In January 2016, the executive director of Canada's Stratford Festival, one of North America's largest repertory theatre companies, was considering the festival's long-term outlook and the role the organization played in the community. The 2015 season had been successful, and she would be able to report a small surplus to the board at the upcoming annual general meeting. But the long-term outlook wasn't as secure. Annual attendance had dropped below previous levels of more than 500,000, which was the attendance needed to ensure long-term operational sustainability. The festival had returned to its creative roots during a period when the Canadian dollar had been in decline, but it had not been enough to ensure that the organization would survive its next economic tempest. The festival needed a long-term, innovative strategy to generate sustainable growth and strengthen it sufficiently to weather future economic downturns and exchange rate fluctuations.
In early 2014, Ferio Pugliese looked back on his turbulent first year as president of WestJet Airlines Ltd.’s new regional air service Encore. Encore represented the company’s most significant organizational change in its 18 years of dramatic growth. Expanding the airline’s fleet to include smaller, short-haul aircraft that could service smaller destinations throughout Western Canada had not been without growing pains. For example, a number of employees reportedly felt they were losing their sense of belonging in the company that prided itself on employee satisfaction. Pugliese wondered how he should proceed in putting Encore on a successful path.
In late 2006, the Rouge Valley Health System’s board of directors began to grasp the gravity of the leadership challenge set before them: rescue the amalgamated Scarborough Centenary Hospital and the Ajax and Pickering General Hospital, which was financially a “basket case,” or face an imposed government takeover. A recently completed independent peer review conducted from June through November 2007 came down hard on the former senior leadership team for poor performance and lack of accountability. To reverse the hospital’s grave prognosis, the board needed to perform triage: work with their new chief executive officer to stop the financial bleed, restore faith among the hospital’s senior management and work towards a new organizational culture.