Terms and Ideas

I have no idea how I came across it, but I found The Law Portal-Law Primers for the Arts today. As the name implies, the site has links to other sources of information on various laws that apply to the arts. There is also a link to information about how to conduct legal research online.

Some of the topics covered you might expect-free speech, cyberspace law, non-profit law, copyright/fair use, setting up a business, contracts, taxes, visas, etc.

There are some issues covered with which I hadn’t anticipated when I visited the site like those surrounding the use of various materials in the creation of art. The site not only links to articles and laws dealing with this subject but a place to find the Material Safety Data Sheets and OSHA regulations surrounding their use.

Something else I hadn’t expected was an article on what to do if an artist starts performing in your gallery without permission.

The site is a good resource not only for law regarding many of these issues, but also policy discussions on the topics I have mentioned as well as things like network neutrality, privacy and media consolidation.

Last week, Andrew Taylor linked to the draft of Charles Leadbetter’s upcoming book, We-Think. It has taken a week or so, but I have read the entire thing and found much of it thought provoking.

The general theme of the book is that some of the biggest innovations of the recent past have been a result of the cooperative effort of enthusiastic amatuers. Among the examples he cites are familiar like Wikipedia, Craigslist and Linux. But he also reveals that mountain bikes were actually developed by enthusiasts who assembled prototypes from scavenged parts so they could ride off road. Many recent astronomical observations have been made the same way, placing cobbled together telescopes alongside multi-million dollar observatories as contributors to discoveries.

Since I have been on pondering the nature of leadership in the arts of late, one of the dozens of things that caught my eye was the following (my emphasis):

Most important for innovation, leaders will have to be open to challenge and question: they will have to be curious and inquisitive.They cannot afford to be intellectually closed.They will have to be accessible to the people they lead, visible and part of the conversation at work, rather than cut off in the executive suite. Leadership will not longer be the preserve of the people at the top of the organisation: it needs to be exercised in large and small way by many people at all levels. If innovation is going to come from all over the organisation, then so too will leadership.

One of the issues Leadbetter addresses in the book is that so many companies say they want people to come up with creative solutions, but the sentiment is mostly lip service. To be sure, the whole problem of companies not supporting their assertion that they value out of the box thinking is a regular topic of business magazine articles. (And lets not even get into the whole fallacy of the “we’re like family here” claim.)

I have a suspicion though that there is a movement afoot that companies will find themselves unable to oppose. As more and more people find some self-actualization in contributing to these collaborative efforts, their desire to feel similar satisfaction at work could end up subverting the organizational culture of their companies. The subtle proliferation of Casual Fridays will be nothing next to this trend!

As people see that they have something of value to contribute to the team laboring on their out of work interest, they may feel that they have something to contribute at work as well. This may lead to some big conflicts as the employee expects things to be restructured to facilitate collaboration or perhaps their expertise doesn’t quite translate over to the function they serve at the company.

A smart company may look into giving employees the opportunity to fill the knowledge gaps needed to translate existing expertise or explore reorganizing things if there is some potential in the suggestion.

They may not have a choice. Employees already create informal networks to get things done in many companies. Get enough people together who have participated in highly effective self-organized groups in their private lives, and the company’s management may find themselves out of the loop.

I have been covering a lot of arts theory lately so I think it is time to share some practical tips. Here is one for your job search process. If you are trying to do a good job in your search, you will attempt to throughly research an organization before you apply so you can craft a cover letter that connects your experiences with their programs and goals.

You also want to know if the organization and environment is for you. What you especially want to know is what those catch all phrases like “competitive compensation” or “salary commiserate with experience and education” really mean.

Web sites are a great place to start, but for more intensive research, one of the places to consult if the organization is a non-profit is its annual 990 filing. If you go to Guidestar, create a free account and search for the organization, you can get access to these documents. There are other sources of information you can peruse as well if you become a paid subscriber to the service.

Organizations have to report the salaries of their highest paid directors and employees making in excess of $50,000/year. You can find out directly what the person in the job you are seeking made if they are listed there. This information either appears around page 5-6 in section V-A or Part I of Schedule A which tends to be page 9-10.

If the position is not listed there it is either because 1-the person doesn’t make more than $50,000 a year or 2) There are more than five people making more than that. (Companies are only required to list top 5 employees.)

In this case, you have to extrapolate what the salary for your position might be. If you are going for Marketing Director and the Executive Director isn’t even listed as making $50,000, chances are the best you can hope for is low 40s. You might also take a look at page 2 of the 990 where they list total amount paid in salaries. If their website shows 4 employees and the total they paid in salaries is $85,000, chances are the salary for your position won’t be very high.

Other than scoping out possible salary range, one can also check out the health of the organization. The form contains a balance sheet that shows how much the company began and ended the year with, what form their assets and liabilities are in and how much grant and donor support the place enjoys. Schedule A has a 4 year financial history of the organization so you can see what the general trend has been.

Often the filing will also include expenses listed by category so you can get a sense what your budget might be as marketing or technical director based on how much was spent for promotion or construction materials.

Finally, there is often a narrative about their recent activities which can give you additional insight into what the organization is all about.

The caveat is that these filings may not provide a complete or truthful picture of the situation. If large corporations can be evasive and creative with their accounting, so can performing arts organizations.

Also, you need to be aware of what the numbers you are looking at really represent. Seeing a listing of assets in the millions may look impressive if you aren’t looking to see how much of that is land, equipment, buildings, etc versus liquid assets like cash with which salaries and day to day operation costs are covered. The most gorgeous facility with state of the art equipment doesn’t do much good if an organization has poor cash flow management and can’t pay anyone to perform.

One of the exercises Peter Drucker suggests in the “Managing Oneself” article I cited yesterday is feedback analysis suggesting that:

“Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations.”

If you are thinking of making this a practice, you might check out FutureMe.org. It is a website that allows you to send email messages to your future self anywhere between 3 days and 50 years. You could use the service to aid in feedback analysis, self-reflection or just entertain your future self.

There was a piece on NPR this weekend about the FutureMe website where the founder read off some of the public letters submitted to the site. (You can flag your letters as private or public when you submit them.) Some of them were funny and others, the the story of a man who uses the service to cope with his progressing Alzheimer’s, were quite touching.