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To Thine Own Tactics Be True

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Seth Godin recently made a post warning people against adopting the tactics of those you view as successful as your own.

The problem is simple. You don’t have a tactics problem. You have a strategy problem.

Borrowing tactics from someone with a useful strategy isn’t going to help because it’s their strategy that’s better, not their tactics.

And using tactics from someone who got lucky isn’t going to help either. Someone needs to get lucky, and it was them. It’s not their tactics that made it happen. Going to the same bank as Charlize Theron isn’t going to make you a movie star.

When in doubt, focus on your strategy. The tactics will follow.

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This reminded me of a quote from Joseph Campbell about the Knights of the Round Table embarking on the Grail quest

“‘They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the forest at the point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest, and there was no way or path.’

“No way or path! Because where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path.”

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Apparently this quote has stuck with me for awhile. In searching for the 2007 post I originally used this quote in I found at least two more instances I used this quote, including in conjunction with another of Godin’s posts.

Perhaps I have used it so much because this is sentiment comes up often in relation to things like copying bylaws from other non-profits or using the same marketing and advertising techniques.

Every organization and community is different with different relationship dynamics. At one point in our lives I am sure we all realized that we couldn’t have the same close relationship with a friend that they seemed to have with another person in their social circle. On paper there may be no difference between you and that third person, but for some intangible reason your friend and they seem to share a significant affinity for one another.

The same is true to a greater or lesser degree on a community scale except some individuals may feel a stronger affinity than others. As Godin says, in relation toa collective you are targeting your tactics need to emerge and be informed by your strategy rather than borrowed. Otherwise the disconnect between the two will feel inorganic and inhibit the relationships you seek to develop.

Causes of Churn Common Across All Business Types

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There was an article on Fast Company this week that discusses customer churn. For the most part the piece is written from the perspective of being a company that has sold another business a product/service that they choose not to renew. Some of that part of the article can be view in parallel with subscription renewal, but there is a fair portion of their advice which applies to single ticket sales as well.

The article notes that the decision not to renew is often made six months prior vs. in the last 30 days or so before the renewal discussions are scheduled.One of the issue identified in the article is the onboarding not matching the promise of the sale pitch. Clearly that can be an issue for customers of arts and cultural organizations when they find their experience isn’t what they expected based on the promotional messaging.

Satisfaction surveys are problematic in that they only measure satisfaction at a specific point in time rather then over an entire span and they don’t record the subtle signs that a decision to disengage has been made. The author of the Fast Company piece, Ron Carlson, suggests being proactive and interactive with the process of collecting feedback from customers, both current and past.

Instead of relying on static surveys, consider having real conversations with both current and past customers to uncover what’s actually happening. What you’re likely to hear in these conversations will shock you.

  • Customers Don’t Feel Heard: “We raised concerns, but nothing changed.”
  • The Real Pain Points Were Missed: “We didn’t leave because of price—we left because we weren’t seeing value.”
  • Your Biggest Risks Are Invisible: “We made the renewal decision months ago.”

Instead of simply sitting around waiting for a renewal conversation, take active steps to retain your clients:

Listen To Lost Customers: Post-churn interviews reveal patterns you won’t see in dashboards.

Map The Customer Journey: Identify weak points before they become churn risks.

Have Regular Check-ins: Not just to “touch base,” but to understand evolving needs.

Ask Why Customers Stay: Understanding what’s working helps reinforce those behaviors.

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Issues like not feeling heard and decision to leave being based on value rather than price are factors I have discussed across a number of posts in the past. Likewise, identifying weak points which might include external issues like parking, dining and safety as well as the ticket purchase and staff/volunteer interactions are also topics I have raised.

I think it is also important to pay attention to that last point -analyzing what is working is just as important as identifying problems. It is easy to view anything people aren’t complaining about neutrally. But it is just as important to catalogue what people say they value as assets and invest in reinforcing what is great about those aspects of the experience.

Seeing Opportunities To Diversify Revenue

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I was recently drawn to the story of Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia opening a retail dancewear store out of their location. They spent $150,000 renovating a space that used to contain two offices into a street level store space. The director of the school noted most dancewear stores stock up to $150,000 in pointe shoes alone and they haven’t reached that level of stock quite yet.

Business Insider had an interesting video in December about the London based pointe shoe maker that supplies the NYC Ballet and the staff at the ballet that maintains the stock.

Rock School made the decision to open the store based on success they have had selling to their own internal constituencies and the fact that a number of longstanding dancewear stores had closed. Those stores had not only supplied the dance community, but also the intricately costumed participants of Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade.

They saw an opportunity to diversify their revenue stream in what they anticipate to be increasingly challenging financial times.

“There’s this perfect storm of already having a successful boutique, seeing the need in Philadelphia, and the potential for a new revenue stream to enable us to do our good work,” he said.

[…]

As a nonprofit, the goal is not to make money, but to cover expenses including maintenance of the buildings. It can be a struggle, says Stark.

“We are anticipating that struggle could get more challenging with what we’re seeing in some of the proposed changes on a federal level,” he said. “We want to be ahead of that, and we don’t want to wait until there’s a problem. We want to proactively step forward and have a solution so that we can keep doing our good work.”

[…]

“Really we’re trying to monetize our asset to support our mission and to support the scholarship and the outreach programming that we do,” he said.

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Go Get My Guitar

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There is a lot of conversation among arts organizations these days about the need to create connection and show the value of arts organizations to the community. I worked with an artist this weekend who really exemplified this aesthetic.

We presented the Masters of Hawaiian Music which is typically George Kahumoku and a rotating roster of 2-3 other notable musicians from Hawaii. In this case it was Herb Ohta, Jr. and Sonny Lim. Kahumoku has been hosting the Maui Slack Key show for over 20 years and has been a musician for far longer than that. He was trained as a visual artist, but is also a farmer, cook, writer in addition to being a sculptor and printmaker. Definitely a renaissance man.

When I initially contracted the show, the local museum was planning having a quilt exhibition around the same time that was going to have 2 out of 20-30 quilts from Hawaii. Over the course of the year that evolved to 100% Hawaiian quilts. I arranged for Uncle George Kahumoku to speak about quilt making the night before the performance and then join the members of a local organization for a potluck and mini-cultural exchange.

The local organization said there would be 15-20 from their group at the talk and potluck and the museum didn’t know how many would attend from their mailing list.

We got to the museum and there were already 40-50 people gathered in the gallery. Uncle George turned around and told me to go back to his hotel room to get his guitar. He really enjoyed the experience because he had never seen so many Hawaiian quilts in one place. He would watch his grandmother and her friends make quilts for every newborn, but he had never seen one placed on a bed and used because they were treated as heirlooms.

He joked when he inherited his father’s quilt, his dad let him look at it and then closed the chest up a few minutes later and told him to never open it again. He didn’t mention if he gave his son the same instructions when he passed it on.

Later at the potluck, upon learning some students of hula came an hour to hear the museum talk, he made everyone move the tables and told them to dance while he played familiar songs on his guitar.

The next night, before the show he was out in the lobby greeting audience members and handing out slips to fill out to “win stuff.” The slips were obviously a way for him to collect address so he could contact people in different parts of the country to attend his shows when he was in the area. But he was also very much making himself available to the audience to chat with him rather than delegating this job to subordinates. (Okay, so he pressed me into helping him so maybe there was a little subordination going on.)

He was back out in the lobby at intermission with Ohta and Lim chatting with the audience. (I had to nudge them back on stage.) Then they were back immediately after the show until everyone left.

It is difficult to communicate the vibe and dynamic via text. His agent may have explained it best when she mentioned his instinct leans toward creating connections and socialization. She mentioned he was likely in his happy place at the museum talk and potluck more than even at the concert.

As much as he was trying to gather people’s contact information, his goal wasn’t to optimize that process. He started drawing names to give things away as soon as I introduced him rather than waiting until the end of the show and taking the opportunity to gather more names at intermission.

Also at some point he managed to collect the names of every staff member and volunteer in the building and acknowledged them all before the performance started. The morning after the public show, I got a long text from Uncle George telling me how much being able to see the quilts meant to him and how he would write about the experience in his memoirs. Again he praised our staff.

I knew by then that he was an exemplar of the level of sincerity and investment that arts organizations need to manifest in their interactions with their community.

Still Trusted, But Some Perceptual Barriers to Overcome

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In my post yesterday I briefly referenced research Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS Experience have released showing that arts and cultural organizations have gained an increased perception of trust since the relaxing of pandemic restrictions.

Last month they released some updated data collected around the end of 2024 about the perceptions working with and against 11 different types of arts and cultural organizations.(subscription required)

They used the criteria of perception of being entertaining (recall audience definition is not your definition), educational, primarily for adults, welcoming to people like me, likelihood to recommend, being an asset to the community.

Generally, exhibit based organizations (zoos, botanical gardens, museums) are regarded as being entertaining. That isn’t as true for performance based organizations. (my emphasis)

Other than live theater, performing arts organizations are on the whole perceived to be less entertaining than exhibit-based organizations.

But before you panic, symphonies/orchestras and other performing arts organizations, remember that these data represent market research, which includes perceptions from people who both do and do not attend these types of organizations. Those who visit with regularity tend to rate the entertainment value more highly … This finding may represent one of those perceptual mismatches between “insiders” and the broader market, where regular attendees who are more familiar with the type of experience offered will likely find it more engaging than those who do not know what to expect…Seeking out opportunities to increase relevance and help potential attendees engage with experiences may offer a potential pathway forward for creative performing arts leaders.

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There is a similar result in terms of perceptions of being welcoming to people like me and likelihood to recommend. Live theater is perceived as being more welcoming and have a higher tendency to be recommended than orchestras and other performing arts organizations.

Interestingly, when it comes to perceptions of being assets to the community, live theater and orchestras are about on par with each other with other performing arts organizations trailing slightly. They attribute this to a mix of high level of trust performing arts and exhibit based organizations enjoy, perception of being educational, and existence as a venerable community institution (for longer established orgs, naturally.)

I am skipping over an immense amount of content they provide. I have almost completely omitted data for exhibit based organizations and probably could have written an entry three times as long based on the performing arts data alone. Additionally, after they provide a macro level view of these trends they drill down on each of the 11 organization types with a short description and infographic summarizing the perceptions that act as headwinds and tailwinds for each.

Communicating What You Are Good For Rather Than Good At More Important Than Ever

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Last month, Forbes website hosted an article “6 Things That Arts Leaders Should Do Right Now” It is written in the context of all the funding cuts and policy changes being promulgated on the federal level.

Except for the suggestion to emphasize the economic impact of your work in the community to garner the support of local businesses and community leaders, the advice is generally to move away from transactional relationships with the community and focus on your core cause and role in society.

Identify the role that your organization has in society.

Magladry, who advises a number of museums, recounted how many museum directors are reviewing the various role that museums can play in communities (e.g., truthteller, protagonist, convener) and how their institutions can act in these roles. This strategizing might require more collaboration between managers and board members as well as artists and community members.

[…]

Many of these recommendations are echoed in Alex Sarian’s book, The Audacity of Relevance, … Sarian argues that arts leaders must ask themselves: What are we good for? rather than What are we good at? In order to answer those questions, arts organizations should have a viable value proposition that tells people why they might engage with the organization and choose its goods and services over other institutions in a clear expression of its plans to address their wants and needs.

Karen Brooks Hopkins, formerly president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, suggests that arts organizations need to move away from thinking in terms of only philanthropy to thinking in terms of investment. “When communities that have a density of arts organizations are successful – economically, socially, and of course, artistically – then there is a reason for cities and municipalities of all kinds to make an ongoing financial commitment to them,”

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This recalls the research by Collen Dilenschneider and IMPACTS Experience that trust in cultural organizations has been growing since the Covid pandemic and underscores the value of positioning your organization as a community resource.

The also article emphasizes the importance of changing the internal culture and structure of the organization to be less siloed so that everyone is working collaboratively to achieve these goals.

Break down siloed work environments.

Adapting to new challenges will require more internal collaboration between departments and more partnerships with other organizations in finding ways to serve audiences and communities. Reaching out and being open to new ideas and approaches may result in finding new funding sources and new audiences for your work.

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Being In Charge When There Is No Benefit

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Seth Godin recently made a post that resonated with me. He wrote about how in large organizations and bureaucracies things often fall through the cracks partially because no one is specifically in charge of something and people have learned not to exert themselves to take charge.

Sooner or later, we say, “I’d love to fix this, but I’m not in charge of that.”

Perhaps, though, we’ve been conditioned to say this even when it’s not true. Because being in charge means being responsible, and we may have learned that being on the hook is uncomfortable.

And so, sooner or later, no one is in charge.

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But he says this sort of organizational inertia doesn’t just exist for large groups:

But it’s not just giant organizations. It’s the little pocket park down the street from you that no one takes the time to clean, or the missing stop sign that no one agitated to have replaced…

The good news is that we have the option to be responsible for far more than we imagine.

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It was the bit about the packet park and stop sign that caught my attention. There is a crosswalk signal near work that was always a little askew. I assumed it was that way so that the sun wouldn’t completely wash out the visibility of the signal. However, after a recent wind storm one signal was pointed diagonally across the intersection and the other was best viewed from a coffee shop and bank about 30 feet before the intersection.

Last week I took pictures on the way back from lunch and sent an email to a city engineer and the whole thing was fixed before I left for work that evening.

Obviously, this is partially an illustration of it being important who you know. In this case I had been in numerous meetings with this particular city engineer discussing the impact of a major road construction project which is going to close our street and sidewalk and displace public art for a number of months.

At the time I also credited her being so friendly and accessible with contributing to the ability to increase the safety of that intersection. As much as I have met with her over the last year, if I hadn’t felt comfortable approaching her about the problem, it would still continue to be an issue today making that intersection more hazardous to cross, including for myself. I had no idea what city department handled crosswalk signals, but I knew she would know. In fact, since the signal is at the intersection of a state and city street, even she didn’t know which entity was responsible and had to ask.

