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Caring, Rather Than Money, Makes The World Go Round

March 4, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

There was a Slate article today covering research on motivating employees that seemed well-aligned with the non-profit work environment. The research essentially verifies the importance of providing recognition and a sense of meaning to employees.

Researchers found that small gifts, rather than money, motivated people to work harder. They told one group of workers they would receive 7 euros more in pay than they had been promised when they were recruited. Another group was given a gift wrapped water bottle worth 7 euros and the control group was given no bonus. The cash bonus didn’t inspire any improvement, but those receiving the bottle were 25% more productive than those in the other two groups. The article notes that this increase in productivity more than paid for the 7 euro expenditure.

(my emphasis)

It’s not that the workers particularly loved their bottles—in fact, in a separate experiment in which catalogers were offered the choice between a bottle versus 7 euros, 80 percent took the cash (and still worked a lot harder). Rather, it was the thought that counted, and simply handing out a few more euros hardly takes much thought. Even offering the option of a gift showed that the employer cared.

An intriguing final version of the experiment underscored the importance, in the eyes of the employees, of the thought and effort bosses put into their gifts. This time, the cash was delivered as a 5-euro note folded into an origami shirt and a 2-euro coin with a smiley face painted on it. The origami money-gift generated the highest increase in productivity of all…

The study isn’t without its limitations. It’s hard to imagine that the average Wall Street trader would work harder for a pink Cadillac than a six-figure bonus. The motivational effects of cash surely become more important when the stakes get higher, and gifts probably work best when tailored to the particular set of employees. That’s how you really show you care.

And that, more than gifts versus cash, is really the study’s takeaway. Many employees toiling away in stores, factories, and cubicles are desperate for a sense of meaning in their work lives. Even the smallest gesture of kindness that shows they’re part of an organization that actually cares can give them purpose—and that leads to motivation.

It is widely recognized that people who work in non-profits do so because they valued the purpose and meaning they find in their work. Invoking the obvious disclaimer that it shouldn’t be a substitute for paying people a living wage, a boss providing some validation that what motivates that employee is valued and recognized can keep that person energized.

It probably isn’t a coincidence that the gifts that exhibited the most effort on the bosses’ part elicited the strongest effort on the employees’ part. For all the technology that may separate us, the work environment is still a communal experience and each person wants to know that the others are expending effort and thought on their behalf.

In many respects, this goes back to the post I made last week about the early warning signs that things are amiss with your company. When the board, upper management and lower echelons are each convinced the others are invested and working hard to keep the organization viable, that knowledge permeates that whole organization without anyone giving voice to that fact.

And the absence of that unity will begin to manifest itself in some intangible way as well.

Info You Can Use, Management Philosophy, Working In The Arts

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Secret Isn’t Thinking Out Of The Box, It IS The Box

February 27, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

You have all heard, or even told, a story where you get a great toy for a child only to have them play with the box. The moral of the story is often to get simple stuff for kids to play with because they will be far more satisfied with that than anything else you can get them.

I recently started to suspect the same thing probably applies to arts experiences with kids. Adults have all these expectations for a high quality, well designed product that they impose on the experience. While the kids are thrilled with the whole experience, including the simple ancillary wrappings that adults will ignore or discard.

My nephews were going to the Museum of Natural History when they had off on Presidents’ Day. When they told me this, I commented “Oh, to see the dinosaurs?” They asked how I knew and without thinking, I replied, “Because that is what I remember from my visit.”

Actually, that isn’t entirely true as I will explain later, but the dinos make a big impression on kids my nephews’ age. I was the same age when I first went to Museum of Natural History.

When I asked them about how they liked the museum, my one nephew asked when he would get to see real dinosaurs (because, you know the skeletons alone are a disappointment to anyone with a vivid imagination). They also talked about riding the A train. Because the train is express at certain points, it rides the middle track which means at times you have one train zipping by in the opposite direction on one side of the train. But on the other side of the car, you have another train traveling in the same direction just “floating” alongside as it keeps pace. Honestly, even at my age I think it is a pretty cool phenomenon.

They actually loved running around Central Park more than the museum. Or at least, they talked about that about as much as the museum, if not a little more.

Talking to them reminded me that while many aspects of the experience are frustrating for adults, (including keeping on eye on the kids), almost every part of the experience can be magical and memorable for the kids.

Talking to them altered my thinking slightly. It isn’t important to expose kids to the arts, it is important to expose them to the whole experience and make it memorable. It doesn’t take much to make it memorable.

The attendance and participation experience as a kid, the whole experience, is what helps grow adults who love the arts. That my nephews and I were able to connect easily and immediately over the memory of the dinos hints at that.

The thing that is really most memorable about my first trip to the Museum of Natural History is both simpler and more complex. We made the visit around Christmas time and there was a huge tree in the lobby. At a table near the tree were a number of Japanese women teaching people to do origami. There were origami ornaments on the tree.

