For those who have been eagerly awaiting a post on the implications of the chicken dance at weddings on the greater culture as a whole, I am sorry to disappoint you, I didn't gain any insights while at my sister's wedding. I don't even think they played the chicken dance, much to my relief.
I did have a brief conversation with my other sister's mother-in-law who founded a social service non-profit and is approaching retirement in the next 18 months. I asked her about the succession planning she was doing since that has been on my mind of late. Pretty much every element mentioned in the reports from the Myer Foundation and Building Movement held true. It was interesting to actually speak to someone about these trends having read so much about them.
In her organization, the budget was about $200,000 too small to necessitate having the type of person on staff who would be groomed to take over. None of the other people in senior management positions want to take over so her board will have to look outside to replace her. She also commented that since most people only stay with an organization 5-7 years, there hadn't been a lot of opportunity to cultivate someone to succeed her. I was grateful to learn that in general, she didn't really question the commitment of emerging leaders in her field to the work.
She had taken a seminar on Founders Syndrome which she had found quite valuable. She talked about having that problem with her board when many of the original members left. (The organization is going on 25 years old now.) She admits that her agency will probably have to deal with at least an off-shoot of this problem when she leaves. Some of the staff have said they are too old to get used to working with a new boss and will leave when she retires. While this will leave one less person who will resist the inevitable change a new executive director will bring, it also removes some of the institutional memory from the agency.
As with many of those in the aforementioned reports, she wonders if she can afford to retire as planned on what she has saved given the recent changes in the economy.
I don't often get the opportunity to speak with people in the non-profit field outside of the arts at any length so it was interesting to hear so much of what I had read verified. When I read reports, I often forget that the trends being reported are cumulative of many respondents and that every element doesn't apply to every organization out there. While my sister's mother-in-law faced many of the challenges outlined in the reports I have read, her agency hasn't experienced them all. Those they have encountered haven't been as big a cause of concern.
Via the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required, I believe) is a story about a study of M.B.A. student perceptions that the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education conducted. Some of the results reveal some attitudes that non-profits, especially those focussed on social and environmental issues, might find heartening.
From the Chronicle article,
"Students seem to be saying that they really want to have careers with a positive impact on society, but they're feeling like they can't do that in mainstream business," said Nancy McGaw, deputy director of the institute's Business and Society Program. "There's a disconnect there."
Among those surveyed, "Only half of the 2007 respondents think that their personal integrity figures largely in corporate recruiters’ evaluation of them as a potential employee." About 80% believe they will be faced with a situation that would challenge their morals and values and about 90% said they expected they would look for work elsewhere if they encountered that situation. Less than half said they would voice their objections.
This report might be a wake up call for non-profits to become more involved in recruiting M.B.As. They can provide graduates with a situation that embraced their values, provided an opportunity to make a positive impact and made them feel they could speak up rather than quit when faced with moral quandaries. I had taken a little poke at a CareerBuilder.com article a couple weeks ago for implying the grass might be greener in non-profits. One of the motivations CareerBuilder mentioned that I didn't necessary find fault with was achieving ends by questionable means. Given that this is something MBAs imagine they would quit in order to avoid confronting, this could be one of the stronger selling points for non-profits.
Though the students are just as concerned about renumeration and work-life balance as anyone.
That factor will always need to be addressed.
I am making an assumption indirectly that non-profits are not actively recruiting MBAs given the fact that the students don't feel that sociopolitical knowledge is valued by recruiters and that good social and environmental practices aren't anything more than good public relations opportunities rather than integral to the value of the company and bottom line. Reading the survey results, much of this appears to be due to the way the training in their program is conducted. So it may take some lobbying of MBA programs to effect some changes in addition to showing up on career day.
I was idly perusing a national arts job site this weekend and came across a board member solicitation for a small theatre in a major city. I thought that was interesting because an organization usually forms a nominating committee and seeks to balance the board in terms of what people might bring to short and long range plans. Though BoardSource counsels against indiscriminate recruitment, I imagined while perhaps inexperienced, they were being a little adventuresome and casting a wide net. They specified a love for theatre and preferred that the members not be theatre professionals.
Then I noticed something that made me a little wary. The cover letters and resumes were all going to the artistic director. It is something of a conflict of interest to have the people responsible for overseeing the finances and operations chosen by the person whose activities will be monitored. Adding to my unease was a check of their organization's website and 990 filings on Guidestar which revealed of the five board members, three were employees. The artistic director, managing director and production person all sit on the board. This isn't a new company that just formed and hasn't had a chance to recruit outside the handful of friends who started the venture. The organization is almost 9 years old and if their claims are true, has garnered enough critical acclaim to attract interest in serving from a decent number of people.