As Godin writes, I contributed to the fix by taking responsibility myself. For years I have been inclined to pick up merchant’s A-frame signs that have fallen down on the sidewalk, flipped floor mats back into place so people wouldn’t slip or trip on them, and reconnected down spouts so that water wouldn’t run across the sidewalk creating a slip hazard.

For me it is a matter of a rising tide raises all boats. If the neighborhood I operate in thrives and is perceived as tidy and safe, that is to my benefit.

But as I note, even for someone inclined to do that lack of knowledge and a feeling that the solution is inaccessible will inhibit my action. So I think it isn’t just a matter of having the option to be responsible that Godin mentions, but also creating an environment organizationally and personally in which people feel comfortable approaching you looking for solutions to problems.

Understanding Barriers To Entry By Visiting Stores That Cause You Discomfort

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Nina Simon posted that she had been interviewed on Kyle Thiermann’s podcast (also on YouTube if you want view a video of them talking.)

They talk for awhile about Nina’s transition from running Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) to writing murder mysteries while taking care of her mother as she dealt with an advanced cancer diagnosis.

Around the 40 minute mark, Nina starts to talk about how she came to be the executive director at MAH. I have written a fair number of entries over the years about Nina’s thoughts on creating an accessible environment for communities at arts and cultural organizations. One of the things she has talked about is creating figurative (though sometimes literal) new doors for people to enter to engage with the organization.

In this podcast episode she touches a little on the empathy that an organization’s staff needs to have to understand the barriers to participation people experience. She says she has gone to conferences and challenged people to go downtown and enter stores that make them feel uncomfortable and pay attention to what it is that causes that. Is it the decor? The way people dress? Rituals and practices you are unfamiliar with?

This resonated with me because I have had that experience and had the same thought about understanding how new audiences can feel ill at ease entering arts and cultural spaces. I have had the experience going to speak to social groups who have traditional practices they enact, but also going into an unfamiliar restaurant and not knowing where and how to order.

As I think about it, I have probably felt more comfortable navigating a new to me performing arts venue than some restaurants.

Nina mentions that you can put out all the messaging you want about people being welcome and how they should feel comfortable wearing what they want, but if the behavior of the other people they encounter sends a contradictory message your efforts may come to naught.

She says even if all elements align to reinforce the welcoming message you hope to convey, people aren’t going to trust your organization as much as they trust their friend’s rock band or knitting circle. Forging alliances and relationships with affinity groups in the community can help cultivate that trust.

Nina also mentioned that it was pretty humbling to realize no matter how much effort they put into creating welcoming environment and programming, it would never increase the engagement with the museum as much as the presence of a good coffee shop and bar in the food hall that was developed next to the MAH.

Take a listen for these and other insights. Also, check out her book on engaging audiences, The Art of Relevance. I just bought my fifth copy — I gave two as gifts, but two other copies I lent out never came back to me.

Working Out Those Work From Home Arrangements

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If you have staff working from home or are considering moving in that direction, I recently made a post on ArtsHacker regarding some tips for creating a successful asynchronous work environment.

The post largely draws from some tips assembled by ArtsMidwest about different tools and approaches an organization can use.

As I write in the ArtsHacker post, you may find the tips

…overly structured for the informal work environment of arts and cultural organizations, but there are likely some situations in which a strong framework is useful. It is easier to discard what isn’t useful than to try to fabricate guidelines whole cloth.  

On the other hand, if it feels like things are being accomplished, but in a very much seat of your pants manner, implementing a structure can be helpful. It may feel like you have artificially imposed constraints on the work environment, but once people are able to internalize the process and begin to employ an effective shared shorthand the boundaries may dissolve into the background.

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Organizing For Work At Home Staffing

It Takes A Village To Get Everyone To Take Vacation

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Another interesting research piece that Bill Byrnes included Management and the Arts was related to burn out in non-profit organizations. A brief excerpt recounting the efforts the behavioral design firm ideas42 embarked on in 2018 appeared on Behavioral Scientist website in September 2024.

What the ideas42 team found was that staffs were engaging in a lot of performative work activity. They would address tasks that were easy to tick off lists or engage in work that made them look busy. The result was that by the end of the day, they were just starting to address the big project they were supposed to be working on.

There is probably a lot in the article that reads like an argument for allowing work at home. Among the things that were slowing people down were calls, emails, and people just dropping by to chat. It took workers an average of 23 minutes, 15 seconds to reset and refocus on their work after being interrupted. Another issue was getting called into meeting that weren’t necessary.

Among the factors contributing to performative working was the mistaken impression that co-workers and supervisors were working as much, if not more, than themselves and they needed to keep up. In fact, others may have been taking lengthy breaks from work and were checking in hours later.

 At work, all people see are others working. When they see late-night emails or texts, they often assume that their coworker or boss has been working all day and night without interruption, when in fact they might have been walking the dog or having dinner with their families. That life outside work doesn’t register because they don’t see it. (Often people don’t want to share their lives outside work with coworkers and bosses to preserve the busyness myth that they’re always working.)

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The folks from ideas42 worked up a number of initiatives to shift the work culture of the organization. One of the things they found was that the interventions that worked least were focused on solving work-life balance issues for an individual whereas the ones that worked best were focused on solving the issues for the whole organization. Essentially, the work-life balance doesn’t get better for the individual if they perceive they are out of synch with the overall behavior of the whole.

Among the things they implemented were having supervisors model they behavior they wanted for the whole organization: visibly going to lunch, taking vacation time, talking about the time they are spending with family and friends. Eliminate the late night emails and texts. Similarly, the number of meetings and those needed to attend the meetings should be reduced.

People should be encouraged to schedule more slack time in their weeks to allow for the fact that tasks will take longer than expected. That way you don’t feel like you are behind because there is unscheduled time in which to make progress. Along the same lines, people were encouraged to schedule vacation months in advance when the future calendar is not cluttered with projects and meetings. Those scheduling time off a couple weeks in advance often try to do so around things already populating their calendars and will either take less time off or feel anxious about doing so and work from their vacation.

Along those lines one of the most interesting intervention ideas mentioned in the article was “vacation roulette.” Everyone that hadn’t taken vacation in a 90 day period would get a note copied to their supervisor listing their vacation balance and encouraging them to take time off.

They then sent them an invitation to take a random Monday or Friday off and signed the note, “From your vacation fairy godmother.” Often, the managers would encourage workers to take a break. 

[…]

….during the “vacation roulette” intervention—where managers were copied on an email encouraging employees with high vacation balances to take a day off—participating organizations saw a boost in days off for over 20 employees, and the highest rate of vacation taking for India-based employees in 5 years. 

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Seeking Outsider Staff With Outsider Ideas

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The last two days I have been covering some of the responses the National Endowment for the Arts received in the dozen listening sessions they conducted with theaters in spring and summer of 2024.

The full discussion can be found in their publication Defying Gravity Conversations with Leaders from Nonprofit Theater.

The overall theme of the responses seemed to be that theater leadership doesn’t have the education and training it needs to address the challenges it currently faces. This held true in the section regarding workforce.

Staff members have new expectations regarding their work environment. They are no longer willing to work long hours and flirt with mental and physical burn out. A number of theaters already began to move in this direction 2-3 years ago, but:

Multiple participants said that many theaters and other arts organizations are poorly run, and that this mismanagement exacts a considerable toll on theater workers and artists. As one way to address this need, listening session participants said they would like to see more training and education for new entrants or even those currently in the field.

Defying Gravity page 10

A number of participants discussed outsourcing some functions or exploring combining back office functions with other arts organizations. Because many people left the arts industry during and after the pandemic, many organizations are looking to hire people from outside the industry and are finding these new hires are bringing new perspectives and ideas. Similarly, theaters are exploring ways to lower barriers to entry for those that don’t have the economic means and network to support themselves through low paying jobs as they seek to develop a career.

One participant said, “We’re trying to get creative in terms of how we look at job descriptions and try to hire outside the industry and train people such as, like, expert project managers or data specialists to come into development or come into our production industry

Defying Gravity page 10

There was also recognition that those in mid- and advanced career positions need some form of continuing education program for their own career development.

One strategy mentioned was to extend accessible opportunities for professional growth across different theater roles through accreditation or certifications in specific areas of expertise. This could be achieved through theater service organizations focusing on theater development by providing support for “accreditation and professional development in a higher-skilled way

Defying Gravity

In that same vein, some participants suggested theaters could host training programs in their own communities to teach people the different tasks required to put on a show (i.e. costumes, lighting, set design, stage management, and technical direction).

I have actually tried to offer these sort of training modules in different communities in which I have worked, mostly focused toward community arts groups and renters who might be looking to improve the quality of their work and facilitate their preparation and planning process. With few exceptions I wasn’t able to get buy-in from the groups. 

Those that did avail themselves were mostly renters and only interested in specific areas. But let me tell you, things got a lot easier for both the organization and my staff once they started using what they had learned.

Need More Education And Time To Absorb It

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Today I am following on yesterdays post about the National Endowment for the Art’s report on a dozen listening sessions they conducted this past spring and summer, Defying Gravity: Conversations with Leaders from Nonprofit Theater.

Yesterday, I focused on theater leadership’s perception that they didn’t have enough time to digest research on promising practices* and a desire to have access to big thinkers on systemic change from outside the theater world.

The sense that theater managers were feeling lost and unsure about how to tackle the challenges they were facing seemed to be the subtext of the responses the listening session participants provided. On an individual basis, I am sure these professionals generally felt they are competent at their jobs and secure in the knowledge they possess. In aggregate the responses almost painted a picture of a group that is struggling and didn’t feel equal to the task.

While the image of a harried, overworked staff has been a stereotype for theaters for decades if not centuries, some of the quotes the report includes about needing to have good manners when speaking with donors doesn’t do theater professionals any favors. I hope it was taken out of context.

As one participant said, “We’re finding it difficult to keep up with foundations or our state agencies and what their requirements are in terms of changing what panelists are looking at.”

Similarly, there was a recognized need for financial consultative services in many topic areas. These areas included how best to use existing funds, how to become financially stable, and how to price services or tickets. “Perhaps an area of expertise that we’re struggling with is that we are quickly having to learn how to be a single ticket shop,” one participant said. Another remarked: “It would be nice to also get funding for support in terms of financial advisement.”

…“If you’re asking people for money, you … have to have the good manners to speak their language,” one participant noted, “that’s something that would be helpful … if you can help teach or give our organization resources on the language that you need to keep your donors and your boards happy.” This service might help theaters to become transparent about their financial needs and current fiscal standing and, therefore, to communicate more effectively with employees, donors, boards, and other funders.

….Participants proposed using technological tools such as AI, electronic tip jars, ticketing apps, management apps, and fundraising software to help theaters increase and manage their financial resources.

…“We want investment from the tech sector to fix this, one participant said. “I wish we could do better because it’s hard enough … even to get working internet in our theaters so people can check the QR codes that we’ve given them already.”

Defying Gravity, PDF pgs 8-9

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, there are already people addressing many of these issues but there is definitely a need for more robust and widespread education and resources on finances, ticket pricing, technology, communication, programming design and philosophy etc., in order to effectively respond to trends and expectations.

But again, as I suggested yesterday, does the availability of these resources do any good if those who might benefit most don’t feel they have the time and bandwidth (and money) to receive and use them?

*Want to give credit to Anika Tene from CreativeWest for introducing me to the term “promising practices” instead of best practices. Although it was a quick mention in a webinar she was leading, I immediately realized that the term relieves pressure on organizations to immediately implement new practices at the most effective level. Also, there is a suggestion in promising practices that these practices are not one size fits all organizations. They may be beneficial, but the value may not manifest in the same manner or degree for everyone.

NEA Report Suggests You Won’t Have Time To Read And Digest It

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This morning the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released Defying Gravity: Conversations with Leaders from Nonprofit Theater. The result of the report are based on conversations during 12 virtual listening sessions the NEA conducted with non-profit theater staff in spring and summer 2024. The composition of each of the listening session cohorts may be found on PDF page 27 or in the image below.

Among them were freelance artists, journalists, Theaters for Young Audiences, Leadership Alumnae and Interim Managers, Black, Indigenous and Theaters of Color. Perhaps most interesting and most appropriate given the recent theater operating environment was a session composed of Recently Close Theaters. The report authors cite the responses of the recently closed theater participants with some frequency.

The image below gives a sense of the operational challenges focused on by each of the 12 listening session cohorts

The report is only 28 pages, but I intend to highlight different topics over a couple days to keep things bite size. I am also going to largely skip over discussion of issues that seem widely known like financial difficulties, diminishing donations and ticket sales for some more focused and nuanced observations. I encourage readers to take a look at the full report if they want deeper insight.

While I often encourage people to read research and highlight how short the document is and/or how easy a read it is, we all know that arts professionals rarely can find the time to do so. And that comes up in the NEA’s report:

One participant referenced a bandwidth issue, saying, “The ability to monitor, intake, synthesize, regurgitate, [and] present on data is just something that always moves to [the] sidelines.” Research investments should include supporting the personnel required to conduct and translate it.

Another type of investment is to bring in voices from outside the theater industry to help address larger issues facing organizations. One participant said, “I would love if there was a way to bring some brilliant systematic thinkers in … who are not involved necessarily in theater, but who are working with extreme systematic change.” This approach could afford theater organizations the opportunity to engage with a more objective, external view on how to address challenges.

Listening session participants wanted to know what is or has been successful for other non-theater art forms to see if those practices could transfer to theater. As one participant asked, “What are the opportunities that are seeing dramatic growth beyond our discipline? And what might this mean?”

Defying Gravity, PDF page 17

I almost feel like there is self-reinforcing vicious circle here because there are a number of people talking about systemic change from outside the arts using frameworks and terminologies that make the concepts relatable to arts professionals. But I am aware of these people because I read a lot of research and discussion where others haven’t created the bandwidth to do so.

