Chapter 14 Chapter 13: A circus without animals and clowns (1)

A circus without animals and clowns I used Cirque du Soleil as a case study for my students in my classes, and it was an opportunity for them to hone their skills in challenging the status quo. In the 1980s, the circus industry was in trouble: corny shows, no suspenseful performances, shrinking audiences, and criticism for its treatment of animals.All things said, it wasn't a good time to start a new circus.Guy Lalibere, then just a street performer in Canada, was determined to start a new circus.Thus, Cirque du Soleil was born, and people's inherent views on the circus were completely changed.Guy turned a problem—a dying industry—into an opportunity by forming a circus.

After showing a clip of the Marx Brothers' 1939 film "At the Circus," I asked my students to make a list of everything stereotyped about a traditional circus: giant tents, animal actors, cheap Tickets, hawkers selling souvenirs, several shows at the same time, loud music, clowns, popcorn, Hercules, burning rings of fire.Then I asked them to look at the problem in reverse, imagining what the opposite of each impression would be like.The new checklist, for example, became: small tents, no animals, expensive tickets, no hawkers in sight, one show at a time, highbrow music, and no clowns or popcorn.So, the students listed the things they hoped to remove from the traditional circus, and the things they hoped to change from the traditional circus. As a result, the brand-new circus image they spelled out was Cirque du Soleil.I also showed them a video clip of a recent Cirque du Soleil show, so the students could feel the impact of this change.Once you've done an exercise like the circus, it's fairly easy to generalize to other industries or institutions, such as fast food restaurants, hotels, airlines, sporting events, education, and even love and marriage.

Once you get the hang of it, the exercise of reassessing your work and life is a breeze. The key point is that you must first take the time to clearly list every existing situation that can be improved. Usually this will be the most difficult part, just like the ball in the previous article. As in the case of capsule angioplasty, sometimes the existing status quo is taken for granted and hard to find out.However, with a little practice, you can master this useful technique for looking at your choices from a new perspective. Some people are very good at discovering and challenging the status quo.They explore for innovative ways to solve seemingly impossible tasks, and in the process of exploration, constantly push the boundaries of rationality and possibility.For this reason, they dared to start a new life in a foreign country, and worked hard to open a new road to the unknown frontier, while we often just watched in fear, never thinking that we could take the same step.