Is It Still Possible To Slow Down And Pay Attention?

A couple years ago, Seth Godin notes what is has probably become abundantly clear to us all– people are looking for abridged versions of pretty much every activity so they can “acquire” an experience without having to spend the time having the experience.

There is a self-perpetuating cycle set up by the media and internet which has generated the demand by creating expectations which in turn forces them to ratchet things up a bit to fulfill the expectations they helped to create.

“A performance artist was on the local public radio station the other day. He didn’t want to talk about the specifics of his show, because giving away the tactics was clearly going to lessen the impact of his work. No matter. The host revealed one surprise after another, outlining the entire show, because, after all, that’s his job–to tell us what we’re going to see so we don’t have to see it ourselves.”

Godin had an interesting observation though about the exception to this.

My full-day live seminars have impact on people partly because I don’t announce the specific agenda or the talking points in advance. It’s live and it’s alive. I have no certainty what’s about to happen, and neither do the others in the room. A morphing, changing commitment by all involved, one that grows over time.

To some degree I think all seminars, not just his, result in people feeling like it has an impact on their lives because the format itself forces people to slow down to the speed of the proceedings. (Though they may be living at a slightly different speed via their tablet computers and phones throughout the seminar.)

Godin makes a similar claim about audiobooks changing people’s lives because they can’t skip ahead and still get the full story.

This dynamic may be why the Serial podcast became such a hit. People had to navigate the story at the speed it was being delivered and no one had any idea what the ending would be.

The performing arts have long touted the uncertainty of live performance as a selling point. You never know if someone is going to flub a line or the first chair violinist will kill off the second chair by bowing too vigorously. (Don’t pretend you haven’t imagined it.)

But it seems that this level of uncertainty just isn’t enough to interest people any more. The arts may need to kick it up a notch.

Ah, but what is the answer? Certainly the endings of many performance pieces are well known or can be discovered. Even if a performance company devoted themselves to offering entirely new works all the time, it wouldn’t be long before the show is summarized and reported.

In some communities it could be more detrimental to have a new work panned on social media by a couple people than to present a well known old warhorse.

More free formatted, choose your own adventure type shows like Sleep No More offer an alternative. Except there has been a problem when people discover the outcomes designed into those shows and try to impose themselves upon the different pathways.

On a smaller scale and performed over a limited time, I imagine that this model could still prove successful for many performance companies.

I obviously don’t know the answer, but I am intrigued by the basic idea Godin presents about how an experience that forces people to travel at the pace it unfolds and evolves can have a significant impact on the participants.

This describes the experience the performing arts have always aspired to and at one time, often achieved– people walking out of a performance feeling moved by the experience. People obviously have that reaction these days too, but at one time it was happening in greater numbers and in response to content rather than spectacle.

Many aspects of those days are certainly behind us and we shouldn’t seek to restore them because they were a product of a different social and cultural environment.

The Serial team may not be able to replicate the success of their first effort, but the fact that so many people became invested in the podcast suggests it is possible that people will slow down and pay attention if you create the right product.

Hey Did You Hear About…

I was really surprised to find my name tucked at the bottom of Barry Hessenius’ 2014’s Top 50 Most Powerful and Influential People in the Nonprofit Arts (USA) In fact, since I read his blog via Feedly and had caught up with my subscriptions on Saturday, I might not have read the post for another week if it weren’t for someone tweeting that Robert Bush from Charlotte’s Arts and Science Council made the list.

It’s not that I don’t think what I produce is worthwhile, it is just that I don’t perceive the old blog here as having that high a profile.

Now, of course, there is pressure to meet the standard set by the company I am listed in.

But Barry’s list dovetails nicely with the subject I intended to address today: cooperation and competition in the arts. Last month, Seth Godin observed that authors don’t compete with each other.

Yet, not only do authors get along, they spend time and energy blurbing each other’s books. Authors don’t try to eliminate others from the shelf, in fact, they seek out the most crowded shelves they can find to place their books. They eagerly pay to read what everyone else is writing…

Can you imagine Tim Cook at Apple giving a generous, positive blurb to an Android phone?

And yet authors do it all the time.

