Articles

A passion for mediocrity?

Arts organisations should be aiming high ? but this can only happen if managers take the excellence agenda on board, says Howard Raynor.

Arts Professional
6 min read

Telling people they have done an excellent job when they have done something perfectly ordinary is the new way of ensuring we don’t actually aim very high. I have been working with organisations in the last two months where the aim is to achieve a new level of performance, and to pull off this rather demanding goal we needed to go back to some basics which are probably worth sharing. Nowadays we tend to have a set of well-intended but ultimately numbing induction and training options that keep our organisation safe and legal. The red tape is great for holding up organisations or sticking them to fixed points. But when induction and training are only about health and safety then we risk creating a mindless but safe organisation. Safety is no bad thing. What is bad is when it becomes the only thing.

No-one wakes up thinking “I can’t wait to be mediocre today,” but somehow we have evolved an entire system for making organisations rigid and homogenous. Aiming higher isn’t part of the cultural process of most organisations. To be clear, aiming higher isn’t something restricted to gold plated arts organisations that groan under the sheer weight of their Arts Council grants; aiming higher is about a personal choice. Each of us within our organisation has the choice to deliver an outstanding performance, really to apply passion and know-how, to give and take accurate constructive support. These are not external factors: they are internal factors. If we have a role in the organisation, whether it is as chief executive, team leader or volunteer, we have a personal choice about committing to excellence.

We seem to be reluctant to accept that it’s not our genes, our parenting or our neighbourhood that made us the way we are: it’s actually our choices that determine our attitude and behaviours. Don’t believe me? Read on, or better yet, read anything by Viktor Frankl.

The problem most of us face when the issue of higher standards arises is the set of assumptions we hold about ourselves and about our organisations. We hold joint assumptions in the culture of the organisation about how good we are and what we are capable of. The thing here is to try and work out where those assumptions came from and how rational they are. All too often, the underlying way of doing things is attached to past experience which we interpret to mean a certain thing. For example, we don’t think about our food and drink service because we are an art gallery. We don’t think about presentation laterally because we have a concert platform and an orchestra. If we can shed light on the assumptions that hold us back, we have a fighting chance of raising our game, personally and organisationally. Is cash-flow the only thing that stops our organisation growing? When we fail at a particular task, what do we assume about ourselves or our colleagues? Do we assume we or they are incompetent, or do we focus on the cause and effect issues? Repeating a behaviour that doesn’t work is a classic example of a wrong assumption in practice. For instance, repeatedly appointing fundraisers who fail to raise money, because you believe that this is the only way, is a doom loop. You need to rethink the assets, the problem and the possible solutions.

If we do aim high, if we assume that our colleagues aim high with us, and if we challenge our assumptions about customers, stakeholders, artists and our work, then we may reach a new understanding. To make this new understanding real to our audience, we need to plan. What tiny, precise, individual actions will get you started down a new road to a preferred future?

Arts organisations need to take on this challenge and reflect the higher standard in terms of induction, training and organisational culture. If we really want to deliver something exceptional, then our passion will encourage others. If we are half-hearted, then we have failed our own leadership test. Being passionate about excellence has to be acceptable within the organisation. Thinly veiled contempt, or worse, outright cynicism, don’t help us or our organisations to grow. We have to support flexible thinking. Assumption-checking and rule-checking need to be acceptable behaviours, as does the giving and receiving of positive or negative comment. Positive reinforcement is more valuable to us if is specific and genuine, but thoughtful, accurate critique is also priceless if it is genuinely well-intentioned. The trouble is it very often isn’t.  [[If we can shed light on what holds us back, we have a fighting chance of raising our game, personally and organisationally.]]

The excellence issue also extends to our environment. It’s hard to do great work in a chaotic work place. It may suit one person entirely, but a whole team of people will read other things into this state of affairs. Professionalism is the same: we all have the responsibility to hone our professional skill at every opportunity. Alongside professionalism is the knowledge of your chosen field. Do you make it your business to know more about the purpose and task of your organisation than anyone else? Do you read all you can on the subject? Do you pursue it in your own time? Do you accept training when it’s offered, if only to build up your network of contacts and create time to think? Achieving professionalism and knowledge requires personal motivation. Whilst intrinsic motivation is a topic for another time, suffice it to say that being clear about what you want to do, what you want to achieve and who you want to be are important if you want to have the energy to succeed.

If we want to achieve something great as an organisation, we are also going to need to sharpen our communication skills: our verbal skills, our written skills, our appearance, our tools and our team behaviour. All these aspects of communication strengthen or weaken our organisation. Yet we spend precious little time establishing the best arrangements.

These excellence skills bring us back to the beginning. We need to believe in the challenge, we need to really want to put our idea or mission across. The arts world is littered with organisations that are doing all right but may contain scenes of mild peril. We need move away from induction focused on safety to induction, training, leadership and communication based on achieving excellence in our chosen field. The whole team has to commit to that challenge if we are to rise above the mediocre. Your leadership skills and generosity will certainly be tested but you will have reversed an easy and corrosive trend.