I know I must have spent at least an hour watching them. I had never seen anything like it before. I had no conception you could do that with paper. That was over 30 years ago and I still have the ornaments, both those I made and those the women gave me. I still remember being amazed they gave me the ornaments they folded. Given how hard it was to fold (for a 10 year old, at least) they seemed like precious objects to me.

Art(ist) Education, General Musings

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What Is Your First Hint?

February 26, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

I was reading today how the new CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, has insisted that all employees be working at their corporate campuses by June rather than telecommuting. Yahoo has not been doing well in recent years and she took it as a bad sign that the parking lot was slow to fill in the morning and quick to empty out at night, something that is atypical for Silicon Valley tech companies, including Google where Mayer was recently an executive.

This got me to thinking about what the signs for arts organizations/companies would be that your staff wasn’t fully invested in the company? Since working conditions at many places are rarely optimal to start with, it may be difficult to know when morale and organizational culture is waning.

While we shouldn’t depend on people’s passion to keep them motivated in lieu of actually paying them, the passion is often the primary motivator ahead of pay, if the staff as a whole seems to have lost that feeling, you have to ask why.

There is a point where it is patently obvious to everyone that morale is low and the spark is gone. What I have started thinking about in reaction to the stories about Yahoo is what the warning signs might be that things are heading in the wrong direction but could be turned around before the negativity became omnipresent.

I would say the parking lot test is one indication. If people are leaving as soon as the job is done and seem reticent to come in any earlier than necessary, then the situation may be deteriorating. In my experience, unless it is 2 am after a load out of one show and a new show is loading in at 9 am the next morning, a fair number of theatre staff will hang out together for another half hour or so chatting and decompressing after the event.

I would also say that the lack of discussion about the event around the office the next morning is a bad sign. There is always need for a debrief and examination of what could be done better the next time. But even beyond the practical considerations, if people around the office aren’t spontaneously reflecting on the quality of the event and exhibiting some sort of intellectual or emotional connection with the experience (even if it is to reflect on audience reaction), then the environment may need to be examined.

What other signs are there? I have worked in performance most of my career so I would be especially interested to learn what is considered a bad sign in the visual arts. Though everyone should feel free to comment, regardless of what discipline you identify with.

I am not really looking to open a gripe fest where people complain about how the cheap bastards cut off the free coffee. But maybe you started noticing people stopped participating in the weekly “Bring Your Own Meat” barbeques in the summer and knew things were going awry weeks before anyone said anything.

Audience Relations, Leadership, Working In The Arts

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Info You Can Use: Arts Hack-A-Thons

February 25, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

This past weekend, the University of Miami had an art themed student hack-a-thon from noon Saturday through noon Sunday. Their definition of the art theme was:

“And by art, we mean all types of art and its interpretations. Want to make the instagram of music, or the Spotify of Images, or have you been thinking of something really cool with videos? Go ahead. This is your time to work on that side project you’ve been putting off.”

The organizers provided food and a space to work and let the teams go at it.

The results were varied and interesting. The winning team made an app that would allow you to find music local to any city by genre. Second place prize was for an app that help curate music recommendations. The third place team created “a music instrument combining piano and guitar sounds with motion sensors.”

Fourth place I have to copy and paste rather than describe. “Nullinator – Joke apps. 1 creates a plaid shirt design based on the sound waves of a song. Another replaces your face in a video with that of Nicholas Cage. A crowd pleaser.”

The entry receiving honorable mention created an app that uses motion sensors to control music “Speed up the song by moving closer to the sensor or distort the bass by waving your hand from side to side. Become a dj by having fun.”

While the UHack event chose art as a theme this year, the group Art Hack Day holds arts related hack days across the country. They describe themselves as:

“…dedicated to hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is tech. We bridge the gap between art, technology and entrepreneurship with grassroots hackathons that demonstrate the expressive potential of new technology and the power of radical collaboration in art. We believe in non-utilitarian beauty through technology and its ability to affect social change for public good.”

Looking through the list of sponsors at the different cities on both sites, I don’t see a lot of arts organizations involved. I wondered if any arts organizations knew these were going on and if involving arts organizations was even on the event organizers’ radar.

These events are probably organized so that none of the sponsors are directing what is being developed, but there may be some room at one to say “these are problems we face, maybe you can think of a solution.”

There does seem to be some scope for involving specific interests in the competitions. The Miami event had small prizes worth a few hundred dollars for best use of different companies’ APIs and Microsoft technology. That would be something easily within the capacity of an arts related organization.

One of the easiest and most visible ways an arts organization might be involved is to provide the space and food for the hack-a-thon to occur. I have to imagine it would be more inspiring to wander through galleries of a museum or the back stage of a theatre during breaks than to be in a student center lounge.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Info You Can Use, State of the Arts

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