It’s one of the things I’ve always liked best about being a professional writer. The universal recognition that there’s plenty of room for more authors, and that more reading is better than less reading, even if what’s getting read isn’t ours.

It’s not a zero-sum game. It’s an infinite game, one where we each seek to help ideas spread and lives change.

Even though the limits of funding, revenue generation opportunities and audience free time make existence as an arts organization or artist seem like a zero sum game, my experience starting about 15 years or so has been that arts people are generally pretty supportive of the work of colleagues in both word and action. They will tell their friends about interesting events and invite them along when they attend.

That hasn’t always been my experience. About 20 years ago, I feel like there was a lot more “us vs. them, we do the real art in this town” attitude. It has seemed over time the people I have worked with have espoused this view less and less.

Which isn’t to say that people aren’t envious of other organizations’ funding base; think other organization’s programming needs to be more diverse; think the annual awards ceremony for their community is all political; and aren’t befuddled by the more abstract and conceptual extremes of artistic expression.

Godin cites the intense rivalry of Pepsi and Coke as the antithesis of the relationship authors share. I mean, be honest. Haven’t you held your breath a moment when pouring Coke into a cup printed with a Pepsi logo, imagining the cup will melt? Have you ever mixed Pepsi and Coke together, standing at arm’s length expecting a reaction similar to dropping Mentos into a bottle of diet Coke, if not an explosion? That is how apparent the rivalry of the two companies is to the general public.

It would be hard to imagine Pepsi or Coke tweeting about members of other companies showing up on a list of the most influential and powerful people in the beverage industry.

But watch who calls attention to Barry Hessenius’ list over the next couple days. I bet you will find that the majority of those who do, don’t work for the same companies and organizations as those named. There may even be former employers and co-workers celebrating the attention someone has received. As Godin noted, there is a recognition that the success of one enhances the prestige and fortunes of the many.

Hey did you hear that Nina Simon, Laura Zabel and Donna Collins made the list?

Could You Hurry Up And Get Delighted?

Seth Godin had a post today reflecting on a woman he noticed in front row seats at a concert being given by jazz bassist Christian McBride. The woman was fidgeting, checking her watch and fiddling with stuff, entirely disengaged with the concert.

Says Godin:

McBride seemed to be too professional and too experienced to get brought down by her disrespect and disengagement. Here’s what he knew: It wasn’t about him, it wasn’t about the music, it wasn’t a response to what he was creating.
[…]
Do your work, your best work, the work that matters to you. For some people, you can say, “hey, it’s not for you.” That’s okay. If you try to delight the undelightable, you’ve made yourself miserable for no reason.

It’s sort of silly to make yourself miserable, but at least you ought to reserve it for times when you have a good reason.

We all know that ideally, this is the best philosophy to embrace. We know that the arts aren’t for everyone and that you have to allow people the time and space they need in order to eventually find that your work resonates with them. If it is going to resonate at all, that is.

But we don’t live in an ideal world and we receive a lot of messages that our audiences need to get it, and get it quick. This obviously manifests in ticket sales reports and the requirements of just plain old pride in wanting to have seats full of people enjoying themselves.

There is a lot of subtext that our funding depends on it as well. We are asked about the diversity of our audience. What are the numbers and percentages of racial groups, students and seniors?

Some times there is no subtext at all. I am currently working on a final grant report that asks what we did to engage the community to participate; what did or will we do to remove perceptual, practical and experiential barriers; what motivates patron, board members and volunteers; and to provide a first hand account of how the programming has made an impact on an individual or a group.

Faced with questions like that, you have a lot of motivation to start thinking your audience, board and volunteers need to experience something that moves them, and they need to have that moving experience during the current grant period.

Its no wonder we have ushers patrolling the aisles and glaring at people pulling out their iPhones. Not only can’t we afford to have the individual become disengaged from the performance, we need to make sure the glow of the phone isn’t constituting a perceptual or experiential barrier to a dozen other people around them. These are all black marks against us that our funders expect us to address.

Now as a practical matter, foundations aren’t infiltrating mystery shoppers into our audiences to make sure we are properly identifying these problems and proposing solutions in our final reports. Their questions are meant to inspire some self-examination in grant recipients about procedures and operations.