I checked the non-profit corporation laws for the state in which the organization is located and there is no law against such a heavy staff representation on a board. In fact, it appears only California makes such a prohibition. Don't quote me though. This type of mix is generally advised against. This exchange on Idealist.org gives a sense of some of the factors to weigh.
It initially appeared to me as if the artistic director may be trying to manipulate the selection process in order to surround himself with people who will help raise money and not challenge him. My suspicions ran so high that I was ready to name names in the post and encourage people to stay far away. However, I also considered that maybe someone advised them that their current board set up looks suspicious and they should make an effort to expand board membership if they want to attract more serious funding.
Which is not to say that next year the artistic director won't have surrounded himself with 10 yes men and women. There were some clues in the 990 and organization website that I pursued with a little Googling thatl makes me wonder how independent the other board members are. The other endeavors with which the board members have been involved makes me skeptical of any suggestion that they didn't know any better about the composition of their board.
I also have to admit there are many possible variable of which I am not aware that could explain this situation so I am not going to be outing them here. On the other hand, I am quite pleased with how easy it was for me to research the organization, the board members and the specific laws of their state dealing with non-profit boards. It is very encouraging to see the increasing ease with which research can be conducted.
Following a link from an entry on the Non-profiteer, I arrived at a site with a report about Non-profit leadership. The summary of the study was so similar to the Building Movement report I cited last month, I initially thought it was the same one mirrored by a partner in that 2004 study.
Come to find out this study, Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out is brand spanking new having just come out this year to report a survey of 5756 members of members of Idealist.org and constituents of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. They also held six focus groups across the country with 55 non-profit staffers who had never been executive directors.
This survey included a much larger sample size than Building Movement's (though they certainly acknowledge BM) but generally gets the same responses. People feel they need to balance their work and personal lives, they aren't terribly keen on becoming executive directors, don't feel they are being mentored or have many professional development opportunities. There are some nice charts graphs and charts on the report home page, (on the Myer Foundation website by the way), that summarize many of the results. Top two of five reasons not to become Executive Director-Don't want Fundraising responsibilities and Would Have to Sacrifice Work-Life Balance.
There were two results that I hadn't seen before that I thought were interesting. First is that 10% more people of color were desired to become executive director than whites and people of lower income were wanted to become executive director than people from middle and upper class backgrounds. I should note that a large number of those belonging to the surveyed organizations are associated with social service/justice, health services, environmental protection/justice organizations rather than specifically with the arts.
The second finding I found interesting was that people of color and women felt they needed more education and training time before becoming executive director than white men who tended to feel they were ready now. The surveyors attribute this more to the fact that more men than women and people of color hold senior positions and are being groomed to be executive director in twice the number. They believed women and people of color felt the need to be over-educated and burgeoning with experience in reaction to this.
I should point out the survey also notes that a large portion of their sample were unemployed (11%) or in the first year (43%) of their career. I do feel women and people of color need better representation, but I don't want my entry to serve as fodder for protest when the numbers are so slanted. I think this mix is fine for reporting aspirations but not necessarily for reporting the reality of a situation. For example, only 4% of those surveyed said they were being groomed to be executive director. However in a 2006 survey of executive directors conducted by the same group, "52% of executive directors reported actively developing one or more people on their staffs to be executive directors someday." The relative lack of experience in this sample needs to be taken into account when looking at some of these results.
One thing I liked about the Myer Foundation website is the resource page. I will admit to only taking a cursory glance at a few of the blogs and other resources but I liked what I saw. For example, this entry on The Bamboo Project Blog that suggests using a webcam, computer and internet calling services like Skype to turn Baby Boomers retirees into long distance mentors and recording the sessions to create a mentoring library. (The use of which will require the cultivation of learning as a value among non-profit leaders, of course.)
There are also a number of links about retirement planning. The lack of which emerged as a motivating factor on many fronts in both this survey and the one Building Movement did a few years ago.
Came across a link to the results of a listening tour Building Movement did among non-profit leaders back in 2004. The results of the conversations they recorded are very similar to the observations made by Ben Cameron in his address to the Southern Arts Federation this Fall. (Perhaps his speech was based on Building Movement's study?)
The conversations Building Movement (BM) recorded were mainly among leaders of social service agencies, but as implied, had many common elements. Both noted that the younger generation is interested in balancing their lives rather than devoting so much of themselves to the job as their predecessors have done. Both also discuss the eagerness of the younger generation to participate in substantive decision making and responsibilities.
