The problem of leadership in the arts is often tackled by recourse to training and the increasing of skills levels. Graham Leicester argues that a change in approach is required if arts leaders are to move the sector forward.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. So said Abraham Lincoln in 1862. This was the quote that came to mind as I looked into the state of people-development in the arts and cultural sector. People like me trained for the dogmas of the quiet past are struggling in the stormy present.
This is not a phenomenon unique to the arts. We live in powerful times, in unprecedented conditions of boundless complexity, rapid change and information overload. Harvard psychologist, Robert Kegan, had it right in the early 1990s when he wrote his book In Over Our Heads1. Human Resources departments have concluded that we require much more rounded individuals to thrive in this environment. Job specifications for senior managers and leaders have added layer upon layer of desirable skills and experience to keep up with the multi-faceted nature of new challenges. The result is that senior roles now ask for a range of human capacities little short of the miraculous. The desirable characteristics of corporate leaders according to the Financial Times, now include having a fiercely sharp intellect, being a black belt in people skills, being genuinely intellectually curious about the world, while also boasting superb energy levels and a certain personal humility.
Arts requirements
AEA Consultings Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California2 lists the following senior management skills in the arts: board development and management, program design and administration, strategic planning and financial modelling, public relations and advocacy, marketing and branding, education, real estate development, commercial licensing, capital formation and fundraising, as well as a talent for diplomatically balancing the interests of diverse constituencies and responding to the changing regulatory environment in the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley. With admirable understatement they conclude, this is a tall order to fill. We have reached the point where we are asking for super-human capacities in our leaders and senior managers: everything short of walking on water.
Consistently asking for the impossible has human costs: high turnover, levels of dissatisfaction, stress, extended sick leave and burn out. Richard Floridas Rise of the Creative Class3 has become a blueprint for many cities seeking to harness the potential of the creative economy. Yet it turns out that the incidence of stress and anxiety disorders is markedly higher in the US regions that score best on his Global Creativity Index. The high energy, flexible, cosmopolitan, small-organisation-dominated creative economy is placing greater strains on the psyche than we are able safely to absorb. Florida labels these externalities concluding that the creative economy is a sustainable notion only if it sits within a creative society. In other words, the steady accumulation of specialist skills by the would-be leaders of the creative class is a hiding to nothing. We need a society-wide upgrading of capabilities to flourish in the buzzing confusion of the 21st century.
Arts offer
Which brings me to the good news. At a time of cultural crisis that transcends sectors, organisations and societies, the arts and cultural sector can take a lead by providing three vital resources:
- 21st century people: The arts are a natural medium for cultural evolution and the development of the qualities we need to thrive in the 21st century. Arts and culture are the crucible in which the consciousness of tomorrow will be formed.
- Creative ad-hocracies4: 21st century people need 21st century organisations. The loose, highly organic, flexible, collaborative, cross-disciplinary, creative ad-hocracies that thrive in the arts are promising candidates as settings for people to grow and develop the new consciousness. Such settings will be in increasing demand.
- Real cultural leadership: in powerful times the task of leadership is to help evolve the culture. California senator, John Vasconcellos, says we need to be hospice workers for the dying culture and midwives for the new. This is real cultural leadership.
Suffice it to say that we need 21st century people nurtured in 21st century organisations that support cultural leaders able to transgress rules and norms in ways that transmute how they are personally affected by the culture into creative action that midwives the future.5 This is not easy. We are still looking for an appropriate form for the 21st century leading-edge arts and cultural organisation. It must be able to perform the ordinary as well as the extraordinary tasks; it must be able to support a sense of moral purpose beyond its own survival; it must nurture and support its members over time in a challenging environment; and it must pay generous and caring attention to the needs of the old culture while midwifing the new. The discovery of this form (and it will be discovered, not invented) will be a critical advance for all sectors and we are likely to find it first in the arts.
Transformation
It is common to talk of the power of the arts and culture to transform lives and communities (to quote Arts Council England). But that does not happen automatically. To transform others we must be transforming ourselves. To perform these acts of alchemy we must maintain the alchemists fragile, intriguing relationship with mainstream science. The ethical philosopher Martha Nussbaum spoke of the fragility of goodness a fragility that is yet enduring and never capitulates. This is the strength I see in the arts and cultural sector.
We certainly need to learn how the sector as a whole can become more organisationally and financially sustainable. And, at the same time, we should recognise that just like any other domain this sector has a growing edge. It is the practice at the edge that draws me, the competencies, the mindsets, the behaviours, the experiences, the organisational forms that are developing there. The arts are choosing the fragile form of ad-hocracy because they have to. It is the most creative. But in todays powerful times many more of us will have to find the courage and resilience to live there.
Graham Leicester is Director of the International Futures Forum.
w : http://www.internationalfuturesforum.com
His paper Rising to the Occasion: Cultural Leadership in Powerful Times can be downloaded at http://www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk
1 Kegan, R. (1995) In over our heads: the mental demands of modern life, Harvard University Press, ISBN-10: 0674445880.
2 AEA Consulting, Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California, (The James Irvine Foundation, 2006).
3 Florida, R. (2004) The rise of the creative class, Basic Books, ISBN-10: 0465024777.
4 The ad-hocracy is an organisational form popularised by management theorist Henry Mintzberg. As the name implies, it is loose, highly organic, flexible, a tent rather than a palace, and often brings individuals together in a temporary structure in order to progress a specific project.
5 Aftab Omer, Leadership and the Creative Transformation of Culture (Shift: 2005 Journal of the Institute of Imaginal Studies).
Mission, Models, Money (MMM) set out to explore and promote new approaches and new solutions to the key issues that affect financial and organisational sustainability and the challenges of introducing new business models and ways of funding. But of course, the arts is at heart a human system. There can be no sustainable sector without sustainable people: that is, people who are equipped, motivated and supported to guide the development of the new ways of operating that a rapidly changing environment demands. Graham Leicesters paper for MMM frames the challenges that face us as individuals and as organisations in a new and compelling way and inspires us to believe that the world of arts and culture is well positioned to nurture a new kind of cultural leadership for today's turbulent world.