Elizabeth Currid's book, The Warhol Economy, discusses the elements that produce NYC's one-of-a-kind creative industry. But what if these elements don't belong only to NYC anymore?
I let out a laugh when I saw last week’s Onion article, 8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place to Live. It seemed especially silly to me, as I’d just finished Elizabeth Currid’s, The Warhol Economy- a book that identifies the unique characteristics that have made NYC an international mecca of creative production. Despite the fact that the book raves about the benefits of NYC’s unique environment for artists and the career development of creatives, the Onion article got me questioning the future of this city.
Some of the key social and economic qualities that have made New York City so successful as a place for creative and cultural career development have been (and, I would guess, will continue to be) replaced by online social networks. “Every generation has its own neighborhood,” Zac Posen said of NYC to Currid during an interview mentioned in the book. I predict that for Generation Y, and perhaps increasingly for the generations following us, that neighborhood will not be Chelsea or the West Village. It will be online.
Here’s how social media and online networks match up to the key elements that secured NYC’s reputation as an international center for creative development:
1. Low economic barriers to entry in the community
Utilizing social media is catching on quick, and is a relatively cheap endeavour. The rise of New York City as an international hub of creativity also arose from low barriers to entry. Namely, the recession of the 1970s created cheap rents that allowed artists to focus more time and energy on their artwork instead of taking up second jobs to make ends meet. Artists bought up low-rent spaces in many of the same neighborhoods, resulting in communities of creatives with a little more time on their hands and getting a little more bang for their buck. All you needed then was a little bit of money (to afford rent), something to say, and the ability to relocate to New York. In order to enter an online community today, the barriers for entry are even lower. You don’t need to move to New York. You just need a little bit of money (to afford a computer) and that same something to say.
2. Production with no real regard for economic growth
There are more than 900,000 blog posts put up on the Internet every 24 hours. Why do we blog? The answers may be shockingly similar to those of “why do we make art?” Some people blog for emotional release or to create a connectedness with the world. Some people blog to make money, but a lot more people (including myself), blog to create symbolic capital. In other words, to gain or maintain regard as a professional in the field you’re writing about. (I utilize my human capital to discuss social capital on this blog to build my symbolic capital! Yes, these are the things your brain comes up with when you are in grad school…) In fact, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project, to make money is the least common reason why people blog. The main reason? Creative expression. Social media and online expression share the same emotional (and similar economic) fuel that drives NYC’s creative community.
3. Utilizing and building weak ties
In her book on NYC’s creative economy, Currid cites the work of Dr. Mark Granovetter who has published significant studies on the importance of “weak ties.” He found that the ties that were farther away from us (versus our close-knit friends) were most influential in creating success. People with the most weak ties are in the greatest position to “diffuse innovation.” While having social exchanges with random folks on the street in New York City does create weak ties, it’s much less hard to imagine how social media promotes these kinds of relationships. Also, social media makes it easier to track weak ties. One needs only to check their @replies on Twitter to get a good sense of the weak ties they’ve created. Social media is a large network of these weak ties. And more than that, they are more easily tracked and weak ties can more easily grow stronger through social networks than meeting someone on the street in NYC- a method that has worked for generations before.
4. The ease of peer review and access to gatekeepers
Listen to the story of any great artist in NYC and they will tell you the stain of people that they met that helped them get to the top. In NYC, there are places where ‘the cool kids’ hang out. There are places to see and be seen. It’s not a stretch to say that there are a hierarchy of sites upon which bloggers and social medialites aim to be mentioned or linked. My boyfriend’s startup sees a greater rise in visitors when it’s mentioned on Mashable than when it’s mentioned on a random blog. The higher the site is on the totem pole, the more likely your work is to be seen by gatekeepers- key people in your industry with the power to aid you in achieving success. This is the same way it works in posh nightclubs, bars, and museum events in NYC. The reason online interactions may have the upper-hand? They are remote.
5. More creative people leads to economic productivity
You don’t need to be in New York anymore to have access to the most influential gatekeepers, or to get attention for your cause or story. The game is changing. In New York City, the above factors created ideal conditions for the spread, sharing, and development of creatives. Similarly, on web, the above factors create ideal conditions for the spread and development of creatives– but also for non-creatives. In a sense, New York just got bigger. Now it’s the entire world. Or rather, anyone with a computer or access to the library.
Social media networks have other advantages that NYC (or any physical location) lacks. This may change our idea of location as ideas are spread freely with no regard to physical region. For instance, time plays a different role. You don’t have one chance to hand over your business card- as you might when running into an ideal client on the street that you may never see again. You can send a message (or respond to that message) at your leisure. This may lead to more strategic communications. Also, places with more people see more economic activity, and for that very fact, it is a good idea to know what’s happening online.
