Home Page

Quirky Little Trick For Monetizing Creativity

November 12, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

A post yesterday on the Drucker Exchange blog caught my eye instantly. How could it not when it started (my emphasis),

The story is told that when Peter Drucker was asked how to become a better manager, he replied: “Learn how to play the violin.”

This was, apparently, Drucker’s way of saying that the best managers and knowledge workers are excellent critical thinkers, creative and open to learning new things—just a few of the attributes that, according to a recent article in Time, seem to be in increasingly short supply among recent college graduates.

…The magazine cited several surveys showing that large and growing numbers of job applicants lack “communication and interpersonal skills” or are weak when it comes to “communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration.”

The article goes on to cite Peter Drucker saying that lack of social skills shouldn’t be the biggest disqualifier for a position because you are hiring them for their brains, not to act as a social director. It goes on to quote Drucker encouraging companies to hire someone based on the strengths they bring where the company is lacking rather than trying to hire to the job description.

But the entry later quotes a talk Drucker gave where he says the employee needs to be responsible for managing themselves. (this link isn’t the talk, but an article Drucker wrote on the topic.)

“For the first time in human history, we will have to take responsibility for managing ourselves,” Drucker declared during a 1999 talk he gave in Los Angeles. “This is probably a much bigger change than any technology, this change in the human condition. Nobody teaches it—no school, no college—and it will probably be another hundred years before anybody does teach it. In the meantime, the achievers . . . will have to learn to manage themselves, to build on their strengths, to build on their values.”

Drucker may be right that these skills are not taught directly in schools, but some part of them are required in the practical activities of performing arts classes. Teamwork, goal setting, communication, vision, deadlines, it is all there and is ultimately tested when the curtain goes up. All these things can be learned in a classroom or by participating in activities of your local theatre/dance/music ensemble.

(Though certainly recognition of and building your own strengths and values is always going to be something you have to develop on your own.)

There is a question of whether performing arts students are being properly prepared to perform and work in the new modes of expression and communication that will emerge in the future. Because we don’t know what those modes will be, the question is really more about instilling flexibility and creativity of thinking as well as a degree of entrepreneurship.

But is it enough? We keep seeing articles like the one in Time magazine cited on The Drucker Exchange or whenever people reference the IBM study where CEO valued creativity as crucial to ensure the future of their companies.

And yet an ever increasing number of standardized tests are administered every year despite the fact that the only standardized test you are regularly required to pass as an adult is your tax return. And they have software and people that will help you out by soliciting information from you.

The arts aren’t the sole source of creativity in the world, and the CEOs in the IBM study weren’t specifically looking for creativity as it manifests in the arts, but it seems like there is a huge unmet need out there and maybe arts people need to sit down and figure out how package it for Fortune 500 companies if they are so desperate for it.

It probably can’t be done in the same fashion as in college art classes. Drucker is right when he suggests that there is no formal way to teach soft skills. You can’t put together a 40 hour course on being creative and issue certificates confident at having instilled the ability in your pupils.

And yet, people commit acts of creativity every day. Some times with as much effort as it takes the grass to grow, other times with much angst, but with the knowledge and confidence that they are capable of it.

But it seems that finding a method to monetize effectively teaching/instilling creativity is about the only way these days to convince people not to dismiss liberal arts as a pursuit and that there is a Way of learning that does not embrace standardize testing.

creativity, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Sometimes They Just Want To Go Home

November 11, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

I was perusing the tweets of those at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference (NAMPC) while thinking about a comment made by the director of the local arts museum wondering why people were leaving a fundraiser so early.

This was the exact opposite situation from one apparently expressed by Alan Brown at the NAMP Conference who wondered why arts organizations were so quick to chase people out after the event was over.

The live and silent auction were over and no one was going to be asked to donate more money. There was plenty of food and alcohol to consume, a cigar and brandy station had been set up in the newly renovated alley for those who wanted to parttake. There was plenty of art to look at, including an amazing new installation and the artist was on hand to chat with.

They had only expected about 75 people to attend and more than 130 showed up so there were plenty of people with whom to mix and mingle. (And one of the other attendees remarked to me that there were a lot of new faces at the event so it wasn’t as if the conversation topics dried up.)

And it was only 8:30 pm on the Saturday night of a three day weekend.

By 8:45 except for the staff and volunteers, the place had pretty much cleared out.

So when I saw Sara Leonard tweet quoting a speaker at the conference saying, “Create the value your audience craves,” I wondered what might have been lacking that might have kept everyone hanging around a little longer.

The auctioneer had to ask for quiet a couple times during the auction because people were too boisterous so they were clearly having a good time.

Perhaps what the audience valued was an organization that ran an efficient fundraiser that showed them a good time and got them out before 9:00.

Maybe as Alan Brown suggests, everyone was used to being chased out and left of their own accord. Or maybe, as one off the museum staff suggested, the community likes to get to bed early.

I feel that I must make a bemused observation that clearly one needs to appeal to a younger audience not only to sustain support for the arts long term, but to find some people willing to stick around and keep the party going for you in the short term. (which I mean both literally and figuratively.)

Whether it be fund raisers or performances, it isn’t enough just to have a fun after-event party in order to attract younger audiences, the content of the main event has to be of some interest because there are plenty of bars and dance clubs where they can go instead and circumvent the boring part.

But the truth is, sometimes it isn’t anything you did. Audiences just want to go home and that is an enjoyable evening.

