with an annual budget of $35,000 in the early 1970 s grows to become an
arts “institution” in its community with a budget of $6.5 million in the early
part of the twenty-first century. From a ModestStart of productions held in
a 1000-seat suburban high school auditorium, the company has grown and
flourished and now performs in a 3500 seat theater downtown.
As the organization
evolves, a board of directors representing the community is added and
new staff members are hired to do what the original founder and one or two
volunteers were doing. The tiny storefront offi ce becomes a larger storefront
offi ce, and when that space is found to be too small, a suite of offi ces is leased
in a high-rise offi ce building near the performing arts center.
Slowly, but inevitably, the small opera company begins to function at a scale
that requires longer term planning and careful analysis of future options. In
other words, the company begins to move from hourly, daily, weekly, and
monthly planning to year-to-year planning often spanning three to fi ve years.
As any organization matures, it begins to take on characteristics that make
it less responsive to change. After all, when a company fi nds something that
works, it continues making more and more of that product. Our hypothetical
opera company, for example, fi nds that a particular pattern of performances
(two grand operas, two operettas, one musical) sells well, and so it repeats
that cycle with different titles every year.
Now suppose that the same community also becomes home to a professional
theater company, a ballet company, and a symphony orchestra. The creation
of each new organization will have an impact on the opera company. It will
fi nd itself competing for arts revenues because audiences simply have more
choices. The theater company, for example, may decide to do two musicals
each season. The change in the cultural environment of the community
requires that the opera company’s decisions about programming now be
made in the context of three other groups struggling for an arts audience.
To better adapt to its new circumstances, a process of continual evaluation
should become the opera company’s normal operating procedures. Asking
questions about where the opera company stands with respect to the six environments
and the other arts groups, and then sifting through the feedback
from its information sources, should become as critical as mounting a season
of high-quality productions.
It is important to remember that the process of continual evaluation is nothing
more than a tool that will only be as effective as the manager and artist
who use it. If the manager is unskilled at using the process, they may
chart a course for the organization that leads to possible ruin. On the other
hand, successful assessment and planning should lead the opera company to
develop at a pace that fi ts well within the parameters of the community and
the six environments.
Organizations discover that a process of monitoring their activities through
ongoing assessment requires the development of techniques for gathering and
analyzing information. Technique, as any performer will tell you, is acquired
through long hours of rehearsal and disciplined practice. Just as painters, illustrators,
dancers, singers, musicians, and actors learn to master their art and craft
through developing techniques for approaching their work, so too can an arts
manager master the art of organizational evaluation and adaptation. Once mastered,
this technique can then be applied to the four functions of management.
For example, to avoid programming duplication or confl icts the opera company
could consult with the other arts organizations on upcoming titles and dates.
Opportunities for collaborative projects may also be explored with the other
producing groups.
Before discussing techniques for exploring individual environments, let’s
examine a general approach to organizational evaluation and assessment. As
we will see, the biggest problem in assessing the opportunities and threats to
an organization is the confl icting information facing a manager.
CONTENT ANALYSIS
An arts manager can start gathering vital information from books, newspapers,
magazines, broadcast media, and the Web. The basic methodology,
which is called content analysis, simply involves identifying key sources for
clues about current practices and possible future trends. Gathering input from
sources external to the organization is complicated by the cyclical patterns of
the media. Topics come and go with incredible speed from the front page, TV
news, and the Web. The key factor in an arts manager’s quest for information
through content analysis is to fi nd enough trustworthy sources for facts and
trends. This is not an easy task, as the sources for information have proliferated
in recent years.
The manager must also differentiate between trends and fads. For example,
shifts in population growth establish trends that ripple through a society for
years: more people, more services, more houses, more apartments, and so
forth. Fads, on the other hand, tend to die out more quickly. Arts organizations
that react to fads sometimes fi nd themselves scheduling programming
that is out of step with what has become the current topical stories. In the
time between the decision to produce a particular program and its actual production,
a new hot issue may arise to take its place.