*These five points are based upon select points in Currid’s The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City. Check out the book to learn more about how they relate to NYC’s economy and social structure.
Why It’s Smart to Listen to Your Gen Y Employees’ Overshare
September 2, 2010
If Mattel were employing millennials, Barbie might still be in charge
It’s no surprise that members of Generation Y can cause annoyance in the workplace when their behavior is at-odds with the established norm. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s wise to brush these young employees aside. In fact, in between Gen Y’s disregard for hierarchy and tendency toward overshare lies information that could make or break your company.
A strategic inflection point is a point of massive change for a company. “Sooner or later,” Andrew S. Groves- author of Only the Paranoid Survive- says, “something fundamental in your business world will change.” It happens when the old way of doing things suddenly shifts to the new. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it can put big companies (like Blockbuster) out of business, and threaten many others (like Intel). These types of large-scale changes render environmental scanning systems (put in place to help predict environmental trends) useless.
Why strategic inflection points are important: MGA Entertainment created their line of Bratz dolls after noting a trend: young girls wanted dolls that looked more like their hip, older sisters. Mattel’s Barbie doll lost a full fifth of her realm almost immediately because Mattel didn’t catch on quickly enough. And Mattel didn’t even see it coming. Bill Gates even holds “Think Weeks” at Microsoft where employees take time to focus on the bigger issues facing the company. The hope is to uncover developing trends that will catch Microsoft off-guard.
Perhaps the Titanic wouldn’t currently be at the bottom of the sea had those in charge of the ship realized they were at a strategic inflection point, argues Brian Huffman, an associate professor of management at the University of Wisconsin- River Falls. “The Titanic’s fate seems less unlikely when one considers that the most experienced of the vessel’s officers had begun their careers when commercial ships were made of wood and powered by wind and sail.”
But you shouldn’t just pay attention to Gen Y because they aren’t “old fashioned.” You should pay attention because, Huffman and Groves argue, CEOs are nearly always the last to see these big changes coming; the little guys see it first. In fact, the higher you are in the organization’s management, the less likely you are to catch onto environment-changing trends. Reasons for this include blissful ignorance, an unwillingness for folks to tell you, and “inevitably incomplete and distorted data” which reaches upper management. The biggest reason is quite simply that these managers just don’t consider that these kinds of game-changers could arise. The key, Huffman argues, is to include lower level managers in important conversations regarding periphery, as they are often the first to catch onto these kinds of environmental trends.
Is Gen Y making “mistakes” or providing information that could save your company? Andrew McAfee recently wrote a Harvard Business Review blog post in which he calls to attention two common mistakes of millennials at work. The first is Gen Y’s tendency to overshare. The second is acting “as if all employees are equals, and equally interested in airing the truth.” But really, the biggest mistake would be to rid Generation Y of these characteristics.
In fact, Gen Y probably could have saved Mattel’s market share by performing the exact same “mistakes” that McAfee discusses (had they been in the workforce between 2001-2004). They would be talking about trends openly, and they wouldn’t have been afraid to tell the big guys. It’s also in the spirit of spreading ideas despite hierarchical constraints and encouraging potential overshare that Gates holds true to his “Think Weeks” that help keep Microsoft moving.
If your organization is the Titanic and you have a few millennials on board, your much less likely to sink. That is, if you take a moment to listen to some of what we say in between comments on what we’re having for dinner and our superpower of choice…
Last week, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly published an article by David Suarez, PhD. titled, Street Credentials and Management Backgrounds:Careers of Nonprofit Executives in an Evolving Sector, in which Dr. Suarez identifies four types of nonprofit executives categorized based on management skills and nonprofit experience.
The nonprofit sector contains many executives who are oriented toward mission-driven nonprofit work, but only half have a management background.
Suarez finds that in nonprofit organizations, it is more common for executives to have nonprofit experience, while management experience remains relatively uncommon. After considering this finding and examining Suarez’s four types of nonprofit executives, one cannot help but wonder: are we hiring the right people? If we’re not hiring skilled managers and we’ve obtained a reputation of inefficiency, perhaps a solution lies simply in hiring more well-versed managers.
I’ll go over my take on Suarez’s four type of executives briefly below, but for much more information and to read about his other findings, check out the article.
The Nonprofit “Lifer” (high nonprofit, low management) – Suarez calls these folks stereotypical nonprofit leaders. They are drawn to a social problem(s), but are more interested in direct work with the organization’s clients than organizational management. With their mental divide between the nonprofit sector and other sectors, I’d guess these leaders might lean toward a more conservative view of sector evolution than the Substantive Expert.