Audience Relations, Fundraising, State of the Arts

1 Comment

The Founder’s Curse

November 6, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

We here at Butts In The Seats blog, (okay, me), are not afraid to admit when we may have been wrong. This summer, Elizabeth Schmidt, wrote a piece on Non-Profit Quarterly challenging the myth of the Founders Syndrome.

There have been times in the past when my posts have played into the notion that Founders tend to hold their organizations back in various ways. As Schmidt enumerates:

The label seems to be applied if one or more of the following symptoms are present. The first is a sense of grandiosity—that the organization is the founder’s, and it exists to serve his or her ego (or pocketbook). The second is an inability to delegate—poor management on the part of the founder. The third is an inability to make a smooth transition from the founder to new leadership. And the fourth is an unwavering dedication to the original vision for the organization.

Schmidt makes the common sense observation that you don’t need to be a founder to exhibit these characteristics and gives a few examples of non-founders who have damaged their organizations by manifesting them. She also notes that being normal human beings, not all founders possess these traits, nor do they suddenly become infected with these inclinations upon deciding to found a company.

She notes the inability to plan a smooth leadership transition is so widespread it is more of an organizational failing than attributable to the influence of a single individual.

The worst in Schmidt’s mind seems to be the fourth stereotype of not allowing the organization to evolve beyond the original vision.

“This symptom is particularly disturbing, however, because it has the potential to squelch necessary dialogue among the stakeholders of the organization. To say, as soon as a disagreement arises, that the party who conceived of the initial mission suffers from founder’s syndrome, severely handicaps that party’s standing in the discussion.”

Schmidt acknowledges that there is always some basis in truth to the anecdotes that form these generalizations about founders and it is likely that many organizations have encountered troubles for just these reasons.

However, she points the lack of research providing evidence that this is a particular problem for founders. The only study she found that attempted to collect empirical data concluded that there was ““considerable truth to some of the rumors and stories about founder’s syndrome.” However, Schmidt feels the following data does not support this assertion and is at best, inconclusive.

-Founder-led organizations tended to have smaller budgets.

-Term limits for board members existed in 31 percent of founder-led organizations and 49 percent of non-founder organizations.

-Eighty percent of founder-led organizations held at least quarterly meetings, compared to 87% of non-founder organizations.

-Three-fourths of the respondents in both groups thought either the executive director or the board chair was the most influential person during a board meeting, but founder-led organizations were more likely to say the executive director was the most influential.

-On the other hand, founder-led organizations were more likely to have reviewed the mission in the past year than organizations led by non-founders; they were more likely to attract full board participation at meetings, and they were more likely to set and mail the board agenda ahead of time.

I haven’t read the study she references, but on the face of the data, I would probably lean toward saying non-founder organizations employed better governance practices. Still Schmidt makes a strong argument about resisting the inclination to automatically dismiss a founder as the source of problems for a company and instead evaluate all elements potentially contributing to the organization’s weakness.

Business Models, Leadership

No Comments

Info You Can Use: Examining The Critical Path

November 5, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Yesterday, Seth Godin made a post that seemed aimed at a few of the companies and organizations I have volunteered or worked for/with throughout my life. He addressed the importance of understanding the critical path to achieving a goal. He defined critical path as “The longest string of dependent, non-compressible tasks.”

He uses wanting to create a garden as an example.

“For example, in your mind’s eye, the garden has a nice sign in front. The nice sign takes about a week to get made by the sign guy, and it depends on nothing. You can order the sign any time until a week before you need it. On the other hand, you can’t plant until you grade and you can’t grade until you get the delivery of soil and you can’t get the delivery until you’ve got a permit from the local town.”

He notes the logical step is to take care of that permit first. “And yet most organizations focus on shiny objectives or contentious discussions or get sidetracked by emergencies instead of honoring the critical path.”

He discusses how important it is to identify the parts of a process that end up being the choke points of the critical path. He gives an example of how a company he worked for used color coded buttons to identify the people who were important points along that path for a project upon which the success of the company hinged. Everyone not identified as part of that potential choke point, including the president of the company, knew not to impede the progress of those who were.

This resonated with me because I recently discovered that the piece of software I use for tracking my task list has a pull down menu with “Waiting on Someone Else” as an option. When I started using that option to keep the list from periodically squawking that those tasks were overdue, I realized that nearly every task was waiting on action from the same two offices. At least in terms of the functions of my operations, those offices were part of my critical path.

As I read Godin’s post, I was reminded of the oft heard statement: fast, cheap, quality, choose any two. There are staff members that are frequently given tasks with competing priorities and are left to ask which of the crucial tasks are slightly less crucial.

Analyzing the critical paths by general project types would assist decision making about resource and time management within the organization. One notable thing about Godin’s example is that the project, rather than the organization chart, determined who were the most important staff members. If it took the president fetching coffee for the graphic designer to make the project succeed, that is what happened.

The president does play a crucial role in the organization and can’t be spending all their time fetching coffee, but their work may not represent a crucial juncture in the overall process upon which other activities depend. (Except for signing payroll, of course!)

Think about the critical paths in your organization. It may surprise you to learn what your critical paths are and may reveal some awkward truths about where resources really need to be allocated to meet the mission of your organization.

Though remember that this is more than just needing a lot of hands to help out with a process, it is about a chain of events that definitely depend on the prior step being completed. Needing 10 people to stuff envelopes on Wednesday isn’t part of the critical path if having six people start on Monday will accomplish the same goal of getting it all out by Friday. It is, however, if you are mailing out W-2 tax forms which, by law, need to go out by January 31 and the forms can’t be printed out until Tuesday because the payroll data isn’t available until Monday, because…

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

No Comments