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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.

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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.

The Customer Is Always Right…

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I have been seeing a number of claims that the full quote ends with “…in matters of taste.” As much as I would love that to be true given that retailers have been bludgeoned with the phrase over the years, it apparently is not. While Harry Selfridge is credited with creating The Customer is always right, there is no record of him completing it with a sentiment about taste.

Reinforces the idea that you always need to research such things before taking them at face value. Which is apt because according to wikipedia, the saying was used to create a sense of confidence in people at a time when caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, was the maxim of the day because malpresentation was so rampant.

While the phrase is attributed to various people, the intent was to assure customers in the early 1900s that the merchant would work to guarantee their satisfaction.

About 10-15 years later, various people were already observing that customers were taking advantage of the saying to bully merchants and engaging in a little misrepresentation of their own. So it has continued for over a century as witnessed by the fact that people are trying to append a few more words to the saying to create a counternarrative.

Certainly, more than a century later there is also plenty of misrepresentation coming at us through various media to warrant the use of caveat emptor as well.

Perhaps it is time for a new saying that both tempers customer demands and urges a degree of discernment before purchasing.

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

What To Say About Your DEI Efforts

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Yesterday someone posted a Harvard Business Review article on LinkedIn dealing with the topic of corporate DEI programs. The authors, Kenji Yoshino, David Glasgow, and Christina Joseph, state that such training programs hold a low legal risk provided they aren’t targeted at a specific group in a manner that creates a hostile work environment.

Public relations-wise it can be a different story depending on the community and customers you serve.

HOWEVER, statements about diversity, equity, and inclusion can carry legal risk if the say too much.

DEI communications create legal risk when a statement suggests that the organization engages in what we call the “three Ps” by conferring a preference on a protected group with respect to a palpable benefit.

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They caution against statements like: ““DEI uplifts historically disadvantaged groups to ensure equal outcomes,” because it suggests that some protected groups might be getting preferential treatment.

As alternatives, they suggest:

“DEI removes unfair barriers that prevent disadvantaged groups from competing on a level playing field.”

“Talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. DEI closes the gap.”

“DEI enables people of all identities and backgrounds to feel welcome and do their best work.”

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In respect to hiring and promotion, they write:

Another risky statement is “We use diversity hiring to recruit people from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds.” This one could suggest the organization considers race or ethnicity in employment decisions …Alternatives include:

  • “We conduct outreach at diverse colleges to strive for a diverse applicant pool.”
  • “While we strive for a diverse mix of candidates, all employment decisions are made without regard to race, sex, or other protected characteristics.”
  • “We look for candidates of any background who will advance our culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
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They also advise staying away from any language that identifies concrete hiring targets and instead use aspirational language referencing terms like aspire, strive, aim, and hope.

Much more specific detail on these and other topics in the article, including how to engage your communications team, if any of this is of concern.

There Will Always Be A Few Successfully Operating At An Elite Level. As For The Rest?

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Seth Godin made a post about elite vs. elitism a couple months ago. His argument is that people can operate on an elite level (i.e. Olympic athletes, surgeons, teachers, etc) but that this doesn’t automatically result in elitism.

Elitism is a barrier, where we use a label to decide who gets to contribute and who is offered dignity. A law firm that only hires from a few law schools is elitist–they have no data to confirm that these recruits are more likely to contribute than others, they’re simply artificially limiting the pool they draw from.

Opening our filters and seeking a diversity of experience undermines elitist insecurity and creates the possibility for even better solutions and connection.

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The scientific method isn’t elitist, nor is a stopwatch used to record the 100 meter dash. Seeking coherent arguments, logical approaches and a contribution that leads to better outcomes isn’t elitist, in fact, it’s precisely the opposite.

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I need to make my usual observation that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the number you arrive at has validity to a claim you are making. Sports fans will happily speak for hours on the fact that a high scoring game or high win record doesn’t mean a team is operating at an elite level if they have been facing weak opponents.

Generally his thoughts align with a general conversation among cultural organizations in terms of removing the filters of tradition and past practice to explore other options. Similarly, there is a lot of conversation around making data driven decisions.

As Godin says, elitism often results from limiting the pool from which you draw after defining those pools as the source of the best product. That is one of the challenges arts and cultural organizations face today. There is a self-reinforcing definition of what is superior, but not a lot of evidence gathering about whether the product they offer has any perceived value in the community.

For a time during the pandemic I would see a number of videos of farriers shoeing horses. It was fascinating and somewhat satisfying to watch horses have their hooves cleaned and repaired so they could move about more comfortably. Many of these farriers are among the elite in their trade, but most people don’t keep horses these days so the market for their skills is fairly small. Fortunately, the supply of good farriers probably reflects demand.

A similar thing is happening with piano tuners. As I wrote in 2023, there is definitely an unmet need for piano tuners among arts organizations and the lack threatens performing arts organizations’ ability to host concerts. At the same time, people can’t give pianos away and many are ending up in the dump.

Much of this is due to changing lifestyles and expectations. So while it is likely that there will always be some arts and cultural organizations operating in traditional ways which will always find they are in high demand, the number of organizations are likely to dwindle if they are not responding to the changing lifestyles and expectations.

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.

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.

Seems Like The Kitchener-Waterloo Musicians Deserve A LOT More Credit Than First Appeared

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A few weeks ago I wrote about how the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony appeared to have found a path to return to activity, albeit tenuous, after the musicians were blindsided by a bankruptcy announcement.

In my post last month, I cited the board chair as saying the musicians invested a lot of effort in helping to save the symphony.

But let me tell you, after reading an additional piece in The Globe and Mail, I think that may have been an understatement. From the account on the newspaper site, it sounds like not only did the musicians raise $500,000 to support the out of work musicians and put on their own concerts, they also did the research and formulated the plan through which the symphony could be restored.

{French horn player Kathy] Robertson and a group of other musicians began to wonder what was salvageable from the original orchestra. If very few potential creditors would get paid from bankruptcy proceedings given the multimillion-dollar shortfall, the musicians reckoned it wouldn’t affect creditors too greatly if they avoided bankruptcy entirely and still didn’t get paid.

So they went to the Canadian Federation of Musicians, who connected the musicians with lawyers – who in turn confirmed that if they could find a way to satisfy creditors, it might be possible to save the orchestra.

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New board members contributed expertise and represented the orchestra in negotiations with creditors, but it sounds like the musicians provided the impetus and significant amounts of sweat necessary to get things back to a tentative footing. I am not sure what the laws in Canada allow, but it seems like the new Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony should be constituted as something of an employee owned and operated entity.

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.

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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.”

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“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.

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.

The Measurement Used Can Alter The Impact Of Your Work

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Long time readers know that I resist the use of economic impact as a measure of value for arts and culture for many reasons. The late potter-philosopher Carter Gillies was really effective in calling attention to the myriad ways in which using inappropriate measures of value would result in meaningless data and incorrect beliefs and assumptions.

Seth Godin recently made a post that illustrated that the measure you use shapes how you perceive the impact and value of the work you do. This brings the concept that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the result is meaningful to a more personal, relatable level.

Godin observes that we have long been indoctrinated to believe that completion of a task is a measure of productivity.  But, he asks, if “I did all my homework” is a measure of productivity, what has the practice of completing your homework ever done for you?

The actual measures of productivity that might be useful range quite a bit:

• I did enough to not get fired.
• I did enough to get promoted.
• I did enough to get hired by a better firm.
• I solved a problem for a customer who was frustrated.
• I changed the system and now my peers are far more productive.
• I invented something that creates new possibilities and new problems.
• I created new assets that I can use (and others can as well).
• I didn’t waste today.

Pick your measurement and the impact of your chores will change.

Just because you can measure productivity in terms of work completed, it doesn’t necessarily yield results that are meaningful–except perhaps to whomever is selling the work you have completed. But there are other measurements of value that can be applied to your work, some of them far more meaningful than others. The impact of that meaning could have–and I use this term intentionally–immeasurably more value than just units of work completed over time.

