Communication Issues

[Britney]

As the stage manager, I've always understood it to be our responsibility to facilitate communication between the actors, directors, designers, technicians, producers...etc.  I feel I do a good job keeping everyone up to date on what's going on with the production.  I send out my rehearsal reports, daily schedules, production meeting reports, and follow-up on e-mails/phone calls as quickly as I can. 
But what do you do when your production team is not reading your e-mails, responding to your phone calls or telling you what you need to know?
Example 1:
I spent about 15 minutes making up a rehearsal schedule for the week with my music director and assistant director (our director was out sick that day...another story in and of itself). I then read the schedule back to them, they agreed it was fine. After rehearsal I typed it up and sent it out to the production team as well as the cast.  We then had a two day break and when we returned, they told me that our music director had a conflict with the schedule for that day and we needed to change it immediately (this is 45 minutes before rehearsal). I asked them why they didn't tell me about it two days ago when we were making the schedule or even respond to my schedule e-mail letting me know that we'd made a mistake and they said they didn't know.
Why didn't they read the schedule e-mail or think about it more carefully after I read the schedule back to them?

Example 2:
Our producer signed on a designer (for very little money, but none of us are getting paid much) who had worked for the theatre before and had a soft-spot for it.  Great! I thought. Someone familiar with the space! For weeks I tried to schedule production meetings around this designer's schedule so we could all sit down and chat. I even told this to the producer who wished me luck.  I finally thought I had nailed down a time so I called the designer and asked if she would be available. She told me that when she signed her contract, she only agreed to come to one production meeting, so if I wanted it to be this meeting I should really think about it. I apologized to her for my mistake and spoke to the producer who said that he had in fact made this verbal agreement with her.
Why wasn't I made aware that this designer was only contracted to join us for 1 production meeting?  Especially after trying to schedule around her for weeks?

Example 3:
Late last night I received an e-mail from our choreographer letting me know that she won't be able to make it to rehearsal today because of a scheduling conflict. I immediately send her a note back letting her know that I will take care of it and I forward her e-mail to the director/asst. director/music director and let them know what I think the best plan is. I then ask them to please let me know if they have any other thoughts before I telephone the actors involved and change their call time.  I don't hear anything from them, so I call the director. No answer. I call the Assitant director who says he'll call me back. He doesn't. I call the director again. No answer, I leave a message. I call the Assistant Director. No answer. I wait. I call the director again. No answer. I wait. Finally I get a call from the Director saying that he just got to his desk and he hasn't checked his e-mail yet today so he has no idea what this scheduling issue is. He reads it and says my idea is great and I should go ahead and call them.
That's all well and good, but I was just trying to do the informative thing and not change the call without consulting my director. If he wants to give me the power to change the call when I think it's right, that's fine, but I need him to tell me that (or maybe I just need to ask).

Has anyone else ever encountered communication problems like this?
What can I do to fix the issue?
The people I'm working with are not new to the business (they've been doing it for many many years) so I'm baffled at how poorly they communicate with me and with each other. I really want to help them and make this production go as smoothly as possible, but I'm have a really hard time.

Any advice?

Thanks,
Britney

[Jessie_K]

Set your email so that you get proof that they receive your emails.  Gently remind them to read.

But no you can't make people read, remember, understand, obey.

Take 3 deep breathes and do your best.

[Britney]

Thanks for the advice. How can I set my email to let me know when my emails are read? I use Gmail.
Thanks again,
Britney

[Mac Calder]

gMail does not support Read Receipts. Read Receipts are only supported by certain clients anyway, so if sending to a large number of personal accounts, there is a good chance that a certain percentage won't support them. You could try a service like readnotify.com - but even that is not foolproof.

But this goes far beyond "I didn't get the email" syndrome.

The only words of wisdom I have to offer are as follows: You can lead a mule to water, but you cannot make it drink.

So lay out your expectations, issues and problems, they will either accept them and embrace the solutions, or they will completely ignore them.

