Management Philosophy

After writing my blog for nearly two years, I finally got around to doing something that seems like a blatantly obvious step–I engaged people at working in a discussion of the implications of an article I wrote on.

Up to this point, I have attempted to translate my theories into policy and practice at my job. People at work do read my blog so from time to time someone initiates a conversation about what a genius I am. Occasionally I refer to a situation that arises as being similar to something I have blogged about.

While I have come into work and asked for feedback on a change I was considering, I have never actively solicited a dialogue specifically about something I have read. A couple weeks ago, I did just that.

I told my assistant theatre manager that I would like her to read The Diversity of Cultural Participation report I wrote about at the end of November. I told her when she was done, she could let me know and we would discuss the implications to our operations when we had the time.

Despite my insistence that she not, my eager assistant manager went home and read it over Thanksgiving. We had our discussion last week. For the most part, our discussion reminded us about the importance of continuing to be hospitable to our audiences so they feel socially fulfilled. (One of the few areas where a negative experience does not get the benefit of the doubt.) We also came up with some promotional ideas to try out after the New Year.

The real value in my mind of the discussion wasn’t in the brain storming and the policy making. The ideas may ultimately yield very little on time and money we may invest in them. The real value was found in process of discussing my vision, her perception of where she is fitting in to the organization, where she is proud about being effective (and where she feels ineffective)and her sharing some ideas she hasn’t felt comfortable mentioning.

There is something about discussing theory that seems to remove some of the restraints on discourse. I guess conversations at weekly staff meetings on the need to repair the golf cart and buy new lighting instruments aren’t conducive to topics like what activities are contributing to one’s self-actualization. Who woulda thunk it?

I am starting to consider doing this sort of thing on a periodic basis with some alterations. (Some folks in the building wouldn’t relish a reading assignment.)

I also got to wondering if any other organizations out there went through a similar process where articles were passed around with the intent of engaging in serious analysis. Actually, I should qualify this by saying passing around in the absence of a crisis. I have seen plenty of articles circulated with dire portents about funding. I am curious about when someone takes the initiative while in a fairly secure position.

I’ve seen boards do it in preparation for retreats. One organization I worked at passed a book around among the senior administration, (I wasn’t one of them, alas), with the intent to discuss it. I don’t know if it ever happened.

Anyone have any tales of conversations they have had on a fairly regular basis where a dialogue about vision and theory transpired? (Note I use the word dialogue– pretty one-sided speeches by the executive director don’t count.)

Email me or pop a comment in the old box below.

Back in early September, I wrote about the National Arts Leadership Institute and Andrew Taylor commented “that he continue[s] to be frustrated by the disconnection of leadership initiatives in the arts.” This was based on the fact that there are many such institutes and few of them talk to each other so they end up inventing the wheel over and over again.

I decided to take a look at just how many there were out there and what they were offerings. I have to admit, while I didn’t doubt Andrew, it soon became clear as I searched that I could have continued far longer than I had.

Mostly I focussed on leadership training institutes that seemed to be focussed on offering sessions at conferences so my brief research doesn’t include programs like the Kennedy Center’s Institute for Arts Management which offer longer term internship and fellowship programs rather than an attempt to offer one day seminar type classes.

The Theatre Communications Group straddled both world offering the mentor/internships of the Kennedy Center along with institutes in conjunction with conferences.

Every conference I could think of seemed to have its own institute. I can see why Andrew Taylor felt there was a lot of duplication that might benefit from merged efforts because the list of topics covered is essentially identical.

First of course, came the Southern Arts Federation’s National Arts Leadership Institute.

The Western Arts Alliance has their own. (Since they hosted a NALI session, perhaps they are thinking of merging their offerings with them.)

-Arts MidWest professional development offerings.

Arts NorthWest has them at conference and sends them on the road through Washington and Oregon

And of course, the granddaddy of them all-Association of Performing Arts Presenters offers some learning..

Like Theatre Communications Group, the national organizations for the other performing arts also offer institutes at their conferences-Dance USA, American Symphony Orchestra League, OPERA America

Americans for the Arts also holds sessions at their conferences. Alas, their Arts and Business Council’s Arts Leadership Institute is only available for arts leaders in NYC.

When I found the leadership institute for the Alliance of NY State Arts Organizations, I realized I could probably find a similar program in nearly every state and decided to stop there.

