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Getting “A Real Job” Thanks To Your Arts Job

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Last month the LA Stage Times had a two part series on work and the arts. One was on jobs at alternative theatres, but the one that piqued my interest was about the benefits former arts managers felt their arts experiences brought to their for profit finance jobs.

As much as I am sad to hear that people can’t support themselves in arts related jobs, I am always interested in information that makes a case for the value of the arts. Whole entries can be devoted to the brain and talent drain the arts sector suffers due to inability to pay a living wage, but I won’t delve into that here since the two profiled who left for the for profit sector are still very invested in the organizations they left.

One gentleman stepped down from his position, though he stayed on the organization’s board, to pursue an MBA and eventually work for Citibank. He felt his experience helped him develop interpersonal skills that enhance his value to the bank. Returning to work in the arts using the skills he learned in banking is always at the corner of his mind.

“But Tarlow observes how his managing director experiences at Celebration still feed into his current job. “Because it’s not only numbers now,” he says. “It’s about meeting with people and doing things more like I did at the theater. Building relationships…I have to work with people in the same way.”
[…]
“[Celebration] was a lot of work, but the rewards I got from it were a great gift,” reflects Tarlow. “When you get to do that kind of theater, you really make what you want out of it. It was a gift for me.” And it’s possible that this “gift” could eventually return him to theater — but in a better-paying job. “I have thought about becoming the finance director of a large arts organization someday. The skills I’m learning at the bank are definitely preparing me for a role like this.”

The second person profiled is also still very much involved with the theatre group he started out with and uses his day job as an auditor to inform the advice he gives to his arts organization and vice versa. Talking to arts people with no background in accounting and finance about those concerns helps him become a better all around communicator on the subject.

“His position takes him to a wide range of companies, both non-profit and for-profit, in all parts of LA. “I’ve worked on audits for much larger arts organizations with ‘real’ budgets,” he says. “Then I look at the smaller Rogue budgets and see where we have opportunities for…growth,” he adds.

Seeing differences between for-profit and non-profit models on a regular basis puts Maes in a constant state of noting challenges for the Rogues, and most small theaters, particularly in terms of keeping theater staff and managers focused on fundraising.

[…]

With his added CPA training and work experience, Maes imposes a tougher financial regimen on the Rogues than he did in the beginning. He is particularly geared toward thinking in terms of risk management, a quality he recommends for all small theaters, where even the smallest mishap — such as a show’s underperforming box office or an unforeseen loss of assets — can wipe out a company’s already anemic bank account.

[…]

Maes wants every theater company to remember that financial people engaging in a small non-profit are most likely not there because of the numbers. Personal meetings and being involved with creative people is what makes the arts rewarding for everyone, not just the artists….

…It’s also helpful being a good communicator and coming from a communication-driven art form. Being able to explain accounting to artists helps me even if I have to talk to someone with an accounting background.”

The third person profiled has worked in the arts sector for a number of years but is now wondering if she should parlay that experience in marketing, development and producing into a job in the for profit sector or continue working for non-profits. She has the confidence that the skills she brings from her non-profit experience can land her a job in a pro-profit studio or marketing firm and finds herself caught in the classic “passion or pocketbook” internal debate.

Passion About Your Work Is Hard Work

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Apropos of my post a few weeks back about people thinking creativity as a lightning strike gift rather than a process of work over time is a piece on Harvard Business Review blog site in which the author, Cal Newport, makes a similar observation about the idea one should follow their passion when looking for a job.

Newport notes that following ones passion has become common career advice and includes a Google N-Gram charting the explosive rise of the phrase in print use during the 2000s.

“Why is this a problem? This simple phrase, “follow your passion,” turns out to be surprisingly pernicious…The verb “follow” implies that you start by identifying a passion and then match this preexisting calling to a job. Because the passion precedes the job, it stands to reason that you should love your work from the very first day.

It’s this final implication that causes damage. When I studied people who love what they do for a living, I found that in most cases their passion developed slowly, often over unexpected and complicated paths. It’s rare, for example, to find someone who loves their career before they’ve become very good at it — expertise generates many different engaging traits, such as respect, impact, autonomy — and the process of becoming good can be frustrating and take years.