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

Do Factors Underlying Desire To Work From Home Herald An Increase In Creativity?

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Back in 2009 I wrote about a TED talk Dan Pink did on motivation. In particular, he discussed how monetary rewards was successful at motivating people in mechanical tasks, but when it came to problem solving and creative solutions, in many cases the greater the reward, the longer it took people to solve a problem.

At the time I wrote:

This may explain why arts people are able to create in the absence of monetary reward.

I wouldn’t let this get around lest people insist that paying you more may rob you of your creativity.

[…]
Pink says the new operating model should be based on:

“Autonomy- Urge to Direct Our Own Lives
Mastery- Desire to get better and better at something that matters, and
Purpose- The Yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”

It seems like these concepts are beginning to increasingly manifest themselves as people start to consider work from home as an option and seek to embrace greater degrees of autonomy, mastery and purpose in their lives.

Pursuit of Low Overhead Ratio Is Starving Cultural Org Of Success

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For a long time now pursuit of a low overhead ratio has been viewed as a benchmark of good governance in the non-profit sector. There have been arguments against that view, but the perception doggedly persists. Recent research specifically focused on arts and cultural non-profits indicates that these organizations actually need to be spending between 30-35% of their budget on overhead in order to be successful.

I wrote a post for ArtsHacker on the topic recently highlighting this:

As we explained in the academic journal Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, we found that when arts nonprofits devoted 35% of their budget to overhead, they fared best in terms of attendance.

Attendance declined, by contrast, for organizations that spent extremely low and high amounts of their budget on overhead. Groups that spent far too little saw their attendance decline by 9%. Attendance for arts groups that spent way too much on overhead fell by 30%.

While there spending too much is definitely detrimental to attendance, a sizeable portion of non-profit cultural organizations are expending far below what is beneficial.

Hop over to the Arts Hacker post to get more detail about why pursuit of a low overhead ratio sends cultural organizations into a downward spiral as well as why the researchers insist there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all rule of thumb about expense ratios.

You Probably Need To Be Spending More On Overhead

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.

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.

 

Making Venue Upgrades Pleasant For Everyone

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I don’t remember exactly how, but I became aware of a grant program administered by the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta (CFGA) called “A Place to Perform,” which supports the efforts of arts groups to access performing arts spaces.

A Place to Perform is an initiative of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta  created after the theatre space of the 14th Street Playhouse became unavailable to a wide range of Atlanta’s nonprofit performing arts organizations. Historically, A Place to Perform has provided grants to nonprofit arts organizations to assist them financially in gaining access to performance venues so they can produce performing arts experiences for the public throughout the metro Atlanta region.

This struck me as a great idea. Throughout my career I have frequently worked with groups who were looking to take the next step up from where ever they had been performing before. Often it was because they were attracting audiences that were too large for the spaces they used in the past or they wanted to do a show with higher production values.

Thinking about these experiences, it occurred it me that a program like the one for Greater Atlanta should also offer additional funding or include the services of some sort of guide/stage manager/technical adviser to help groups make this sort of transition.

A problem the venue staff of places at which I have worked repeatedly encountered with groups trying to make a transition from a space with smaller audience and technical capacities was a disconnect between what they envisioned and how to accomplish it.  Now granted, we often ran into the same issue with some repeat renters who seemed to start from square one year after year, but at least we had notes from early shows upon which to build.

With brand new renters it often difficult to just get to the point of creating an accurate estimate for equipment and especially labor.  Having a lighting and sound change, a curtain flying in while a set piece flies out and microphone packs being transitioned to other people can mean 10 people paying very close attention to what is going on where you had three at the smaller venue you were at previously.

If a grant program paid an experienced person to sit down and talk through your vision with you and then communicate that to the venue or even fund the person to coordinate those details through the run of the show as a stage manager or production designer, that would help the whole experience run smoother for everyone.

And yes, there is nothing keeping groups from including that in their grant application –except they don’t know that it will be helpful to have a consultant. Best approach might be to have something in the grant application and any applicant Q&A sessions encouraging people to think about whether they might need help and including it in their budgets.

This is not to say that venue staff can’t help. Every place I have worked, the staff has been willing to provide advice and patiently work with new groups. In a couple cases, staff has provided planning documents and templates which cut days off the rehearsal process.  The biggest problem has always been surprise additions which ends up over working the staff and raising the final bill for renters.

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.

Comp Tickets Are Not Cost Free Transaction

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Last month Drew McManus had box office manager Tiffin Feltner make a guest post on his Adaptistration blog on the topic of comp tickets.   It has taken me about three weeks to stop grinding my teeth long enough to make a post of my own on the topic.  You will see a lot of posts about optimizing ticket prices based on various criteria and I think those assume people have a handle on their comp ticket policies. But let me tell you, in my experience there are a lot of people out there you think would know better who have absolutely bonkers approaches to comp ticketing.

Feltner notes that about 40% of comps go unused. I wondered if that is a nationwide statistic or just what they have observed in terms of the venues they serve. Reports I have pulled from my ticketing system often show much greater rates than that.

Organizations I have worked at have ticketed events for rentals of our own venue as well as served as a community ticketing hub providing service to other organizations at their venues. Many times they are not only comping tickets for individual events, but providing comp subscriptions which results in a large number of empty seats for the entire year.

There are so many issues that arise because of comp ticketing decisions. First, because organizations like to comp tickets and subscriptions to important guests, they place them in large, consecutive groups in the closest rows. Which means if people don’t use the comps, you can have a nearly sold out event where the first 10 rows are virtually empty and those in attendance are packed like sardines in the back of the venue.

Then there are other cases when the event is sold out in the ticketing system and the client can’t get a special last minute guest in because they distributed the house seats held back for this purpose days earlier. Then of course, when the show starts there are a bunch of empty seats because so much of the house had been comped.

We have run into situations where the client decides a ticket holder has forfeited their seat by not showing up five minutes before, without ever having communicated that policy. (Because it didn’t exist until just now.) Sometimes the ticket holder shows up to find their seat occupied, sometimes that bullet is dodged.

Then there have been times the client tells us they have confirmed a ticket holder is not attending, asked us to assign the ticket to someone else, and then put a sign on the seat reserving it for a third person.

Not only are poorly considered ticketing policies bad optics and create poor customer relations, most of the time the ticketing staff ends up as the target of blame for these bad decisions–often by the people responsible for making these bad decisions. This is what makes me grind my teeth because all these bad feelings and awkward situations could be avoided with a little forethought and policy discipline.

In their guest post, Feltner suggests using a card that can only be redeemed on the night of the show as a solution to the comp issue. That is similar to an approach my staff has used with clients where we suggest unassigned blocks of seats strategically placed in places with good sightlines. These blocks can be assigned as needed when it is known what VIPs will be attending. This allows for better placement and assignment of seats prior to an event date.

However, there needs to be strong comp policy guidelines in place so that there isn’t a gradual creep back to 1/3 of the seats being comped well in advance.  If your venue scans tickets, you are probably able to pull a no-show report broken down by ticket category that can provide insight into how many of the comps are being used which can inform tweaks to the ticketing policy.

While I am advocating for a robust comp ticket policy, this is not to say that you shouldn’t be offering comp tickets. There are a lot of reasons why free admission is a bad idea, but it can be useful to achieve targeted goals. As Feltner mentions, it is important to have some sort of tracking mechanism in place to evaluate whether you are achieving those goals.

One thing to consider if you are offering comp tickets as a sponsorship or donor benefit is to ask the recipient if they plan to use the tickets. In my experience, a fair number of people provide support because they believe in the organization’s work, but don’t necessarily intend to redeem the benefits that come with the support.

Not only does that allow those seats to be filled, but it also allows a greater portion of their donation to be credited as tax deductible because they are not receiving material benefit. However, this benefit needs to be refused immediately at the time of the donation. You can’t ask people in December after you have had 8 events occur and then retroactively provide credit for unattended shows. If they do decide to attend one event at a later time, you can always comp them in then and make an appropriate adjustment to their donation credit.