Even if these arts insiders discussing these non-arts industry concepts aren’t able to provide the guidance for full extreme systemic change the listening session participants ultimately seek, they can probably provide a transitional frame of reference that would allow arts professionals to more effectively translate this change into theater practice.

The Ole You Shouldn’t Expect To Be Paid For Having Fun Argument

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Andrew Taylor recently wrote on a topic I haven’t covered in some time – exploiting the passions of arts and cultural staff and creatives.  He points out that a lot of non-profits of all types frequently discuss the benefits they have provided which have elevated the status and experiences of customers and clientele while neglecting to provide the same treatment for their organizational staff.

To paraphrase blogger Adam Thurman who I cited many years ago, arts organizations can find it easy to use people’s passions against them.

As Taylor writes:

As it turns out, the passion-driven nature of arts work can be part of the problem. One study found that assumptions of passion and purpose in the workforce can “license poor and exploitative worker treatment” (Kim et al 2020). Across seven experiments and a meta-analysis, the authors found that:

…people do in fact deem poor worker treatment (e.g., asking employees to do demeaning tasks that are irrelevant to their job description, asking employees to work extra hours without pay) as more legitimate when workers are presumed to be “passionate” about their work.

This “legitimization of passion exploitation” flowed from two primary factors: assumptions that passionate workers would have volunteered for this work if given the chance, and beliefs that the work itself is its own reward. Either of those sound familiar?

As Taylor says, being told that you shouldn’t expect to be paid to have fun or for what you would have done anyway or even that you weren’t showing commitment to the cause are all things people in the arts have heard multiple times. And let’s not forget, needing to pay your dues when you are starting out.

Taylor cites five factors identified by the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard as essential. Those having the highest measure in all five are experiencing the most well-being. There are deeper explanations of each factor in Taylor’s piece, but in short they are: Happiness and Life Satisfaction; Mental and Physical Health; Meaning and Purpose; Character and Virtue; and Close Social Relationships.

I mention these in part to provide context for Taylor’s accompanying observation:

It may be surprising to learn that “Financial and Material Stability” is not considered a core domain, but rather a supporting variable that helps individuals maintain well-being in the other domains over time.

So in essence, proper level of remuneration can indeed help people buy/support happiness. I mean, you knew that, but it is good to see it backed by some data.

Taylor links to the Human Flourishing Program’s questionnaire to help people asset where they and their organization stand in helping staff flourish.

Defined Plan For Change –Including The Accusations

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Interesting story via Artsjournal.com that might provide a rough roadmap for arts organizations looking to change the programming mix they offer the community.  The public broadcaster of Norway( NRK) received survey results indicating that climate change was not getting enough coverage.  There was a reluctance to cover these sort of stories for fear of being accused of having too strong a political bent. (Recall Norway is one of the top five exporters of oil and natural gas in the world so climate change touches on a cornerstone of the national economy.)  An interesting aspect of this story is that the staff of the broadcaster pretty much managed upward in order to get executive leadership invested in making these changes.

The parallel to arts and cultural organizations I saw is that staff and board members are often concerned that instigating a shift in programming and experiences will alienate long time supporters and perhaps also garner accusations of making political statements with the choices.

After agreeing that NRK needed to produce better climate journalism, senior leadership, along with a group of journalists who weren’t climate specialists, decided to figure out what better climate coverage would look like.

Initial conversations covered everything from where the broadcaster drew the line between activism and journalism, to which editorial tone would balance fear and hope, to which audiences to focus on and where to put resources.

[…]

That has helped the broadcaster deal with claims that coverage of climate is politically motivated, and prevented such blowback from shaping the broadcaster’s climate strategy.

Part of the challenge has been to produce stories that don’t prioritize “running after whatever people get angry about, or that triggers some deep-rooted emotion,” says Cosson-Eide, “but instead looking for stories that are relatable, but also say something meaningful about what’s at stake and what we have to do as a society.”

I appreciated that they didn’t just say we are committed to more climate coverage but also created parameters about what that coverage would look like that was shared with everyone. In terms of the arts and culture realm, the decision might be made to commit to a course of action, but the artistic staff might decide what that looks like among themselves which leaves everyone else to speculate and opine that things are going too far or not far enough toward meeting the organizational commitment. Or perhaps the rest of the staff is in the dark about how decisions are connecting with the overall goals.

Based on the article, the creation of a clearly defined policy has allowed NRK to provide a consistent quality of coverage that other news outlets have struggled to maintain in the face of multiple crises like Covid, Russian invasion of Ukraine, etc.

I especially appreciated NRK’s decision to resist catering to the passions and controversies of the moment and stick with the core tenets of their climate coverage plan. It is a challenging thing to do for both news organizations and arts/cultural entities which seek to provide content and experiences which reflect the interests of the communities they serve. It sounds like NRK addressed the general topic in a relatable way, but tried to avoid placing it in the framework of whatever might have people riled up.

This approach seems like a good lesson for arts organizations looking to formulate a shift in type of programs and experiences.

The Loud Part Of DEI May Be Passing, But The Goals Remain

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An article on Hyperallergic by Lise Ragbir observed that DEI hiring initiatives have started to wane in both the commercial and non-profit sector. There were a number of high profile, highly touted hires, a fair number of which were short lived due to lack of supportive infrastructure and culture.

I suspect and hope that while the overt and public efforts at DEI have faded from the news, there are organizations quietly working to advance these goals. Ragbir provides three suggestions for arts organization to employ which will generally contribute to the development of infrastructure and culture for all employees.

The first is to empower staff. The long term goal being the reduction of turn over by providing people with opportunities to take on responsibilities which feel meaningful. Though this may also mean increasing salaries as well, Ragbir notes that it often costs the organization twice as much to replace a good worker as paying them enough to retain them. Not replacing them at all can lead to increased employee dissatisfaction and departure.

The MMF data also suggests that one of the major sources of career dissatisfaction is a lack of opportunities for growth or career advancement. The report highlights the fact that “the path to promotion and seniority is long and uncertain, with an average tenure of 12 years in an institution before a promotion.” Now consider this: Entry-level workers, who make up the most diverse part of the museum workforce, are also on the longest track to promotion.

A second suggestion advocates for using interim leaders during times of transition to provide the breathing space to create more constructive policies and work culture before hiring a new permanent leader.

Jenni Kim has served in lead operating and administrative roles at major museums and cultural organizations, including MoMA PS1. In a recent email exchange, she and I discussed the value of interim leadership. Her take? “An interim leader can play the pivotal dual roles of 1) giving an organization time to find and transition to its next leader, and 2) handling immediate and short-term needs that clear the deck for the next leader.”

[…]

“A leadership transition will likely change an organization in a number of ways, planned or not,” Kim said . “So, it is a critical moment for the board to reflect and assess their readiness to support and invest in setting-up new and diverse leaders for success.” Because diverse perspectives will lead us closer to fulfilling those loud calls for change.

The third suggestion might be a little controversial – empowering and training board members to help with the process. There are a lot of executive level leaders in non-profits who would prefer to keep board members at something of a remove from the organizational operations out of concern they may engage in micro-management. However, as Ragbir notes, there are greater expectations for accountability for cultural non-profits so this level of involvement may not be something arts leaders can avoid.

She notes that there is a lot of education and training of board members to prepare them for this level of involvement, but doesn’t link to any resources. I suspect this type of effort is so new there aren’t a lot of examples and case studies from which to draw. There is going to be some degree of finding ones way.

Trust In Non-Profits Is Up, But Unsurprisingly Politics Color That Trust

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Last month I pointed to research by Colleen Dilenschenider that indicated trust in cultural non-profits has grown since around 2019. Non-profit Quarterly (NPQ) had a short article about similar findings by the Independent Sector showing that trust in non-profits in general was higher than government, business, media, philanthropies, and foundations.

From the NPQ article:

The latest Independent Sector report breaks down five key findings:

After four years of decline, trust in nonprofits has rebounded by 5 points to 57%.
Trust in philanthropy remains steady at 33%, lower than trust in nonprofits.
Americans trust nonprofits to reduce national divisions more than they trust corporations, government, or media.
Americans have less trust in nonprofits to advocate for public policies and conduct nonpartisan voter engagement.
There are clear pathways for nonprofits to increase public trust in the sector

I was curious to know more about what the pathways to public trust might be so I took a closer look at the report issued by the Independent Sector. The measures survey respondents indicated would increase their level of trust was largely related to a commitment to ethical behavior and transparency.

62% of respondents would trust an organization more if it passed a course or certification for ethics in its operations

61% of respondents would increase their trust if the organization committed to a set of guidelines and ethical principles for its operations

79% of respondents said their previous volunteering experience made their views of nonprofit organizations more favorable

I was pleased to see that volunteering helped people feel more favorable about non-profit organizations.

After I read some of the comments individual respondents provided, I was a little skeptical about the statements that third party ethics certification would help raise confidence in non-profits. Regardless of political identity, people’s perceptions were that many non-profits were intentionally enflaming divisions or perpetuating the problems in order to justify their existence. Certification that what had been perceived to be corrupt practices by a non-profit was actually well within ethnical practice may result in people deciding the third party certification is untrustworthy.

Accountability Leadership

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Back in June there was an article on the Harvard Business Review site about 3 Ways to Compassionately Hold Your Team accountable.  The authors of the piece approach the topic from the cognitive processes associated with accountability. What appealed to me about the piece was the contrasting of punitive approaches with those that views an assignment as an opportunity for growth and acknowledges that mistakes are a part of that process.

Since the creative process involves generating, refining, and building upon multiple iterations, this seems an appropriate approach to apply to management and leadership practices in arts and cultural organizations.

The authors categorize these perceptions of accountability as “threatening” vs. “worthy challenge.”

Leaders should strive for the second type of accountability, as there is now significant research suggesting that encouraging a growth mindset accelerates individual performance, learning and adaptability, and overall well-being. And because growth-oriented accountability rewards employees for taking risks and encourages a growth mindset, it has knock-on benefits for team culture. In particular, it compels people to find solutions to the mistakes others have made rather than blaming or shaming them.

The three accountability methods they identify are: Think Ahead, Own Your Commitments, and Anchor on Solutions.

Think Ahead involves envisioning and communicating what success looks like to staff, including any difficulties staff may encounter. The example given in the article is a client that often interrupts to ask questions, but similar situations occur in arts and cultural environments in terms of details known about attendees, groups, board members, etc. The challenge to Thinking Ahead is being able to empathize with the person(s) being assigned the task. Not only in terms of what questions they may have on details you take for granted, but anticipating that they may be intimidated by a situation that wouldn’t ruffle you.

Own Your Commitments is essentially holding yourself to the same standard as employees and modeling the behavior for them rather than taking a “do as I say, not as I do approach.” The authors point out that if employees are held accountable for meeting certain benchmarks but their leaders are allowed slack, the dichotomy can cause all sorts of issues.

An arts organization related example that immediately comes to mind are policies like ticket changes, rental refunds, etc. Often it does fall to a leader to bend policies to accommodate certain people and situations. In those situations it is important to confirm that staff made the right decision with their initial refusal rather than blaming them for not knowing they were dealing with an important person and should have made an exception. The other approach is to explain why the decision to bend policy was made and either empower employees to make that decision themselves within that context or give them permission to pass the decision up the chain without repercussions.

Finally, Anchor on Solutions is essentially the practice of acknowledging errors and problems are part of becoming more skilled and productive. It is about reflecting, discussing, and seeking solutions rather than focusing on assigning blame.

Anchoring on solutions means letting go of blame and working to make things better. It means debriefing deeply on both wins and failures, and constantly seeking creative ways of solving problems instead of reasons for failure. Like owning your commitments, anchoring on solutions is a learnable skill that is heavily influenced by the actions of others around us. Therefore, leaders need to be intentional about focusing on the way forward, not on finding out whose fault it is.

Flagship Ballet Changes Course And Five Years Later Audiences Are Responding

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An Associated Press story (via Artsjournal.com) reports on the success the NYC Ballet has had in attracting younger audiences.  Not only has the average age dropped in the last five years, but the largest cohort of attendees as shifted from those in their 60s to those in their 30s.

In 2023, 53% of ticket buyers were under age 50, and people in their 30s made up the largest age segment by decade. Five years earlier, in 2018, 41% of ticket buyers were under 50, and people in their 60s made up the largest age segment.

The article says they have achieved this through a number of changes, some of which you might assume: Engagement via social media, both the organization’s accounts and those of individual dancers. Pricing – their 30 for 30 program which allowed those under 30 an opportunity to purchase any seat in the theater for $30 grew from 1,800 members pre-pandemic to 14,000 members now.

Perhaps less expected is the credit for the shift in audiences they give to the decision to shift from a single artistic leader to two. Five years ago the Ballet appointed Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan as an artistic team. This has apparently resulted in a significant change in the organizational culture:

Company insiders describe a mood different from the days when one outsized, all-powerful personality ruled from above. For one thing, the pair says they’ve instituted annual taking-stock conversations with each dancer.

[…]

She and Stafford say they’re also paying more attention to wellness, be it physical training to avoid injury, healthy diets, or a more frank discussion of mental health.

They have also changed the programming mix both in terms of commissioning collaborations between young choreographers and visual and musical artists with youthful followings and diversifying the ethnic and racial representation of dancers and choreographers.

And there have been collaborations with visual or musical artists with youthful followings — like the musician Solange, who in 2022 was commissioned to score a ballet by 23-year old choreographer Gianna Reisen.

[…]

Recently, the company heralded its first two Black dancers to dance Dewdrop, the second most important female “Nutcracker” role: India Bradley and guest artist Alexandra Hutchinson of the Dance Theater of Harlem. Yet to come is a Black Sugarplum Fairy. The company says 26% of of its dancers identify as people of color, whereas 10 years ago that figure was 13%. Stafford and Whelan have commissioned 12 ballets by choreographers of color in the last six years, it says.

