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Listening
In mid-January this year, we commenced work on a Strategic Review for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. We were charged with accomplishing a comprehensive and rigorous review of Arts Presenters' entire array of programs, strategies, communications, processes, goals, and objectives.
The organization's Board of Directors and its CEO - Sandra Gibson - had come to the conclusion that Arts Presenters has continued to operate pretty much like it has in prior decades, employing the same processes, strategies, services, and tools. The observation was echoed many times by people throughout the field in interviews, conversations, and meetings.
Jack Welch observed some time ago that, "When the rate of change outside an organization is greater than the rate of change inside, the end is near." Given Welch's insight, Arts Presenters' determination to ensure that the organization creates value for its membership is entirely understandable. About the most irreversible mistake any organization can make is to allow itself to become irrelevant to its stakeholders.
In a practice-oriented field like arts presenting, about the quickest way to become irrelevant is to cease being useful. While a big slice of the Arts Presenters annual conference experience has been on art, issues, opinions, and movement politics as of late, make no mistake about this: utility, practicality, and marketplace forces continue to be very important to the people and organizations that make up Arts Presenters and the field. In nine months of exhaustive consultation and active listening, we've gotten the message:
Help ensure that the performing arts presenting and touring ecology stays sustainable.
Processes like this one take courage, determination, an open mind, and a willingness to lay one's warts out for scrutiny and consideration. Personally, I'm impressed. The organization - from the Working Group that is helping guide us, to the staff, to the Board of Directors - has shown a strong desire to listen and be responsive. No defensiveness here.
At a time when large organizations and corporations are remarkably inept at actually listening to their customers, and then acting on what they hear, Arts Presenters is showing muscularity, smartness, and stewardship. It's inspiring.
We're now engaged in a series of 8 public convenings entitled "Conversations with the Field," the purpose of which is to seek feedback about the findings and directions that are emerging through the process. In short, we're trying to find out what people think about what the process has surfaced.
Here is the complete schedule of meetings:
Long Beach, CA, September 7
San Francisco, CA, September 8
Little Rock, AR, September 15
New York, NY, September 22
Baltimore, MD, September 29
Chicago, IL, October 2
New Orleans, LA, October 3
Portsmouth, NH, October 10
More information is available here: Conversations with the Field.
Posted on September 20, 2006 11:23 AM | Permalink
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