Fezzik Was Right!

In the movie, The Princess Bride, the character Fezzik talks about how fighting one man is different than fighting a group. (It is right around 1:35) In fact, according to the powerful giant, it can be tougher to fight one person than a group.

It a lesson I relearned this past week when we were hosting a one person show. When we have a group of people visit to perform, even if they number as small as three, they are generally mutually reliant and supporting. They work out their schedule among each other and get themselves where they are going. With a single person, the dynamic changes and the relationship with them can become more intimate.

I had approached last week thinking that the group before had presented little difficulty and how much less a problem an individual would be. In some respects it was, but in many other aspects the performer’s visit consumed much more of my time and attention than most groups do.

For example, groups generally take their meals together be it catered in house or driving to a nearby restaurant. Smaller groups might invite staff and crew to take meals with them but with an individual, the opportunity presents itself more often and feels natural. Last week I ended up eating dinner out more times than I ever have since moving here. I was late or missed events I frequent weekly as a result.

While I regularly escort performers to their hotel after meeting them at the airport, there are times I don’t if they feel comfortable driving themselves. Last week I waited around 4 hours to escort him while he unpacked and set up at the theatre. Sure I would have rather gone home, but he was in a strange city, it was raining and while it is easy to get to the hotel, he didn’t have anyone to help him navigate.

Working with an individual performer doesn’t always present challenges. The dinner conversation was great. In fact, I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to take him around to a more diverse group of restaurants. Last year I was driving a single performer to the theatre to rehearse and took a 20 minute detour to a scenic overlook because the she kept admiring how beautiful it was and I knew she would appreciate the view. These usually aren’t options that even enter consideration with groups. One’s relationship with individuals is more likely to feel like a guest and host or even familial interaction.

In some situations, dealing with a single person is less difficult if they relax their expectations. For most of the week we had our hospitality set up moved from our green room to the scene shop because it was less trouble to grab water, coffee, cookies and fruit from the stage. Generally performers are less keen about getting their coffee next to a table saw.

When we talk about customer service, speak of treating every individual as if they are the most important person. But if this type of experience has reminded me of anything, it is that the standard of care rendered to people has to be anything but. People in groups often get a lot of what they need from their companions. Dealing with individuals sometimes thrusts the role of a companion upon you by default.

Part of the point I am trying to make isn’t so much about having a separate way of dealing with a single person at the box office versus a group that comes to buy their tickets as it is an attempt to create a metaphor about being mindful of the dynamic that group size dictates. Our audience had as different a relationship with the single performer as I did. It may seem self-evident in your mind that the experience would be different, but there are assumptions about what will happen that we automatically project on our experience based on past experience that simply are not valid. In such cases, operating as business as usual may yield disappointing results for audience, artist and staff.

Management Students Got Skills. You Better Recognize That Fact

One of the things I hate most about attending conferences is that the sessions I want to see most seem to always be scheduled at the same time. One of the tough choices I made was between a session on Emerging Leaders and one on the career opportunities for Arts Management program graduates. I attended the latter hoping to purchase the audio of the other session only to discover it wasn’t recorded due to a mix up about what hotel it was occurring at.

The session on career opportunities for arts managers was lead by Andrew Taylor of the Bolz School, Irene Conley, Chair of Performing Arts Management at the Hartt School and a gentleman whose name I neglected to note.

The discussion wasn’t so much about the job market that will greet arts managers as it was about the skillsets arts managers will need to possess.

Conley mentioned the importance of problem solving, resourcefulness, critical thinking skills and good communication skills. One of the things she requires her students to do is make four new contacts each week as a networking exercise forcing them to do enough background research on people that they can answer questions about each person.

As part of the classroom experience, she emphasizes the process of group work as well as the end product. She has the students evaluate what they did as a member of the team since that is the dynamic they need to operate within in a job environment.

She works to make sure the internship opportunities her students avail themselves of are meaningful and not just providing advanced knowledge in copier machines.

Andrew Taylor took a slightly different approach in talking about what skills managers should have. His contention is that arts organizations look for a one to one correlation between a job description and the skillset a person has. He noted that corporate recruiters know what type of person they are looking for, the skills that will translate to their industry and assume the person can acquire the specific knowledge they need on the job.

Arts organizations don’t know what they want, write up an extensive wish list and then try to find someone who has those exact skills. If I understood Taylor’s explanation correctly, finding an exact fit is not only difficult, it also contributes to a view of the organization that is limiting. The idea that the activities of development are exclusive of marketing which are exclusive of sales is the type of thinking that stunts progress. A person needs skills and understanding that encompass all these areas regardless of which one they are being hired for.

As an illustration, Taylor mentions that an associate was looking for someone to run the box office of a large performing arts center. After some dissatisfaction with candidates from the arts field, he ended up hiring a person who had run a Sears phone order center because they had a better sense of how to manage offering service on that scale.

Taylor says he trains his students to essentially take control of interviews and use answers that create a bridge between what the organization is looking for and the skills the student possess to show how their experience translates.