The early stages of a fantastic career might not feel fantastic at all, a reality that clashes with the fantasy world implied by the advice to “follow your passion” — an alternate universe where there’s a perfect job waiting for you, one that you’ll love right away once you discover it. It shouldn’t be surprising that members of Generation Y demand a lot from their working life right away and are frequently disappointed about what they experience instead.”

The arts career path has long had a “paying your dues” period of near slavery labor for low or no pay internship followed by successfully transitioning to a near poverty level pay. I joke, but only because I don’t want to confuse the poor treatment many entry level people are subject to with the genuine need to actually go through an unsatisfying process of improving your abilities.

The dream of being discovered and making it big is what causes many to pursue a career in the arts. The fact that there are some who can make it big with no apparent effort is something of a plague on the arts industry.

Still for many people, this dues paying process gives people a realistic view of what is expected in the arts career path and they choose to leave it.

Pursuing an arts career with its abysmal pay can be something of a blessing in disguise as part of the dues paying process. The fact we have the stereotype of the actor who waits tables shows that many creative types are picking up other skills in the process of pursuing the dream.

Of course, the benefit of this all hinges on heeding the advice of our grandparents to do everything we do well. It is easy to fall into the practice of not taking a job seriously figuring your effort doesn’t matter since you will be gone soon enough. Then when you revise your career plans, you may suddenly find that as a result of your inattentiveness no one will credit you as having paid some dues.

One of my first jobs was doing yard work which involved everything from mowing and weeding to mucking out horse stalls and polishing brass and bronze pots. I don’t think it directly prepared me for a job in the arts, (though I did end up driving a farm tractor a lot the rural arts center I worked at), it probably instilled a work ethic, taught me about a lot uncommon practices like beekeeping and gave me many problem solving abilities. (Like the time I set fire to the…erm, well I have said too much already.)

Cal Newport calls for career advice to reference the inevitable sour period before you feel inspired by your work.

In some respects, I think the arts are blessed with the stereotype of the wait staff who wants to act. Even though no one believes they will ever have to work in a restaurant to support themselves, that waiter is in our collective unconscious and can’t be exorcised. Part of us always knows that possibility exists. Some may even be motivated to pursue excellence to ensure it doesn’t happen to them.

Still more discussion of that metaphorical waiter needs to happen to make people aware that the pursuit of their passion may not come easily or as directly as they imagine.

Many performing artists would acknowledge their awareness that the pursuit doesn’t come easily since many of them start working hard at eight or nine years old. The problem is that “practice hard to be a success” has been used to motivate them for all those years and it is not a foregone conclusion, especially in relation to orchestras these days.

Arts and culture industries needs to emphasize the fact that the path to success may not be as direct as it has been represented to encourage people to think about and be open to alternative routes.

Arts & Job Crafting

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Apropos to yesterday’s Labor Day holiday there was a blog post on the Harvard Business Review site back in June about job crafting, basically changing aspects of your daily activity to make your job more enjoyable.

I thought many of the suggestions cited by the author, Amy Gallo, were particularly applicable to arts organizations. Arts employees are apt to feeling burned out and unfulfilled due to wearing many hats and having a large workload.

But compared to many other types of businesses, employees of arts organizations generally have a fair bit of freedom about how they accomplish tasks. Employing a little creativity in the process isn’t likely to be viewed as disruptive and might even be applauded.

One of the first suggestions Gallo mentions is examining oneself to assess whether the problem might be that you are simply prone to being dissatisfied all the time. Another is to think about ways to change your outlook about your job and perhaps form emotional connections with colleagues and co-workers.

Next is to look at restructuring the job itself:

“Spreitzer and Wrzesniewski suggest using a job crafting exercise to redesign your job to better fit your motives, strengths, and passions. “Some people make radical moves; others make small changes” in how they delegate or schedule their day,…For example, if your most enjoyable task is talking with clients, but you feel buried in paperwork, you might decide to always speak with clients in the morning, so you’re energized to get through the drudge work for the rest of the day. Or you might save talking with your clients until the end of the day as a reward.

