Info You Can Use: Reward Disloyalty

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H/t Daniel Pink who linked to a story about a “Disloyalty Card” being used by independent coffee shops in Singapore. If you go to one of 8 coffee shops and pick up a card, go to any of the other 7 to get stamps and then come back to the original, you get a free cup of coffee.

I know some arts organizations who have tried these sort of programs to encourage patronizing other organizations with mixed results. What appealed to me about this approach was the rebellious, counter culture feel of it. I had this image of a program that encouraged people to be disloyal to movie theatres and Netflix.

What probably works for the coffee houses is that they can create a bit of an edgy or cool vibe with their stores. If arts organizations are going to try this, they either need to have the same vibe or link it to a series of shows that have that sort of feel. No one is going to feel like they are walking the path less traveled if they find themselves in a staid, completely conventional experience.

My impulse would be to avoid using it during something like a First Friday event where it might look more like a bingo game where people breezed through to get their cards stamped. That doesn’t seem particularly productive. An opportunity to do it across the course of a few months to a year could encourage people to make a more deliberate progress- see a show one weekend, walk through a gallery the next month, go to a dance concert and take visiting friends to the contemporary art museum.

It doesn’t appear that the Singapore disloyalty program requires you to visit all 8 of the coffee shops, just frequent more than one. Even disloyalty programs need to be convenient so it doesn’t make sense to force people to wander all over the place just to get a free cup of coffee. The same would likely apply to a similar program with the arts. Even if all the participating venues were in close proximity, it wouldn’t really be effective to force people to frequent places that didn’t appeal to them.

Structuring the program to encourage people to try a few new things is good. There should be a variety of disciplines represented, but they should get credit for going back to the places they liked rather than only rewarding them for hitting every place once.

Heck, it probably shouldn’t be confined solely to places that were built with the intention of housing art. Get the coffee shop or bar that hangs work by local artists involved. Even better–approach the bars and coffee shops with some opera or classical music performances like the Yellow Lounge program in Germany I wrote about a few years ago or Opera on Tap. Getting these sort of performances into the mix would make for an interesting disloyalty program.

History Repeats Itself…Wait, Didn’t I Just Use This Post Title?

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You may have read Kurt Andersen recent piece in Vanity Fair noting that fashion, art, design and culture in general hasn’t really changed much in the last twenty years. Or maybe like me, you started to get the sense of this some time ago when you realized the rebellious college/high school kids today were wearing the same clothes and essentially listening to the same music as when you were a rebellious college/high school kid 20+ years ago.

Reading Andersen’s article, I recall a piece in Rolling Stone back around 2000 where they said the 70s didn’t deserve the reputation for being an awful decade for music given that it saw the rise of so many different genres of popular musicians from Led Zeppelin’s rock to Ramones’ punk to Donna Summer’s disco. As Anderson points out, (as well as Weird Al) there hasn’t been much difference between Madonna and Lady Gaga.

Andersen attributes the lack of innovation to a desire for stability in an unstable world.

“People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out. So as the Web and artificially intelligent smartphones and the rise of China and 9/11 and the winners-take-all American economy and the Great Recession disrupt and transform our lives and hopes and dreams, we are clinging as never before to the familiar in matters of style and culture.”

I just wonder why the Depression, two World Wars, Vietnam and the Cold War didn’t cause a longing for stability that froze popular culture (though I will concede the latter two may have planted the seeds.) Rather, I think that in making the world smaller and enabling us to all experience the same things at the same time, technology has started to introduce a uniformity. It is tougher for regional quirks to gain enough influence to bring about changes. Instead everyone consults the same sources.

As Andersen points out, the ubiquity of so many retailers across the country means that it is possible for us to access the same resources as everyone else as well. There used to be a minor plot element in stories where residents of smaller communities would ask a newcomer what the fashions were in Paris or NY. Now there is no need to do so. Not only does everyone know what the styles are, they are readily available.

