Barry's Blog

What Did You Say?

2012-02-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

Good morning.
"And the beat goes on......................."

The Art of Listening:

Most people like to talk more than they like to listen. They like to hear what they have to say about something, but not always what someone else has to say. And even when they are focused on listening, they often don't really hear or understand what the other person has said.

Clearly one of the most useful of business skills is the ability to really listen; to hear what is being said and, most importantly, to be able to process what one hears and relate that information to a given situation. I'm not talking about remembering what someone said, but rather understanding what they were actually saying - the meaning of their words, particularly in the realistic application of the meaning to one's circumstances.

I suspect very few people are really any good at that. Like the Paul Simon line: "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest", I think what most of us do is project onto what someone else says, what we want to hear. The net impact of that is a high degree of misinterpretation - and that can cause serious problems in business because it lulls us into thinking a scenario will play out that very likely will not. And that in turn wastes time - the one precious commodity which is perpetually in short supply and which none of us can afford to squander.

One of the hardest things for people to hear is rejection, or any kind of 'no' response.

In many cases we so want a "yes" answer to something that we hear that 'yes' answer, when the reality is that the answer is "no". It's almost as though there is a business mindset version of Aspererger's syndrome where we just aren't able to pick up on the cues being given. If we hear an unequivocal answer, we are able to accept it, but the problem is, of course, that often times we get answers that are vague; answers that are not really answers at all. Many people have trouble saying 'no', so they really try to convey 'no' without saying it. And many more of us are all too willing to conclude that they aren't saying 'no' - in large part because we don't want to hear a 'no' answer to something. Sometimes any response other than an unequivocal 'yes' is, in fact, a 'no'. Not always of course, but more than we would like to think. Just think about seeking some target donor and the time spent with the person / organization that ultimately does not come through. Perhaps the writing was on the wall and we just didn't want to acknowledge it.

The reason this is important is because time is so precious, and failure to appreciate that the answer to something is 'no' steals that time away; time we might pursue in some different way, in some different forum, to get the 'yes' answer we need.

How do you tell the difference then between what might be a 'yes', but ultimately will turn out to be a 'no'? And at what point do you conclude that it simply isn't worth pursuing the hoped for 'yes' response anymore? I don't know. All situations are unique and the circumstances of each different. I think it has to do with honing our listening skills so that we become more experienced and successful at reading the cues which might tell us which way the wind will blow in any given situation. I'm not sure, but I would guess that there might be some training that could help us in that capacity. I would love to see professional development opportunities for our sector expand to include such things as building 'listening' skills (as well as a host of other skill sets we never do anything to help develop in our people - from time management and organization to how to motivate people) - but we do none of that.

Meanwhile, it might be useful for each of us to think about how we might improve our listening skills, our capacity to read cues from people, and our ability to recognize a 'no' answer as early on as possible. I suppose we can start that process by doing a little self-analysis as to the recent past and trying to zero in on when we might have misread cues. Anything we can do to preserve the limited time we have to make things work is of value to us and there is little we do that wastes more of our time than the pursuit of a 'no' response to something.

Have a great week.

Don't Quit

Barry

Merchandising and the Arts

2012-01-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

Good morning.
"And the beat goes on............................."

Merchandising the arts:
Long before Napster and the file sharing platforms and iTunes changed the revenue stream model of the music industry - moving away from record sales as the primary source of income for recording artists to touring taking that role - merchandising of branded products established itself as the third leg in the income stool. Rock and roll early discovered that there was a market (and huge profits) for merchandise associated with popular artists - from tee shirts, tour jackets and baseball hats to posters and programs, from coffee mugs to backstage passes, from musical instruments to keychains. And the merchandising segment of the industry has grown so large as to actually often surpass income from both the sales of recorded music and even touring income. Product endorsement soon joined the lucrative income source as music was sold to hype and sell other brands (e.g., Bob Seeger's "Like A Rock" being used for years by GM as its theme song to sell GM trucks).

The music industry learned early on how to aggressively market its merchandise - first as a point of purchase thread at live concerts, then by mail and now online, in retail outlets and at trade shows. Taking a cue from the music business, the film industry quickly followed suit marketing film studio products (e.g., the Warner Bros. and Disney retail outlets across the country) and, much more significantly, marketing specific movie products (from Star Wars to Transformers to Toy Story) - including apparel, action figures and other toys, and beyond. The film industry also used branded products as commercial ties to promote a given film itself (e.g., the McDonalds action figure Happy Meals etc.), a relationship that worked well for both partners and not only yielded additional income to the film companies but became part of their overall marketing strategy to sell tickets.

Sports also learned from the music and film industries, and NFL, NBA, major league baseball and other sports now derive substantial income from their own merchandising efforts. Lesser sports also jumped on the bandwagon - e.g., Golf - which not only merchandises product, but provides endorsement income to the players.

All of this activity comes under the heading of merchandising and it is big business - not just in America but now on a global basis. Rock and Roll and movie tee shirts are ubiquitous across the planet worn by rich and poor alike.

While piracy and counterfeiting are a problem for merchandising efforts as they are for copyrighted music and film, legitimate merchandising for which income is gained continues to grow.

