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Hiring A Fun Coach Like A Physical Trainer

January 23, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

Last week, NPR Reporter Andrew Limbong interviewed Catherine Price, author of The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. Limbong observed that while he has the impulse to roll his eyes at the news people are hiring party coaches and fun coaches, he can see that these roles maybe akin to people hiring physical trainers. Basically, people find they need to carve out time to focus on fun and need external assistance in accomplishing that goal.

Price says there are three conditions required to have true fun- playfulness, connection and flow. You will notice her definition of connection especially aligns with the conditions people seek from arts and cultural experiences:

A lot of adults get very nervous when you use the word “playfulness,” so I like to say you don’t have to necessarily be silly or childish. It’s really just more about having a lighthearted attitude towards life and towards yourself.

Connection refers to this feeling of having a special shared experience with other people. And then flow is active and engaged. And really importantly, flow requires you to be present. So if you’re distracted at all, you can’t be in flow and you can’t have fun.

She observes in all the stories about fun she has collected from different countries and cultures around the world, very few involve spending money or traveling anywhere. This reminded me of Jaime Bennett’s TED Talk from ten years ago where he observed that people think that art is something someone else does rather than something they have the capacity to do. In this case, it is the idea that you can only have fun in a time or space dedicated to that purpose rather than to make it part and parcel of your daily activity.

Limbong picks up on Price’s mention of being present and asks if social media may have an impact on people having fun. He observed that the fun he is having with nieces and nephews can often be interrupted by someone wanting them to stop and memorialize the instant with a posed picture. Price expounds upon the idea that fun has to have an authentic flow because it spoils so easily.

I think it’s really messed us up because one of the requirements for fun is that you be completely present and that your inner critic is silent. And if you’re performing, then you’re not fully present and you probably have your inner critic on in some capacity. That kills fun. Fun is very fragile. It’s like a sensitive flower.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts

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Supermarket Self-Checkout And Loyalty

January 22, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

I came across a study conducted by researchers at Drexel University , (well one is an alum that teaches at University of San Diego), on whether using the self-checkout lane at a supermarket results in less loyalty than using the lane where the employee processes purchases.

I was curious to see if there are any lessons to be learned for arts ticketing in terms of online purchasing vs. in person purchasing. Even though a large portion of tickets are sold online, something I have noticed over the last five years or so is that greatest concentration of ticket sales in a period of time tends to generally be during the hours the ticket office is open. I was hoping to get some insight into whether there might be a trend toward people wanting more personal contact during the purchase experience. In the context of increasing conversations about loneliness, it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine a shift away from interacting only with machines.

The researchers conducted studies with five slightly different designs to try to control for things like what people were accustomed to doing at the supermarket, whether people felt rewarded for the choice of check out, number of items being purchased, and intentionally priming participants mindset by reading different texts before going shopping.

Basically, while people who felt they were being rewarded for using self-check out, whether it was due to some benefit or being primed by a reading passage, tended to feel more loyalty and satisfaction as a result, the biggest factor was actually number of items being purchased. The more people exceeded approximately 15 items, the less satisfied and supported they felt by the supermarket while using the self-check lane.

That seems pretty logical given the small amount of space you are provided to bag and stage groceries in a self-check out lane. The more items one purchases, the greater opportunity to encounter errors. I imagine this is even more likely when trying to ring up produce which may not have been effectively labeled or indexed for look up. Often there is only one person monitoring 10-15 checkout stations and you have to wait while the staff member assists others.

The researchers note there is a lot more research about self-check out that needs to be done since there are many factors in play. Some researchers have looked into issues like perception that you are contributing to the loss of jobs by doing self-checkout. Then there is the related question about why you aren’t getting any incentive to do an employee’s job. I have seen some great videos for clothing self checkouts where people experienced a great deal of frustration removing the anti-theft tags on top of having to remove hangers, fold and bag.

Probably the clearest lesson here for arts organizations is that people need assistance the more complicated their transactions become so you always need to provide an opportunity for purchasers to speak to a live person. Certainly it is frequently impractical to provide live assistance 24 hours a day, but having the availability of live help posted clearly and repeatedly can help people feel supported.

This may sound blatantly obvious, but in the last few months I was in a conversation in which someone commented that venues in some countries have completely ended staffed box office hours outside of performances. I may be misremembering slightly and the phones were staffed and there are no walk up interactions. Certainly, other countries have different cultural expectations about customer service.

Audience Relations, Pricing

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

January 17, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

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

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

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

From the Jones Day report:

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

Boards, Leadership, Legal Topics

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Guaranteed Basic Income Programs Seem To Benefit Those With Concrete Goals

January 16, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

Long time readers know I tend to pay attention to news about guaranteed basic income programs, particularly those that have artists as a target group. Thanks to a CityLab link to a story on Los Angeles’ recent foray into providing guaranteed basic income, there is more data about what approaches are most effective. This program didn’t target artists as a group, but it has some good insights.

Like most stories on the subject, there were many heartening stories about the successes people had and continued to experience after the program ended. However, this article also mentioned those who were doing well while they were receiving the $1,000 month funds, but once the program ended found themselves faced with living in their cars. Anecdotally, at least those who had problems after the funding ended weren’t spending that much differently than those who continued to thrive. (i.e. the biggest spurge spending was on rather modest once a week meals)

What seems to be the differentiating factor is whether people had concrete goals they wanted to achieve prior to receiving the monthly payment:

Participants that do achieve a measure of economic mobility, she said, are those who already had concrete goals or plans.

“What happens with guaranteed income is that it smooths that income volatility … and it creates predictability,” Castro said. “When you have that floor, that scarcity starts to go away. And we know that it calms the mind, it calms the spirit, and it creates space for people to re-imagine an alternative future, or to maybe take steps toward a goal that they’ve always had but have not been able to actualize.”

Abigail Marquez, general manager of L.A.’s Community Investment for Families Department, which ran BIG:LEAP, called guaranteed income “one effective strategy” for ending generational poverty in L.A. Such programs must be paired with workforce development, economic development and housing strategies, she said.

Knowing this, one concern I would have is that guaranteed basic income programs not gradually evolve guidelines similar to foundation grant programs where candidates for receiving the money have to provide evidence of having goals they are pursuing and just need a little bit of help gaining stability. Unfortunately, it is easy to imagine this happening because the folks putting up the money want to hear success stories and know their funds are being used effectively. Little by little, the unrestricted use nature of guaranteed basic income can become a little more restricted.

On the other hand, I feel like guaranteed basic income for artists becomes an even better idea since artists generally always have projects in mind they want to pursue. Though I am sure there are some who would say some of those projects aren’t as practical as the goals people in the L.A. Times story were working on.

Finance, Fundraising, General Musings

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