When heckling at a performance is unchallenged by house staff and results in the cancellation of the run as recently occurred in California, it signals the need for a review of procedures in event spaces across the country.

Questions like these on a grant report indicate the type of activity and outcomes that are valued in grant recipients. These expectations are somewhat in conflict with the long view non-profit arts organizations are enjoined to embrace in respect to cultivating their audiences.

When Christian McBride plays The Blue Note, the venue worries about whether they sold enough tickets, food and alcohol to cover costs. The Blue Note certainly wants all the patrons to have a good time and come back again, but they don’t concern themselves too much with whether people have attained a new level of personal growth.

When McBride plays at a non-profit arts center’s jazz series, the organization worries about all those things The Blue Note worries about, but also has to concern themselves about recognizing potential barriers to entry, the diversity of the audience and whether they have been inspired.

It can be something of a psychic burden to try to balance all the requirements of a non-profit existence. You have to be cool, put your best work out there and not worry about delighting the undelightable.

But at the same time, you wonder how you have failed that person. What barriers have you been complicit in maintaining? Is she really undelightable, or is that a convenient way for writing her off when you should be patient and try harder? How can you change your programming and outreach efforts so she feels engaged and included?

Price and Value

Seth Godin recently made a post that provides a good summary of how value influences the way consumers view price.

“It’s too expensive,” almost never means, “there isn’t enough money if I think it’s worth it.”

Social entrepreneurs are often chagrined to discover that low-income communities around the world that said their innovation was, “too expensive” figured out how to find the money to buy a cell phone instead. Even at the bottom of the pyramid, many people find a way to pay for the things they value.

[…]

Often, it actually means, “it’s not worth it.” This is a totally different analysis, of course. Lots of things aren’t worth it, at least to you, right now. I think it’s safe to assume that when you hear a potential customer say, “it’s too expensive,” what you’re really hearing is something quite specific.

There is a sentiment commonly expressed around arts organizations, especially ones that are trying to attract college age attendees, that college students who say a ticket is too expensive will generally spend twice as much on beer on the same Saturday night. While a performance and a beer are transitory experiences, everyone knows beer is more transitory of the two. (The old saying, you don’t buy it, you rent it.) But, of course, it is the social environment that accompanies the beer that people value.

More from Godin:

Culturally, we create boundaries for what something is worth. A pomegranate juice on the streets of Istanbul costs a dollar, and it’s delicious. The same juice in New York would be seen as a bargain for five times as much money. Clearly, we’re not discussing the ability to pay nor are we considering the absolute value of a glass of juice. No, it’s about our expectation of what people like us pay for something like that.

Start with a tribe or community that in fact does value what you do. And then do an ever better job of explaining and storytelling, increasing the perceived value instead of lowering the price. (Even better, actually increase the value delivered). When you don’t need everyone to buy what you sell, “it’s too expensive” from some is actually a useful reminder that you’ve priced this appropriately for the rest of your audience.

Over time, as influencers within a tribe embrace the higher value (and higher price) then the culture starts to change. When people like us start to pay more for something like that, it becomes natural (and even urgent) for us to pay for it too.

That bit I bolded caught my eye. In theory the arts already deal with a tribe or community that does value what it does. That tribe tends to be affluent and influential, but we all know the common refrain is that these people are dying off. Whatever influence they have, it isn’t continuing to motivate too many others.

I am not sure the answer is just better storytelling and waiting for influencers to help shift the culture. I think there has to be a corresponding shift in product features to something consumers value as well.

This isn’t just about the arts. In the cell phone example Godin uses, the phone’s value in the developing world goes beyond just being able to talk to other people. It allows people to gather information about crop prices and choose which market to travel to and acts as a medium for currency exchange.

Without these benefits, I don’t imagine as many people in the developing world would own phones as do today. They are buying Nokia phones with long battery life rather than iPhones because electricity sources are so scarce.

In terms of the arts, I have no doubt that it is entirely possible to avoid compromising on price. I likewise believe that there are many groups out there offering what people want, but who suffer from lack of good storytelling.

Yet just as phone companies know they will sell more Nokia phones in Kenya than Apple and Samsung phones, even though those two companies are duking it out for domination in the rest of the world, very few arts organizations are going to be exempt from aligning their “product features” to suit local conditions.