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Stuff To Ponder: Subscriber Rush Tickets

July 22, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Since I have started a new job I am in the process of evaluating every document, process and interaction my organization undertakes. One of those areas is customer service, of course.

For that reason, an article I came across via The Drucker Exchange is really resonating with me. In a blog post titled, The Dark Side of Customer Experience, Monique Reece opens with a joke we can probably all relate to.

The longer version is in the post, but basically a guy dies and is shown heaven and hell and given a choice between the two. On his visit to heaven, everything is sedate and lovely. Hell is a veritable Mardi Gras party. After the doors close on Hell, the guy tells St. Peter he chooses Hell. The doors open and it the scene is the stereotypical hellish landscape.

Upon wondering what happened to the party scene, the man receives the response “Well,” said St. Peter as the doors closed. “The first time you came to visit you were a prospect. Now you’re a customer.”

Reece cites some of my biggest pet peeves– the introductory rate that rewards new customers and makes the person who has been loyal for 10 years, enduring price increases, feel like an idiot for sticking around so long for no recognition or reward. As Reece notes, there is actually more of an incentive to separate your relationship and then renew it.

The performing arts version of this is giving cut rate discount tickets to last minute purchasers, suggesting a certain amount of foolishness on the part of those who planned and purchased ahead of time. Some arts organizations sell large amounts of rush tickets at rates lower than those of subscribers who have committed to many shows in advance.

It just occurred to me moments ago, why don’t performing arts organization offer Rush tickets exclusively to those who have already purchased two or more tickets?

This would have multiple benefits 1- It rewards people who committed in advance; 2- It turns those people into recruiters for your show when they invite their friends along; 3- It gets people you already have a relationship with paying closer attention to your emails or social media account that you are using to communicate this discount, providing an opportunity to get them excited and mention other shows.

My suspicion is that attending a show on a half price ticket thanks to two people who purchased weeks in advance is a better model of behavior than attending alongside two other people who also decided to attend because tickets were half price.

It probably also reinforces many elements of the advance purchasers’ self-image if they know their friends were only able to attend because they were stalwart supporters of the arts organization.

The only real problem I can see with this idea is reserved seating. Offering rush tickets in this way appeals heavily to a social element which is compromised if everyone can’t sit together.

Granted, it illustrates the appropriate outcome associated with paying half price on the day of a performance versus full price in advance. Still the emotional disappointment of not being able to sit next to ones guests could supplant the acknowledgement of this logical consequence.

General admission events are good to go though.

This is not the direction I intended to go in when I started this entry. I like this result better.

Audience Relations, Business Models, Info You Can Use, Marketing/PR

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We’ll Pay You Twice As Much As The Last CEO (snicker)

July 17, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Apropos to my post dealing with doing more with less earlier this week, last week Janet Brown, CEO & President of Grantmakers in the Arts wrote about the problems with non-profit CEOs forgoing pay.

She cites an example where the retiring CEO of a performing arts center had only accepted a nominal salary. The savings that represented meant the different between running a deficit. Now with the CEO retiring, they either needed to find someone else who was willing to do the job for free or find the money to pay someone for the job.

The performing arts center should have been booking the CEO’s non-salary as an in-kind contribution all these years, keeping the reality of the expense in the budget. This, of course, would have shown a loss for some years, which (I’m only guessing here) is probably not what the CEO or the Board wanted. So the cycle of under-capitalization continues.

Brown asserts that every organization should strive to be completely transparent financially, not only for the sake of those who inherit leadership positions, but also to retain the confidence of supporters.

Sound business practices are possible in nonprofits but, as I’ve stated before, this demands transparency and leadership that wants to do more than keep the doors open….Our investors in the nonprofit arts world are community members, governments, foundations and corporations who give money because they believe in our organizations, their missions and the good they are doing for our communities. These investors also deserve (and should demand) returns, which include the best artistic product possible and the strongest balance sheet good management can provide.

I guess the lesson here is not to pay your executive director as well as your interns, erm I mean, pay them both!

Boards, Business Models, Fundraising, Leadership

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Info You Can Use: Generating Interview Questions

July 16, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

I have only been at my new job for six weeks and already they have me on a search committee. Some may groan at the thought, but the position being hired will likely impact my area pretty significantly so I was actually relieved when I was asked to serve.

We had our first committee meeting today which was preceded by a training session on interviewing. In addition to reminding us about the usual forbidden subjects of age, race, religion, martial status, etc, the human resource director talked a little about a new approach the university was using with searches.

It is a little difficult to explain clearly here, but essentially it starts with the committee prioritizing the most important areas of the job (e.g. leadership, communication, experience, strategic vision, collegiality etc).

This would help us determine what questions should be asked at what stage of the process. If leadership and experience are top priorities and were going to make or break a candidate for us, we would ask questions that related to those areas during the phone interview phase rather than exploring collegiality.

At later stages we might have more questions touching on leadership and experience since they are high priorities, add in questions dealing with middling priorities to help us expand our impression of the candidates, but choose to only ask a few questions on low priority items or omit them altogether.

What really impressed me about this approach is that it keeps the early interview rounds focused and theoretically dictates how long latter phases of the interview process actually need to be.

