Leadership and Resilient Arts Organizations featuring Jeff Erbach

[AI ] TRANSCRIPT:

“As an employee of any organization, as a leader at any organization, you contribute to the culture. And it isn't just leadership. This is kind of key for me. It's not just the thing that managers and directors and CEOs do. Staff people actively contribute to the culture.”

Let's talk about leadership for resilient arts organizations. With me today is Jeff Erbach, and he's going to share his insights from 30 years in the arts and culture sector.

So just a couple of things to know about Jeff before he steps in and shares his insights and wisdom with us is that Jeff has worked in cultural development, placemaking and public art for a bunch of different municipalities and galleries and arts organizations across Canada. He is currently associate VP with Arts Consulting Group Canada. He's been a practicing media artist for 15 years, and he was also on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

So, Jeff, thank you so much. It's really wonderful to see you again, and I'm really looking forward to hearing your insights about leadership for Resilient arts organizations. What is the first thing you'd like to share?

Thank you. Heather. I'd like to first share two things, which is that I'm a huge fan of of the podcast, as you know. And secondly, that, I appreciate the introduction and the credentials and the rest, and it's actually critical that, the things that I talk about are exactly that are just things that I may have learned over the course of my experience.

And none of it is certainly gospel by any stretch. And, and I think, I like to say that at the start. Yeah, but it's just ideas in some ways. I like to serve as a provocateur and sort of poke holes in some things and challenge them some thinking.

So, yeah, I like to talk about this, this topic in several categories, process, structure, culture and people. And then the mission, all of which I think should resonate with with arts and cultural organizations.

And I'll start maybe with process.

And I like to start with process because it's the one, I think that a lot of organizations don't think about much, and they don't pay a lot of attention to it. But in many circles, it's actually considered a pillar of organizational capacity. Right. And the reason for that is that, they can be caught a staff efficiency, of course, as we would all mentioned, but also staff morale. And I think when you reach back in your experience, you can remember a time probably where you worked at an organization and you could not understand why you had to do a certain thing, why they made you do it that way, what the point and purpose was. And and it wasn't just that it took time. It took up mental space. And people tend to not like that. So, you know, it's really clear that that these things need to be expedient. There needs to be clarity on the decision making around process. It has to be consistent. And also that processes should deserve some attention and thought and conversation and communicating to folks why a process is the way it is and what the outcome of that is, how the outcome serves the organization is really, really key.

And when you do that, and I've worked in organizations in which we did exactly that, we actually dedicated meetings to talking about process. Yeah, and improving them. And everyone felt so good about it that they could contribute to their daily work grind and that they understood what we wanted the end result to be and how it contributed to the health of the organization.

It wasn't just a task that they had to do. It built the organization. And, I think then it sort of served the mission and the purpose and, is a really positive way to proceed.

Yeah. That makes I really relate to that, because there's so many times where we think about process, where it's really how to do something, where, as you know, speaking to the why and the result that you're looking for from the how. So again makes it meaningful and makes it and is, you know, understandable. But it also, I think enables our team members and ourselves to work towards the result as then which again aligning with the mission, as you just said.

It's a great point, Heather. It can also feel really amorphous, like it's some process is a thing that is an overlay that exists outside of you and your work, when really the process is actually generated by human beings.

Yeah, we make the process. It doesn't feel that way sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it's totally true. So simple and efficient processes, right? Are absolutely clear of the organization. Yeah. It was the organization ultimately. Yeah, absolutely. What would your next insight or learning from your experience? I, I like to talk about structure and structure. This one's a hard one because there is no homogenous conversation on this.

Very, very large organizations have very different structures than very small ones. And so does government and non-government. Of course, ultimately, I feel like it needs to align with your budget and mission. And I think organizations can do a job here of finding a balance. You know, we tend to we tend to think of when we talk about structure, we think of hierarchies, and we think of the rigidity of the hierarchy.