Yeah It’s Hot, But Very Little Sustenance Consuming The Roiling Steam Of Culture

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Seth Godin made a post today that advocates for the value of the journey over the destination:

TL;DR is defensive. Not simply because it defends our time, but because it defends us from change and from lived experience. A joke isn’t funny because it has a punchline. It’s funny because something happens to us as the joke unfolds, and the punch line is simply a punctuation of that experience.

“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana,” isn’t funny by itself.

Godin cites an article by Ted Gioia that I saw about a couple months ago in which Gioia uses the term “Dopamine Culture” to argue that people want to experience the hit rather than the journey.

In a chart from Gioia’s piece Godin includes in his post, Gioia charts the trend away from participating in an activity to spectating to essentially just consuming the short tail end of an experience.

Among Gioia’s examples which go from Slow Traditional Culture> Fast Modern Culture> Dopamine Culture:

Play A Sport> Watch A Sport> Gamble on A Sport
View in A Gallery > View On A Phone > Scroll on A Phone
Newspapers> Multimedia > Clickbait

Godin points out that what seems to be in demand is the metaphoric boiling water of all these short bits of experience we can consume, but that sort of diet doesn’t provide long term sustenance. Long time readers will know I approve of his sentiment that about not everything that can be measured matters:

Cavitation happens here. We’re at a rolling boil, and there’s a lot of pressure to turn our work and the work we consume to steam.

The steam analogy is worthwhile: a thirsty person can’t subsist on steam. And while there’s a lot of it, you’re unlikely to collect enough as a creator to produce much value.

[…]

And now we live in a time where the previously informal is easy to measure.

But just because it’s measured doesn’t mean it matters.

The creators and consumers that have the guts to ignore the steam still have a chance to make an impact.

The Work Doesn’t Get Any Easier At The Top

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The Chronicle of Philanthropy had an article written by the co-executive directors of the Building Movement Project (BMP) which focuses on non-profit leadership issues. I have been writing about their various studies since 2008.

I haven’t yet read the full results of their recent study which asked the same questions of leaders in 2016, 2019, and 2022, but the Chronicle of Philanthropy article shares some seemingly contradictory findings.

BMP found that the number of people interested in assuming leadership roles in non-profit organizations has been dropping in each study since 2016. What really surprised them was that previously non-profit staff of color had increasingly expressed an interest in leadership positions, but that reversed and dropped significantly in the 2022 survey.

Upon further investigation, BMP found that the context in which aspiring leaders had assumed their roles wasn’t the most constructive (my emphasis):

… we found that aspiring leaders, especially those of color, weren’t being pulled into leadership through support and positive role models but were more often pushed into top positions to escape difficult work circumstances and improve the situation for themselves and others.

…We assumed that removing barriers would translate into a positive desire to move into leadership.

But the data showed the opposite. The more challenges respondents faced in nonprofit workplaces, including inadequate salaries and a lack of mentors, the more likely they were to express an interest in the top role, particularly people of color.

Basically, the assumption that things are better at the top didn’t hold true. This was especially the case for persons of color who worked for predominantly white boards. They felt less supported by leadership and boards than white leaders or staffs of color who worked for boards and leaders of color.  While that does seem to indicate that persons of color can create an environment which will be more supportive of aspiring leaders, they actually need to feel like they can stay in the role long enough to cultivate younger staff.

Along these lines, BMP found:

“…leaders of color receive far less support from both their predecessors and leaders in other organizations than white executive directors do. Specifically, 22 percent of leaders of color and 30 percent of white leaders got support from their predecessors; and 33 percent of leaders of color and 41 percent of white leaders got support from leaders in other organizations.”

Among the suggestions BMP has for reversing the diminishing interest in executive leadership of non-profits are some obvious ones like making sure the work load is reasonable and borne by sufficient staff, cultivating younger staff, providing mentoring and networking opportunities from peers and retired executives.  Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems with this list is that fewer funders are willing to provide the financial support to increase staffing, education, mentoring, and networking required to empower leaders.

20th Anniversary Of Butts In The Seats

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This past Friday, February 23 marked the 20th anniversary of this blog. While Drew McManus often remembers the anniversary better than I do, I did recall the anniversary was coming up prior to the actual date.

When I first started back in 2004, I used a platform provided by my internet service provider for a total of two entries. It was quickly clear that their set up was not suitable for blogging. I ended up switching to Movable Type which I stayed on for awhile until Drew McManus invited me to join the Inside The Arts platform.  I am glad he did because the technical requirements for maintaining the blog were quickly outstripping my ability and interest.

Happily, Drew was far more skilled in such things. And while his focus on expanding his business to provide websites and ticketing CRM for arts organizations led to the sunsetting his blog, Adaptistration, his company embodies the same approach as his blog–providing useful tools and advice for arts and cultural organizations. At one time you might have read his posts or attended conference sessions on how to effectively use Google Analytics or analyze 990 filings for orchestra compensation. Now he focuses on making it easier for customers to learn about organizations, events, and feel comfortable rather than overwhelmed purchasing tickets.

While I didn’t initially mean to make this post an ad for his company, I have known Drew a long time, and our conversations have informed many of my posts. (He recently commented in a Zoom conference that I was the attendee he had known the longest and met in person the least.)

However, my initial inspiration to start blogging was another Andrew — Andrew Taylor, who writes the Artful Manager blog. I actually wrote to him with a comment on one of his posts shortly before starting my blog and he included my response in a later post. (Mine is the one about Chick tracts) I was so thrilled, I made it the subject of my second blog post.

There have been a lot of people who have influenced my thinking over the years. At the risk of overlooking some important ones, I will cite Carter Gilles and Nina Simon as being among those who have helped to shift my thinking and improve the way I operate professionally. The point being, this blog hasn’t emerged from a vacuum but stands on the shoulders of giants who have come before.

When I look back at some of my earlier posts, I have to cringe at some as I compare where I am now philosophically and professionally. Certainly others have stood the test of time. This blog does reflect much of the general thought about how arts and cultural organizations should operate so it is also a testament to how the general thought has evolved over the last two decades.

My view is that things have been moving in a more constructive direction in terms of being more audience and community-centric. This has manifested in orientations toward welcoming and inclusivity for community members, but also staff and volunteers. There have been increased implementation of policies to create better work environments for employees at all levels, including interns and apprentices.

Yes, there are still a ton of hostile work environments out there. You don’t have to look far or hard to find stories about organizational leaders who seem to be intentionally doing the worst they can to make people miserable. I have written about a lot of them. But you can absolutely see examples of organizations who are breaking away from the long seated mentality of the show must go on even if it destroys you/you have to pay your dues like I did/suffer for your art.

Thanks to all of you who have been reading all the while

Cleveland Ballet Issues Turned Out To Be Much Bigger Than Initially Suspected

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Back in November, I had written about allegations of harassment by the administration of the Cleveland Ballet of one of their teachers due to body weight issues. I thought that would more or less be the last time I wrote about that particular accusation. However, the results of the investigation by the ballet board has turned into a lesson about boards exercising better organizational oversight.

According to a recent news story, the CEO, Michael Krasnyansky, was essentially forced to resign when the board investigation started and credible accusations of sexual harassment and inappropriate touching emerged stretching back over the course of years.

His wife and artistic director, Gladisa Guadalupe, was just fired after the investigation by the law firm Jones Day uncovered a culture of intimidation and retribution that aimed to obstruct the investigation and a wide range of issues related to financial impropriety and self-dealing.

From the Jones Day report:

-Description by Ms. Guadalupe of complaining dancers as “moles” or “troublemakers” and stating that once the investigation was over, “we will handle the troublemakers.”
-Proposal to lay off employees suspected of communicating with news media.
-Altering Nutcracker cast assignments to the detriment of dancers suspected of cooperating with the investigation.
-Dismissing from the Cleveland School of Dance faculty dancers who cooperated with the investigation.

[…]

-Commingling of funds of Ballet and Cleveland School of Dance, which are separate entities.
-Cleveland School of Dance expenses improperly paid by the Ballet.
-Ballet funds used to pay for personal expenses of Mr. Krasnyansky or Ms. Guadalupe, including personal car insurance, travel, meals, and lodging.
-Restricted donations used to pay for current operating expenses rather than the restricted purpose designated by the donor.
-Significant amounts of endowment donations used for current operating expenses but booked as expenses for the 2023 endowment campaign event

To add a degree of insult to injury, when the the interim artistic director who stepped in when Krasnyansky and Guadalupe were suspended in November was accused of plagiarizing the choreography for the Ballet’s Nutcracker production and ultimately stepped down herself.

When thinking about how this situation could have been avoided, you run into the question of balancing micromanagement by the board with the board exercising appropriate oversight. I suspect that on paper, policies and procedures were in place to avoid the misuse of funds, but the culture of intimidation magnified by the top leadership being married may have made staff reluctant or unable to enforce them.

Similarly, it sounds like it would have been difficult to conduct an investigation or even regular check-in conversations with the dancers about their perceptions of the work environment in the face of the pressure to keep quiet that was being brought to bear.

By no means am I excusing what happened. I am just observing that in hindsight, it is easy to say the board should have been paying more attention. It is difficult to identify what measures they could have put in place which would have provided them with accurate, honest reporting about the state of the the organization given the effort of obfuscate. The Jones Day report said despite all they discovered, they had repeatedly been denied access to most of the materials and records they requested so there are likely other issues which have remained uncovered.

Just As I Was Wondering About How Things Turned Out

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Last week I was flying into to Indianapolis to attend the Midwest Arts Xpo conference and I idly wondered how things had turned out at Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields after their job posting controversy back in 2021.

If you don’t recall/weren’t aware, the job description said the museum was ““…seeking a director who would work not only to attract a more diverse audience but to maintain its “traditional, core, white art audience.’”

The implication that diversity efforts would be limited to activities that didn’t alienate the existing white audience was not well received by the greater arts and cultural community.

Coincidentally to my musing, last week the museum announced that Belinda Tate who had served as executive director Kalamazoo Institute of Arts since 2014 would be the new director starting in November.

According to the article, even after the 2021 controversy saw the resignation and replacement of the CEO & President, an uncomfortable culture remained which hopefully Tate and current CEO/President Colette Pierce Burnette, who started in August 2022, can successfully work together on shifting.

Since Venable’s departure, Newfields has also faced allegations that it had facilitated a “toxic” and discriminatory work culture at the museum, according to an open letter from Kelli Morgan, its former associate curator of American art. In the letter, Morgan described a “racist rant” from one board museum member.

Tate must contend with the legacy of Venable’s polarizing vision for the museum’s programming which, according to his critics, prioritized blockbuster exhibitions. Oft-cited examples include a show devoted to Bugatti cars and the Winterlights festival, which involved stringing flora in the garden with colorful lights during holiday time and charging $25 for entry.

You’re Not Hiring Them To Fit In

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There was a short piece in Fast Company today that discusses hiring employees in similar terms to what is required to broaden and diversify audiences – You have to hire for the company culture you want rather than hiring someone to fit existing work culture.  Basically, you can’t expect the changes you want to happen by forcing new hires to conform and fit in. Effort needs to be made to support and acknowledge the change new hires are bringing to the organization. (my emphasis)

I’ve found that companies genuinely committed to improving their workplace cultures also have another set of priorities. They look for candidates with a proven record of curiosity, innovation, and making change inside organizations.

[…]

To attract changemakers, organizations should demonstrate a genuine commitment to fostering this kind of internal innovation. In company events and full staff meetings, highlight employees who have called out problems, suggested solutions, and improved how the organization operates. One company even rewards employees for making new and interesting mistakes, showing that it supports employees taking risks and trying out new things.

Committing to changing organizational culture needs full investment because it is the right thing to do rather than the thing people expect the organization to do. It has been noted that a lot of the diversity and equity leader hires that occurred in the wave after the George Floyd protests have started to disappear, frequently due to the lack of internal support and delegated authority provided to those hired. Companies would loudly announce their commitment to change, but because there was no accountability, layoffs and resignations followed.

Leaders I/S/O Organizations Who Know Things Have Changed

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I had a post appear on ArtsHacker today about hiring executive leadership in the context of the social changes which have occurred since the start of the Covid pandemic. My post primarily focuses on a piece Seema Sueko wrote for American Theatre, which I would highly encourage people to read.

Sueko was serving as a field advisor for a search firm specializing in executive searches in the arts and culture field. She discusses how she initially assumed that search firm would work with their clients to identify all the social, political and economic changes that occurred since their last hire, determine how the organization would need to change, and then what qualities the new leadership would need to possess to move the organization in that direction.

Finding out that was not the case, she surveyed 4-5 other search firms that also worked with arts and culture organizations and found they operated in much the same way.

She lays out some great ideas about how organizations can do a better job with leadership hiring. Many of the suggestions would probably please candidates to no end such as the hiring committee going through mock interviews and receiving feedback on how to do a better job.

As I write in my ArtsHacker post, I thought her best idea was one about creating an introductory video of a facilitated conversation about the job:

I recommend that the search firm record a Zoom meeting with the search committee where each committee member introduces themselves, followed by a facilitated conversation about the job opportunity. This video could be shared with all the candidates to level the playing field and capture some of the culture which can’t be conveyed through a written document. Such a video would also have the added benefit of demystifying and humanizing the search committee, which, I propose, will lead to more substantial interviews with candidates.

I am not sure about the current status of hiring for executive roles in arts and culture is at the moment. Readers may know that I changed jobs in November 2022. Around February-March 2023, the very first place I interviewed for when I started my search a year earlier contacted me to say the search had failed, board membership had changed and would I like to interview again.

While this certainly not indicative of the whole industry, I suspect it might not be far off the general environment. A lot of people have chosen to leave the field and hiring committees might be finding it difficult to identify good candidates because they are looking to hire for an environment that no longer exists and candidates are looking to join an organization that has acknowledged the work and change that needs to occur.

N.B. – regarding the post title. With all the social media abbreviations, has the old print classified “in search of -/i/s/o” entirely fallen out of use or do folks use it on dating apps?