Instead of saying, we should have the candidate meet with Bob because it just seems like a good idea, looking at the prioritization you may realize there isn’t any reason for an official meeting with Bob. If there is, a low prioritization might point to a 20 minute meeting or a meal alongside others rather than an hour long one on one meeting in Bob’s office.

Now, notice I say theoretically. Politics may dictate the candidates meet with Bob even in the absence of a compelling reason. That could be detrimental to the search. The HR director mentioned that searches often fail because highly qualified candidates can identify weak processes like undue focus in irrelevant areas.

There was one slide in the HR director’s presentation that I immediately knew I wanted to feature here on the blog. After the committee had finished its discussions, I ran down to the human resource office to ask her permission to share it with you.

It is a general template for the interview questions. Clicking on the image will open a new window so you can refer to it and my commentary on it without having to back arrow.

Interview Guide Template. Used with permission. © Shawnee State University — Interview Guide Template.
Used with permission. © Shawnee State University

The bullet points on the left under “Leadership” note general activities the university has identified that person possessing leadership qualities will have/need to engage in.

The italicized text in the center is how these qualities are specifically exhibited in relation to this job. (This being an example document, they are exceedingly general.) Under that are the questions that are derived from this.

The Situation/Obstacle/Action/Results at the bottom allow the committee member to make notes about how the candidate’s answer touched upon these different phases during the situation being described.

What I really like about this format is that it places the elements from which the questions emerged on the same page with the question. There are always going to be answers you never anticipated when you envisioned the qualities of the person fulfilling the job. It is easy to become confused about whether the response illustrates that they are qualified or not.

But if you gaze down and see the answer being given touches upon all the qualities that comprise the foundation of the question, you can feel more confident about their qualifications.

I am looking forward to continuing in this process. I may end up with a different impression later on, though the search chair has used it in a few searches before and speaks highly of it.

Info You Can Use, Leadership, Legal Topics, Management Philosophy, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Giving, Rather Than Sacrificing

July 15, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

I was thinking last week about the growing sentiment that non-profit organizations should resist the impulse to do “more with less.” The idea being that it gives funders, boards, government entities and the public an unrealistic view of what the real costs of programs actually are and is likely to cause burnout among employees.

The quality of all programs will probably suffer in an effort to make up for the loss of funding to one, as well.

Although it would really hurt organizational pride and morale, the suggestion is to eliminate the program rather than stretching and stressing yourself even more trying to maintain it. That way, at least the consequences of low funding are unambiguous.

A cynical thought crept into my mind that some organization of younger workers unfettered by concerns of good pay and work-life balance might come along and belie your insistence that the program couldn’t be supported, by happily suffering through its execution.

But soon I got to thinking, why not let them? Not that you should welcome an under-captialized organization with unrealistic expectations, but if there was someone qualified who thought they could do a better job, maybe your organization should hand over your files to them.

I started to wonder if many non-profits had really ever thought of this. Most organizations are aware of people doing similar work in their region, whether they are viewed as competitors or providing parallel services. If you are being faced with having to eliminate a program, but are conflicted and a little guilty thinking about all those whom you serve losing something they valued, perhaps it is best to give your program materials to a group that possesses better resources or sees that program as one of their core competencies.

Once you no longer view each other as competitors, there may be room for constructive partnerships. For example, a performance venue who is seeing their K12 school show program flounder due to decreasing availability of bus money might direct their clients to a group that performs in schools, but doesn’t have their own facility.

The traveling group may benefit from the additional contact list, as well as costumes and props that the venue will no longer be using. In return, however, the traveling group may still do an occasional school show for the venue or may produce a series of weekend family matinees at the venue, allowing the venue to continue offering family programming without having to bankroll the development.

Or perhaps both groups wanted to do an after school program, but neither had all the resources they needed to pull it off. Yet as partners, they do.

By the end of my musing, I started to think that trying to do more with less and hold on all your programs might not only be harmful to your organization, it might also impede constructive partnerships.

Instead of looking around at other groups as competitors for the same pie, which granted is increasingly becoming the case, it may be more productive to evaluate what other people are doing as well, if not better than you, with an eye to possibly having to cede that to them.

Times when things are going well are probably best to consider these issues because it also allows the time to evaluate potential partnership options while free of financial panic.

Perhaps you will decide to transition things away before a critical decision ever needs to be made, when your program still remains vibrant and is a worthwhile addition to another company.

No organization should be in a mode of constantly contemplating its demise. I know many elderly start mentally ear marking who will get what when they die, if they haven’t already started actively giving things away. I don’t think that is a healthy way for a non-profit to operate.

It should know where its strengths lay, what its core functions are and what things occupy a more secondary role. Strive for excellence in everything and shine in the community, but be consistently clear about what the priorities of the organization are.

Boards and staff members are likely to have strong emotional attachments to the work that your organization is doing, and probably rightfully so. An open and ongoing conversation about what another organization is doing well can help to motivate your organization to step their game up and do a little better.

But having an open conversation about the organizational priorities as well as what other organizations are doing well may ease the decision to cede/transition a program away if the staff and board has regularly acknowledged the worthiness of another organization to do the work that is being set aside.

Art(ist) Education, Boards, Business Models, General Musings, Management Philosophy, Working In The Arts

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