The other end of the spectrum there is that a structure can be too loose, and what is created in those environments actually are confusion and chaos. Honestly, I, I've experienced this, working for organizations and speaking to organizations that there's a lack of certainty around how decision making happens, where the decision making goes. You know, some of it is that we're doing each other a disservice when we're talking about collaboration, which we talk about a lot now in the sector.

I understand, collaboration. I'm not, you know, we're on the sands of collaboration and. Yeah, but it has its moment and it needs to include the right people at the right time and in the right way. Yeah. And when it's not, when it's just we're going to collaborate and reach across all the different departments and all the different work areas and include everyone in everything.

There's a paralysis that happens in those organizations, most notably the large ones. Large organizations sometimes absolutely just get stuck because they feel they need to actually, you know, reach out to so many different service areas and people to move anything. And there there are other ways to do that. I won't dive into those. But in terms of collaborating effectively, there are ways to do this.

And one of them is to have the right structure. And, you know, that also includes management and governance. I talked about how process is a pillar to organizational capacity. So are management and governance. And you know that when you're working, for a nonprofit arts organization where the governance isn't certain, you know, that that poor executive director goes into those board meetings and they're not sure when, where and how board members contribute.

And that causes all manner of issue, most notably that it takes up tons of space on the executive directors or CEO's plate. When it's clear, when it's concise and articulate, that governance structure, really, really works, that we can go up. Yeah. And, but when it doesn't, it, yeah, it can create a lot of issues. I kind of like to say, having worked in nonprofits for a very long time, it only takes any two people to cause all manner of problems in a nonprofit organization.

They could be any two people. It could be one board member and a staff person. It could be two board members. It could be. But any two people can actually take a nonprofit organization, way off the rails, for whatever reason. Right. So so it's precarious. Yeah. Nonprofits are precarious in terms of their structure. It requires some attention.

So. Right. So structure needs to align with budget and mission. And your team members. So that was process and structure. And I think your next one that you had mentioned off the top is culture. Culture. Yeah the culture is a funny one. It it again you know, it feels like something that's sort of put on us when we work in organizations like the culture is thing that I'm swimming in, but culture is also the thing that you make.

I mean, you're an active as an employee of any organization, as a leader at any organization, you contribute to the culture. And it isn't just leadership. This is kind of key for me. It's not just the thing that managers and directors and CEOs do. Staff people actively contribute to the culture. And, in in leadership has a special place in a culture conversation.

Culture is sometimes defined as whatever leadership finds permissible. So what is the tone and tenor of the meetings? Are you allowed to email people on weekends? Does the CEO never take a vacation? All of that becomes part of the culture because it's modeled through the leadership. Right? And many organizations have values. Those value statements on websites are so beautiful.

You read them and you're so inspired, and then you work at that organization and you have zero conversations about values. Zero. It is never brought up. It's never mentioned. You don't even know what they are. And for me, in terms of culture, it's really powerful to make use of those incredible value statements, bring them into the room, talk about them quarterly, make them part of performance reviews.

Why not? If we're all supposed to live the values, maybe you need to hold people accountable to the values. They need to have clear definitions if you're going to do this work. But, I think there's something I've seen it work really effectively, and it's notable that bringing those value statements actually into the workplace can have a really positive effect.

So yeah, you made me think of of the phrase what you tolerate, what you perpetuate. And that came to mind as you were speaking. But really, I love that ultimately what you were saying about how we all create the culture that we're a part of and making it not just values aligned, but values focused in a really conscious and intentional way, I think really fosters the culture that we want to not just foster in our organizations.

Of course, but also the culture we want to be part of the culture is we want to be in and and experience on a day to day basis. So we've done touched on, process, structure, culture and people. Is now your next point, right? Yeah. People. I mean, this is this is the heart of everything. Of course. Right.

We like to say this, and when you're working in an environment that includes people and not the robots, you have to pay attention to this, and and you have to, for me, understand that most issues that I've encountered are communication based. Honestly, and it can be everything from, misinterpret irritation to a misunderstanding of expectation.