You’re Not Meant To Eat Everything On The Menu

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Many of you may have seen the news about the accusations of “wokeness” being leveled at the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel for adding plant based breakfast sausage to the menu. To be clear, they aren’t replacing the existing meat based sausage option, just adding the plant-based option.

Upon reading this, I immediately thought of a talk Nina Simon did at the Minnesota History conference discussing her book, The Art of Relevance. Specifically, I was reminded of her statement that not everything an arts organization does is for the insiders. She mentions this idea in other talks that she did, but this was my first introduction to the concept so I remembered it clearly and thought the Cracker Barrel story was a good opportunity to revisit it.

While I remembered this talk so clearly I was able to find my post on her talk immediately, I had not recalled just how appropriate it was.

Right there in the second paragraph I wrote,

“She uses the metaphor about going to a restaurant and how you don’t suddenly decide to boycott the restaurant if they start adding vegetarian and heart healthy options to their regular menu.”

Sorry Nina, it looks like you were wrong.
.
There are a lot of lessons and things to consider in the Cracker Barrel example. There are a number of other restaurants and chains that started offering faux meat like the Impossible Burger without this sort of reaction. Dunkin Donuts in particular offered the breakfast veggie-sausage patty on their menu. So why the negative reaction to Cracker Barrel’s decision? My theory is that people have made the restaurant chain part of their identity and adding a non-meat option threatens that identity in some way.

I think in a lot of ways arts organizations might view their core supporters reacting in a similar manner and be reluctant to effect change. Honestly, I don’t know that Cracker Barrel offers a cautionary tale to most arts organizations. I do think that there will be a lot of people in a community who very closely identify with and organization and are invested in its well-being, to the point they will mention a show they just attended a few months ago. The fact the show was two years ago just illustrates they feel like they have close ties.

On the whole, I think it will be like most restaurants adding heart healthy and vegetarian options — people’s eyes will pass over those listings looking for what they like. New opportunities to open doors to new audiences isn’t going to bother long term supporters overall, especially if promoted well while maintaining a perception that long term supporters aren’t losing anything by it. It think it is easy to overestimate the push back. I have seen a whole season of classical music concerts fill the house despite the inclusion of some contemporary, non-canonical pieces. The traditional audiences seemed happy to see younger audiences filling in the seats beside them.

Certainly, context matters and the emergence from Covid restrictions provides license to try new approaches. Arts and cultural organizations would be wise take advantage of this opportunity.

This is not to say that there aren’t organizations with which supporters have made their association an integral part of their identity. Supporters for whom any change feels like a personal threat. A situation like this bears very, very serious examination. Not only is it an impediment to inviting new people in to renew the vitality of the organization, but it may clash with the organization’s self-perception of who they are for. Most Cracker Barrel locations are near interstate highways so the addition of the vegetable based faux meat is meant to signal that travelers with different dietary preferences are welcome. But the response of a lot of customers is, no they are not.

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.

Ushering Them Off With Great Fanfare

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I have read a fair number of articles about transitioning problematic board members off a board, but I have to credit Vu Le for laying out a relatively detailed process for accomplishing the task.  Le’s approach, which he terms the “Plaque and Sack,” requires essentially killing the board member with a ton of kindness.

I wouldn’t imagine it is 100% effective, but it is intended to help mitigate any negative repercussions that might result.  It is also meant to be used in extreme cases after much thought and consideration.

Basically, it involves identifying a high visibility event at which to honor the board member with an award for all they have contributed and accomplished, both with the organization and in the community.  The occasion should feel prestigious and significant and involve lionizing the honoree as a pillar, supported by a video montage of people likewise praising them as they retire from the board.

Le admits that perhaps the hardest part of the whole process might be swallowing anger and resentment while organizing the occasion.

9.Try to suppress your bitterness and resentment: I know it can be hard to watch someone get praised publicly when they have been terrible for the mission, but close your eyes to keep them from rolling, …

And that, my friends, is the art of the Plaque and Sack. Besides board members, it may work on difficult volunteers and donors. Again, do not deploy this lightly.

 

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.

I Wish I Was Going With You Approach To Customer Service

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This morning I attended a brand reveal for a Marriott hotel slated to open half a block from my venue in/around January. This particular collection of hotels is highly customized to the community in which it resides so there was a lot of detail discussed in the 1.5 hours of the actual presentation.

One thing that occurred to me during the presentation was that you should only pay for brand design that you have the budget to execute. The amount of money they are going to spend executing the branding vision is going to be significant.

When the designers started talking about the brand values that would be embodied, a couple struck me as concepts to be embraced by arts and culture organizations.

One was – we are not docents, we are friends-in-the-know. The other was – we are not interested, we are invested.   These statements seemed to embody the nuanced difference between good customer service and great customer service.

If you had two people working at the front desk and they each provided the same information to guests, but there was something you couldn’t put your finger on that made one of them seem superior to the other, something akin to these two concepts are likely to be present.  The better service comes from someone who isn’t just doling out information, but makes you feel they wish they were going with you or want you to have the same great experience they had when they were there.

So now I am letting these ideas percolate in my brain as I look around at our operation and think about how that can manifest at different points in our visitor experience. (Though I suppose we shouldn’t give people the impression we wish we were accompanying them when they ask directions to the restrooms.) Of course, however we decide that should be embodied in our building should be present where ever we are representing the organization outside out facilities as well.

Let me just point out that these are not entirely new concepts. In terms of marketing, they are a variation on Trevor O’Donnell’s “Gal In Starbucks” test from six years ago that I have written on a number of times. This is something the arts and culture industry should have been working toward for a few years now at least.

Colorado And The Case Of The Hidden Salary

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I have noticed Drew McManus will get me riled up about an arts administration topic and then suggests I write an Arts Hacker post about it. Last week was no exception. Last Thursday he posted about how he had gone back to requiring employers posting positions on Arts Admin Jobs to include a salary range.  He had done so because there was a growing demand among job applicants and others within the non-profit world to have salaries included.

But that Drew also noticed an editorial on the Chronicle of Philanthropy (registration required) was making waves for suggesting that omitting the salary was in everyone’s best interest. And boy did that garner a spirited response from readers.

With good reason since part of the rationale seemed to be along the lines of someone being grossly underpaid at $40,000 would be too intimidated to apply for a job more appropriately paying $120,000, so it is better to keep the salary hidden….you know, for their sake.

There is a lot more to the effort than just some opinion pieces. As I note in my Arts Hacker post, Show The Salary started in the UK and is an international effort that probably extends even further than my research turned up.

There are definitely signs that there will be immense resistance by companies and organizations to list salary ranges. While there are a number of states and municipalities which have rules against requiring or discriminating against applicants who don’t provide their current salary, only Colorado requires employers to provide salary and benefits information in their employment listings.

As a result, a number of companies who allow employees to work remotely are specifically saying Colorado residents can not apply for open positions. Nike says residents will need to move from the state before performing any work.

Since there are a significant number of positions open in the arts right now, including at the executive level, there is an opportunity to create a strong precedent and expectation of listing salary ranges. Such a simple move is likely to exert a lasting influence and shift in the general work culture among arts organizations going forward.

There is more detail about the whole topic in my Arts Hacker post so check it out.

 

Time To Include #ShowTheSalary In The Hiring Process

 

Manspreading Of Buzzwords

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Apropos to Monday’s post on Jargon vs. Lingo, a link came across my social media feed yesterday featuring an interview with Anand Giridharadas by Mariana Mazzucato, a professor at the University College of London on the topic of philanthropy .

There is a moment right around the 23:00 mark where Giridharadas refers to a situation where the “…manspreading of certain languages which render native speakers in various institutions illiterate.”

Basically what he says happens is that advisors or consultants come in and start challenging practices, wielding terms like “leveraging synergies” and “boiling the ocean” to make it seem like the shorthand language you use internally to accomplish things is not sufficient to achieve success.  Giridharadas says this allows people to come in from outside and make people feel inadequate in their familiar home environment. It shifts the power dynamic by establishing their expertise while positioning natives as no longer credible.