Taking A Look At A Good Old Fashion Case Study

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The blog for Master of Management in International Arts Management had a case study post by Donna S. Finley and Vijay Sathe examining how the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) and Alberta Ballet (AB) had revamped their business model in an attempt to stabilize their finances.

Feels like it has been awhile since I covered a good old fashioned case study.

One of the first things that Finley and Sathe discuss is that both organizations recognized they were already essentially serving the bulk of their core markets and that growth would only come from identifying new market segments:

At CPO, audience research led to the identification of two new audience segments: those attracted by the flexibility of single-ticket sales, and those seeking to enjoy classical music in non-traditional environments in a variety of venues within and outside of the city.

At AB, research revealed numerous new audience segments that all indicated a strong desire for before- and after-performance receptions, dining opportunities, special events for youth to meet dancers and purchase products and memorabilia, and alternative, more personal and customized venue experiences.

While these are programming and ticketing choices that have been identified as areas of opportunity for a large number of arts and cultural organizations, there was an additional area of growth Finley and Sathe mentioned that left me wanting to know more:

At CPO, new and unusual settings were found and facilitated both the renewal of traditional repertoire and the introduction of new works. New business focused on joint community programming initiatives, whereby revenues and expenses could be split between CPO and a community group such as the Rotary Club or the South Asian Association. The Orchestra found an immediate new revenue opportunity within services it had historically undervalued.

I was curious to know how this manifested. It sounds like Rotary or South Asian Association were co-sponsoring or partnering with CPO on producing new and traditional works in novel locations, but I wanted to know more about how the programming was executed, what attendance was like, if there was revenue sharing between CPO and the community organizations. Basically, all the stuff an arts administration and policy nerd gets excited by.

Another major point touched upon in the case study was both organization’s attempts to stabilize the cycle of engaging in capitalization campaigns, spending the money, then engaging in another campaign, all in the face of decreasing donations and funding. Especially while faced with the impacts of Covid. One of the things they did was outsource administrative functions to third party services providers with far more expertise which apparently saw a great deal of cost savings. When I first read the post, I thought perhaps both organizations had consolidated their back office functions in partnership with each other, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Unfortunately, they also realized savings by cutting artists contract weeks:

“…reducing musician weeks from 46 to 40 per year and dancer weeks from 42 to 36 per year; and, at CPO, reducing staff salaries by 20% while simultaneously introducing an incentive pay component with upside potential based on the entrepreneurial success in tapping new markets.”

The description of the entrepreneurial programs of both organizations were pretty general. (Granted, the title of the article does include “abridged.”) Apparently, for CPO the success of those efforts “more than made up for the 20% decrease in their base salary as part of the cost-cutting measures.”

What caught my eye was an apparent admission that for both organizations:

“… The artistic side, comprising the Artistic Director and their respective teams of artists, made its plans and decisions in isolation – disconnected from all or most aspects of the business operations.”

As a solution, both organizations are working toward streamlining their planning and reporting structures

Success Attracts Success

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I was interested to see there was some research conducted with some of the earliest recipients of MacKenzie Scott’s unrestricted gifts to various non-profits between 2020 and 2021. The median of the grants she distributed was $8 million as compared to a median of $100,000 given by larger funders in recent years.

To be clear, some of the organizations Scott targeted in the first few rounds of giving didn’t sound like they had been getting anywhere near $100,000 grants. The biggest finding of the study was that the Scott grants weren’t just transformational for organizations, they were equally transformational for leaders who found they no longer had to lay awake at night worrying about keeping doors open. Now they not only felt secure in knowing existing programs could be executed, they began to dream about what else it might be possible to accomplish.

In interviews, more than three-quarters of leaders discussed the shift in their thinking that accompanied the receipt of this gift. A scarcity mindset was replaced with an opportunity to pursue transformational possibilities, as leaders were able to reimagine their organizations “in the ideal way to achieve the biggest impact that we could have.”

Close to two-thirds of interviewed leaders described a sense of relief and breathing room after having received their grant. Many told us of the opportunities to innovate and take risks that their grant has afforded them, knowing their organizations are now more financially secure. “It’s an opportunity to be innovative and creative because we have more foundational support,” said one leader. Another said, “For us to have money to pilot something to see how it goes is just a miracle from heaven.” Other leaders put aside a specific portion of the gift specifically for bold or risky ideas.

The most striking response for me was a leader of color talking about how she felt affirmed and vindicated after worrying her presence was a liability to the organization:

I’ve been told about two million times that organizations led by women of color get less than others,” one leader told us. “So, I was nervous about this because I’m thinking, man, I hope that who I am doesn’t cheat this organization out of opportunities, you know? And that’s a sad thing to even admit to you, but I did think that.” The grant from Scott was powerful for this leader because, as she put it, “it positioned being a woman of color as an asset, not a liability.”

What was also encouraging was that the concern others funders would reduce their support of recipient organizations was unfounded. In many cases, the organizations reported an increase in overall fundraising after receiving MacKenzie Scott’s gifts.

Have Things Changed Since 2008?

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I am going to be traveling and preparing to take up a new position so I am dipping back into the archives to help provide some content while I am busy elsewhere.  One of the first entries I came across in my review of old posts seemed to be well-suited for re-examination. Back in 2009 Andrew Taylor made a post about survey work his students had done at the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) in Denver. Happily the links to his original post and survey results I included in my post reflecting on the survey results still work if you want to see them.

The conference was a meeting by members of different arts disciplines, including service organizations like Theatre Communications Group, Opera America, Chorus America, Dance/USA and League of American Orchestras. One of the observations made in the surveying was the different cultures of each discipline. I wonder if people feel things have changed since 2008/2009 or if this still generally describes things:

The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals). Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

Other topics I covered in my post had to do with degree of trust between arts administrators, community engagement practices, government relations, knowledge sharing throughout disciplines, as well as lack of sleep and succession planning.

While the status quo feels like it has remained in place on all these fronts, the one area covered in the survey which seems like it is finally being addressed seriously these last few years is diversity. Some of the summarized responses are a little cringe-worthy.

“Diversity was the most polarizing priority in the AmericaSpeaks process, and the issue for which there is the most disconnect in language and priorities….Some flatly stated that they did not think diversity was a priority, and others noted that people in their organizations may claim to support diversity, but don’t really mean it. Many noted ambiguity in defining diversity: that diversity “means different things to different people—there is no common agenda for inclusion.”

This was revealed in the stark differences in responses ranging from the claim that minority arts groups don’t have to make any efforts at white inclusion (“Why is it that primarily Caucasian-based groups look to ‘diversify’ their audiences while minority-based groups do not?”), to people who thought diversity meant “Getting minorities to see the importance of what we do.” Still others rejected the audience development perspective and saw the need for more systemic change. Said one respondent, “most of our organizations are not ready—we want to talk about it, but we are not prepared to become ‘diverse’ and accept the changes that may follow.” Some acknowledged that there were challenges in terms of comfort zones. Some noted that tying funding to diversity or pursuing diversity and losing money on such efforts might be counterproductive…

Respondents were more concerned with what they saw as others’ failure to address or understand diversity than with their own ability to effectively address the issue. As such, many did not envision opportunities for progress although they agreed that progress is needed.”

Here is the original survey report if you want to take a deeper dive.

Actual Recognition That Return To Office Shouldn’t Be Return To Usual

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Yesterday Daniel Pink made the following Twitter post about OKRs – Objectives & Key Results (because apparently KPIs – Key Performance Indicators, needed to be replaced with another equally meaningless acronym?) and he suggested some NO-KRs which have plagued work culture to jettison.

Pink provided a link to a website summarizing the Charter Workplace Summit. This was the first time I have seen signs corporate employer making constructive attempts to revise the office work environment and move beyond threats or cheap perk ploys to get people to return to the office.

Some of the things that caught my attention:

Workers should be re-onboarded. “We’ve been spending all this energy on onboarding new employees in a unique and special way,” said Daisy Auger-Domínguez, chief people officer at Vice Media Group and author of Inclusion Revolution. “We need to do the same thing for our current employees.” She sees that as a way to remind colleagues why it’s important to come to the office.

Talk about what’s not working. “We owe it to our people to get really specific about where we’re growing, where we’re shrinking, where we think we have the most risk,” said Francine Katsoudas, Cisco’s chief people, policy, and purpose officer. “In doing so, we give our people a lot more power as well.” Providing transparency about a business’s challenges is also a way to enlist colleagues in navigating an economic downturn, said Kieran Luke, chief operating officer at Lunchbox. “We want everyone to see and understand, empathize, and take a sense of ownership.”

Audit your attention. “The scarcest resource that we have is not money and it is not time. It is attention,” said Didier Elzinga, CEO of Culture Amp. Organizations need to assess what they’re asking their leaders, managers, and individual employees to focus attention on amid numerous priorities. “We can actually sit down and look at it and give ourselves almost a budget,” he advised. “How are we going to prioritize the things we need [a company’s staff] to focus on?”

I particularly liked the idea of re-onboarding, especially if people have been working from home for any length of time because the shift back to the office is pretty much going to be akin to starting a new job in a new place mentally, emotionally, physically and relationship wise. In addition, the time and attention paid to new hires makes you feel special. I am sure a lot of us have resented seeing special offers advertised for new subscribers to a service, but no benefit given for 10 years of loyalty. I have recently seen people complain online about being denied the $2/hr bump in salary being advertised for new hires when they obviously had more experience and wouldn’t require a learning curve. It makes people feel their loyalty is taken for granted.

I also liked the concept that these days attention is a scarcer resource than time and money and that there needs to be clear communication across the organization about what priorities should receive the most attention.  We have all seen the posters wearily asking which of the 10 top priorities is actually the super-secret extra top priority the boss want you to focus on first.

What I was really surprised to see included in the list was the recognition that workplaces being a social environment, there is opportunity for tension. There seemed to be an acknowledgement not only that this may present a problem for people returning from a work from home setting, but that perhaps more could have been done to train people for that reality over the last few decades:

Practice real-life scenarios such as uncomfortable conversations. “We often give people an opportunity to expand their role and become managers without actually giving them the experiences that they need to practice the craft,” said Edith Cooper, co-founder of Medley. One way to do that is to create spaces, such as group coaching environments, where they can practice having difficult conversations without being judged or dismissed.

and

Physical offices are a place for conflict. “Conflict, disagreement, the brainstorm, the row, the ‘I’m sorry, we’re not on the same page here’” are important to spend time together with colleagues for, said Julia Hobsbawm, author of The Nowhere Office. In-person work—whether it’s in an office, coffee shop, or other location—is also important for training, mentoring, and social connections between people. “To hang out, to learn, or to argue,” is what in-person work time should be for, concludes Hobsbawm.

 

Interviewing Post Covid: How Do You Want To Do It?

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Last week Barry Hessenius sent me a link to a Buzzfeed article listing answers to job interview questions, suggesting it might make a good blog post. This suggestion was well-timed because Drew McManus had also posed a question on LinkedIn about whether cover letters were useful any more, spurring a spirited conversation among arts professionals on that topic.

Between the two, there is a lot to think about in terms of how we interview, both as employers and potential candidates.  For example, in the LinkedIn discussion, Tyler Rand mentioned his company inviting people to introduce themselves by choosing from a number of formats including letters, email, personal statements, videos and showing their suitability for the position through either resumes, work samples, links to websites or LinkedIn profiles.

The Buzzfeed piece claims the list contains clever answers to tough job questions. While there are some suggestions like describing yourself in the context of your Hogwarts house and how to navigate the dreaded “what are your weaknesses” and uncomfortable salary questions, many of the tips mentioned are smart responses to typical interview questions rather than a matter of clever maneuvering.

For example asking

“What’s the biggest pain point in the company/office/on your team, and what could I do to address it if I started tomorrow?”

Can be useful in uncovering issues about the work environment that hadn’t come out during the interview, possibly revealing an organizational culture that doesn’t suit you.

Similarly,

“When they ask if you have any questions, ask what current/past employees in this role find the most rewarding and challenging about the position. If there are red flags, you’ll get them here. It’s basically asking the interviewer what the job’s strengths and weaknesses are but more effective.”

I have been asked a number of times what my plan for my first 90 days on the job will be, but it never occurred to me to turn it around and ask the obvious:

‘What are your 30/60/90 day goals for the role?’

I have asked what the goals for the new person might be and how my skillset might be applicable toward fulfilling them, but the X days horizon can give you a sense of top priorities and allow you to judge whether they are realistically attainable in that time period.

Anyone have any additional thoughts on obvious, but seldom asked questions or processes they feel are antiquated?  Are there ways you would rather interview, both as an employer or candidate, but feel stuck in a framework of expectations?  I suspect there are questions some candidates would love to ask but there is a fear of appearing too presumptuous to the prospective employer.

Org Culture More Important Than Artistic Reputation

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A couple weeks ago Aubrey Bergauer hosted a LinkedIn conversation with Karen Freeman from Advisory Board for the Arts (ABA) to discuss what mattered most to arts professionals as they sought jobs in the arts. Freeman discussed a survey ABA conducted where they asked people to prioritize between different situations in order to drill down to what really mattered. An example Freeman gives is would you rather have great pay, but so-so benefits or a lower pay rate but with better benefits.

Among the criteria people had to prioritize were things like artistic reputation, work from home, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), shared governance, professional development, etc., They had over 1500 respondents from organizations around the world, though with a slightly larger representation by U.S. based groups.

Freeman shared four findings among the many that she found most interesting. The first one revealed that respondents felt their current organization had medium healthcare benefits, good management, good job security, middle of the road flexibility with work hours, fairly good progress in diversity and equity and selective transparency. Freeman notes that a majority of respondents felt their organizations operated at the highest level of artistic quality which she attributes akin to a Lake Woebegone view that everyone is above average.