[KMC]

One of the most valuable lessons I ever learned in school was circle of influence vs. circle of concern (illustrated below).  Anything that potentially effects how you do your job goes into the circle of concern.  Anything you have direct control falls inside both the circle of influence and circle of concern.  And as you'll notice, the circle of influence is much much smaller than the circle of concern. 

In your situation, people not reading their emails absolutely falls into your circle of concern.  Unfortunately it falls well outside the circle of influence. 

Sometimes there is not a whole lot you can do!   

[Britney]

Thanks, Mac.  
I guess ultimately I feel strange talking to them about these elementary communication issues. Perhaps its because I've been in the business for 5 years and they've been in the business for 25 years.
I wonder how they've done things in the past and if this is just a function of them being at a new theatre company (management just changed recently) or if this is just how they operate.

[Britney]

In your situation, people not reading their emails absolutely falls into your circle of concern.  Unfortunately it falls well outside the circle of influence. 

Sometimes there is not a whole lot you can do!   

Thanks for the helpful diagram! I suppose it's just maddening to me that there is so little I can do to fix this. 

[cue_light]

I've actually had this problem in the past, and I actually had great luck with adding "please confirm back your understanding and compliance." on any "actionable" emails. I then took to following up by phone on any non-responses after a reasonable amount of time.

It was very inconvenient and time consuming to begin with, but eventually it became more inconvenient for the production team themselves to deal with my follow-up voicemails. After about a week or so, they realized that it was just plain easier to respond to me by email. This way, it forces (theoretically) to read the email and you have a receipt saying that they both got the email and agree to information contained therein.

[Britney]

Interesting system. I did think about doing something like this but thought it would be too time consuming.  It's good to hear from someone who has tried it and gotten through the time consuming aspect to the actual helpful aspect!

[KMC]

That is a great idea by cue_light.  Sadly I hadn't even thought of it as it's fairly standard practice for me.  If I'm emailing someone I don't know well (i.e. know they are on top of their stuff) or someone I know is somewhat lacking, I usually add "please confirm receipt" if it's anything more than an FYI email.

[centaura]

I doubt its a case of them being new to the theatre, its a case of their minds not making the connection to how important communication is.  Some people will never make that connection, which ironically is why stage managers are so useful to begin with, but one of the reasons that they get driven nuts.  All I can say is do the best that you can do, you have done the documentable to give them the information that they need.

-Centaura

[Rebbe]

I think your examples are common issues that most of us run into at one time or another.  Like Centaura said, if everyone was good at communicating and following up and delegating, we’d live in a world of SMs.  So years of experience may not make the rest of the production team any better at those things. Overall, I’d try to focus on one issue at a time.  Rather than trying to talk to them about “elementary communication issues,” just  address each problem specifically, and suggest a way to avoid the same problem in the future.   

Your second and third examples are good notes for yourself for the future.   It’s a good idea to ask the producer during prep or sooner I if any one on the production team or cast has schedule conflicts, or time limitations based on their contract.  Ideally they will give you this info without you asking for it, but that just doesn’t always happen.  Or you ask and they still don’t give you the full story, but at least you can have it on your list to ask. 

With the director, since it sounds like he trusts you, maybe you can now agree that in this situation you will just make an executive decision if you can’t reach him and it’s less than X number of hours before rehearsal.  Keep in mind that with most Equity contracts there are rules about the notice needed to change a Call, so if you work Equity in the future you’ll have some guidelines to help you, rather than having to honor every last-minute change.   

[Britney]

Thanks to everyone for all the good advice.  Looking back on each moment, I can see where I could have done something differently to help/change the outcome of the situation. Things always seem worse in the heat of the moment.

I agree that I should definitely talk to the director and get his permission to make executive decisions regarding call times. Especially since he is interested in turning this company Equity in the future and wants to make the transition as seamless as possible. 

As my father is so fond of saying: there are no bad experiences; only lessons learned. The more "lessons" I learn, the more I agree with him.

Britney

[VSM]

Here's to your dad...