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Reducing The Crowd Doesn’t Increase Satisfaction By Itself

February 3, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Last week The Guardian had an article about people being so dissatisfied with their attendance experience at The Louvre, they were determined never to visit again.

It isn’t just the crowds, but also poor signage, flow of attendees and long waits despite holding timed admission tickets which upset people.

On Monday, a 74-year-old clinical psychologist from Paris, who said she had been a regular visitor to the Louvre for 40 years, exited the popular temporary exhibition, Figures of the Fool, feeling battered.

“I’m leaving in a state of extreme fatigue and I’ve vowed never to visit again,” she said, declining to give her name. “The noise is so unbearable under the glass pyramid; it’s like a public swimming pool. Even with a timed ticket, there’s an hour to wait outside. I can’t do it anymore. Museums are supposed to be fun, but it’s no fun anymore. There’s no pleasure in coming here anymore.

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A day earlier I had seen a piece on the NBC News site where French President Emmanuel Macron announced a major renovation to the aging museum facility which would include moving the Mona Lisa to a space “accessible independently of the rest of the museum.”

I am not sure if that means it would be permanently located in a separate space or if it is only temporary for the term of the renovation. Given that many people only visit The Louvre with the express intent of viewing the Mona Lisa and leaving, it may be wise to maintain that arrangement.

As I was reading these stories, I recalled that I had written a post about organizations discovering during the pandemic that visitor satisfaction increased when capacity restrictions were in place. I had remembered that Disney had decided to limit park attendance rather than go back to pre-pandemic levels in an attempt to preserve that level of customer satisfaction.

I had forgotten that the article I cited also mentioned the Louvre was scaling back admissions from 45,000/day to 30,000/day for the same reason. I had wondered if they had reverted to admitting larger numbers again, but upon re-reading the NBC News piece, apparently they had maintained the lower capacity numbers.

In 2021, des Cars became the first woman to head the Louvre, a symbol of French culture around the world. Since then, she has introduced several measures to make the museum more accessible, including a cap on visitors in 2023 to reduce overcrowding, extending opening hours, and pushing for the creation of a second main entrance.

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If they are admitting fewer people, have an additional entrance, and longer operating hours, I wonder if the dissatisfaction is more a matter of their timed ticketing being out of synch with the flow of people into and through the museum. Perhaps they aren’t spreading admissions out over a long enough period of time. (They may have extended hours, but people are still buying admission tickets during a super concentrated period of time and later hours are fairly easy to get.) Or perhaps as people say, the signage and directions are so poor, people are taking longer to move through the galleries once they are admitted and things get backed up.

Arts Facilities, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Working In The Arts

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It Takes A Village To Get Everyone To Take Vacation

January 29, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

Source

Art(ist) Education, Business Models, Leadership, New Initiatives, Working In The Arts

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When Where You Say You Are Is Who You Are For

January 28, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Colorado Public Radio has a weekly Q&A feature they run. A recent question about why some sports teams are named for Denver and others for Colorado even though they are all based out of metro Denver reflects the ways in which technology and connectedness change our perceptions.

Reporter Ben Marcus noted that older teams like the Denver Nuggets and Broncos are generally named after cities because many cities in the state had teams which would play against each other. In that situation there was value in emphasizing associations with the city.

As cable television helped distribute games to larger audiences, team owners recognized there was value in creating broader geographic associations. Marcus cites the examples of the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies baseball teams.

Not to mention there was financial benefit in appealing to a broader geographic base. Apparently the residents of Denver rejected a tax increase to support building a stadium for the Rockies. However, voters in the adjacent cities of the Denver metropolitan area approved the tax measure and the stadium got built.

And the Rockies draw attendees from throughout the state, a situation the executive director of the Colorado Baseball Commission attributes, in part, to the name.

Success off the field, however, is undeniable. Despite being one of the worst teams in baseball last season, an average of 31,361 fans attended games.

“A lot of the attendance at Rockies games even now are people coming from other parts of the state,” said Macey. “Grand Junction and Lamar and also from a lot of the surrounding states. So having Colorado as the name is kind of all-encompassing, and helps attract all of those people to games.”

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I bring up this story to inspire some thought among arts organizations about whether there are elements of their name and branding which creates psychological and perceptional limits about who they geographically serve which is in conflict with the organizational vision of who they serve.

I know there are a number of arts organizations who effected a name change to encompass a larger geographic area. The first that comes to mind is the Honolulu Symphony becoming the Hawaii Symphony about 10-15 years ago.

But before anyone makes that change, you may want to consider the bit of insight shared at the end of the Colorado Public Radio piece which suggests streaming technology is increasing the geographic region of people which might form a relationship with an organization:

Jason Hanson, the historian, said the rise of the internet and streaming services means team owners may one day think globally, well beyond cities and states.

“You could easily imagine some kind of shake-up in the NFL, where a team moves, and as their new name picks you know the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific coast or something that would be bigger, that would have sort of more meaning in other parts of the world.”

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Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Marketing/PR

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Getting An Early Start On The Show

January 27, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

League of American Orchestra’s Symphony.org site had an interesting piece on concert start times recently. It wasn’t really surprising to learn that organizations were experimenting with different start times to better suit the needs of their audiences.

I was, however, surprised to learn that in 2006 and perhaps even more recently, there were classical music recitals starting at 10:30 pm and selling out. (Though perhaps to be expected given they were in the city that never sleeps)

In 2006, a New York Times critic reported that the Mostly Mozart Festival’s “A Little Night Music” concerts, held at 10:30pm, were “almost always sold out,” and raised a question: “Why should cabaret acts and jazz sets be able to start late, but not classical recitals?”

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The general theme of the article is that people’s expectations have changed, especially post-pandemic. The Houston Symphony apparently tried an earlier start time about a decade ago only to revert back to their regular time when the change proved unpopular. However, they have recently shifted to 7:30 pm to 8 pm and not only was it well received, surveys are showing a trending preference for a 7 pm start.

To some degree they credit the increase in people who are working from home who don’t have the commute from office to the theater with perhaps a trip home and dinner in the mix. Though other organizations report complaints that earlier start times don’t provide enough leeway between work and the performance so there isn’t one standard best time for all communities.

In some places they are finding that matinees are better attended than evening performances. In my own experience I am seeing that trend with renters who specialize in choral and operatic genres as well as recitals by dance schools. This probably isn’t news to many since the core audiences for both types of shows tend to want to be home earlier.

The article quotes Gwen Pappas, vice president of communications and public relations at the Minnesota Orchestra, referencing the fact that people are used to being able to access their experiences on demand.

There are many ways in which a communal performing arts experience can’t be individually curated but where we are able to give people options. They really seem to appreciate it.”

In 2023, the Minnesota Orchestra moved its Saturday night concerts to 7pm and introduced 2pm concerts on select Saturdays. Some subscription programs come with any of four different time options over a week: 11am, 2pm, 7pm and 8 pm.

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My first thought is that with so many different options for concerts to start, there might be some headaches communicating the different times to inattentive single ticket buyers. The last concert they attended started at 8 pm, now they are late for the 7 pm concert or vice versa. You might be arriving for what you thought was a 2 pm matinee only to find everyone leaving from the 11 am event. I suspect they have found some good ways to address that issue, though there will always be a few people who overlook the reminders, etc.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

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