The Mission Paradox Blog

Human Capital

One of the reasons arts organizations struggle is that they ignore the finite resource that is human capital.

You only have so many people.

They only have so much time to give.

Each tactic, each task you add to somebody's life cuts into their finite resources.

Too often we add to people's workload without considering the impact it could have on them.

Instead of removing a task for every one we add, we just keep piling it on.

Because the people we work with love us and our mission, they keep trying to keep up.

Until they can't.

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Every industry has their culture.

I'm always concerned that for way too many arts organization, a key component of their culture is burnout.

Give people too much.  Work them too hard.  Replace them once they are gone.

Are the arts really so all consuming, so complex that we think it's acceptable to give people who are working 20 hours 40 hours worth of work?

Here's what I want you to consider this weekend:

As a leader, one of your key responsibilities is to take care of your people.

You must guard your human capital.

Sure, you would hope that if people are overwhelmed they would tell you.  But that doesn't always happen.  In fact, it has been my experience that it RARELY happens.

People don't want to let you down.

They don't want to tell you that they are tired.

So it's your responsibility to look out for them.

Sometimes, you have to give them permission to be tired.  Permission to take a break.

The arts are a beautiful, beautiful thing.

But sometimes the price we ask people to pay for it is way too high.

Take care of your people.

 

Noise v. Work

I don't know where you stand on the whole health care debate going on in the US.  But there is a lesson in it for all of us.

Let's look at the public option in health care.  Again, doesn't matter if you are for or against such things.  What is relevant is that the public option was something a lot of people wanted, but a lot of very powerful folks were opposed to.

Because of this, there was a lot noise.

Noise on the blogs.

Noise on the cable news channels.

Every day there was a new report about who was winning and losing.

It was all very interesting, very juicy, very exciting.

But behind the scenes, in much less interesting settings, actual work was happening.

People organizing, people calling their senators and representatives.  Any positive impacts the ultimate health care bill has will come because of that work.

Any skilled activist will tell you that it's this sort of work that makes change happen.

And that same activist will tell you that it's hard to get actual change because work is a bit of drag, but noise is fun as hell.

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As artists, particularly those of us in the performing arts, we are in the change business.

We have perception problems, image problems, we need to fix that.

But all that involves work. 

So the question is, does your organization know the difference between noise and work?

Does it know where the line is between making noise on blogs, Facebook and Twitter and the actual work that makes art part of the fabric of a community?

Or does your organization think noise is work?

Have you fooled yourself into thinking that 3 hours on Facebook and 3 hours on the ground in the community you serve is the same thing?

You kids should date

I was reading through the excellent posts at the Emerging Leader Salon (over at the Americans for the Arts blog) and was struck by this thought:

On one side you have numerous arts administrators who are passionate and looking for opportunities to lead.

On the other side (and in a different spot on the arts blogosphere) are plenty of artists looking to put interesting art in the world.

So why don't the two sides come together more often?

Why don't we see more dynamic pairings of artistic and administrative minds within these emerging organizations?

Is it money?  Artist figuring they can't afford to hire those people, or admins not wanting to work at a particular pay scale?

Is it ego?  Emerging artists who are just finding their way don't want an equally strong opinion on the other side?

I've got no answers, I'm just curious.

 

Amen

Michael Kaiser, of the Kennedy Center, on diversity:

"I have been spending a great deal of time thinking about the issue of diversity in the arts, specifically, the drive to diversify the programming and constituents of all arts organizations.

The more I consider this thorny issue, the less I am convinced that the arts world has worked hard enough to dissect the true costs, benefits and implications of recent diversity efforts.

(snip)

Having spent a great deal of my career working with arts organizations of color, I am as committed as anyone to the diversity of our arts ecology. I do not believe that we can have a truly great artistic community if all segments of our society are not represented well.

But I do not think I believe anymore in forcing Eurocentric arts organizations to do diverse works or to put one minority on a board." (emphasis added)

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If I ever see Kaiser I'm going to kiss him just for saying that . . . and I don't care how he feels about said kiss . . . he deserves it.

I touched on this in my "Gravity" post but Kaiser says it better then I ever could.

Part of embracing diversity is accepting people's choice not to be diverse.

Many people, myself included, believe that for the arts to thrive now you should probably build an organization that attracts a wide range of people.

But if someone doesn't want to do that, for whatever reason, we have to be mature enough as an industry to go "that's ok."

Few things are more painful then watching an organization try to jam an African-American or Latina artist into their lineup in a transparent attempt to be diverse.

It's bad for them, bad for the artist and insulting to audiences of all colors.

They shouldn't have to engage in such measures if they don't want to.

Now let me be clear, I think refusing to embrace the diverse and interesting world we live in is just dumb.

But if they do, it's their choice and we should respect that.

Embrace the ones that want to reflect the world.  Let the other ones work things out on their own.

 

 

 

A Complete Loop

Good marketing is a closed loop.  That means that everything you do with your marketing has to make sense.  Let me give you an example of what could happen if you don't close the loop.

For the next show my day job has, we made the strategic decision to market the show to college students.

I call it a strategic decision because we thought about it first.  I didn't just jump up and say "The kids will love this!".

Instead we looked at all the factors, the play itself, the director, the time of year, etc. and decided that this might be a show that audience would enjoy.