The arts manager must therefore use caution when trying to sort through their
thinking about what the future may bring. For example, it is not unusual to
fi nd contradictory opinions expressed about a particular topic. One futurist
Web blogger predicts a vision of a world where people will be able to use
their hand-held computer to navigate through thousands of options for entertainment
and information. Another pundit sees us becoming more isolated
from each other as we spend our limited free time exploring these endless
entertainment and information options in ways other than attending arts
events. In this case, they may both be right and the manager is still left to
contemplate the potential impact on his organization.
Where to look for arts content
If nothing else, the development of the World Wide Web has made it possible
to access information much more quickly. Being selective about where
you go for information is probably even more critical than it was before one
could type in a few words and activate a search on to the Web. For example,
online access to sources such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal ,
and Business Week should be an integral part of the information base that a
manager can use to begin building a structure to hold the sources of their
content analysis activities. These are not the only sources for general news of
the world or the trends that are developing in our society, but having content
delivered to you electronically every day has become a requirement for anyone
trying to keep current.
The need to stay current in an arts discipline has also been aided by organizations
better using their Web sites. Early Web sites often were simply electronic
versions of the print content already generated by the organization. As
arts organizations became more familiar with the Web they began to better
exploit the differences and unique features only a Web site could offer. In fact,
the development of the notion of Web 2.0 has become a common part of the
vocabulary of organizations. Arts organizations now have Web sites that can
be very interactive including video clips, podcasts, and blogs.
These Web sites provide managers with a great deal of information about
what other arts organizations are doing when it comes to programming,
pricing, or other activities. For example, fi nding out the names other organizations
use for their various donor levels can be a helpful if you were considering
new titles for your own giving levels.
Of course, the number of sources for information on the Internet is overwhelming.
The words “arts organization trends ” typed into an online search
engine may return hundreds of thousands of potential links. Obviously, narrowing
the Internet search is required, but narrowing it to what? Focusing on
your discipline area as well as seeking information from organizations that
specialize in research can help narrow your sources to a more manageable
level. Wasting an inordinate amount of time doing online research can actually
undermine the effectiveness of a manager. The research is not an end in itself.
Fortunately, an arts manager’s Web research options have improved in recent
years. For example, many arts managers review Web sites such as ArtsJournal.
com on a daily basis for the latest worldwide arts news and ideas. In addition
to dozens of links to stories in the media or even a YouTube video clip, the
site contains Web logs or blogs on dozens of subjects ( www.artsjournal.com ).
The Arts Management Network, a monthly newsletter service, also offers readers
a worldwide perspective on arts and culture topics and publications ( www.
artsmanagement.net). The Americans for the Arts Web site is also an excellent
resource for research ( www.artsusa.org/NAPD/modules/resourceManager/
publicsearch.aspx).
Online research reports published by the NEA, Americans for the Arts, and
sources such as the Pew Charitable Trust and the RAND Corporation can be
of great assistance to a manager trying to stay informed about the possible
trends affecting the arts. Many of these reports are free and easily downloadable.
In addition, major arts consulting fi rms publish online newsletters
with content of interest to an arts manager. For example, fi rms such as AEA
Consulting publish a quarterly newsletter called Platform, and AMS Research &
Planning regularly publishes an electronic magazine titled Insights .
“ The Performing Arts in a New Era ” by the RAND Corporation is one of many
reports that can be of assistance in the arts manger’s search for information.
The fact is no manager has the time to run their arts organization and keep up
on everything published about arts and cultural trends. However, by exploring
the RAND Web site ( www.rand.org/research_areas/arts ), the search for information
may be narrowed.
Collecting and sorting through all of these sources has also been made a little
easier through the Web technology known as news aggregators. An arts manager
can establish his own personalized news service by collecting information
from key sources through either a Web system like Google or Yahoo,
or the information can be gathered through application software such as
Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox. There are applications that can function
as “Podcatchers, ” which enable the capture of podcasts from organizations.
There are other software applications available that will convert text to audio
recordings that the arts manager may listen to later.
No comments:
Post a Comment