The BM conversations revealed that members of Generation X feel a great deal of pressure caught between an older generation which isn't retiring and a younger generation coming into their own looking to become involved and effect change. Whereas the older generation has remained in the same positions for years, the younger ones move often looking for more promising opportunities and often contemplating leaving the field. This causes organizations to have people of a great deal of experience at a certain level and then a sharp decline just below. This can have grave implications for those places that haven't engaged seriously in succession planning.
Part of the problem, Building Movement notes, is there is no structure currently that provides these leaders with a place to go or even transition to other than retirement. They are healthy enough to continue working but there are no opportunities available to them that would result in a net increase of openings for younger people. Since they did not open a retirement account in their 20s and 30s and with Social Security and health care iffy propositions, retirement may not be a very attractive option.
The lack of mentors to help cultivate the necessarily skills was a big concern. One of the few people who did have a mentor of sorts praised the mentor's ability and willingness to point out that "new" ideas were actually old ones that have been revisited a number of times which prevented him from trying to reinvent the wheel. Another problem that was mentioned was that the older generation had all these relationships with funders that they weren't passing on to the younger generation. Because they had not had extensive interactions with long term funders, when the younger leaders took over they were "perceived as less seasoned." This lack of contact could have severe consequences for many organizations.
The most surprising result of the conversations for me was the reluctance to become executive director many of the younger generation had. I figured that position was the logical goal for those chomping at the bit for their predecessors to retire. This reticence stems back to the desire for a balanced life. The executive director position was seen as thankless and too heavy a burden to shoulder to still have time for one's family. I don't know if this sentiment is carried over to the arts. Having family members who have worked for social service non-profits, I can see the truth of this for that sector. Though I imagine they would say the same thing for the performing arts from the perspective of an outsider.
Building Movement has a monograph that integrates the findings of the talking sessions with research to make suggestions for cultivating new leaders and planning for the transition of existing leaders in a healthy manner. I haven't had a chance to look at it at any length but since I often harp on succession planning, it would be a smart thing for me to cover it here in a future entry.
At a time when arts organizations are merging the executive and artistic director position into one, either as a cost saving measure or because they can't identify suitable candidates to fill vacant roles,** comes praise of dual leadership as a model for non-profits in general to emulate.
Says the Nonprofiteer:
"...the Nonprofiteer wonders why all nonprofits don't adopt the bifurcated leadership model common in the arts: an Artistic Director to lead program, a Managing Director to handle resource acquisition and allocation.
Wouldn't social service agencies operate better with someone at the helm whose expertise was effective service to clients and someone at the rudder whose expertise was squeezing every dime til it shrieked? These are not identical skills--they're not even complementary--and for charities to insist on combining them into a unitary Executive Director means one part of what they need done will almost inevitably be done badly."
I don't know if the Non-Profiteer is suggesting two people in equal roles necessarily. I am familiar with the structure of a number of non-profit social service organizations and short of a couple very large entities, I can think of none where there was a programs person with the scope of authority and responsibility comparable to an artistic director. Any change may not require an equitable relationship as much as less a lopsided one between the two areas.
What is interesting to me is that the Nonprofiteer's comments have made me re-evaluate the dual leadership issue. Deciding to consolidate positions for economic reasons or because the board can't/doesn't want to find a replacement suggested problems about the organizations other than the implications of a changed leadership dynamic. It is certainly easy to see how both roles can get the short shrift with satisfaction for neither when they are invested in one person. My thoughts upon reading that the positions were being consolidated were generally that it was too bad for that company rather than the decision was bad for the performing arts world as a whole other than considering it an example of poor decision making. Some times it takes the observation of an outsider to make you reevaluate if something is valuable enough to fight to keep.
(**I wanted to cite the article I recently read supporting this fact in but for the life of me, I can't find it.)
In her column in this month's American Theatre, Theatre Communications group Executive Director, Teresa Eyring talks about the recognizing the growing number of Professional Amateurs in our society. Now this topic is nothing new. I have posted on the subject of Pro Ams. Andrew Taylor has done so on a number of occasions. His students did a research project on the topic. Charles Leadbetter and Paul Miller who coined the Pro Am term, wrote a book on the subject.
What makes Teresa Eyring's comments special is that she leads a major service organization and therefore is in a position to exert greater influence when she says it is worthwhile to heed a trend. (Though she was certainly influenced by all this discussion of Pro Ams.) What she has to say hasn't impacted my thoughts about Pro Ams in any direction. But it is good to see an arts leader like her encouraging people to explore the possibilities.
So if the words of all the aforementioned folks haven't gotten you to ponder the concept, maybe Eyring's will. She acknowledges that a transition that embraces Pro Ams can be difficult.