I made the comment that I thought another skill set people needed was the ability to talk about and advocate for the arts. I mentioned the need to communicate the value of the arts at all ends of the spectrum– advocating to governments and grant makers, (noting that recent research shows that the arts may not be best served by citing economic value of the arts), all the way down to press releases and speaking to individuals.

The part of the session that got me thinking the most though was the idea that arts organizations don’t know what they are looking for when they hire. I currently have my hands tied in that regard since I work for a state institution that pretty much codifies how good a candidate for a position is based on number of years experience and education. I have clearly seen more effective people paid less because their experience and education were less than others.

I imagine there will come a day when I can’t hide behind the strictures of a bureaucracy when it comes to determining who is best suited for a job so I have already started pondering what the skills are that candidates for arts jobs should possess. How should a job description be written to attract people with these skills and knowledge? What appears in the descriptions today that don’t reflect what we really need/should be seeking?

What I think I need to do is ask Andrew Taylor if he has come across a situation where the description, interview and actual position all correspond appropriately. I fear his answer will be that such a situation doesn’t exist within the arts world.

Arts Leaders Ain’t Learnin’ Too Good

I have just returned from the Arts Presenters Conference. I must have tried to do too much in too little time because I am fighting off a cold right now. I did want to make a post on one of the sessions I attended because some of the information communicated was simply fascinating.

In the Learning to Lead session The Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor’s graduate students presented the results of their research about what resources arts managers used to learn and solve problems. When they finished, I got up and asked a question about the results of their survey. They found that 90% of people read reports, books, etc at least once a year. I asked what end of the spectrum the majority of responses fell since last year Neill Archer Roan had presented findings at the APAP conference that said that learning was not valued in the presenting field.

Since Neill’s research was based on interviews and were anecdotal, I wasn’t sure if his results were any more scientifically based than the grad student’s results which was based on a self-selected group that filled out an online survey. I also stated some curiosity about whether people who were more comfortable with online surveys might be reading more reports via that medium. The students who responded said the reading that was taking place were skewed toward the less frequent.

I hadn’t known that Neill was sitting a couple rows behind me and soon he got up to address the issue of learning not being valued. I was so amazed by what he had to say, I bought the MP3 file of the session so that I could quote him accurately.

Speaking of the work the Roan Group does, he said,

“We believe there is a cultural bias against learning in this field and in the non-profit field as a whole. We believe that that exists for several reasons. One is cultural another is really biological. There are a lot of studies about satisfaction and how we are actually wired…Someone who is rationally satisfied behaves no differently than someone who is rationally dissatisfied. People behave differently when they are emotionally satisfied…the pathways back to learning are different where there is emotional satisfaction…I think in our field and in the performing arts, there is so much emotional satisfaction…that is actually a barrier to our need to understand and respond. (my emphasis)

The idea that emotional satisfaction, which is probably what allows people in the arts to tolerate low pay and long hours, is actually inhibiting progress just sort of blew my mind.

He goes on to say that in the arts there isn’t a practice of looking back and evaluating a situation for what works and didn’t work and then documenting the findings. Without the documentation, the arts rely on tacit knowledge carried in individuals. While tacit knowledge is superior to documented knowledge, if you have high turnover, your organization doesn’t learn.

The session was about two hours long so I imagine there will be other insights I will derive from them as I review the file.

How Do Leaders Learn

Next week I will attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in NY. Unlike last year where I was there for a week attending the conference and Emerging Leadership Institute, this year I am in and out very quickly in a weekend. I cringe at the thought of all that time on the plane. Once I get there, I know I will wonder why I ever resisted the idea because I get so much out of the experience. I enjoy the opportunity to see showcases, talk to artists and learn about new trends and philosophies in performing arts.

One of my biggest motivations for attending this year is to continue what was started last year in having Emerging Leadership alumni involved at the conference and advance an agenda. We have meetings and social gatherings planned this year. We were going to sponsor an issues session until we learned that Andrew Taylor’s students at the Bolz Center were going to be presenting findings from a study that was generally aligned with our purpose.

We also encouraging our membership (and anyone else interested in the topic) to attend the session at the conference, Learning to Lead: Where And How to Arts Professionals Extend Their Knowledge and Advance Their Craft. Andrew has a post about it on his blog today. Even if you aren’t going to attend, if you are an arts leader, please consider filling out the 15 question survey that will inform the discussion and findings of the session.

The survey asks questions about where one goes looking for knowledge and help in solving problems. Though it could probably comprise an entire research session of its own, I would have liked to see some questions asking people to measure the value of the guidance/help they receive. From conversations I have had over the last year, I suspect a good many people would comment that they weren’t getting the guidance they needed or perhaps were having a hard time identifying a trustworthy person with whom to discuss their problems.

And though it wouldn’t be scientific and might have been a little more time consuming, it would have been interesting if they asked where people got their initial training in the arts. I am just curious how many people have formal education and how many were mentored and learned on the job.

In any case, while Andrew will undoubtedly have an entry discussing the session, I intend to do one as well to present my perspective. I usually try to avoid duplicating the subject of his posts since I assume we share a lot of readers. But I am making a very long flights in very short time. I am gonna earn the right to bloviate a little. I am sure my approach will differ from Taylor’s to some extent any way.