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What’s Your Culture?

June 18, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

When I assumed my current position, I had hoped that I had escaped the need to complete long annual reports. I was leaving a region whose higher ed accrediting body has the reputation for being the toughest. So I thought, if I did end up having to do an annual report, it wouldn’t be too onerous.

Well, I was wrong. Under the guise of a lunch invitation to meet the rest of the university leadership, I discovered that I would indeed need to do an annual report. And it seems to be more extensive than the one I used to have to do.

In addition, the reporting protocol this year seems to be entirely new, giving rise to thoughts that this is a conspiracy against me by a universe that just won’t let me escape doing annual reports!!!!

While I am not looking forward to the task, one section of the report that I must admit met my approval inquired by department culture:

3. Please answer the questions below addressing departmental culture. As you answer the questions, please include examples from the past year illustrating your points.

a. Describe your department culture?
b. What influences your culture?
c. What theories or practices inform your culture?
d. How do you assess if your departmental culture is impacting the continuous improvement of your department and the institution as a whole?

I think reflection on organizational and departmental culture in this way can be important. Even within a performing arts organization, the culture of the tech, marketing, front of house and artistic areas are distinct from each other.

Discerning what influences your culture and how your departmental culture contributes to the organization as a whole can be contribute toward bolstering the positive and making a constructive effort to repair the negative.

It can help recognize the truth of dysfunctional dynamics if a department realizes a prime influence on their culture is acting as a buffer between two other departments to prevent them from throttling each other.

Yeah, acting as a peacemaker is a positive thing, but if the result is to delay or deflect conflict rather than effect a continuous improvement, it isn’t ultimately a constructive contribution.

Leadership, Management Philosophy, Working In The Arts

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Info You Can Use: We Are More Than Just Our Overhead Ratio

June 17, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Well, the timing could be a little better.

Part of the big news today is that GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance joined together to sign an open letter to all donors asking them not to use overhead as a primary criteria for giving.

The letter does a pretty good job in a short space of discussing how inaccurate the ratio is and the consequences for non-profits when they feel they have to hobble themselves to maintain a low number.

The letter specific cites Stanford Social Innovation Review‘s article, The Non-Profit Starvation Cycle which does a good job explaining the problem in detail.

The reason why I said the timing could be better is because it comes on the heels of a weekend where CNN has been majorly featuring a story about charities that have been fleecing donors with the causes only getting 4% in some cases.

Now make no mistake, I am not defending a 96% overhead by any means. There are a lot of scams out there and it appears pretty clear that the organizations featured in the story set out to deceive right from the moment they generated names that sound very close to nationally recognized charities.

My concern is that to people unfamiliar with charities, the timing of the letter’s release makes it almost appear to be an apologist for the high overhead ratios these dishonest groups had. Especially since a picture of the website of the one of the groups CNN damns contains a claim that Charity Navigator gave them a 3 star rating.

The proximity of these two announcements aside, the public recognition that charities should not be judged on overhead alone is a real advance in the effort to get non-profits evaluated on less superficial criteria. It will likely still happen for some time to come, but it is an encouraging sign.

Advocacy, Fundraising, Info You Can Use, New Initiatives, State of the Arts

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Stuff To Ponder: New Standard Discount Category

June 12, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

I had some additional thoughts regarding the article by Alex Tabbarok I cited yesterday that I didn’t include for fear it would get lost in the entry.

Noting out how oriented toward higher education our society is, Tabbarok observes,

“College students even get discounts at the movie theater; when was the last time you saw a discount for an electrical apprentice?”

It occurred to me that extending a discount to trade apprentices might provide a continuous but subtle message that the arts are for everyone, not just the educated elite.

Obviously, this needs to be supported by programming and an attendance experience that isn’t intimidating. But I wondered if the passive act of providing a discount to laborers might succeed where active claims of the arts being for everyone have come up short.

You may not get many actual apprentices attending, but the act of publicizing the discount may contribute to a shifting perception of your organization.

Audience Relations, Info You Can Use, Marketing/PR, New Initiatives, Terms and Ideas

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The Apprenticeship Option

June 11, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Recently Marginal Revolution blogger and economist Alex Tabbarok linked to an article he wrote a year ago suggesting that the United States would be well served by adding a focus on putting students into technical apprenticeships to the current push to get kids into college.

He starts out by applauding the now familiar push by governors in many states to provide incentives to students pursuing STEM fields over Liberal Arts. “We should focus higher-education dollars on the fields most likely to benefit everyone, not just the students who earn the degrees.”

I particularly oriented in on the part of the article where he notes,

“In 2009 the United States graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math, and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual-and-performing-arts graduates in 1985.”

Wow, that is pretty great, huh? But he goes on,

There is nothing wrong with the arts, psychology, and journalism, but graduates in these fields have lower wages and are less likely to find work in their fields than graduates in science and math. Moreover, more than half of all humanities graduates end up in jobs that don’t require college degrees, and those graduates don’t get a big income boost from having gone to college.

Most important, graduates in the arts, psychology, and journalism are less likely to create the kinds of innovations that drive economic growth.

I initially felt a little indignant at the idea that graduates in the arts aren’t spurring innovation. But then I started wondering if the arts sector needs to take a little responsibility for this. It seems this might be a result of a lack of training and good public relations.

There is an on going conservation about training arts students to take a more entrepreneurial approach to their work so there is already an acknowledgment that this is an area to be improved. Perhaps part of that training should emphasize not undervaluing your work so that people don’t undervalue the work that artists do.

In terms of public relations, I think there is a lack of circulation of stories about successful creatives like those I recently cited about the winners of MIT’s Entrepreneurship Competition (one with a BA in East Asian Studies and Chinese Lit., the other with a BA in Aerospace Engineering) and the Rotman School of Management’s design competition.

The main thrust of Tabbarok’s argument isn’t so much to diminish the liberal arts degree as to advocate for apprenticeships. He notes that some people are simply not suited for college but vocational education programs have a stigma of being the dumping ground for high risk kids. He points to the model of Germany (among other European countries) where students normally opt for technical training and apprenticeships that provide real world work experience while the students are in high school.

What appealed to me about this was the idea that if there is room in the day for a high school student to receive vocational training, then you have to allow that there is time in the day for arts classes.

But I am not suggesting that some kids be allowed to paint while the other kids go learn to weld. I think high school vocational training should seek to provide opportunities for students to train and apprentice at local arts organizations as well. Who says you can’t take some of your welding classes in a scene shop or art studio or that you have to do your apprenticeship in a shipyard?

Apprenticeship programs like this could strengthen ties between schools and arts organizations and reinforce the idea that vocational skills don’t have to be applied in purely practical ways.

On the other side of the coin, I have a vague recollection of reading an article that suggested many visual artists today don’t have a good understanding of the materials they use because they haven’t had a lengthy exposure working/playing with them. Even if my recollection isn’t correct, the opportunity to work with materials still exists.

The reality is, four years of college isn’t the entire key to becoming an artist either.

Art(ist) Education, creativity, Working In The Arts

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