"If these shifts are irreversible and true, the question for professional arts organizations is how most effectively to embrace and respect audiences and potential audiences as they self-identify as creators, with a capacity for meaningful involvement in the artistic process that has often been closely held by professional theatre artists and organizations."...
"...For theatres and theatre artists, this trend presents questions that are both practical and semantic, such as: What do we do with the word “professional”? In the 20th-century arts world, this word has often been used to instruct the public, critics and funders to expect an experience qualitatively superior to that which is non-professional or amateur...""...However, with the growth of a pro-am culture that goes beyond art into science, technology and other realms, the power of a professionals-only province continues to fade—or at the very least, the nomenclature is less effective and meaningful. Some of the teeth-gnashing over this development has to do with how the public will know the difference between what is excellent creative expression and what is merely average..."
"...if theatres can find ways to tap into the growing interest among individuals in participating in the actual creation of art and the arts experience, perhaps we can move this trend to a tipping point of sorts, bringing theatre into a new period of cultural ferocity and ascendancy."
Taking a gander over at the TED website to see what talks have been released since last I visited. Apropos to yesterday's entry is this talk from Howard Rheingold about collaboration and cooperation. It is a short piece, only 20 minutes, but if you don't have time to listen to the whole thing, move the handle down to the Cooperate=Wealth section of the index that pops up when you move the cursor across the bottom of the video.
He addresses the idea that if survival is all about competition, there wouldn't be so many humans. At some point, humans began to cooperate and that helped them thrive. The benefits of cooperation are generally understood, even across cultural lines. He speaks of how players of the ultimatum game seem to innately know that proposing a 50/50 split offers the most likely path of greatest reward. (At least among Americans, Europeans and Japanese. Rheingold notes that slash and burn folks in the Amazon, pastoral herders in Central Asia and other countries proved to have different sense of fairness when playing the game.)
He also briefly addresses the Tragedy of the Commons, the idea that unless there is a way to restrain overuse, humans will exhaust a commonly held resource. He cites a counter study that found that people are only captives of what is essentially a multi-player prisoner's dilemma if they view themselves as such. Those who are able to successfully break out do so by "creating institutions for collective action" with common design principles.
As his talk draws to a close, he cites the example of how some of the most cutthroat competitive corporations like IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems are open sourcing their software and some of their patents to be worked on by the commons. He mentions that Eli Lilly has "created a market for solutions for pharmaceutical problems." Though he doesn't mention it, I assume that is also an open source type effort. He also cites Toyota which works to make their suppliers more effective even though it means increasing supply efficiency for Toyota's competitors. EBay has solved the prisoner's dilemma by introducing a mechanism by which two people who can't necessarily trust each other can make an exchange. He says they are doing it because they have realized that a certain degree of cooperation is beneficial for the bottom line.
So my obvious question is, if multinational corporations can extend a little trust to cooperate, can't arts entities from the service organizations down to the smallest theatre/dance/music/visual art company find a way to do it as well? While large organizations might be most immediately influential by providing an example for many others to emulate, technology allows the successes of smaller to be disseminated as they couldn't even a handful of years ago.
My thanks to David Dombrowsky of the Center for Arts Management and Technology at Carnegie Mellon who commented on a recent entry. In response to my entry on how well things were developing for the Emerging Leadership Institute, he suggested that instead of independently inventing the wheel arts organizations like APAP, Americans for the Arts and the Southern Arts Federation which all have leadership programs combine their efforts to offer greater opportunities for learning and conversation.
He isn't the first to express this sentiment. Andrew Taylor said the same thing two years ago when I did an entry on Southern Arts Federation's National Arts Leadership Institute. As Andrew noted, there are many such programs throughout the country. I listed a sampling here.
Someone in my Emerging Leaders meeting at APAP suggested that it might be logical and beneficial to open a channel of communication with the American for the Arts Emerging Leaders program alumni.
I had a brief email exchange with David about causes and solutions. We generally both agreed a little bit of ego and territoriality came into play. As Andrew Taylor noted in his comment, we are often enjoined to partner and collaborate by these service organizations but they may not be providing a good example for their constituents.
One thing I mentioned to David was that change in outlook might have to come at the grassroots level and technology made such things possible where it hadn't been before. I will make no promises or idealistic statements about success at this juncture, but I am going to talk to some people and do some research and see what develops. Given that I don't know exactly what success will look like other than people engaging in effective communication and exchange of ideas, I can't be more committal about what my plans are. If people have any suggestions about who to speak with or want to get involved in organizing an effort, as nebulous as it might be at this point, drop me an email.