The second finding is perhaps the most interesting one because it provides insight into what arts organizations can do to retain employees (~13:30 in the video). In terms of what people valued most, Inclusive Culture was valued most and Other Office, which encompassed office space and technology fell at the lowest end of the range. Inclusive culture encompasses transparency, accountability, inclusive decision-making along with diversity, inclusion and equity.

Second most important was flexibility which includes flexible hours and work from home. Next is advancement, including opportunity to advance and supervise. Next is Manager which involves good manager, professional development and internal recognition. Health care and leave came next. Second to last was artistic reputation and community import.

This raises some interesting questions. There are already surveys that indicate trumpeting artistic excellence, while important, isn’t a top draw for audiences. Now we see it is almost at the bottom in terms of what organizational staff value. So perhaps it is time to examine the amount of emphasis being placed upon it.

I should note though that it isn’t clear how many of the respondents were creators and performers. Those groups may rate artistic reputation much higher than administrative staff.

Skipping to the fourth slide (~19:25) provides a little insight. When broken down by job role, people in the C-suite (aka highest paid person’s opinion) care most about artistic reputation (even more than artistic department) along with job accountability, manager quality and transparency. C-suite place least emphasis on job schedule flexibility, work from home and DEI.

When broken down by generation (~16:40), the starkest differences were that artistic reputation was most important to baby boomers and DEI was most important to Gen Z respondents.

Freeman also mentioned that they ran some simulations to make up for some potential flaws inherent to the surveying methodology they used to get the above results. In those simulations, when choosing between higher pay or artistic reputation, 54% of people would take the job with higher pay at a place with no reputation for artistic quality.

A second simulation they ran provided the choice between a place that had high pay, but hierarchical decision making, low transparency and accountability, and performative DEI against an organization with better culture on all these dimensions, but lower pay. In that case, 63% of people would take a job with the better work culture at the expense of better pay.

This was some new data for me insofar as what I thought were the start of trends are far more deeply held values than I anticipated. If you are similarly surprised, take a look at the video.

Strippers Ask Actors Equity’s Help Securing Safe Work Environment

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A couple weeks ago I caught an NPR story about a group of strippers at a bar in LA who were working to unionize under the auspices of Actors’ Equity Association.  The dancers had been dismissed and locked out after complaining and petitioning the bar’s ownership to improve working conditions, both in terms of the physical performance environment and protection from aggressive clients. After months of striking outside the bar’s parking lot, the dancers filed to join Actors’ Equity.

One of the reasons why this story grabbed my attention was that I made a post in 2021 about how Actors’ Equity had decided to significantly lower the barriers to union membership. The union essentially provided automatic membership to members of sister unions like SAG-AFTRA, AGMA and AGVA as well as anyone who was enrolled in the union candidate program. The candidate program, which required accumulating points for performing in specific types of roles in venues operating under a union classification, was scrapped in favor of the new Open Access program which just requires that you have worked professionally as an actor or stage manager in the United States.

In reviewing the program, I noticed Open Access membership is only available until May 2023 so we will have to see how membership is handled after that. However, I initially viewed the union’s willingness to go to bat for these dancers as an extension of the Open Access program. They didn’t nudge the performers toward other unions like AVGA which represents variety/cabaret performers or SEIU which the NPR story says another group of strippers joined about 25 years ago.  I similarly wondered why the dancers approached Equity rather than another union. Was it due to the union’s presence in small performance venues in LA or perhaps Open Access has made the union appear more welcoming.

It will be interesting to see how the efforts of the dancers to unionize ends up. Likewise, I will try to keep an eye for more news on the Open Access program to see if it continues/evolves after May 2023 and if the effort achieves the diversity, equity and inclusion goals Actors’ Equity intends.

I should mention, the NPR story doesn’t just report on the strike but includes four discrete profiles of the dancers for additional perspective.

NPR Series May Help Expand Conversation About Theatre in US

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Keep your radio tuned and your ears open to your local NPR station for the next month or so, especially if you are a theatre professional. The network is doing a series over the next five weeks about the 75th anniversary of the regional theatre movement. In a piece that aired this morning, they provide a little bit of a preview of the topics they are going to hit on from the impact of Covid, to economic concerns, regional theatres as a feeder to Broadway and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The short piece mentions many of the conversations and activities which have unfolded over the last few years, from the mass resignations at Victory Gardens Theatre; the “We See You White American Theater” statement; the viability of subscription model and questions about the utility of the non-profit governance structure:

Theaters also started rethinking subscription plans that prioritize well-off people who can purchase a season’s worth of prime seats in advance, while leaving everyone else scrambling for leftovers. And they began reconsidering the current, frustrating governance model at most non-profits, where theater artists must answer to a volunteer board of directors, often with little theater expertise, which has all of the authority and none of the accountability.

It may be useful to have these topics discussed by an outlet outside of the usual theatre channels. Being able to point to NPR stories may end up being like the consultant effect where an outside “expert” repeats everything internal staff has been saying resulting in decisions to mobilize to achieve important goals.

Most board members and patrons don’t read American Theatre and related information sources, but many do listen to NPR and find it a credible information source. The NPR series can provide an entree for conversation or simply raise awareness among the greater community involved with arts and cultural entities around the country.

Next To Pick Up The Reins

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Since there is a bit of a cross-readership, many of you may have already seen that Drew McManus announced yesterday that he was going to cease posting regularly on the Adaptistration blog. Drew is one of the few people who has been posting on the topic of arts management longer than I have.  Way back when he reached out to me about moving my blog from the Movable Type platform I was on to the Insidethearts.com site back in the early days of WordPress.

In his post, Drew noted that even after posting for 18 years, potential topics of discussion have not been exhausted.

Having said that, it still feels very odd to reach the realization that it’s time to stop while simultaneously having no shortage of ideas and topics that deserve attention…but it’s also clear that now is the time to let new voices step in and pick up that conversation. The emerging practice of audition fees, virtual audition practices, underpaid/overworked staff, the post-pandemic compensation reports, and so much more are all issues that need the sunlight of public examination in a non-partisan environment.

I will readily admit that the blog format has gradually fallen out of favor. My active readership has gradually decreased over the years. But I am also pretty clear that I am writing as much to help myself work through thoughts about arts policy and practice as informing a readership. Just as many people have a daily discipline of writing in a personal journal, I am mulling things over publicly.

My intent is to continue writing this blog, but as Drew says I equally hope new voices step up and address topics of concern for the arts and culture field.

Welcoming and Belonging For All

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Last week I received an email from Arts Midwest noting that September 9-18 is Welcoming Week, an international effort to provide a welcoming experience at all levels. This includes government and social policy and action to make communities more welcoming to organizational efforts to provide a sense of belonging in workplaces and other social interactions.

The concept of creating more metaphorical doors through which people can engage with arts and cultural organizations is a frequent topic here so I wanted to call attention to the effort and some of the resources that are available. In addition to the Welcoming America website, Arts Midwest created a page of resources focuses on how arts organizations can create that sense of belonging for employees and community members with whom they interact.

Arts Midwest is also hosting a webinar on Wednesday, September 14 4 pm EDT/3 pm CDT/1 pm PDT on the topic with a focus on “how arts can transform, deepen, and enrich immigrant inclusion work. ”   Sign up if you would like to learn more.

 

How Will Non-Profit Law Change To Meet Shifting Expectations?

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Gene Tagaki raises some interesting thoughts over on the Non-Profit Law blog on the question of how legal concepts and structures may need to adjust to reflect changing values in the non-profit sphere.  He lays out some thoughts in regard to Charitability, Philanthropy, Governance, Technology, Fundraising, Advocacy, and Employment.

I provide this list with the intention of sparking enough interest in folks to read more deeply because I am only going to touch on a few ideas that popped for me.

One question he raised was whether the IRS would need to adjust its definition of 501(c)(3) entities:

“Would relief of historically discriminated groups of individuals without regard to poverty or distress now qualify as charitable? Would the sale of alternative energy sources for personal use be charitable even if at market rates?”

Tagaki also points out that there is a growing shift in how fundraising is accomplished and how the work of social good is being framed. He notes that crowdfunding focused on supporting a specific project or individual versus organizations which help many. He also cites corporate efforts to “charity-wash” their activities by positioning themselves as reducing social problems.

“Fundraising trends also raise other legal concerns as nonprofit fundraisers face competitive pressure from those raising money from crowdfunding platforms to help specific individuals rather than charities, businesses proclaiming to do more social good than nonprofits, and entrepreneurs looking to both help charitable causes while creating for themselves an opportunity to earn substantial amounts of money.”

Finally, Takagi observes there is a trend not only toward remote work, but also shared leadership of organizations. This approach is likely to exist in tension, if not complete conflict with a hierarchical board governance model legally required of nonprofits in the US.

“Many organizations are struggling with this movement as there are clear and proven benefits with traditional hierarchies and the law is built on boards having ultimate responsibility and authority over the activities and affairs of their corporations. But there are shifts in power that are possible, and laws or regulatory guidance that confirm the appropriateness of certain delegations of authority may be helpful. What are some of the distributed leadership systems that would be helpful if recognized by sector leaders as good practice and by lawmakers and regulators as acceptable?”

As always, many things to think about for the future.

Interesting Thoughts On Arts Management Styles

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Andrew Taylor made an interesting video/post about dominant arts management styles on his blog recently.  I am always wary about personality type tests and categorizations, particularly because so many are based, developed and administered using questionable methodology. I do think they can be useful as a tool for self-reflection and consideration if they are subsequently discarded and not used to define oneself.

In this particular case, Taylor is applying Ichak Adizes’ PAEI management framework to arts managers. PAEI stands for Producing, Administrating, Entrepreneuring, and Integrating. Taylor is careful to note that this frame:

“…is not to suggest there’s just four kinds of people in the world or the working world. The purpose is to suggest that each of us brings a dominant concern to the work; a dominant way of paying attention; and a dominant understanding of what it means to be productive in the workplace.”

Because everyone employs a mix from each of these areas, to get a sense of what your dominant approach is, Taylor says you might look at how you react when you are under stress and things around you are going poorly. Also, if there are things other people do in a work environment that drive you nuts, they may be operating in a mode opposite to your dominant approach. He gives the following examples of how each of these styles might manifest in practice:

Do you double down and get the work done that’s in front of you? Are you a producing energy?

Do you pause and think about what’s the better system to manage this process? Rather than getting it done now, let’s get it done right? Making you an administrating energy?

Do you focus on a distant future and say, Well, maybe what is in front of me now is really not the useful thing. Maybe there’s something bold and new and different I should be thinking about?

Or is your impulse to check in with others and your team and see how they’re doing and what they’re doing and how they’re finding focus in their own energy in this moment?

Taylor says that the extreme of each of these can be very damaging for an organization: The Lone Wolf Producer that moves forward with the work without concern for whether it serves the needs of the organization; The Administrating Bureaucrat that focuses on things being done according to the rules and best practices, halting progress; the Arsonist Entrepreneur who consistently burns everything down in order to create something new in the ashes; the Super Following Integrator who focuses on serving whatever needs the group expresses today.

I am skipping over quite a bit here, but the video and accompanying transcript are really relatively short so if your interest is piqued, it is worth the time to check out his post and ponder the insights you may receive.

Consent Agenda Probably Most Useful Than Ever Before

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In an ArtsHacker article I wrote back in 2015, I had advocated for the use of consent agendas as a way to quickly dispose of routine matters at board meetings and leave time for discussion of substantive issues.  Now that we are in a place where at least some members may be attending virtually, it is probably even more important to conduct business in a manner that incentivizes people to maintain full focus on the business at hand.

Some of the links in my original ArtsHacker post are no longer valid, but a quick web search will help you find a number of resources that address how to use a consent agenda such as the Council for Non-Profits.

Basically what happens is that the organizational staff prepares materials which it sends out in advance of the board meeting. Those materials are placed into a consent agenda which is approved as a whole at the start of a board meeting. The Council for Non-Profits lists the following as things which might be placed in such an agenda.

• Approval of board and committee minutes
• Correspondence requiring no action
• Committee and staff reports
• Updates or background reports provided for informational purposes only
• Appointments requiring board confirmation
• Approval of contracts that fall within the organization’s policy guidelines
• Final approval of proposals that have been thoroughly discussed previously, where the board is comfortable with the implications
• Confirmation of pro forma items or actions that need no discussion but are required by the bylaws
• Dates of future meetings

Best practice is that any questions board members have should be asked prior to the meeting so that they can be researched and addressed in advance. When the meeting starts, the chair asks if there are any parts that the board feels need to be removed from the agenda. If there are, those items are removed and then the meeting moves forward to approve the remaining items. The removed items are then addressed later in the meeting.

So if a board member has major corrections to the minutes or questions about something in the financials, they should make a request to have those things removed from the consent agenda. Once the agenda is approved, there is no backtracking to engage the board in discussion about those items such as whether the organization should be entering into a contract that was included in the consent agenda.

In my 2015 post, I linked to an article in which the author recounts his experience attending a meeting which used a consent agenda if you want a sense of what this looks like in practice.

The idea is that the first 5-10 minutes of a meeting are spent addressing the consent agenda and then the remaining time is used to address policy, governance, strategy, etc. It is much more time consuming to go around the room calling on each committee head only to have them report “no report,” or “we met last Tuesday and will have a report next meeting,” than to have that summarized on a sheet of paper you received 10 days before the meeting.

When the nominating committee is ready to propose new members or the governance committee has bylaw revisions to discuss, those topics should be addressed in the main of the meeting rather than listed in a consent agenda. The process isn’t meant to reduce transparency though it can be misused in that manner.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to successful use of this agenda is getting everyone to turn into their information far enough out that it can be assembled for review and then getting all the board members to read the materials in advance so that very little gets pulled out of the consent agenda.

It sounds like a lot of work, but avoiding the committee roll call with a 1-2 sentence report out and quickly getting to substantive discussion is worth the effort and keeps people engaged. While I have never been successful in getting any board I have been involved with, either as organizational staff or a member, to adopt a consent agenda, the times I have gotten “best meeting in a long time” compliments has been when we have been able to get past the reporting quickly and discuss past successes/impacts, exciting initiatives and involve the board in decision making that moved toward real progress.