He points out that people who have achieved relatively high levels of success in industries like education, arts and aviation don’t tend to decide this expertise can be applied to other industries, but people in the commercial business world will feel they are qualified to direct the efforts in other realms. Giridharadas specifically mentions charities, non-profits and the arts as industries often feel their commercial skillsets will transfer to.

Now none of this is to say that non-profits and the arts don’t have issues like insularity and diversity, equity and inclusion, among others that need to be fixed. But with some exceptions, the solution to these problems can be achieved with plain speech and the native jargon of the organization without the necessity of introducing buzzwords.

Mazzucato also made an interesting point about the commercial world employing a paradigm adopted from a now outdated physics worldview. She says economics finds it convenient to employ Newtonian view of equilibrium to justify a laissez-faire policy–the idea governments shouldn’t interfere because the system will self-correct. However, she notes that physics has moved on to the quantum physics model where there are higher degrees of uncertainty and randomness. These are factors probably a more appropriate paradigm for economics since individuals, social structures and behaviors do not easily conform to the predictability of an equal and opposite reaction.

To be clear, she is not saying economics should look to the quantum model to figure everything out. She just makes the point that scientific models have shifted as observations about the world have been tested and economics seemed to glom on to a convenient metaphor/model that conformed to a desired outcome.

 

 

Jigglers Were About Spending Time Together, But It Sold Alot of Jell-O

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Economist Tyler Cowen had a rather extensive conversation with poet and former NEA Chair, Dana Gioia, on a plethora of topics. The one that most quickly grabbed me was right out of the gate when Cowen asks Gioia about his success at marketing Jell-O. He said it took him 2.5 years to conceptualize and then sell General Foods on Jell-o Jigglers which ended up reversing a 25 year downward trend and doubling sales overnight.

Gioia says that while General Foods was the best food company around in the 1950s, by the 1980s they were foundering because they didn’t know how to re-imagine their products. If you grew up in the 70s and 80s, you may remember that there were all these recipes that involved using Jell-O in intricate ways. (My family had one of their cookbooks and actually made a few.)

Gioia’s approach was to greatly simplify the use to re-imagine the product and make it relevant to consumers.

…rather than creating an elaborate recipe, which was what we were trying to sell people for 40 years, simply a way that you could add water with your kids, put it in the refrigerator and have it ready as a finger food in one hour.

…it was the way of using three times as much Jell-O for an occasion in which people would never use Jell-O, which is to make your own gummy bears. It became a mom-kid activity. We sold every box of Jell-O in the United States for several months.

When I read that, it made me think in the 1980s Gioia was basically doing what we in the arts have only just started to do recently –focus on how our product creates connection with family and friends.

Gioia also talks about how he brought a poet’s humanities based creativity to solve problems for a disciplined, data-driven corporation:

I was a poet, but I needed a job, so, I went to business school, I got an MBA, and I ended up in marketing at General Foods which is a highly analytic company with a very military organization. It was absolutely fantastic at managing existing businesses with a maximum of efficiency. What they were not good at was, in a sense, reconceptualizing a business that was in trouble, because they would simply try to do more or less of what they had done before.

…but with each promotion at General Foods, actually the particular skills I had, which was in a sense of — I’m very good at reconceptualizing things, taking a solution that people have had, breaking it apart, and creating a new solution. I essentially brought creativity that was completely in command of the numbers, if you can understand. That’s a very fairly rare combination, and I was able to transform several businesses there.

Definitely lessons in there for the arts and culture sector as they try to reconstitute and reinvent themselves in the coming years. Cowen and Gioia go on to talk about poetry, religion, opera (“What is opera except the suffering of people with high voices.”) among other things throughout the interview.

One Year Later, What Have We Learned About Working From Home?

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Vox Recode provided some interesting insights into factors which will exist as people increasingly work from home. Some of the issues I had already anticipated like a move to a less permanent, more freelance/contract worker environment,  and difficulties that may crop up if your supervisor and you live in different time zones but they expect responses aligned to their 9-5 schedule.

There were some surprises for me like the finding that older workers were more open to telecommuting than younger workers whom I assumed would be more comfortable with a digital existence. But apparently it isn’t degree of comfort with technology that was the defining factor:

Employees over the age of 40 were more likely to say they would prefer to continue working remotely, while employees younger than 40 were more likely to want to return to the office, according to one study of teleworkers done by Bucknell University. Young people felt they were missing out on the mentorship and soft skills they would have received working alongside older colleagues in the office, who can help them advance their careers.

“They are impatient to be successful,” Eddy Ng, a professor at Bucknell University and one of the report’s authors, told Recode. “They now know the value of social capital and the need to interact with others.”

The fact that older workers are likely to have living spaces large enough to accommodate office spaces and that are not intruded upon by roommates and younger children were also mentioned as possibly contributing to this finding.

There was also a racial divide and the theories supporting it bear considering if you are planning to do better on diversity and/or letting people work from home:

Nearly all Black knowledge workers currently working from home, some 97 percent, want a hybrid or fully remote work model, compared with 79 percent of their white counterparts, according to data from Slack’s Future Forum survey. The report posited a number of reasons, including remote work reducing the need for “code switching,” or making oneself and one’s speech fit the norms of a majority white office. Being outside the office also reduced instances of microaggressions and discrimination and improved Black employees’ ability to recover from those incidents. With remote work, Black knowledge workers reported a greater sense of belonging, a greater ability to manage work stress, and greater work-life balance than their white colleagues.

The Vox article suggests that productivity will gradually become less focused on the quantitative measures that have persisted since factory assembly lines and more aligned toward quality of work and interactions. However, they caution that using productivity as a measure of an employees worth, regardless of whether it is based on quantity or quality should not be the bottom line.

One of the things they caution against is a situation arts organizations have been urged to move away from –siloing. If you aren’t going into a shared workspace every day you aren’t interacting with everyone that works for your company, only a core group with whom you need to perform your tasks. As a result, there isn’t the sharing of ideas that lead to innovation; creating of empathy for needs of others, (you’re more likely to make things easier for Carol in accounting if you see how hard she works); or the creation of a general organizational culture.

At the same time, the article says that seeing people in their home environments rather than their office cubicle has helped to humanize them.

You don’t come out of seeing your coworkers — and their living rooms and their babies and their pets — in the middle of a global pandemic without getting a little closer to them. And such closeness makes people happier and better at work.

The pandemic did a good job of humanizing people, not only because we saw more of their interior lives but because we worked with them while going through something immense.

[…]

Indeed, one in six people reported crying with a coworker this year, according to Microsoft’s study, and nearly one in three say they are more likely to be their authentic selves at work than last year. About 40 percent said they were less embarrassed when their home life showed up at work compared to how things used to be. All of these interactions correlate with a better sense of well-being, higher productivity, and more positive perceptions of work, according to the study.

Hopefully that isn’t all just the stress of the pandemic and people will continue to feel a closer connection with each other.

Well Done Rare Medium

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It is pretty widely acknowledged that people who work for non-profits do so for intangible benefits like a feeling of contributing to the betterment of society and self-actualization rather than rewarding levels of remuneration.

Of all the benefits non-profit workers feel they get from the work they do, compliments are probably not one of them. A story in Harvard Business Review noted that two research efforts found that while people felt that compliments were beneficial and should be given more often, many people refrained from expressing compliments to others.

…we consistently found that people underestimated how good their compliment would make the recipient feel. Compliment-givers tend to believe the other person won’t enjoy their interaction as much as they actually do; in fact, they often believe that their exchange will probably make the person a little uncomfortable. Yet, consistently, receiving a compliment brightens people’s day much more than anticipated, leaving them feeling better, and less uncomfortable, than givers expect.