What does this have to do with arts organizations these days? Well, for one, there has long been a conversation about how everyone in theatre is taking their cues from what is being done on Broadway. There has also long been a conversation about how everything being done on Broadway is a revival, revue or dramatization of material which has proven itself in some other format.

It seems that what we have here is an opportunity not only to break from our own past practices but to become agents of change for general culture as well. I am not so idealistic that I can’t admit that is a lot of inertia to overcome for non-profits. But since it appears increasingly likely a change of business model is in order, we might as well include artistic and cultural innovation while we are in the process of re-invention, right?

Even Great Artists Need Recess

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I may be beating a long dead horse here but last week the National Endowment for the Arts linked to a NY Times article from their Twitter account asking what people thought. The article in question was about how public schools in NYC were having arts classes during recess. I tweeted in response that I thought it was great, but that when I was a kid, I had art, music AND recess. The title of the article touts the school as being highly rated.

While I am happy these kids are getting some arts exposure, I wonder how it can really be seen as an improvement and a credit to their high rating that they had to do it during recess. It’s a shame that that the only time students can have the experience. It is with some chagrin that I tell the story of my first day in high school where I was trying to figure out when we would be allowed outside for recess. The memory of realizing I wouldn’t be having recess any more still causes a little ache.

I have to wonder, is there really so much more to learn these days that they have to squeeze arts classes and recess out? I know arts get cut for financial reasons, but if a school has the resources to offer it during recess, then they could offer classes as well, right? It has been 30 years since I was in elementary school, but I don’t think there have been that many developments in history, reading, mathematics and science in that time that can’t be covered in the course of all the elementary years of school.

If they have to spend so much additional time teaching and testing material for kids, that must mean those of us in the previous generations fell short of learning all that was required of us, correct? I quake in fear for what it will mean for me when these kids grow up and bring their superior knowledge capacity to bear, pushing me out of my job.

Okay, while it may indeed happen one day that my knowledge will be obsolete compared to younger people, I am fairly certain it won’t all hinge on the differences between what we learned in elementary school. In fact, I may retain my superiority over them simply because of the freedom of recess I enjoyed in elementary school.

Dr. Todd B. Kashdan recently had a piece on the Creativity Post about this very topic. (my emphasis)

If you want children to do well in school, give them dedicated time to play, sing, dance, build something out of wood, or whatever their fancy. There is a myth that time spent in these activities is time better spent cramming in more information for all important high stakes tests. Unfortunately, the brain doesn’t work that way. We each have a finite amount of willpower and when this willpower is exhausted, carrots and sticks are not going to change this fact. Our brains need time for restoration and replenishment. Discover what kids are passionate about and set them free to pursue it. Let me repeat that, set them free. Do not overly structure their recess. Do not overly structure their play time. This is a time for them to recharge their batteries. In return, you will get a greater frequency of creative, curious, critically thinking youngsters. You will get attentive, engaged students.

There is a great NY Times magazine article on the science behind the finite nature of willpower. There is a shorter version of the information on NPR if you don’t have the willpower to read the article. 😉 (Though as you will learn, you might be able to get some will power by eating a cookie!)

The more I read about the importance of allowing kids free time, the more I appreciate that my elementary school emphasized self-directed learning. (Albeit under the withering gaze of nuns which I am sure counteracted some of the benefits the freedom afforded.)

It occurs to me that arts people shouldn’t just be advocating for arts in the schools, but the free time to explore and express it. I am sure artistic and creative people are well aware of examples from their own disciplines in which a strict teaching environment has had a stultifying effect on the development and joy of young students. The advocacy can’t simply be about providing arts education if it is bereft of an opportunity to play. If students choose to spend their free time peering down at a cell phone texting their friends, it may be in part because they were never provided the opportunity and encouragement to spend it any way else.