So we started closing the loop and making sure all of our marketing elements made sense in the context of our stated goal . . . reaching students.

Buying print ads in periodicals popular with students:  Check.

Expanding our social media by buying ads on places like Facebook and Metromix:  Check.

I thought the loop was closed.

But it wasn't.  I was forgetting a vital part of the plan because it wasn't immediately obvious.

Price.

Our ticket price for college students was too high.

If I wanted any other part of our plan to work, I had to fix that.

So I spent time fighting the battles I needed to fight in order to give students a reasonable price.

It wasn't until I won that battle that the loop was officially closed and our marketing plan made sense.

When you are marketing you need to check out everything, the price, the promotion, the time of the year . . . everything you can possibly think of.

A closed loop gives you your best shot at marketing success.

A open loop costs you time and money.

Being Persuasive

It isn't about "what to do?"

You can figure that out.

Seriously, almost any challenge related to the business of arts has a couple of solutions you could try.

Most people don't struggle because they don't know what to do.

They struggle because they don't want to do it.

Maybe they is a Board member.

Maybe they is an Artistic Director.

Maybe they . . . is you.

That's why one of the most underappreciated skills to running an organization is the ability to persuade others.

People need to be convinced.

Once you make your case for change in a persuasive manner change is pretty easy.

If you can't make that case, change is impossible.

 

No Difference

The Emerging Leader Salon at the Americans for the Arts blog has been loaded with interesting posts.  I try to hold my own with this post:  There is No Difference.  Click the link to check out that post and what everyone else is saying.

Pain Threshold

Artists who are still emerging in their field have some huge advantages over larger, or more established organizations.

For example, you probably don't have to deal with the "subscriber problem" because you don't have any and don't plan on getting any.

And you don't have to figure out how to "diversify" your organization because diversity is probably already baked into your work.

Those are huge advantages.

Really.

Because for those mid-sized to large institutions they have a huge challenge to deal with:

The pain threshold.

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Most arts organizations were not built for this world.

A world with endless entertainment options.

A world where the audience has been fairly static and unchanging.

A world where the wealth that was previously funneled to them is going to other places.

To adapt to this world is going to require a tremendous amount of pain.

The pain of not knowing exactly what to do next.

The pain of trying and failing.

So the only question left for those organizations is this:

How much pain can you handle?

That's why it's vital that these organizations have leaders, not managers.

Managers were great for the 70's, 80's and 90's.

Managers were good at keeping the ship moving and the lights on.

But they are pretty useless now.

You're not going to manage your way to the Promised Land.

Now you have to lead, as difficult as that can be sometimes.

And you have to prepare your organization for the pain.

 

Linkage

The good folks at the Americans for the Arts blog are doing an Emerging Leader Salon which has comments and observations from the future of the arts field.  It is well worth checking out.

Tony, on the Elaborate Outsourcing of the Color Slot.

The Love of Controversy

In the arts we often talk about the need to make more "controversial" and "risky" artistic choices.

The common wisdom is that if we keep giving our audience boring, or repetitive, choices then we run the risk of losing that audience for good.

There's a lot of truth in that.  But there is another side to consider.

I want to talk a bit about controversy and context.

To do that, I need to tell you a story

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I've been the marketing director for my day job for a little less then 2 years now.

When I first got there, the theatre had just done a production of Thyestes and was headed into a production of Titus Andronicus.

Without boring you with too much detail about the two plays, let's just say that both plays are classics that are rarely produced and difficult to stage.

Oh, and they both feature a tiny bit of cannibalism.

So, by a lot of people's standard, the theatre made a bold, unusally and risky choice to do a play with controversial subject manner.

You know what happens next.

A lot of our audience hated it.

Really hated it.

The emails flew in.  The phone calls.  The people walking out the theatre.

We got all of that.

Now, to be fair, there were absolutely some patrons who appreciated both the productions and our decision to do them.

But a lot more were pissed off.

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At the time, I leaped on my high horse and assumed that the people who complained (or stayed away) were the typical "scared" arts patron that only wanted to see happy and simplistic stories that didn't offend their tiny little worldview.

I was wrong, of course.

But I didn't find out how wrong until later.

After the season ended I start calling subscribers and single ticket buyers and talking to them about next season

(Quick sidebar:  I love how in the arts we spend a whole lot of time talking about our audience and only a little bit of time actually talking to them.)

Anyway, they had a lot to say about Thyestes and Titus.

Sure, a few of them really did want us to do less complex, happier stuff.

But a lot more of them just wanted a bit more context to the whole thing.

Why did we choose those plays?

Why did those particular plays have those acts of violence?

It's not like providing that context would have made the plays any less difficult to stage or watch, but it would have given the audience the tools they needed to understand it and process it better.

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We live in a world where controversial, provocative, edgy stuff is a mouse click away.

We don't lack outlets for stimulation.

But what the arts can provide that a bunch of YouTube clips can't provide is the context/background/history necessary to understand that stuff better.

The lesson I took away from Thyestes and Titus is that you can do whatever the hell you want artistically.

But if you want other people to pay money and sit down and watch it for a few hours then you need to prepare them.

There are a lot of ways you can do that, through advertising, through your website, through public relations.

You just need to do it.