[…]

In fact, only 50% of people in one experiment who wrote down a compliment for a friend actually sent the compliment along when given the chance, even though they’d already done the hardest part — coming up with something nice and thoughtful to say. That is, despite the widely shared desire to give more compliments, when faced with the decision people still often forgo low-cost opportunities to make others feel appreciated and valued.

Among the concerns people had were that their delivery of the compliment would be awkward and that repeatedly giving compliments on consecutive days would diminish the value of the praise and be perceived as increasingly insincere.

The authors conclude by noting that gratitude and praise is especially important now more than ever and advocate for creating a culture of gratitude:

As Aron Ain, CEO of Ultimate Kronos Group has said, “Gratitude is not about a one-time holiday party, day off, or spot bonus…It is about creating a culture of gratitude.”

(Title of this post is based on a recollection of a clue in a Hardy Boys book from ~40 years ago where the antagonist writes a note congratulating a fortune teller.)

TikTok As A New Employee Training Manual?

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Daniel Pink made a tweet today that I immediately bookmarked so I could go back to it.

I hadn’t noticed at the time that this was year-end summary type article that reviewed the best advice entrepreneurs had given in 2020. There are a lot of interesting bits of insights covered here, some of which are more applicable to arts organizations than others.

The “What Would Your Replacement Do?” question referenced in Pink’s tweet was one of those with broad application. It refers to a mental exercise Upstart co-founder Dave Girouard would use to keep himself from getting too complacent:

…what would happen if tomorrow my board got together and fired me,” says Girouard….And if they bring her in and she starts at Upstart — what would she do differently than what I’m doing? I think about that for a while, and then I tell myself, ‘Why the hell aren’t you doing those things?’ It’s just this weird game I play to get myself to recognize that while I’m doing some things okay, I can be lulled into a place of feeling good about myself when I’m probably not doing some other things very well.”

The first bit of advice on the list caught my eye because it was a list of 40 questions to ask on interviews. The list is obviously written for the commercial sector and pretty heavily geared for start-ups there were still quite a number that would easily suit non-profit arts.

Things like: “What’s something that would only happen here but wouldn’t at other organizations?”, “When you’ve done your best work here, what about the culture has enabled you to do that?”, “What would 1:1’s be like with my direct manager? What types of topics would we discuss?”, “What is the title of the most senior underrepresented person at the company?”

“If I asked your investors what they’re worried about, what would they say?” –this one caught my attention because I immediately thought to replace “investors” with “board” which got me thinking about how well the organization might be communicating issues with the board and if the board was paying attention.

An article about Job To Be Done (JTBD) also caught my attention based on the statement: “People don’t simply buy products or services, they ‘hire’ them to make progress in specific circumstances.” This is often the case with people and arts and cultural experiences. People value the experiences across multiple dimensions.

Sunita Mohanty, who was interviewed for the article said she often uses the following prompt in relation to product development.

Which she says translates into the following: “Peloton JTBD: When I need an option to workout, but I can’t go to my favorite studio, help me to get a convenient and inspiring indoor workout, so I can feel my best for myself and my family.”

Off the top of my head, the way this might translate for an arts situation might be: “When I am seeking opportunities to spend time connecting with my family and friends, but I have trouble identifying places we feel completely welcomed, help us see ourselves and our stories so we feel acknowledged and valued in the broader community.

There is a lot of really valuable advice about hiring, evaluation, office culture, and diversity and inclusion listed in the article. As tempted as I am to cover them all, I don’t want to make this post super long. Many of the ideas intersect with other posts I have made or other articles that are out there.

But one idea that never came to my attention before was use of asynchronous video tools as a form of communication and new hire training.

In the early days of building Drift, I was using WhatsApp all the time. It was easy to record and send videos quickly. And so I started to communicate to my senior leadership team mostly asynchronously through video and audio messages,” says Cancel. “If we have a problem, we’d make a quick video on what we sucked at, how we fixed it, the results, and what we learned.
[…]
But Cancel has also noticed other benefits. “It allowed me to really think through what I was saying, versus just getting in a room with someone or having a back and forth in text messaging or a phone call,” he says. “It was the sharing aspect that really made it an effective tool for us — all of a sudden we had old videos on different topics that we could share with people who were starting their journey at Drift in their onboarding process…getting everyone focused, and helping folks understand why we were making decisions, giving us an ability to be transparent in a way that we couldn’t before.”

Given that so many people feel comfortable making videos of every little move they make, this struck me as a pretty viable practice in arts organizations and one that might even inform creative works.

Decision Not To Grow≠Failure To Grow

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An article on Daily Yonder making an interesting point came across my social media feed last week.  They noted that part of the reason why rural communities are characterized as being in decline is that those communities that eventually grow much bigger are no longer classified as rural, they become a metro.   It is almost like claiming that the life expectancy of caterpillars is getting shorter despite the increase in available flora without acknowledging that the abundance of flora allows the caterpillars to transition into butterflies earlier.  This is a form of survivorship bias.

“Rural America is reported as declining in part because we no longer count as Rural those counties that grew into a Metro classification. We are measuring those counties that stay Rural which, by definition, have not grown,” stated the report.

[…]

Those that remained rural are far from homogenous, but the report stated that “they often have some economic specialization or dependence. Counties that stayed Rural and lost population tended to depend on farming, mining, or oil and gas. Counties that stayed Rural and gained population (though not enough to switch to Urban) tended to be recreation-dependent and/or retirement destinations.”

The way rural counties are classified and reclassified contributes to a skewed image of “struggling rural America.” Policy makers should consider this as they look for ways to help rural counties succeed.

This reminded me of the frequent complaint that the success of an organization or company is predominantly measured in growth. Is the number of people served or funds raised/earned greater than it was in the past? A lot of us know it is the less easily quantifiable depth and quality of the experience that can create deeper impact and lasting impressions in participants.

Heck, at about 4 pm this afternoon I got an email at my day job saying our outdoor fire escape concert series has been nominated for a special Covid Cultural Award. I would argue that a primary criteria for that was just “able to do something this year” rather than anything to do with growth.

I strongly suspect there is a dynamic at work in the non-profit sector as a whole, and the arts and cultural industry in particular, similar to the one observed in the Daily Yonder article. There are rural communities that see growth, but remain rural but there is often no differentiation between them and those rural communities that are doing poorly.

If you make a conscious choice to stay small or only grow large enough to provide sustainable salaries to staff and then reinvest resources into providing better and better experiences, you end up in the same category as groups that are just entering the field or entering your size classification.  As a result, the perception of your organization is shaped by sweeping generalizations about your category.

If others in your category are struggling to deliver quality programs or lack the capacity to do good work, then by default the belief is you are as well despite having developed an extremely stable foundation over the course of decades.

This dovetails with my frequent discussion of how economic impact is a bad yardstick by which to measure the value of the arts. Just as the authors of the study of rural communities say different measures and different solutions should be applied to rural communities, a single standard of success is not appropriate for all arts organizations.

 

Don’t Feel Obligated To Sink More Into Bad Choices

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I am not saying anything new when I note that there are a lot of arts organizations which are incapable of taking much action due to Covid related legal restrictions or lack of resources. My assumption has been that those who are able to make plans or take action are exploring opportunities that require relatively low investment of time and resources — basically taking advantage of any option that allows them to stay nimble and muster the most leverage.

Much to my surprise, as few resources and time people have at their disposal, I have already started to witness people engaging in behavior reflective of  the sunk cost fallacy. This is the practice of feeling you have to continue down a path you recognize as a bad choice based on the fact you committed so much effort to this point. The Wikipedia article I linked to has some good examples – staying in a bad relationship because you have invested so much time and emotional energy in it, getting a membership to an expensive gym in order to force yourself to exercise, continuing a war because otherwise the sacrifice of lives would have been in vain.