Time To Review Programming And Rental Procedures

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Many people probably heard about a Minnesota venue cancelling Dave Chappelle’s show hours before it was suppose to occur.  Something similar happened a few weeks ago at a venue on the other side of my state where a comedy show with different comedians was cancelled the day before it was supposed to occur.

This has gotten me to thinking that art and cultural organizations need to be doing a better job developing and implementing policies and procedures. Putting aside the question about whether these shows should be cancelled,  the decision to cancel shouldn’t be made so close to the performance date. Regardless of the content of the performers’ show, cancelling anything so close to performance time is irresponsible, unprofessional and bad for community relations.  (I know how complicated it is move venues and re-seat people having done it during Covid. The fact the Minneapolis show was immediately moved to another venue suggests the decision and arrangements were made earlier, but only announced the day of.)

The organization on the other side of my state flubbed things even more by issuing a statement that said the show was cancelled due to the content and then issuing another statement saying it was because the proper paperwork and deposits were not received.   This sort of mixed messaging is an indication that there is not a good crisis management plan in place. I am not suggesting the social and political views of a performer constitutes a crisis, but if you have a plan to have one voice addressing your roof falling in during a performance or an entire cast testing positive for Covid after a week of shows, you have a process for communicating tough decisions.

I suspect the venue in Minneapolis was already generally aware of the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle and the clamor of protest got to a point where it outweighed the benefits of hosting the show.  For most other programming, whether it is a solicitation to book a performance or for an outside party to rent the space, it is important to be very clear about the content and requirements of the proposed event. This is a good policy for reasons almost entirely unrelated to opinions about political and social issues.

Ninety-nine percent of the issues that have occurred in venues I have been involved with have been related to technical requirements. Often renters are too vague about their plans and technical needs or show up and add a ton of things they never mentioned before, resulting in a higher bill because we have to scramble to find equipment and staffing at the last minute. Most of our rental contracting has been held up because the technical director doesn’t have the information he needs to accurately estimate the event.  There are definitely people who neglect to submit deposits and paperwork on time, but we address that well in advance of the show.

Similarly, our biggest concern with shows we book is lack of technical details on one hand or assurances that the show will fit in our space despite misgivings. Agents and production offices 500 miles away are motivated to contract a show and leave it to the people on the ground to work around problems far too often.

We have declined to present productions or rent our venue due to technical concerns far more often than for content. Content needs to be reviewed and considered alongside technical requirements in a holistic process. Things shouldn’t reach the contracting stage if there are issues, much less be a matter of discussion a day or two before.  I suspect our colleagues on the other side of the state saw the opportunity to generate some rental revenue and didn’t really pay attention to who it was until the protests started a few days before the performance.

As for the policies and procedures you put into place, that is a matter for discussion with involvement from internal and external constituencies and some legal review. Those policies are going to differ for each organization and community.

More Europe Performing Arts Orgs During Covid

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Last week German arts administrator Rainer Glaap made a Facebook post linking to the first ever study of theatres across the European Union (EU).  Additionally, some of the survey participants were non-EU members of the Creative Europe program.  Readers may recall I had made a number of posts looking at how various governments across Europe were providing financial support to artists during the height of the Covid pandemic.  So I was interested in seeing what this report had to say.

One of the biggest difficulties faced in putting the study together was all the differences that exist between European countries in terms of number of theatre, definitions of performing arts activities, funding policies, training practices, etc. There were numerous times the report noted the difficulty in making and apples to apples comparison.

However, there were a number of interesting things I pulled from the report. For instance, apparently France and Germany are the primary models for presenting/touring versus producing.

The so-called ‘French oriented system’ is based on productions, touring and selling plays to other venues making international co-production easier to fit in a programme. In a ‘German oriented system’ whereby theatres operate as production houses with in-house established ensembles, international co-production is less natural since the programme is set for the season.

Since the degree to which European governments subsidize the arts is a frequent topic of conversation in the U.S., having a EU-wide report on this number is obviously of some interest (recall this is an average from 39 participating countries):

“ticket sales in public funded theatres usually amounts to about 25% of the theatre budget. Commercially-oriented private theatres and independent companies however rely mostly on revenues generated from the box office and other commercial activities. Among the surveyed private theatre venues and companies, revenue from sales (tickets, admissions) constituted around 40% of their budgets before the COVID-19 pandemic.”

During Covid, many of the measures taken in European countries were similar to those in the U.S. Many shifted to streamed live or archived performances, with results ranging from innovative to downright disappointing. Others found ways to perform in outdoor or non-traditional spaces. Companies in a number of countries started working with hospitals, retirement homes, schools and universities to offer performances. Some organizations experimented with the drive-in theatre experience where people remained in their cars. There was an account of a festival in France which replaced the cancelled Avignon Festival which provided press exposure to smaller arts organizations which normally wouldn’t get it and apparently enabled the organizer, Theatre 14 to reach audiences not used to attending theatre. I am not sure how it was organized to encourage that. I assumed it might be outdoors in public spaces, but it appears the performances were held in physical performance spaces.

There were examples of efforts to provide better support for artists, both in terms of government policy:

Good practices are emerging, such as negotiating a minimum wage for artistic work in the theatre, also for people working on other terms than an employment contract e.g. in Austria or Finland. In some countries, such as Poland, new legal acts and wide-ranging regulations are created to support this professional group. In Belgium, the situation of artists resulting from the pandemic pushed the creation of a new type of ‘fair trade’ contract, in order to improve the contractual relations between artists and cultural operators. As a result of such a contract, a play can either be postponed or cancelled, but in the latter case part of the fees must be paid to the artists.

[…]

….The project was funded via the European Commission’s DG Employment and Social Affairs budget line for Information and Training Measures for Workers’ Organisations. It helped the unions to train and put in place a strategy in relation to organising, with a focus on freelance, self-employed and otherwise atypical workers in the Media Arts and Entertainment sectors.”83

As well as acts of solidarity:

Nau Ivanow, a cultural residence space in Spain that has a venue, decided that all income from ticket sales during the COVID-19 pandemic will be given to the performing companies and artists.
Also, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic they decided to offer their two rehearsal spaces for free for the interested artists/companies.

[..]

Some of the [Romanian] public cultural institutions (National Dance Centre, National Heritage Institute, Clujean Cultural Centre, National Museum Complex ASTRA Sibiu, Studio M Theatre in Sfantu Gheorghe) announced that they did not attend this funding session in order to show their solidarity with the independent cultural operators, whose resources have been drastically diminished, and who were less eligible for support than state funded institutions.

The report also made some recommendations for the future which I will probably cover in my post tomorrow.

Encouraging Signs In Theatre Internship Programs

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American Theatre had some encouraging news about a trend to improve summer theatre internship programs.  The need for this was seen last year as interns and other staff were walking off the job at some of the most prestigious gigs in the country.  A number of theatres are focused on making the experience more accessible, shifting from models where interns paid to participate to ones where they received pay as well as travel and housing.

Some programs are moving away from the premise that interns are a source of cheap labor and have redesigned the experience to focus on providing career training, networking and mentorship.

Gersten seems genuinely interested in providing hands-on experiences that are of primary benefit to the intern; the new program, she said, “doesn’t require their labor but does allow them to get hands-on experience. And the program combines time in an experiential setting as well as classroom time.”

Others have redesigned the application review process to allow for the selection of more diverse intern pools.

At New York Stage and Film, the application process itself has been democratized. Instead of one or two higher-ups reading applications, the company has “invited last year’s artists and staff to participate in the first round of going through applications, and of course they’re paid for each application they look at,” said Burney. He observed that this new process has “shifted the way people have access to our company” and “provided a deeper sense of belonging to the company” for its existing members.

Rosie Brownlow-Calkin who wrote the American Theatre piece notes that implementing these practices is something of a double-edged sword. The increased cost of providing a better experience means that fewer people are accepted to these programs. In some cases, this is a good thing because it allows for more one on one interaction with working professionals and hands-on experience on more meaningful projects. However, it also means fewer people are able to participate in what is viewed as an important career building experience.

Additionally, many of the organizations interviewed for the article note that federal Covid relief funding has provided for the existence of these improved intern programs. There is a very real sense that the quality of these experiences, if not the entire internship program, may be in jeopardy once those funds run out. When asked how they intended to sustain their internship programs, two of the organizations interviewed said they would ask their donors for more money which doesn’t seem to be a very concrete plan.

The fairness of these programs has been a common topic for my posts, so I am glad to see that theatres are giving serious consideration to the design of their internship programs. There is obviously more work to be done. Decisions related to these programs will be among the many needing to be addressed as arts organizations confront existential challenges of the next normal.

Repeat Of Board Tensions In Chicago

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If you hadn’t caught the news in the last week, there is a major crisis at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago which saw the mass resignation of their current cohort of resident artists. This is a seeming repeat of similar tensions in 2020 between the theater’s board and artists which also saw the mass resignation of artists.  Subsequently, the playwright of the show in production, cullud wattah, pulled the rights to the show which had been set to close July 17, leaving the theatre without any remaining programming.

The greatest detail about the conflict is laid out in a post by isaac gomez, one of the members of the erstwhile cohort. He discusses the suspension of the Artistic Director and resignation of the Acting Managing Director whose tensions with the board came to a head when they were shut out of conversations about a major financial purchase (apparently the purchase of an adjacent building) which the directors strenuously objected.

There was also the issue of a prolonged negotiation with the candidate for the executive director position which had been unoccupied for two years .  The artist cohort learned that their input into the selection was not welcomed when they were accidentally invited to a meeting. The executive director candidate, whose hiring the artists were urging, subsequently withdrew herself from consideration at some point in all the tensions.

Overburdened due to absent leadership and unfilled positions, many of the theatre’s staff left their positions as well, much of it on the upper management level.

While gomez’s account is certainly only one side of the story, he reflects regret about the situation noting that Victory Gardens has stood by their commitment to provide a degree of stability for creative artists unseen in the broader industry. However, by not living up to written commitments about providing access and transparency in decision making, gomez and colleagues feel that the board has been unable to move beyond the toxic cycle which caused similar issues two years ago.

“…Black people, are just living works of art, in our culture and being.”

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For years now I have been following and writing on the Culture Track survey.   At one time the survey was being conducted every three years or so in order to measure changing trends and attitudes about arts and culture.

When Covid hit, the folks at Culture Track decided it was important to closely monitor the impact of the pandemic on perceptions of arts and culture. It seemed like there was a new phase of the study being conducted every six months. (Disclosure, my venue participated in the study and has been grateful to receive useful data as a result.)

One of the things they noticed early on was that racial minorities were underrepresented in the survey and worked with NORC at the University of Chicago to collect data to offset that disparity.   In the most recent phase of the survey, they included a qualitative segment in which they extensively interviewed fifty Black and African-American participants to gain insights that the broader survey couldn’t provide.

In early May, Wallace Foundation posted an interview with some of the co-authors of the report on the role of race and ethnicity in cultural engagement. I haven’t read that report yet, but the interview provides some interesting perspectives.

The same interview links to the qualitative report, A Place to Be Heard, A Space to Feel Held: Black Perspectives on Creativity, Trustworthiness, Welcome and Well Being  This is extremely valuable to read.  While there are reasons specific to them that may or may not cause Black residents of the United States to feel an organization is trustworthy or welcoming, there is a lot in the responses that illustrate why anyone in general would not feel a sense of trust and welcome.

The findings are broken into four sections: Creativity, Self-Care, Trustworthiness, Welcome & Belonging. While there is much to be garnered from the executive summary of the study, the respective sections offer a lot to sink your consideration into.

I am always keenly interested to hear how people perceive creative practice and the study did not disappoint.

Some preferred to frame their creativity as a state of mind (“feeling like an artist inside”), an attitude they viewed as fundamental to guiding one’s life. One participant described this as an active rather than spectatorial process: “It’s not just about appreciating creativity, but about bringing creativity from the world into yourself.” Others seemed hesitant to call themselves creative, especially if there were people in their lives who had pursued creative careers. “I am very in awe of art and artists,” said one participant. “I think we all have creative sides, I think mine is not as expressed as others’.

The more I see people asked about creativity, the more nuance appears. I am starting to feel this is a topic we don’t talk to people about enough. In fact, the study says that in the first phase of the survey conducted shortly after Covid started, Black respondents reported participating in fewer cultural activities than the overall pool of respondents. In this qualitative survey, the range of activities people reported participating in was much broader.

Having the conversations about what people define as creative really seems to matter.

“And that idea of creativity as ubiquitous and lived was, for some, specifically tied to being Black and practicing Black culture as an important form of creative expression….As one participant put it, “I think that everybody, particularly Black people, are just living works of art, in our culture and being.”

In the trustworthiness section of the study, one of the big takeaways I had was that just because the demographic segment whom you hoped to reach are showing up, it doesn’t mean they trust your organization.

The people we spoke with can hold a “double consciousness” about cultural organizations’ trustworthiness and experiential value…they can enjoy the experience even though they don’t have a trusting relationship with it. They’re used to some amount of cognitive dissonance in these experiences: they can relish the art and overall experience even while knowing it’s problematic in important ways

Some of the issues of trustworthiness are related to who has influence and who is making the decisions are cultural organizations. There has been a fair bit of conversation these last few years about representation on executive staffs and boards. But it is also a matter of what stories and faces are appearing on stages and walls. One of the direct quotes from a participant is particularly pointed.

Traveling internationally…when you go to museums, you see what you are told in the U.S. is not true. The narrative of African race is much more out there than in the U.S. If you go to Sweden to the Nobel Prize Museum, [you’ll be] blown away by how many Brown people have won the Nobel prize. There are a whole bunch of us across the globe… I went to Mozart’s house, and I saw how he played alongside Black classical composers. Look at all this greatness we don’t talk about [in this country].”