Merging all these programs into a single national program most likely isn’t the answer since certain regional organizations have strengths the others don’t. (Western Arts Federation seems to have a strong research bent, for instance.)

Some consolidation that saw conferences hosting leadership institutes generated by one of a handful of regional or national organizations (who co-ordinated syllabi to some degree with one another) might in order to ensure quality and uniformity.

My wanderings across the digital landscape brought me to a study on the Compass Point website. (they provide services to the non-profit sector.) The study, Help Wanted: Turnover and Vacancy In Non-Profits, is about four years old, but it examines why it is so tough to keep a non-profit organization fully staffed. (There is a similar one studying the challenges of Executive Directors, too)

The study was performed in the San Francisco Bay area and encompasses all non-profits from arts to social services, but there are some very interesting lessons to be learned.

From the executive summary, we learn the following facts:

-8% of the paid staff positions at nonprofits are vacant.
-30% of these positions have been vacant for four months or more.
-24% of the vacancies are management positions.

Which employees are leaving and why
– A striking 47% of the people leaving nonprofits are non-program staff: administrative assistants, bookkeepers, CFOs, development directors, etc. Executive directors report that the three most common reasons for staff resignation are: a great job offer elsewhere, dissatisfaction with compensation, and the cost of living in the Bay Area.

So okay, the whole cost of living in Bay Area isn’t applicable elsewhere.

There were some interesting results about where people are going.

Where exiting employees go:
The most common destination of exiting nonprofit employees is other nonprofits; 34% move on to another nonprofit agency. Moving to the for-profit sector accounts for only 20% of nonprofit turnover.

This is a good news/bad news thing. While it is great that people are sticking to the non-profit sector and continuing to enhance the sector’s ability to serve the public as a whole, non-profits are not only competing with each other for funding and, in the arts, audiences, but now have to compete for personnel as well.

Other additional interesting facts-
Of those organizations surveyed, only 13% had a person dedicated to human resources. Most everyone else had the fuctions shared by one or more other people. 47% of the respondents indicated that the executive director was the sole person developing hiring, recruitment and retention strategies.

What I found most interesting because I had never stopped to think otherwise myself is that executive directors felt a 0% turnover rate was an ultimate goal. And really, I would have immediately agreed. The study also said that EDs didn’t have any expectations that some positions would turn over more frequently than others.

The truth of the matter is, the study showed “certain positions as having a normal turnover rate of 60% per year, while other positions may have a turnover rate of 15% per year.” The study notes that obviously high turnover in some positions (or dependent on the size of the organization, any position) can have a more adverse effect than turnover in others.

Different plans for retention and replacement need to be made with realistic projections about how swiftly a change is expected. According to the study, the reality of the day is that many people view being in the same job for over 5 years as letting their careers stagnate. People are going to move around despite best efforts at keeping salaries and benefits competitive.

Knowing this fact doesn’t make life as an executive director any easier though. Many EDs interviewed were reluctant to discuss the impact of this prevelant trend with their boards because they felt a high turnover rate would reflect badly on their management skills. Many people in the study admitted they held on to incompetent folks because they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to find a replacement at all. The other problem with a tight labor market is that programs the non-profit planned on offering have to be limited or cancelled outright for want of staff people.

So an executive director, anxious that their board will learn about the high turnover rate keeps ineffectual workers, distributes the work of the vacant positions as well as a portion of the inefficient ones’ to the rest of the overworked staff. In order to relieve the pressure on them, the ED has to cancel other programs which brings the demoralizing realization that the organization isn’t as effective as it once was. (And lets face it, most non-profit workers are surviving on their idealism, not their pay.) It is any wonder the report on executive directors says that while EDs are just as likely to stay in the non-profit sector when they too move on, they don’t take executive director positions.

The end of the report offers strategies for avoiding turnover where it can be, accepting and planning for it where it can’t be and minimizing the impact when it does happen. These recommendations are across the board to boards of directors, non-profit organizations and funders/providers of technical assistance.

Well I am back from the Western Arts Alliance Conference with much to tell. The first a controversial plan WAA has to change the format of the conference.

As I noted in my last entry, because the plenary speaker had to cancel, the Marketplace Committee report scheduled for Sunday was delivered on Wednesday instead. This was lauded as a happy incident because it would allow people to discuss the changes throughout the conference.