One particular example given is applicable to the arts if you substitute a performance/visual arts experience in for deciding whether to stay or leave a ball game you aren’t enjoying:

The economist will suggest that, since the second option involves suffering in only one way (wasted money), while the first involves suffering in two (wasted money plus wasted time), option two is preferable. In either case, the ticket-buyer has paid the price of the ticket so that part of the decision should no longer affect the future. If the ticket-buyer regrets buying the ticket, the current decision should be based on whether they want to see the game at all, regardless of the price, just as if they were to go to a free baseball game.

Many people, however, would feel obliged to stay for the rest of the game despite not really wanting to, perhaps because they feel that doing otherwise would be wasting the money they spent on the ticket. They may feel they have passed the point of no return. Economists regard this behaviour as irrational. It is inefficient because it misallocates resources by taking irrelevant information into account.

One particular recent example I had in mind when writing this post resulted from sharing our research on livestreaming options and equipment after a successful execution with colleagues. What we had found was inexpensive and simple to use, especially in light of the fact that the cameras would communicate well with each other which made switching between camera angles very simple.

Despite our colleagues admitting that this sounded like a simpler option than the one they were working on which required more expensive and complicated equipment and software, they turned down our offer to lend them the equipment because they had put so much effort into researching their option. (I am pretty sure they hadn’t purchased everything they needed at that point.)

It should be acknowledge, there is probably no one out there that doesn’t make irrational decisions which are not in their best interest. I would bet Dan Ariely who studies irrational behavior for a living has succumbed a number of times. It isn’t terribly surprising given the times we live in that we make poor decisions based on gut or emotion, but all the more reason to pay very close attention to what is motivating your actions because there is so little margin for error.

Don’t Forget Lessons Learned About Business Insurance

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One of the panel sessions at the recent Arts Midwest-Western Arts Alliance virtual conference was on Reopening. The one panelist that really caught my attention was Anna Glass, Executive Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH).

She said when the Covid emergency hit, the Cultural Institutions Group, a collection of major arts institutions in NYC area which had been organized some years prior, provided a great resource for information sharing during the crisis.  Apparently there were group calls seven days a week for the first two months to discuss the issues and they have scaled back to four times a week now. The group organized itself into various working groups to help figure out solutions to problems and organize advocacy efforts.

Glass is the co-leader of the insurance working group and spoke about the rude awakening groups like hers had when they discovered how lacking their insurance policies were.  One thing they didn’t realize was that there were caps on the amount of money their policies would pay out. So while DTH face the cancellations of events that annually brought in over $1 million, their policies were capped at $30,000. On top of that, while they were so sure that they could make a business interruption claim based on government action due to Gov. Cuomo’s executive order, they learned their policies would only cover them if there was physical damage to their buildings.

Glass said her insurance working group provided a lot of information to the greater Cultural Institutions Group membership about how to read their policies, make claims, etc. The working group encouraged everyone to make a claim even if they didn’t think they had a chance of having it approved just to make some noise about the issues with business insurance.

Glass said she paying greater attention to her insurance policies and really pushed back on her (previous) insurance broker for “not working for me.” She is determined not to make the same mistake twice.

The brief silver lining Glass sees in all this is that arts organizations in the NYC area are cooperating, collaborating and advocating as a unified groups in a way they hadn’t before. She hopes that becomes an ingrained habit/practice moving forward.

I wanted to bring this up in general for the broader lessons about cooperation and advocacy this has for us all, but specifically to remind people to pay attention to things like insurance policies and contracts moving forward. I am sure it will be nigh impossible to get appropriate coverage for epidemics, but you still need to think seriously about what types of coverage you need and what you will or won’t accept from a policy. There is so much other crap going on right now, it will be hard to effect change but eventually there will likely be a movement to reform insurance coverage.

What I Opposed In Good Times I Praise You For In Bad

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Recently I have been talking about how Covid times have brought a greater tolerance on the part of boards/audiences for experimentation with programming choices. I guess I have been talking about it with colleagues and co-workers because when I went to find my post I made so I could link to it, I couldn’t find it.

In any case, Drew McManus posted another episode of his Shop Talk podcast today where he talks with Jeff Vom Saal, Executive Director of Spokane Symphony & Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox and Zak Vassar, President & CEO of the Toledo Alliance for the Performing Arts.

At around the 16 min mark, Drew talks about the difference between creativity and innovation and notes there really hasn’t been a lot of the latter in the orchestra world and in fact many great administrators have been punished by boards and donors for pushing boundaries and taking risks. He says now arts organizations are paying the price for failing to become nimble enough to respond to the current challenges.

Vassar responds by talking about a trustee that recently pulled him aside and said:

“You’re trying to do something that in a good economy I would have voted down everyday of the week. But now is the time to experiment and to be nimble and to learn what we didn’t know and learn how to do it better. Because by the time the economy and the world comes back online, you’re gonna be at least one hare’s run faster on the track than the slowest tortoise…”

Let’s just ponder that for a second. I am not saying organizational staff don’t buy into this sort of thinking as well, but just imagine having a board member tell you that they would have fought you tooth and nail in better economic times, but now that you are really wondering about how you are going to meet payroll, have no audience willing to show up, slimmer fundraising prospect and almost no staff to pursue donations and grants, this is the best time to invest non-existent time, energy and resources into innovating?

I understand that when you feel you have nothing left to lose and find your perceived competitors on a level playing field (or teetering at the edge of the field) it seems like seeking new pathways is the best course of action.

Why were the decisions we are making now problematic when the economy was better and there was more ability to mitigate the impact of failure?

Perhaps the first thing in need of change the organizational dynamics that won’t tolerate change until complete failure is imminent.

We have seen the results of this type of thinking for decades – people rally around an organization at the moment its existence is imperiled. Those cases are isolated and individual. Now everyone is imperiled and we realize there is a need for a broad, communal rally–probably necessitating listening more to the other people at the rally.

Or more aptly in the terms of this metaphor, inviting a lot more people to the rally than in the past and listening to them.

If you have a board member that is either explicitly or implicitly communicating they would have opposed you before, but now they are willing to support you, you need to have a very honest talk that makes it clear there can be no return to those old modes of thinking when the economic picture improves. While the economy may improve, the operating environment and expectations people have will not return to what they were before.

Merit Can Be More Easily Inherited Than Earned

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There was an article on San Francisco Classical Voice website on September 1 about racism in classical music titled “The Last Water Fountain: The Struggle Against Systemic Racism in Classical Music.” The last water fountain phrase was coined by Lee Pringle, founder and artistic director of the Colour of Music Festival in Charleston, SC.

The narrative of the article orbits around Pringle and includes numerous anecdotes about the direct racist experiences different Black artists and professionals have experienced throughout their careers as well as ways in which the general framework of the classical music industry inhibits their careers. (e.g. don’t get offered many opportunities, but union membership prevents participation in non-union events organized to amplify the talents of musicians of color.)

There were many aspects of the article that grabbed my attention, but a statement made by the articles author, Robert Macnamara, early on really illustrated how the concept of meritocracy resulting in the best ensemble is undermined by the lack of access many Black musicians in particular have to “farm system” that begins to channel musicians on a career path at a young age.

In the system, support is assumed, and when the question arises, the answer is predetermined: “Oh honey, $1,800 seems like an awful lot of money for an oboe, but I guess, if you really want this, we can always find the money somewhere.”

And so begins the march; the route is fixed. White people and some ethnic groups follow a progression of youth orchestras and schools of the arts and then are often paired with principal musicians in local professional orchestras. Meanwhile, young Black musicians inevitably draw attention to their raw talent but can’t afford the coaching and mentoring to help develop technical expertise and to help direct the way through the audition maze. Having little or no experience in a youth orchestra, they arrive in college music departments with, as one musician put it, “a lot of heart and personality but may not catch every note.”

The effect of this closed system is that it’s pervasive, ingrained, and needlessly exclusive, a monoculture that white audiences often don’t know much about or, frankly, seem to care much about.

I have posted about this before in regard to internships. Studies have shown that internships tend to be valuable when it comes to getting a first job and establishing a career. However, those who benefit most from internships are those whose families support them financially and reinforce their choices through their expectations.