There are some efforts in the nonprofit arts to merchandise, but for the most part those efforts are ancillary and not thought of as significant. We have given little thought to expansion of a product line, how to aggressively market "merchandise", how we might better cooperate in sales and distribution, and how such strategies might augment weak bottom lines.

Museums do the best within our sector. Not only blockbuster exhibitions of Picasso, King Tut, Van Gogh or the like, but even lesser exhibitions are now routinely merchandised with coffee table catalog books, posters, baseball caps and even mugs, keychains, mouse pads and so on. Museums have an advantage in that they have permanent physical plants in which almost all include a Gift Shop. To a lesser extent they market their merchandise online, and a few even venture into holiday (Christmas) marketing.

Performing arts groups more often than not share facilities and those facilities do not have a permanent gift shop on site. A large percentage of those organizations market merchandise at their performances - again clothing and books, but also DVDs, calendars and other items. Of the performing arts, dance seems at least slightly ahead of music and theater in merchandising - but all of the performing arts lag far behind what the potential of the market might be. Most performing arts merchandising efforts are sort of "afterthoughts" and not really seen or treated as even potentially lucrative enough to qualify as a funding stream.

I think we are missing out on the development of a meaningful revenue source by our failure to develop the potential for merchandising within the arts. There is really no reason why we should not be able to expand the market to significant levels. We need to think more about how we might successfully first make our brands more marketable and then merchandise our brands and offerings more successfully.

More than likely, of course, we cannot simply try to replicate what the music, film or sports industries have done. Those sectors trade on "celebrity" to an extent that may not be available to us. We're not likely to soon sell Opera star action figures or Symphony Conductor bobble head dolls (though I would love to see that happen some day), nor are we likely to soon negotiate Burger King tie-ins (though perhaps that is not as far-fetched as some might imagine), but we can do some things to begin the process of making merchandising a meaningful source of income across the sector:

First, we ought to think broader in terms of marketing standard merchandise items - i.e., tee shirts should be branded as "fashion items" and seen as 'hip' for certain target demographics. More thought should be put into at least the basic clothing items we might successfully brand and market. We are simply operating on a primitive level in terms of the way we approach the limited merchandising we do.

Second, we need to figure out ways to expand the distribution of our merchandising catalogs at all purchase points - including at performances, online, via normal retail outlets etc. As part of such expansion, we need to talk with each other as to how we might cooperatively market our merchandise so that we might benefit from the economy of scale. There is no reason every city that has a Disney store ought not to also have an "Arts" store merchandising a range of items from a wide variety of organizations. We ought to be able to develop at least a limited line of high end fashion apparel brands that might be created in conjunction with major designers and then carried by high end retailers from Macy's to Nordstrom's to Neiman Marcus etc.

Third, we need to think about how to more aggressively market standard and new merchandise. We need to learn how to sell the idea that a branded arts product is essential to own - in the same way products are marketed not only by the music, film and sports industries, but by mainstream companies from fashion designers to Proctor & Gamble.

Fourth, we need to do some specific demographic target marketing. Thus, for example, while tee shirts may be a hard sell to an older Opera demographic, fashion tee shirts aimed at the kids of that group might do very well with their parents. In fact, we ought to have a whole segment of our merchandising industry directed at kids - from toddlers to teens to college kids. Certainly fashion clothing and accessories, but also beyond that to such things as arts mobiles for baby cribs We ought to also target niche markets - including multicultural groups and the LGBT community. This approach ought to be a natural for us.

Fifth, we need to zero in on specific holiday marketing - from Valentine's Day to the Fourth of July, from Christmas to New Year's - including certain multicultural holiday niche markets.

Sixth, we need to put more thought into how to "celebritize" our major artists - particularly performing artists such as dancers, musicians, and playwrights - as part of a wider effort to brand the arts as 'hip' and 'cool'. We need to target multicultural niche groups here too. There is no reason African American, Latino, and Asian dancers, composers, musicians, actors, playwrights and visual artists should not be seen as 'heroes' in their (and the larger) communities. Doing so will open opportunities for greater merchandising.

Finally, we need to begin the process of thinking about tie-ins for our merchandising efforts.

Of course this kind of thinking will be anathema to the purists. God forbid, we sully the image with such pedestrian marketing - even if it helps us to survive. To those I say "Get real already."

The point is that there are a lot of discretionary merchandising dollars out there that ought to be flowing into our coffers that are not. At a time when everyone is talking about new revenue models and how difficult our income generation has become, we are missing out by our failure to take a more sophisticated, aggressive look at the potential for merchandising within our own field. Moreover, merchandising is not only potentially profitable, it helps establish our brands and that ultimately helps garner increased audiences and more support.

Again, as in other suggestions I have made, this is something that will best be addressed (at least in part) by the sector as a whole and not just by each organization acting individually.

Have a good week.

Don't Quit.
Barry

Wanted: Warm body with big checkbook

2012-01-22T18:19:00.000-08:00

Good morning.
"And the beat goes on........................."