Yeah. That that the executive director has an expectation of the marketing director, and it's not fully facilitated or articulated in the marketing director then isn't sure how to succeed in their position. It can be as broad as that. It can be as small as misinterpreting the tone of an email, because email is a terrible communication tool for tone.

Very, very bad. And so, understanding that there are different communication styles, understanding that what people's motivations are and motivations are widely diverse, they often break along lines of, of, demographics. So by example, age is one example where where people of different age actually often have very different motivations for why they're doing that work. Young people are bringing varied different ideas into the workplace with them than old folks like me.

And we have very different things that we're looking for out of the work in different ways that we want to be acknowledged. Yeah. And so all of this, I think, is really rich territory for certainly for HR areas. But there are a lot of organizations that don't have HR people. And so it falls to the leadership. Right. But but that's a good conversation for CEOs and executive directors to have with boards as well, is how they're fostering and nurturing the people in the organization, knowing these kinds of complicated layers.

Yeah, absolutely. And like I say, different motivations as well as modes of communicating in order to move forward with that. So yeah, absolutely. People and communication, and the tone and tools, as you had said earlier in another conversation too. All right, Jeff, you have one. It's just it's always talking about me and, and and I say Segways because this is my favorite thing to put in front of folks who work at nonprofit arts organizations, which is we talk about expectation, we talk about serving community and so much expectation.

Honestly, is inside the park. So much expectation is actually built by board members and by staff members and not actually by, say, funders, is the number one thing that I that I hear around funding is the expectation of funders to do all these things. And, I'm not always certain that's the case. I think sometimes the expectation is actually built internally, and it's because everyone is so passionate about what they do.

And there's all these limitless opportunities in art and culture for how to serve community. But you don't have limitless resources. And so your guiding star is, in this case of conversation, your mission. And so you have to make sure. I mean, the key thing in leadership now is to kind of point everything into this one place, right? And to keep it all on track and, and of what value is it that you do for people that, that that's, that's where we are now post-Covid.

Right. And with all of the social reckoning that is finally happening in the sector, in the fields, which is so important, people are asking hard questions about the value of what it is to have theater or ballet or an art gallery. And so, being clear about what that means and pointing everything that way, I think is the trick.

And it you couldn't say that all performing arts organizations post-Covid have struggled. It's not true. There are endless examples of performing arts organizations that are doing actually very well. And and one of many things that they've done is this is they understand their audience and they understand what they deliver to people and, and why people come see it.

And they've, they've really, really got that SAT. And some organizations are still grappling with that. And so I think it's something deep. I mean, I don't we don't have the time frame to go like very deep into that. But I think the baseline of it is to be really certain about the value proposition of what you do, who it's for, why it's important, and communicating that well.

And of course, Alex Sarian in Calgary, who's doing all that extraordinary work. And I like to bring Alex into this space to just say that he's a master at communicating what the value is. He's he's done extraordinary work on that topic. So yeah, absolutely. And I'm hearing so much in that both in understanding where the expectations are coming from, when we're trying to live up to expectations and making assumptions that we need to fulfill and, and live up to expectations and really be keeping an eye on the value, the mission, the messaging and the motivation.

I love alliteration, you can tell, in, you know, in everything that we're doing, in order to keep it really focused on the core value that our organizations are really about delivering, coming right back down to the mission. Right. So we have had a chance to speak about process, structure, culture, people and mission. Thank you so much for sharing your insights.

It's always great to have a chance to chat with you and fun to do it in this format. Where can people find you on line? Only on LinkedIn. Unapologetically. But I'm there. I'm on LinkedIn and I'm very active on LinkedIn.

Excellent. Okay. We will find you on LinkedIn. Thank you so much for joining me today.

And it's such a pleasure to see you. And we'll talk with you again soon.

Now for anybody watching, thank you for joining us on this High Five. We will be back again next week with another episode. See you then.