If it’s not the work you dislike but the people you work with, you may be able to change that too. Wrzesniewski says she has seen people successfully alter who they interact with on a daily basis to increase job satisfaction. Focus on forging relationships that give you energy, rather than sapping it. Seek out people who can help you do your job better”

In some respects, the fact that just about everyone performs multiple functions in an arts organization can be an asset to job crafting efforts. Lacking concrete job boundaries, people can swap some of their duties a little bit. What is mind numbing to one might provide a refreshing respite to someone else. One thing I have appreciated about the arts jobs I have had has been the ability to get up and away from one task to do essentially all of the things Gallo mentions.

I have been able to attend artist outreaches to see the impact of our work on people in the community. I can talk with colleagues and patrons and develop connections with them. I have been able to get up from my desk to stick my nose in on rehearsals and classes to get some inspiration. Walking around to inspect facilities and equipment or setting my hand to some physical task often provides the distraction my mind needs to find a solution that wasn’t coming sitting in front of my computer.

Would You Know If Your Candy Machine Was Broken?

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As you might imagine, there are a few vending machines scattered around our campus. The one behind our building get cleaned out regularly when we have rental groups with large numbers of kids or our own shows are in tech week.

A number of months ago, whenever I would try to get a granola bar from one end of a row, I got a message to make another selection. A little experimenting showed this was the case for a few of its neighbors. Across campus near the administration building there is a machine in which a whole row returns the make another selection message.

I usually don’t see the guy refilling the machines or when I do, I am generally in a rush. But I finally said something to the guy about a month ago. He thanked me for the report and said he would tell the technician to take a look at it. Then he commented that he had noticed on his computer inventory that those items weren’t selling.

It is people like him that make me really nervous.

Part of the reason I finally said something to him was because I started to realize he had no real investment in his job. The situation had existed for about 6-9 months.

Even if he wasn’t the same person who was tending to the machines when the problem started, there were many signs one existed. Not only was the fact that part of the machine broken conspicuous when they were the only things ever left when students and kids literally emptied the rest of the machine, but the items that weren’t selling were actually noticeably sun-bleached. And of course, he admitted his inventory was telling him that items in both machines never sold.

Wouldn’t you suspect a problem if an entire row of candy bars in a machine never sold, yet the Snickers were moving well in the sites around the campus?

The reason people like him make me nervous is that I start to wonder what problems I am not being told about. The vending machine guy may not be paid well and doesn’t feel like he has any incentive to make sure the machine is producing revenue efficiently. I begin to wonder if people working for me might feel something similar. My concern isn’t so much about revenue maximization as ensuring patrons, renters and others who use the facility don’t have a negative experience.

One of the most difficult tasks businesses offering services seem to have these days is training people to be aware of problems and be proactive about either attending to them or reporting it for further action.

I generally feel like I have a good staff that pays attention to these things. This afternoon my technical director noted that the dust from nearby construction had infiltrated our ticket office and the room needed to be cleaned. But there have been times when I have noticed a glaring problem and wondered why none of those who pass that way regularly, including cleaning staff, students and faculty, attended to it in some manner.

Of course, a lot of the responsibility resides with those who train and supervise. It is incumbent upon them to discuss the values of the organization, mention the types of behavior that is expected and outline the available courses of action.

It is also important that those courses of action be viable and legitimate. If a problem is reported and results are not forthcoming, there is less incentive to report problems in the future. The same if the resources to effect the solution are rarely available or there is a perception that making the extra effort on behalf of the organization is not valued.

If a solution can’t be effected immediately, the timeline for the response should be communicated clearly–e.g., “The leaky toilet will be replaced when the building is closed for the summer, in the mean time, this is the temporary stopgap solution we suggest.”

In the non-profit arts, frequent communication about what sort of environment and experience the organization wishes to provide is important given the large number of volunteers that assist with so many tasks. Even long time volunteers may forget the overall vision because they are not exposed to it as consistently as regular staff and they may volunteer at a number of other places, each with its own vision of things.