Board Recruitment:
While we do an increasingly fair job at trying to find the right person to fill our empty Executive Director and other senior management slots, the same cannot be said about our attempts to recruit new Board members.

Ideally, of course, we seek board members who are passionately committed to the goals and missions of our organizations. Smart, involved people with deep ties to various segments of the community who will be active in helping to increase the capacity of our organizations, improve their sustainability, and be responsible stewards in the discharge of their fiduciary duties. We want high profile people, solid business contacts, diverse representation and people eager to right our financial ships. From the perspective of most staff, the goal is people who will get involved but not micromanage; partners in community outreach, fundraising and as advocates and boosters. We seek people who have some knowledge of the arts and in particular the ecosystem of the given organization, who understand their role, and who bring something to the table as it were.

But the reality is that there are really two principal criteria that invariably govern our decision to invite someone to join our boards: 1) without meaning to sound specious, the main qualification we look for is really just a warm body - someone who will actually show up at meetings and contribute in some way, someone who will accept the position; and 2) people willing to write a check - the bigger the better. Less important, but an added bonus is if the candidate has a high profile that we believe will somehow inure to the benefit of our organization.

We don't, for the most part, vet potential candidates much more than that. There are no search firms to do sophisticated board recruitment, and the typical arts organization has no developed policy, protocol or procedure that governs the selection of new Board members. New potential board members often meet with someone from the Board nomination committee charged with finding good board members in some very informal way and the recommendation to the full Board is invariably to approve the applicant - which the Board almost always does in some rubber stamp procedure with little to no discussion. Nominating committee members seek out like minded people more often than not from some similar background or network from which the committee member comes, and while there may be some attempts to cast a wide net, that simply does not happen that often. Bottom line: almost never does an arts organization reject a potential board candidate. We can't afford to - the pool is too small, the competition too fierce and the options too few. And, we have so little time to devote to this enterprise. We take what we can get and give the whole process precious little thought or energy.

Of course, it is difficult to find a slate of candidates clamoring to join the typical arts organization board. And that is particularly true for those candidates every organization wants - the well heeled, people of color, business and civic leaders, people with cache. Large euro-centric stalwart organizations make little attempt to recruit those with small bank accounts (for many the board is a key source of annual revenue and that need trumps the need for board members to be otherwise qualified and bring more than money to the table). Neither the big cultural institution, nor the average sized arts organization, seriously tries to place younger generation members on their board. The truth is that the profiles of many board memberships are self-perpetuating - including the questionable practice of re-electing board members to multiple terms. Unlike the private sector and Fortune 500 companies, too few Executive Directors of our arts organizations serve on other arts organization boards - no time I suspect. Most board members have little to no understanding of how nonprofits function - or what the challenges they face entail.

Theoretically, board members are responsible for the financial soundness of the organization and for providing expertise and support to the managers of the organization. The Board sets policy and hires the executive in charge of running the organization. The Carver principle suggests those are the sole functions of a good board, and that boards really ought not to get involved in day to day operational decisions, program management, or much more. In reality, boards often ignore those suggested guidelines and see their job as making all kinds of decisions. That invariably leads to conflicts, poor staff / board working relationships and suspect decision-making. Many an organization gets into serious trouble because the board and staff are at odds.

Boards vary widely in their number, composition and the way they conduct their business and there is little development of any guidelines (other than theoretical) as to how they might best function. We are, sadly, all over the map as it were in regards to everything about our boards. Some boards are great, others pathetic. It takes the typical arts organization some time to get in place a board that seems to work for it - at least in the short run. Over the long haul, many arts organizations experience cycles of good and bad boards - depending in large part who is calling the shots. And on the average board, some members are very active and others very passive; some are supportive, others almost combative. Our board training is pretty much confined to some brief, and more often than not, meaningless orientation session, the proverbial board handbook with sections on the bylaws, finances and a roster of phone numbers, and the once ubiquitous annual Board Retreat - which seems to have fallen out of favor.

In such a climate, one would think that putting more thought into the recruitment (and then training) of board members would be accepted thinking for every organization. Yet it seems to me we have been moving away from paying more attention to our boards; less emphasis on who we want and how we get those people, let alone what professional development we provide them not only at the beginning of their tenure, but during that tenure as well (and the problem there, of course, is that most board members do not want to make that kind of time commitment, and though we want them to, there is no making such involvement mandatory for fear the potential member will simply bolt. In that regard, we have paid little attention to why people join boards in the first place - perhaps because we intuitively know many, if not most of them, do so for the wrong reasons). Everything from the number of members on any given board to the frequency of meetings is often an arbitrary and random decision with little thought into it. Alas, too many decisions about our boards are given short shift.

No, there are few boards who would ever turn down someone willing to accept the invitation and write a check -- no matter how unqualified they may be in every other respect.

We really ought to pay more attention to what a board ought to be, how it ought to function, who we want on our boards v. who we will accept, and what we expect of them once they agree to serve - beyond showing up with their checkbook. - not as a sector, but as individual organizations. We have moved too far away from understanding their role and maximizing their effectiveness.

Have a good week.

Don't Quit.
Barry