Give The Gift Of Autonomy For Christmas

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So the big tragedy of non profit arts organizations is that while we are the champions of creativity, we don’t really provide all our employees the most conducive environments for being creative. Sometimes good things happen despite us. Because the workload to personnel ratio is usually slanted in favor of the work load, there often isn’t a lot of opportunity for people to stand back and do some creative problem solving that might result in the alleviation of some of the work load.

A recent post on the Drucker Exchange criticized the industrial age view that long hours and great effort equates to productivity when that simply is not so any more. Andrew Fuqua recently made a related post on the benefit of “slack” in the work place. His post was generally about the computer programming industry, but there were many lessons non-profit arts organizations can take away.

One of the things he says a programming company should do is, “managers must stop assigning tasks.” Instead, it is up to teams to decide how the work will be done. Of course, for non-profit arts organizations, this assumes there are enough people to comprise a team rather than 1 person (or half person departments). But essentially he says, managers shouldn’t be making assignments, handing out work or be an individual contributor.

“Well, gosh, then what should a manager do? Well, I’ll tell ya! You could manage more people. You can still step in when the team needs help (but not too quickly). You are still an agent of the company, handling legal stuff, signing off on expenditures, etc. You can still manage risks, especially if you are a skilled Project Manager.”

Even if that doesn’t sound like something that is viable given the size of your organization, there are other things he suggest that are definitely applicable.

“Keep an eye on the system, looking for improvements
Ensure cross-training is happening (not by making assignments, but making the team handle it)
Understand the dynamics of the organization
Understand how value is created
Protect the team from interference
Make the organization effective; learn to look at it as a system
Support the team
Clear roadblocks
Watch interpersonal interaction — watch when one team member pulls back, withdraws in a brainstorm (for example)
Help the team learn TDD by making room for them to learn (time – remove the schedule pressure while they learn)
Understand the capacity of the team (also a team and scrummaster job)
Think through policies, procedures and reward/review systems and improve them (what messages do they send?)
Understand what motivates knowledge workers (see the previous reference to Pink) and let creating that kind of environment be an imperative”

Arts organizations can definitely benefit from looking at the dynamics of the organization and looking at themselves as a system of interrelated and interdependent parts rather than different segments performing different functions. This approach will help the organization understand where the value they possess lies. It may not only be the stuff you are selling tickets to, but in the expertise that is possessed by the group.

You will see a lot of these factors mentioned as valuable in management texts. The one suggestion Fuqua makes that jumped out at me was in regard to watching when a team member pulls back and withdraws in a brain storm. That can say a lot about the interpersonal dynamics of the organization. It may be viewed as one less person providing opposition to your ideas, but it could be damaging to the organization long term to have someone feel disassociated from the rest of the organization or team.

You might note that Fuqua references Daniel Pink and his talk about what motivates knowledge workers. That motivation is autonomy which repeated studies have shown is more effective than cash rewards.

One of the things Pink talks about is a Australian software company, Atlassian, which periodically gives their employees 24 hours to work on whatever they want. The only proviso being that they share it with the entire company at a party they throw at the end of that period. Apparently the practice has contributed to the solving of a number of problems and the creation of new products.

Imagine what might be produced if you let a bunch of creative arts people loose of their everyday constraints for 24 hours with the promise of beer at the end!

One of the things I know is very important to a lot of people I work with in the arts is professional development opportunities. Again, this is something Fuqua references. Often the biggest thing inhibiting arts people from getting the professional development is the funding. One solution to this problem goes back to my comment a few paragraphs ago about understanding that the value possessed by the organization may not solely reside in the product you are selling to the public.

Your organization may possess expertise that is valuable to other arts organizations and for profit businesses. You might arrange for a cooperative professional development day where all the arts organizations get together and have their staffs provide learning opportunities for each other. You might be able to likewise trade your expertise to area businesses in exchange for training or advice.

Best of all scenarios–your organization (or cooperative of arts organizations) puts together training programs to sell to businesses based on your expertise. Perhaps seminars in team building, creative brain storming, or the selection and lighting of visual art in commercial office spaces.