Most of all, supervisors and other leadership need to emulate the values they espouse with their own actions. If they aren’t excusing themselves to assist someone who looks lost or bending over to grab a candy wrapper blowing by, it is more difficult to get others to do the same.

Engagement Matters In All Aspects Of Your Life

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I came across a number of articles/blog posts about employment this week and have seen a little bit of common thread through them related to arts and creativity.

The first was the results of a Gallup poll declaring Majority of American Workers Not Engaged in Their Job Those who are middle aged and highly educated are more likely to be disengaged than younger and older workers. Gallup sees this as a problem because:

“Because jobs are more complex and require employees to have higher levels of skills and knowledge, business should be concerned that the more highly educated workers are less engaged. The less engaged employees are with their work and their organization, the more likely they are to leave to an organization.”

The arts may be faced with the challenge of engaging their community, but employers are faced with the same issue in regard to their work force. While it is of small consolation to those trying to generate income for their organizations, this may mean it isn’t that the arts are not engaging of itself but that people are looking for more connected and meaningful experiences for their lives in general and no one is doing a real good job of fulfilling that need at the moment.

This week also saw the results of another survey, this one by the NEA. Their Artists and Arts Workers in the United States looked at the economic activity of artists and creatives in each of the states. This group includes a wide swath of people: architects, writers, designers, photographers, circus performers, show girls, animators, to name a few.

There wasn’t any information on job satisfaction and engagement. I was hoping there would be. There were some interesting observations about clusters of different types of artists. For example, architects and designers are more likely to be foreign born and tend to be the best paid. I was surprised to see that the most common college major for dancers was visual and performing arts. Likewise, I surprised to learn that “In Hawaii, art retailer employment concentrates at 6 times the rate as the national average.”

I offer this as something of an introduction to the third article. On the Economist website, I saw a possible sign of hope for those studying the arts and humanities – The return of artisanal employment.

“Harvard economist Larry Katz had an answer. He reckons that future “good” middle-class jobs will come from the re-emergence of artisans, or highly skilled people in each field. Two examples he mentioned: a contractor who installs beautiful kitchens and a thoughtful, engaging caregiver to the elderly. He reckons the critical thinking skills derived from a liberal arts education give people who do these jobs an edge. The labour market will reward this; the contractor who studied art history or the delightful caregiver with a background in theatre will thrive.”

As much as I am pleased by any suggestion of the value of arts education, I have to confess some initial skepticism at the suggestion that caregivers with theatre degrees will be much in demand. However, considering the size of the aging baby boomer population, it isn’t inconceivable that they will create a demand for much more actively engaged care that will require caregivers with creative skills.

The piece goes on to point out that as employees are no longer able to count on their companies to support them throughout a career, people need to become more self sufficient and dependent on the skills they cultivate for themselves.

“Actually the new way may offer more certainty because people look out for themselves, rather than being vulnerable to changes that impact their employer. The nature of work constantly evolves. The company man was a post-war construct. The self-sufficient artisan is actually more consistent with historical labour markets.”

Circling back to the Gallup poll I first mentioned, the artisanal worker would likely be more highly engaged in what they were doing compared to the current circumstances. I should also note that while I implied otherwise the Economist piece doesn’t connect this trend exclusively to those with creative backgrounds, but those with a high degree of pride in what they do in any field.

This morning on NPR, I heard a story about a doctor who, at 101 is still making the rounds on the labor and delivery floor in Augusta, GA. He has delivered three generations of some families. It made me think of my family doctor who was still making house calls to the elderly in the 1980s.

The possibility that those sort of values may begin to manifest themselves again fills me with some optimism. As much as people might like to return to those days, it isn’t going to happen, but as I said the values can still manifest themselves in contemporary terms. If you have been listening to some of the discussion about Steve Jobs in the wake of his death, apparently one of the values his father instilled in him was building all parts of something well, including the things people will never see. The implication was that he made the same demands of the design of Apple products.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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