This idea that meritocracy isn’t the value neutral measure we think it is has been around for a few years, but in the last few months, and apparently few days as I searched for links to articles I recalled reading, it has come to the fore again and is something to consider as we examine the composition of our organizations their relationships to those being served.

Always Wear Clean Underwear Theory of Management

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Collen Dilenschneider most a recent post about the factors that influence a cultural organization’s reputation. In order they are: Favorability, Mission Execution, Onsite Experience, Stability, Social Impact, Leadership, Testimonials, Business Results and Contributions to Education.

Dilenschneider starts out saying it isn’t about the Yelp/Trip Advisory reviews so I knew testimonials wouldn’t be listed near the top. I was really surprised to see that Mission Execution came in second and before Onsite Experience. My first thought was that we would need to rethinks the types of questions we were using on surveys because so few are oriented toward mission execution.

Now to be clear, Dilenschneider says this isn’t about your ability to recite your mission statement on command, but how well you have internalized and manifest your mission.

“But this measurement and its rank suggest that knowing what you stand for matters – and knowing that you take action surrounding what you stand for matters, too.”

As you might anticipate, she says many of these categories are inter-related. The perception of organizational stability is shaped by leadership and business results, the latter of which is basically financial stability.

Two of the significant observations Dilenschneider made speak to the need to always be working on cultivating a good reputation as a hedge against times of crisis. Or to metaphorically employ my grandmother’s advice – “Always wear clean underwear because you never know if you will be in an accident.”

The entities with better reputational equities prior to the pandemic seem to be faring better during it. … it seems those that had better reputation-related metrics prior to the pandemic are doing a better job keeping them for now. This may be because those institutions had already made investments in social media, for instance, and had established a reputation for engaging audiences digitally before they had to… Entities with better reputations may have similarly already been promulgating educational resources, also resulting in their coming to mind compared to entities that may be only really starting this effort now.

The web may now play an even bigger role in maintaining a positive reputation that inspires attendance. …The web – and social media, in particular – played a critical role in motivating attendance and shaping reputation prior to that pandemic. With more time spent online and fewer folks out and about, digital engagement and seeing stories from others may influence the perceptions of all of these factors influencing reputation to an even greater extent.

Love-Hate Relationship With Curtain Speeches

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Troublemaker that Drew McManus is, he suggested that as people return to live performances post-Covid, arts organizations should re-think the hallowed curtain speech. He argues that patrons won’t have the patience to endure the lengthy speeches after months of ad free Netflix and Disney Plus watching bliss.

He mirrored his post on Facebook where a lot of people had something to say about curtain speeches.  (So if you have a lot to say on the subject, head over.)

I definitely agree that a lot of people do very long, poorly considered curtain speeches at their events. I try to keep my short and entertaining, but occasionally the stars misalign and it stinks and I resolve to get better.

Let me tell you, I have been to a number of organizations in my time where I wonder if they are investing any effort into trying to get better.  If our expectations are that the performers should be working to be at the top of their game, the staff delivering the curtain speeches should be aiming for the same goal.

I know that some places want to have artists, donors and board members speak so that there is better representation and variety in the appeals and some people will be better than others. In those cases, if you can’t guarantee that the speech is well-rehearsed, the time limit should be strictly enforced.

All this being said, what I feel is going to be most important post-Covid is a sense of reassurance and trust. While many in the Facebook discussion advocated for getting rid of curtain speeches, I wrote about the value of getting up and standing in front of people to assure them that the staff of your venue is taking steps to ensure their health and safety, even if you don’t explicitly say that.  (I quoted someone in a post a few weeks ago that cautioned about leaning in too heavily on safety messaging.)

Depending on the dynamics of your community and audience, delivering the curtain speech while wearing a facemask might be necessary to reinforce and model the expectations you have of audience members.

And as much as anyone is reluctant to have patrons getting in their face, literally or figuratively, with complaints, it may prove cathartic for audience members to vocalize their fears. If you have done a credible job keeping things safe and are able to identify what you can do better, then you just need to have a thick skin.

I am sure it won’t be necessary for some time to remind you that whomever showed up for the performance made a number of conscious decisions to do so, (or at least impulse factored into it much less than before). So perhaps the most valuable part of doing curtain speeches will be thanking people for coming out. I suspect it will take very little effort to make the sentiment sound much more heartfelt than it had in the past.

Even if you are convinced by my argument, if you want to vent about bad curtain speech experiences, head over to Drew McManus’ Facebook post and join the conversation.

Not So Strange, But Does Require Effort

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Non-Profit Quarterly made a post in May that just came across my social media feed today about a weekly Zoom call 200+ arts organizations in NYC are having in order to share information during Covid-19. Ruth McCambridge links to the New York Times piece that reports on this effort.

I have to admit I initially bristled at McCambridge characterizing the NYT article reporting on a story that is “pretty strange” because:

It appears the pandemic has created a sudden realization among the city’s arts organizations that they need one another for advice, counsel, and support even while they take one coronavirus-related hit after another. That has led to a daily Zoom call with around 200 leaders in attendance, coming from groups large and small and spanning organizational types.

[…]

Pogrebin finds it “notable how much they are actually acting these days like the ‘arts community’ to which they often aspire.” We call it something of a small miracle, which we think we may be seeing a lot more of as advocacy and mutual aid look increasingly central to not just our survival, but our evolution in a new landscape.

I have been regularly participating in on a number of those calls myself so I will admit that there is more coordination and information sharing across disciplines than before. It is definitely beneficial to everyone involved.

However, over the course of the last 15+ years, I have been part of organizations comprised of arts and culture entities whom regularly shared information and even engaged in cooperative grant writing. I am sure many readers have similar relationships. You know, the ones where you receive important information, but also multiple people feel their one word reply “Thanks” should go to the entire group rather than to an individual.

While I do agree with the proposition that it would be a shame these cross-disciplinary conversations faded away when the crisis passes because we are seeing greater cooperation and community than in the past, I also feel like the idea this coordination is novel news doesn’t given non-profit arts & cultural organizations credit for progress made over the last couple decades.

Also, were there a lot of commercial entities who were having conversations like these that non-profit arts organizations have been eschewing?  It seemed perhaps there was an implication of some norm that existed that cultural organizations are finally participating in. Non-profit folks are networking and sharing information at conferences, chamber of commerce meetings and rotary meetings, etc just like everyone else.

I will say though, it can be really difficult to make sure you are invited to the right meetings. If you look in the comment section of the NYT article, people were asking how they could join the call because the information wasn’t public. You had to know someone in order to receive the meeting link.

That dawned on me about a month ago as I bounced from one Zoom meeting hosted by charitable foundations to another Zoom meeting of local live event organizations (concert venues, sports teams, bars, etc.). I realized a number of people in the meeting I just left weren’t invited to the second meeting where topics like the governor’s orders on public assembly are discussed. I asked for about 20 additional groups to be invited to that second meeting and did see about eight show up to the last meeting.

Bottom line- regardless of my perceptions of how these meetings are characterized, an effort should be made to ensure they continue past the current crisis. Which means people who are invited need to commit to participating rather than blowing the meetings off. Just as important, we should continually be thinking about who might benefit from these conversations and take steps to see they are invited.

 

Delay May Appear Wise, But Is The Outcome The Same?

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Interesting short piece on the FastCompany website that points out the current uncertainty about the future created the the Covid-19 pandemic makes deferring on a decision seem the wise option, however there is always a cost associated with delaying on that decision. The author of the piece, Art Markman, says that because deferring the decision seems so attractive, people don’t actually think through whether the delay will make any difference or not. (my emphasis)

Leaders might think it prudent to wait for more information about the status of the pandemic before moving forward. However, it is always worth making a decision tree to determine whether a different decision would be reached in each of these conditions. Key leaders do not always take this step. In some cases, leaders might find that the best outcome is actually the same regardless of the status of the pandemic. In that case, deferring the decision would involve paying a cost to defer the decision in order to get information that does not change the decision that gets made. There was no reason to incur that cost.

