of the company early on in their
careers in hopes that the organization could find and foster their rising stars so that they will not
jump ship down the way. On page 133, they even suggest “letting them help solve the company’s
biggest problems.” (Martin & Schmidt, 2011) by including the employees in the organizational
goals from inception to implementation. Here is where the recommendation of individual person
analysis from Snell & Bholander (2013, page 299) comes into play, as well as creating the internal
training programs for using up potential within the talent pool.
Employees may be standoffish at first during the individual analyses, but once they begin
to see their place within the future of Cirque, professional studies supporting these actions
suggest that they will become more self-fulfilled in the work that they do. They will even begin to
sense that the company holds their talent in high regard and the company will benefit by having a
strong, talented work force that will become a more coherent team. Rising stars will eventually be
conditioned for their future roles in management and the competitive advantage that Cirque has
enjoyed over the years due to their broad talent base will flourish. After the final proposals have
been implemented, Cirque du Soleil will have successfully reinforced their organizational
foundation through capitalization and advancement of existing talent, increased retention of
talented employees, and by having succession plans in place so that the machine keeps running
strong in the future.
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References
Cohn, J., Khurana, R., & Reeves, L. (2011). Growing Talent as if Your Business Depended on It.
In Harvard business review on finding & keeping the best people (1st ed., Vol. 1,
pp. 105-127). Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Review Press.
Delong, T., & Vijayaraghavan, V. (2002). Cirque du Soleil. Harvard Business Review,9-403-006.
Martin, J., & Schmidt, C. (2011). How to Keep Your Top Talent. In Harvard business review on
finding & keeping the best people (1st ed., Vol. 1, pp. 129-147). Boston, Mass.: Harvard
Business Review Press.
Snell, S., & Bohlander, G. (2013). Chapters 7-9. In Managing Human Resources (16th ed.).
Mason, Ohio: South-Western.
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