Michael Kaiser, the “Turnaround” King of the arts is out to create a nationwide movement. For those who aren’t familiar with Kaiser’s put the money in art and marketing approach, I suggest reading his recent book The Art of the Turnaround. His theory is simple. Spend on the art and marketing. Take artistic risks even in bleak times – even more so in bleak times. It is the art that will save the organization not gutting the institution. The lynchpin of the entire philosophy is that the arts have an issue with income generation. I am drilling down here – it should be noted that the Kaiser lists 10 rules that are required that address things like mission, alignment, and most importantly a leader – he lists these among key ingredients for a turnaround. All three are important but the last can not be underplayed so read the book – it is a quick read – at least read the first chapter for the 10 rules.
A few months back Kaiser and his team at the Kennedy Center announced a peer counseling initiative Arts in Crisis. The program seems to have had a lot of volunteer mentors and not enough volunteer clients so it is hitting the road according to the New York Times.
As part of the program, Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative, which offers free emergency planning assistance to organizations that submit online requests at artsincrisis.org, Michael M. Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center, will lead arts management symposia in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. At each event, hosted by a local arts organization, Mr. Kaiser plans to address the challenges facing nonprofit performing arts organizations today in areas including fundraising, building more effective boards of trustees, budgeting and marketing.
“There were a lot of organizations that weren’t signing up but who had lots of questions,” Mr. Kaiser said. “It seemed important to go face to face with many of them. So I’m going to just under 100 cities to talk about their problems specifically and to make sure they get the support they need.”
In a Huffington Post piece, Kaiser summarizes his take on the current issue facing the arts:
It is the decision-making of boards and staffs in response to economic challenges that has much greater long-term implications for the health of our arts ecology.
While arts funding only fell 6% last year, many arts organizations are making drastic cuts to their programming. Many have canceled performances, eliminated educational programming, shortened seasons, or closed altogether. Others are “dumbing down” their product; there is a widespread call to make programming more accessible (read boring). Still more are cutting their marketing dramatically; after all, they argue, who will notice if we spend less on communicating our (reduced) programming?
These approaches to dealing with the current recession all assume that cost is the underlying problem of the arts; conventional wisdom suggests that an arts organization can “save its way to health.”
But this is wrong, dangerously wrong.
Arts organizations across the world have a revenue problem, not a cost problem. We are a remarkably efficient industry, doing more with less. But we do not yet know how to create the revenue streams we need to do our work in a consistent manner.
Now, I won’t go read every post I have written, but I would be shocked if any disagreed with Kaiser, his general thesis, or ideas. In fact I have been a proponent of them and broadened the discussion based on this to include mission, vision, community and individuality.
I think he is an important leader in the arts and I am glad he is at the helm of one of the most important performing arts centers in the country, but…come on you knew there was a but coming…
I think the reason the Arts in Crisis initiative hasn’t taken off as much as the Kennedy Center thought it would and the reason why sadly it probably never will is that a lot of organizations don’t have the necessary leadership. Not that the leadership makes bad decisions (there are certainly plenty that do) but simply there is a lack of organizations in the field that have quality, committed, and trained key leadership at the artistic, management and board level. They might have two out of the three, mediocrity in all three or more likely one bending the others to his or her will. Many organizations have to reach a crisis point to do anything about this – all of the organizations Kaiser has “turned-around” were in critical danger. Kaiser took organizations that were lost and turned them into survivors.
Kaiser in his book insists that someone must lead (it is actually rule number one), that organizations in trouble “suffer from a diffused leadership.” Don’t mistake this as a dismissal of the relationship between artistic, management, and board for one almighty, all powerful leader who all else must bow to. Quite the opposite. It is about BALANCE and ALIGNMENT between artistic, management and board leadership. It is about trust, authority and responsibility for the art, vision and health of an organization being placed in the proper hands.
Today, the companies that I observe being innovative, growing, thriving or changing the landscape seem to have some version of this balance and alignment. Those that are on the cusp of bankruptcy seem to have leadership that is unbalanced, in conflict and sometimes at war with one another. But most of the companies are in that middle area. They aren’t on the at the risk of closing and they aren’t highly successful, they just are open. As much as these company would benefit from Kaiser’s work or the work of several others out there (there are a lot of great thinkers and workers out there), those companies don’t seem to have leadership who will or can pull themselves up above the day to day to look at the bigger picture so they will simply stay flat, mediocre, unbalanced, or on the brink, choose your phrase, but they won’t reach the potential of the impact they can have. I am not saying this is wrong. It just simply is. In any industry there is going to be a continuum of size, success, and quality – it is key to the ecosystem of the industry. However there is a lot of room for improvement across the field the “top of the continuum” is not toppling over no matter what criteria you use for placement. I do think if/when we have more quality leadership structures at more arts organizations we will see an increase in arts participation and the modern renaissance of the arts will flourish!
Additional thoughts and reading:
David Dower and Isaac Butler have been having an interesting dialogue about institutions, their responsibilities and their effect on continuing the status quo. It all informs this key concept of Kaiser’s work and my feelings in this post and I recommend reading them. I think both David and Isaac bring some great conversations to the blogosphere. All of the discussion that has been happening around the next generation of leaders with some great thinking from Ian David Moss and others will be key to this as well.
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You are so very right that those of us who have been professionals in the arts for years understand that dumbing down the product, going off mission, and starving the marketing budget is suicide. The trouble is that we so often have volunteer boards running our organizations who don’t have a clue about the business of the arts. I don’t understand why there is not more public oversight. If bridges collapsed after public funds were invested, questions would be asked, yet public funds are constantly pumped into failing arts organizations with little accountability.