I haven’t come up with a scenario other than capital improvements/repairs and staffing decisions in which this might apply to arts and cultural organizations. I may be too entrenched right now  in thinking about the pros and cons of re-opening venues in the context of economics and public perception/willingness to broaden my imagination. However, I figure some readers might be in situations where being reminded to make a decision tree might be useful for helping move things forward.

It’s A Good Time To Broaden Board Composition Too

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Tyler Green’s tweet today about art museums acting like corporations rather than charities got me to look at the full series of tweets on the subject.  He is angered by the fact that instead of stepping up to support museums in a time of crisis, the billionaire members of boards are voting for mass lay-offs of staffs.

In brief, his argument seems to be that while museum boards are comprised of people who make the largest individual donations to museums, they are not the largest sources of support for those museums.

He notes that many charities have board members who represent the membership or community the organization serves, but institutions like San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) don’t have any.

All this is worth serious consideration as our organizations seek to move on to the next normal. Those who have supported our organizations in the past with their participation may no longer feel safe engaging with the general public. There is an opportunity to start working toward oft expressed ideals of engaging a broader audience with whom you haven’t had the time and resources to initiate a conversation. Because they are increasingly likely to be your new audience.

Their numbers may not be as large as your old audience, but social distancing rules have reduced your top capacity so you have some cover to explain the smaller crowds.

I wrote about Nina Simon’s talk on this effort earlier this month.

But perhaps most importantly in the context of Tyler Green’s posts, it is probably time to broaden the membership of the board. This is likely to necessitate a shift in corporate/board culture. Even if your board isn’t comprised of billionaires, it is highly likely that the group dynamics of the board are going to feel alienating to any new members chosen to represent the core demographics served by your organization.

Customer Desires: Always Complicated

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The news JC Penney is closing a number of their stores and liquidating the inventory reminded me of a post I made eight years ago about the company’s efforts to deal more fairly with customers. Instead of having all sorts of sales and discounts that lead consumers to suspect something had been marked up last week in order to put it on sale this week, among other bits of trickery, JC Penny’s new CEO at the time pledged to offer completely transparent, low everyday pricing.

The move backfired on them leading a number of business reporters to observe that perhaps people liked to be cheated. That CEO was out, a new one was ushered in who restored the sales and coupons.

It was all a bit revelatory about consumer psychology and how you can’t always take what people say they want at face value.

As I pointed out in my post at the time, it also illustrates that money does not build relationships and loyalty.  I would suggest that most non-profit arts organizations are in the relationship building/facilitation business. If we weren’t, would people be donating the value of their tickets on cancelled events and increasing the amount they typically donate in a year? I say facilitation because participation in an activity with friends and family contributes to the development of relationships.

As much as your organization is struggling, those donations and other expressions of concern are what distinguish your identity and role in the community from larger corporations, even if you suspect you may be soon accompanying JC Penny on the road to dissolution. In that 2012 post, I also linked to a post I made about the expiration date of arts organizations. At the time I was speaking theoretically. Sorry to say it may be emerging into reality.

Back in 2012 when I first wrote my post, I quoted Collen Dilenschneider. She has since come out with much better research and advice for arts organizations use of discounts, but the basics still remain the same.

One thing of course, I need to point out is that price does not develop loyalty. You can not develop a relationship with your community if interactions with your organization are based on price. I stated that in the early days of this blog and as Dilenschneider notes this is true even in these days of social media:

“It is far better for your brand and bottom line to have 100 fans who share and interact with your content to create a meaningful relationship, than to have 1,000 fans who never share your message and liked you just for the discount.”

Dilenschneider also points to some data that there are diminishing returns from social media discounts. This may illustrate be where arts organizations and retailers differ. Retailers can offer myriad discounts annually and not suffer, but arts and cultural organizations offer a product valued entirely differently from that of retailers

How Do Arts Administrator Practice To Get Better?

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Sometimes a good headline is all it takes. When I saw a link to a New Yorker piece about “Bassoonfluencers,” I knew I had to at least take a look.

It turned out to be an article about a woman who posts her daily bassoon practice sessions on Instagram. She was inspired by violinist Hillary Hahn’s online posting of 100 days of her own practice regimen. The bassoonist, Morgan Davison, feels that being accountable to her followers to make a daily posting helps keep her motivated and evaluating the quality of her recordings has kept her on a path to improvement.

Readers may recall I made a post back in January about Hillary Hahn’s use of daydreaming as part of her practice routine.

I have long been interested in the process of practice and improvement so the article about Davison and other musicians using social media as part of their practice intrigues me.

On the other hand, it isn’t exactly a new idea for me. I have long felt writing this blog and having an accountability to my readers aids my effort to be a better arts administrator. The need to seek out new material to write about keeps me abreast of all sorts of developments in policy, theory, and practice. Additionally, it helps me perceive connections that wouldn’t seemingly intersect with arts and culture.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has a practice they feel improves their proficiency as an arts administrator.  Performers have long used recordings as a way to reflect upon and improve themselves. Posting those sessions on social media is only the newest manifestation of that.

Except for reading, going to conferences and networking, I am not sure if arts administration has had a similar tool to use. These things don’t provide for easy reflective assessment. Keeping a journal might be the best method.  It might be that there hasn’t been a perceived need for self-improvement in arts administration, but the challenges and speed of change over the last 20 years or so have revealed a need for it.

Teamwork? We Got Tons

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I read stories celebrating the fact that Covid-19 is finally making businesses recognize the benefits of telecommuting, confident that there will be this great revolution that will see people working from home in the future. To me it seems like it will be a terrible situation which will create greater class divides and income inequality.

I don’t think it takes a great deal of imagination to see how telecommuting will enable companies to more easily classify workers as independent contractors and not provide any health benefits. Because employees won’t be seeing and interacting with each other on a regular basis where they can compare notes about wages, work loads and other expectations, it will make it easier to underpay employees and prevent them from organizing to demand better pay.

Already employees are subsidizing the companies they work for by bearing the cost of electricity and internet connections. I know at least one person who is paying for her own mobile hotspot in order to do her job because the internet speed in her location is not fast enough.

Yes, it may provide greater work opportunities to people living in rural areas and may even improve the economies of some rural places as people move there, but again those places will need to have good technology infrastructure in place to support those workers. And not everyone will have the resources to move to places with a lower cost of living, nor will the potential pay for the work they are qualified to do justify the move.

Which is not to say the current work environment is any more beneficial. I just feel that except for people with higher status jobs, a move to telecommuting is potentially a worse situation unless accompanied by some strong worker protections, especially in regard to health insurance.

But the intent of this blog post isn’t really to get into a debate about socio-political-economic policy as much as it is to provide a context for potentially the biggest drawback of telecommuting — a degradation of creative interaction and teamwork.

Steve Jobs famously designed Pixar’s offices so all the restrooms and mailboxes were in a central location so that people working in disparate departments and projects would engage in casual “what are you working on?” conversations they wouldn’t otherwise have. His hope was that this would drive innovation and result in creative leaps.

Today on the CNN site there was an article titled “Minneapolis theater community uses stagecraft skills to support businesses of color in the aftermath of protests” One of the people interviewed made what is probably a very familiar comment to many of you:

“For anyone who has arts training, they are taught early on how to collaborate with people. And that collaboration comes with the ability to quickly organize and problem-solve,” said University Rebuild organizer Daisuke Kawachi, who pointed out the valuable stagecraft skills volunteers are now applying to their community.

And as with Pixar, physical proximity makes others more aware of resources than they might have normally been:

Kawachi estimated University Rebuild has supported more than 200 businesses. He said the number could be higher, because some requests have come on the spot while volunteers are in the field.
“We’ll go to a business and then their neighbor will say ‘come over.'”

Because we are steeped in the culture, a lot of us take a collaborative team environment for granted. As much as businesses have been saying that creativity is one of the top things they look for in employees, if telecommuting becomes widespread, collaboration and teamwork may become a greater competitive advantage as well.

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