The question of welcoming and belonging are closely related to these same factors of representation. Just because someone feels welcomed to a space, doesn’t necessarily translate into a feeling of belonging. While it is more marked when physical traits mark you as different from the rest of the crowd, most people can understand the difference because we have all had an experience where we are excited to be somewhere, but we don’t feel like we fit in. It doesn’t even need to be something like not knowing which of five forks to use at a formal wedding reception, we have all walked into a restaurant or store and shown ourselves to be outsiders by messing up the seating or ordering process.

Just as it takes time to become accustomed to the practices of a new place, making someone feel they belong is the process of small experiences over a long time. As the study points out, this can’t entirely be achieved by making an intentional effort to be hospitable to new arrivals, there are also myriad cues about who belongs, many of which will be invisible to insiders. It will likely take conversations with those with whom you have cultivated a degree of trust to identify what cues may be undermining a sense of belonging for them and their friends.

Take the time to read the report of the qualitative study. For many, there will be some things you are aware of already, things you may have already suspected, and things you haven’t been explicitly told before.  For others, it will be a lot of what you already know and will perhaps appreciate having explicitly mentioned and talked about in a manner it hasn’t been before.

Into The Arts And Out of ‘The Real World’

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Last week Vu Le made a Twitter post alluding to the fact a lot of corporate leaders will shift to leading non-profits, but you basically never hear of a non-profit leader making a career transition to lead a corporation.

That made me think of a story Howard Sherman had linked to, (apparently back in October, it didn’t seem that long ago), reporting that cultural organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area were courting people who didn’t have previous experience in the industry due to the high level of turn over.

There is quite a bit more nuance to the story than you might expect, especially given the context I created with Vu Le’s post (which remains a valid point, regardless.)

The piece opens mentioning an art administrator who asked for a higher salary upon applying for an arts job and was given it.

A bit later, it mentions that revamping job descriptions and interview questions to include diversity, equity and inclusion was helping to draw people to museum work.

“If you look at our job descriptions, they look like manifestos,” said Lori Fogarty, director and CEO of the Oakland Museum of California.

Each museum applicant who makes it to the interview round gets two documents describing the institution’s work on anti-racism and equity, and that’s not just informational.

“We ask questions about how values of anti-racism and equity actually show up in your work and how you would apply these values to your position,” Fogarty said. “What we’re finding is this is a big reason people are applying to the museum.”

Similarly, revamping job descriptions to remove degree requirements that are not necessary to perform the work and allowing the flexibility to work from home are cited as changes that are making culture jobs more attractive to applicants.

However, there was one part of the article that grabbed my attention (my emphasis):

Even with the arts’ lower salaries compared with many other hours-heavy industries, such as tech, employers say they’re still finding applicants, some of whom are transferring from one position to another within the field or coming from another industry entirely.

“Applicants are easier to find than before COVID,” said the Ballet’s St. Germain-Gordon. “I’ve interviewed people trying to get into the arts out of ‘the real world’ mostly.”

[…]

At the same time, the social justice movement has led some veterans of the arts — a field known for its long hours and low pay — to rethink their life priorities in other directions. Some have decided to leave the field altogether.

Michelle Lynch Reynolds, for example, left her role as executive director of Joe Goode Performance Group in September and does not plan to get another job in the arts. She says the problem wasn’t with her company but with the industry.

“My career felt emotionally tied to my identity as a creative individual,” she said. “That is personal, but it’s also systemic. There’s an entire culture built on the idea of, ‘This is what you’re living for.’ ”

Part of me was wondering if this was a “grass is greener” in the easy non-profit world and the folks moving into the field are in for a rude awakening or if the arts and culture world has performed a sufficient degree of self-reflection and will provide a better work environment for experienced new hires and new entrants to the field.

Around next October I would be interested to hear how things have been going, whether in SF or other parts of the country where a similar shift is playing out. Near the beginning of the article the authors mentioned that the inclusion of people from outside the arts and culture world might introduce some productive change. If new entrants are coming in at the early- to mid-career level positions, the ultimate outcomes may differ from when someone moves from the corporate to non-profit world at the executive level.

Is Your Talent Being Hoarded?

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The Marginal Revolution blog linked to a really interesting study on talent hoarding a practice in which managers prevent productive workers from seeking promotions. The study author, Ingrid Haegele, found that when the manager is promoted, subordinates have the best opportunity to gain promotions themselves.

My findings indicate that talent hoarding causes misallocation of talent by reducing the quality and performance of promoted workers….Manager rotations increase worker applications for major promotions by 123%, indicating that talent hoarding deters a large group of workers from applying for promotions.

[…]

I find that talent hoarding has disparate impacts by gender. Talent hoarding deters a larger share of female applicants from applying for major promotions compared to men. Female marginal applicants are twice as likely to land a major promotion than males, implying that talent hoarding
is more consequential for women’s career progression. Conditional on landing a promotion, women are almost three times as likely as their male counterparts to perform well in their new positions, suggesting that the firm may be failing to realize potential productivity gains by not enabling
talented women to progress to higher-level positions. Female marginal applicants are much more qualified than males in terms of their educational qualifications and past performance, indicating that talent hoarding affects women at a higher part of the quality distribution compared to men.

Interestingly, Haegele found that talent hoarding was generally gender neutral. Male and female managers were equally likely to hoard talent and these managers suppressed the advancement opportunities of both male and female subordinates generally equally. She says credits the gender difference to:

“….the survey finds that women in the firm place more value on preserving a good relationship with their manager and rely more on managers’ career guidance when making application decisions.”

As a result, they are less likely to apply for promotions.

A couple things to note: First, this is only a study of the impact of talent hoarding. There are plenty of other factors which contribute to workplace inequities for everyone. The author had to control for a lot of factors in her study, among them being that managers have a lot of subtle tools that their disposal to reinforce talent hoarding that are difficult to detect.

The other thing to note is that she conducted her survey on a large multi-national manufacturing corporation with most of its employees in Germany. While she does cite other studies illustrating how talent hoarding occurs in the U.S. and other countries, her findings may not be entirely applicable to small non-profits in the U.S.

Talent hoarding in staff of 12 is certain to have entirely different dynamics, especially with the limited opportunities for internal promotions.

But if anything, during this Great Resignation period where people are looking for better opportunities for themselves, being aware that your manager has a disincentive to praise your talents, both within the organization and to you personally is something to consider.

Come For A Haircut, See A Van Gogh

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It will probably come as no surprise to anyone running an arts venue that many attendees are over the mask wearing thing. At my venue, we actually had a more conservative mandatory policy for mask wearing than our university parent. At the beginning of December, we were prevailed upon to loosen those restrictions by my boss so for about two weeks we were at “strongly suggested” before the omicron surge saw everyone, including our parent organization institute mandatory masking again.  Still, it wasn’t long after the new year that we had people leveraging loopholes to avoid wearing masks.

Over the holidays I was amused to read that some landmark institutions in the Netherlands were chafing against restrictions there in a fairly creative way. The Van Gogh Museum, Mauritshuis gallery, and Concertgebouw concert hall engaged some barbers, nail artists and fitness instructors to provide services at their venues because those businesses weren’t restricted in the way that art institutions were.

“We wanted to make the point that a museum is a safe visit and we should be open,” Van Gogh Museum director Emilie Gordenker told AFP.

“The mayor called me last night and she said she’s not permitting this. We expect to get a warning at some point after which we will have to close, but we wanted to make this point very badly so here we are.”

One of the barber’s clients said he had come because he was “pro-culture”.

[…]

Nearby, the “Hair salon at the Concertgebouw” event saw two masked barbers clip hair on stage, while the orchestra played Symphony No. 2 by Charles Iver.

“After two years of patience and an ever-constructive attitude, it is high time for a fair perspective for the cultural sector,” Concertgebouw director Simon Renink said.

Fitness classes took place at the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague, home to Vermeer’s famed “Girl with the Peal Earring, while the Speelklok museum in Utrecht set itself up as a gym.

No mention of whether the ubiquitous “Shave and a Haircut” riff was played anywhere.

While the pandemic is certainly going to force arts organizations to rethink their business models, I am not sure that salon services are going to become the next trend. Exercise and yoga classes at museums and galleries was a thing pre-pandemic so I wouldn’t completely discount the idea.

The story does remind us that arts people are very creative thinkers. If arts leaders are willing to exercise this skillset in defiance of governments, perhaps they will be more willing to try new ideas without fearing the reactions of funders and donors as much

 

Yes, But When She Said It, It Sounded Brilliant

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Vu Le posted this week about a well-observed phenomenon he termed “Outsider Efficiency Bias.”  He defined this as basically having an outsider like a consultant come in and be lauded for making the same observations and recommendations that internal constituencies have.

Because this is a common experience, I figured someone would have already coined a term for it, but I couldn’t find one. Though logical fallacies like appeal to authority, appeal to accomplishment and appeal to novelty all intersect.

He points out this manifests in the hiring and contracting decisions organizations make and beyond just bringing consultants in for a week or two.

•Board members insisting on hiring an external candidate to be the ED instead of promoting a qualified person within the organization
•EDs/CEOs doing the same thing, hiring a staff from outside, often neglecting internal candidates
•Foundations hiring people from academia or the corporate world, who have no experience in nonprofit, to be the CEO
•Organizations hiring consultants from outside the geographic area instead of contracting with local consultants who live and work there
•Organizations hiring local consultants instead of just listening to their staff
•Conferences booking national and international speakers instead of working with local speakers

Le said he experienced this situation with his own board when they suggested bringing in an outsider to advise them about how to write blogs and articles better. If you aren’t aware, Vu Le is in fairly high demand as a speaker and panelist based on the content of his blog posts and use of social media to advocate for equity.

He acknowledges that an outsider perspective is important to the growth of organizations and is not discounting the need, but he lists many ways in which a bias toward outsiders can undermine the short and long term health of an organization.

I would have to copy and paste a significant portion of his post to include everything so I encourage people to read the original and think about how the bias exists in your organizational culture.

Since the Bible talks about a prophet being honored everywhere except in his own town and among his friends and family, this behavior is pretty deep seated but can be avoided with the investment of some thought and attention.

Who Gave You Your First Break?

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Tweets responding to UK based Arts Emergency’s new campaign were filling my Twitter feed today. I have written about them a couple times before. They are essentially focused on cultivating the next generation of creative workers through training opportunities, scholarships and mentoring.

The organization’s name and raison d’etre is premised on the idea that cuts in funding nationally have created an emergency for the future of the creative economy in the UK.  Their newest push is #BreakTheGlass, as in “In Case of Emergency, Break The Glass.”

What I really admire about their execution of this awareness campaign is that they aren’t focusing on the negative consequences that cause their organization so much concern, instead they have asked people to tag & tweet about the person(s) who “gave you some key advice or encouragement early in your career.”

Today my feed was packed with people calling out those who helped them get jobs in theater, in broadcasting, print media, etc. I usually view Twitter with a chronological order setting and there were so many people talking about those who gave them their first big break, I was scrolling, scrolling, and scrolling only to find I was still viewing tweets that were only 5 hours old.

I don’t want to horn in on Arts Emergency’s initiative, but maybe folks here in the US need to pick up the tune and call out those for whose help we are grateful. October is Arts & Humanities Month which would make it a suitable time. Or if we don’t want to steal attention from Arts Emergency, next month around Thanksgiving would be appropriate as well.

Ultimately, over the long term I think advocacy for arts and culture needs to have positive messaging like this that doesn’t focus on economic impact, test scores and behavioral outcomes as benefits. Talking about mentors and being grateful for opportunities and investment of trust and faith is a good way to emphasize the benefits of arts and culture in cultivating relationships and reinforcing the social fabric without explicitly making those claims.

Your Programming Is More Inclusive, But What About Giving Opportunities?

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Hat tip to Artsjournal.com which featured an article that seems to indicate it is better to diversify the donor base rather than continue to ask the same pool of donors to give more.  The article discusses giving to public radio stations which have a slightly different appeal process than most non-profits and more closely tie donating to membership than many performing arts organizations.

The piece uses the example of WABE, located in Atlanta, GA which upon noting that the average donation amount made by all listeners was $14/month decided to ask their existing monthly donors to increase their giving to $15/month.  This ended up backfiring on the station.

But the $15 ask turned out to be “too high,” Barasoain said. Though the team was happy with the total revenue the drive brought in, the bigger gifts came at the expense of suppressing the number of donors by an estimated 12%–16%, he said.

During WABE’s previous two fall drives, on-air pitches requested gifts in any amount. The total number of pledges for the fall 2019 drive dropped 34% compared to fall 2017 and 20% versus fall 2018.

In the 2019 drive, “we were tapping the same group of donors to give more and more money to the station,” Hyman said. “And it’s just not sustainable long-term.”

The station immediately pivoted and lowered its pledge-drive asks.

In fall 2020, the team pitched gifts of $10 per month. The number of pledges increased 11%, and revenue decreased less than 2% from fall 2019.

The station has since expanded the ways in which they solicit support to include telemarketing and direct mail as a way to supplement their on-air fund drives.

The article discusses the efforts of WFAE in Charlotte, NC and KEXP in Seattle, WA which have removed minimum monthly giving levels for the sustaining member category to create a sense of participation. There is evidence that the monthly giving helps keep people feeling engaged on an ongoing basis and improves retention.

KEXP in Seattle prioritizes “participation first,” said Erin Lightfoot, director of annual and digital philanthropy. “We’ve always really highlighted … ways that everyone can participate in supporting the station no matter what their financial capacity is, and also being extremely grateful for that.” During on-air drives, pitch announcers vary the requested giving levels.

“We do try to vary it a lot in order to make sure that we’re really inviting everyone in no matter what their capacity or their comfort level is with gift-giving,” Lightfoot said.

Something to think about in terms of making giving feel more inclusive as a complement to programming feeling more inclusive.

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