By annual membership meeting on Sunday it became clear that it might not have been such a good thing to have people talking about it all conference because people were very angry.

The proposal for the change is found in WAA Celebrates 40 Years of Community: A Commitment to the Future.

The biggest problem people had was with The Commons proposal. Instead of continuing to replicate the pipe and drape format that even Comdex follows, the taskforce envisioned something less structured.

The pipe and drape format, they felt, commidifies what the artists and managers exhibiting have to offer. The presenters walk around and get to pick and choose who they will talk to while the exhibitors stare longingly from within the confines of their booth hoping to make eye contact while the presenters try to avoid the same.

Under the new proposal, artists/managers/agents might set up shop in different formats. Perhaps in a suite, perhaps at a bar, at a table in a common area, etc.

I had a discussion with someone about this on a shuttle ride to a venue. Ultimately, a change of format will probably be necessary as younger people enter the field. People will be communicating via cell phones, text messaging, Blackberries, etc. rather than walking up and down rows. They will flock to showcases as word gets around about what artists look most exciting. Brochures and DVDs will be replaced by presenters asking artists to send them a link to a Bittorrented movie of their work.

The problem was, the taskforce didn’t offer any solid vision of what this commons would look like. Before the meeting on Sunday, I heard presenters opposed the change because it took power out of their hands, but at the meeting it was mostly artists/managers/agents who voiced their criticism.

Among their concerns were-

-If artists/agents were set up in bars, how would presenters know where to find them?

-If they were set up in suites, the line between the haves and have nots would be extreme. William Morris and CAMI would be able to fete presenters in style and comfort while others would bankrupt themselves just arranging for a room.

-If the Commons were going to be available for meetings around the clock, did that mean the small artist who only had one person representing them would have to exhaust themselves sitting there 14 hours a day?

Currently, the resource room where the exhibitors are is only open for 2-3 hour periods before and after professional development meetings and showcases. This gives insures the majority of people, including exhibitors have an opportunity to devote their attention to just roundtables, just showcases and just discussing possible performances.

I suspect the Commons being available all the time just means managers and presenters could arrange to meet outside of the offical time in that area rather than people always being “on.” They turned the lights out on an agent and I while we were talking because they wanted to encourage us to move on to the showcases. In the future this theoretically wouldn’t happen. (I actually went to dinner with an agent and members of my consortium)

I actually had an entirely separate problem with the proposal. However, I followed an irate agent who was flabbergasted that the conference administration had actually originally considered waiting until Sunday to present this proposal to the membership so my complaint was probably forgotten pretty quickly.

I was actually impressed by this agent’s fervor. He represents a rather prominent dance company and, as he pointed out, hardly needed to be at the conference to get bookings. He said he showed up to lend support to the other artists. I have to admit, the fact his company is represented there does lend to the sense that one can contract quality artists at this conference.

My problem was mostly philisophical. The suggested changes would mean that the conference would end up in California permanently. LA, San Francisco maybe San Diego and Denver are about the only cities in the region that might have a hotel large enough to house a conference since they seemed to be so set against, as the association president put it, returning to the ugly cookie cutter, conference centers with bad lighting and loud ventilation. (I really felt bad for the conference center staff standing in the room.) The fact the conference would be able to take advantage of the wonderful theatre facilities at Disney Hall, etc was lauded.

My comment was this- LA and Disney Hall doesn’t reflect the conditions in which most of the presenting membership operates. Like me, they are in smaller, less well appointed facilities located in smaller cities. There is more benefit to the membership in seeing venues like the National Hispanic Cultural Center (gorgeous facility and ironically, contains the Roy E. Disney Performing Arts Center.) and KiMo Theatre because we can walk away from them with applicable ideas about running our own theatres.

Just in case rumors that came to my ears about the conference permanently moving to LA bolstered by the denigration of conference centers were erroneous, I asked a person on the Marketplace Task Force who refuted my view in meeting point blank if I was wrong about the permanent move.

While he allowed that there was a slight chance that they could be talked into going back to smaller cities, he pretty much doubted it would happen. (This might have been his personal preference rather than an expression of the prevailing attitude since he really appeared to want to turn the conference into APAP of the West. (You want to talk about an atmosphere of commidification, attend that conference!)

It will be interesting now to see how things pan out in 2008 after the LA conference.