Forever Skills

4Problem solving

The thing about problem solving is, sometimes it’s not until we create a new solution that we realise there was a problem in the first place.

Michael Smith is the owner of The Sun Theatre. It is a small cinema in Yarraville, a suburb in the west of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. When he first bought The Sun, it was a dank, mouldy ruin ready for demolition. But, acting on a hunch, he invested his time, energy and a considerable amount of money in lovingly restoring the old timber cinema seats and the artfully decorated foyer. Just so we’re clear, he didn’t update the cinema to conventional modern standards, but rather to its original condition from in its heyday.

It didn’t make sense. It was expensive. Uncertain. Risky!

In a world where big chain cinemas dominate the industry with a model designed around Saturday nights (the biggest movie-going night by far), where they cram people in and run as many ads as they can before people will walk out, this looked like madness.

We did none of that. We put in the most amazing chairs we could. We run no ads. We choose the films we show and we serve the community and the customer first … always!

‘For instance,’ Smith continued,

The Secret Life of Pets was launching and the team and I were brainstorming ideas on how we could do something creative with it. We came up with the idea of letting people watch the movie accompanied by their pets.

Of course, there is an inherent problem with having animals indoors for ...