The Substantive Expert (low nonprofit, low management)- These leaders are less concerned with their sector of employment, and are specialists in specific disciplinary areas. Despite having minimal management backgrounds, they usually have significant academic credentials. We see these kinds of executives frequently in museums and similar institutions. (As a surprising side, much of the art world was upset recently when MOCA appointed a Social Entrepreneur as Museum Director instead of a traditional Substantive Expert)
The Social Entrepreneur (high nonprofit, high management)- This person is not to be confused with the definition of the rare social entrepreneur made popular by Martin and Osberg. In fact, this type of executive is nearly as common in the nonprofit sector as the Nonprofit Lifer. These folks, however, have more of an interest in the organization’s plans for scale, replication, and sustainability than Nonprofit Lifers- according to Suarez. They are high on nonprofit experience, ascribe to a nonprofit ethic, and have management training.
The Professional Administrator (low nonprofit, high management)- Like the Substantive Expert, the Professional Administrator is not married to the concept of working in a nonprofit environment. These folks have management experience, but do not have a particular draw toward the nonprofit sector over the for-profit sector– or are at least more flexible in their sector of employment than other types of executives.
I believe that we should continue to aim to hire Social Entrepreneurs. They are, after all, skilled managers with an orientation toward social missions. The problem, perhaps, may lie in how we are employing executives that fall in the other three categories. Though it may not make sense to deny Nonprofit Lifers the “hands-on” jobs that they desire, hiring managers should consider that sometimes the right kind of employee is more dependent on the position than on the candidate’s sector of preference.
For instance, we often hire Substantive Experts (low nonprofit, low management) to take on heavy nonprofit management jobs without question. Or we hire a right-brained drama-aficionado to manage the budget for a nonprofit theater without considering a more suitable candidate for this left-brained task. For some reason, we let the bond of a shared desire for social good fuzzy up our judgement.
After all, who wants to say ‘no’ to a job candidate who desires to make a difference? I don’t think we always have to. But I do think that if we want the sector to evolve, we must hire folks that can help our organizations grow.
Another possible solution for nonprofits? Invest in more professional development and create managerial opportunities for current employees so that even Nonprofit Lifers who are comfortable with the sector feel the need to push the boundaries of sector constraints and encourage organizational growth.
Curating: Everyone’s Doing It
August 23, 2010
Curating is not just for museums anymore
At the initial rise of social media, everyone was a self-proclaimed guru. Then last summer, everyone hopped on the entrepreneur bandwagon. The newest buzzword making the rounds? Curator.
The popularization of curating is a great thing for museums. It’s also a great thing for nonprofits grappling to describe what they are doing in this people-driven economy.
As Lucy Bernholz describes in her latest blog post, lots of folks are curating nowadays. Or, using curating as the new way to express actions of coordinating, producing, and organizing for public consumption. For example, Pop!Tech, TED, and TEDx did not produce or organize their talks, Lucy found. Rather, they claimed to have curated them.
A curator is commonly known as a keeper of cultural heritage, and as a content specialist responsible for an institution’s collections. They are trained specialists with a keen eye toward making content accessible to the public. With this in mind, the desire to curate– or be associated with curating– makes sense. Creating culture, making connections, and getting people to feel connected is a big aim for nonprofit and for-profiteers.
No doubt the word has grown out of the museum flowerpot and taken root in the new way businesses and organizations develop strategic plans. I cannot help but think that this a big step forward for museums, libraries, and archives. The word curator, once solely used in these institutions, created an intellectual barrier between the well-educated staffers, and presumably less-educated museum visitors. As the word becomes popularized, the ivory tower of over-educated museum inaccessibility breaks down. It also puts museums at the front-end of the trend, as they employed curators for decades if not centuries before a for-profit company hired a formal event curator.
Curating has come to mean not just producing, but something of producing for the public. Thus, curating is an effective verb for nonprofits to use that embeds the task of interaction, storytelling, and public understanding.
Maybe we are even changing the word. Maybe, in the future, the word “curating” will be more associated with community engagement than with item arrangement, more connected to social media than to location-based planning, and more overtly focused on the present than the past.
Nonprofit Management Ideology: Are You Liberal or Conservative?
August 16, 2010
When discussing the future evolution of the nonprofit sector with colleagues and classmates, I often explain myself and then say, “but that’s coming from a Nonprofit Lefty…”
Everyone wants nonprofit progress, but there are different trains of thought in the nonprofit world about which practices and mentalities will get us there.
Nonprofit right: On one hand there are folks that are set on keeping the sector ideologically separate from the others. They advocate the more conservative and traditional practices that got us to where we are today– such as championing low administration costs, hiring predominately folks who work only for nonprofit organizations or are experts in the field, and drawing out the moral differentiation between the civic sector and private sector. When I think of a nonprofit thought-leader focused on reform and progress from a more “conservative” standpoint, I think of Rosetta Thurman.
Nonprofit left: On the other end of this nonprofit political spectrum, there are organization leaders that favor a more inclusive definition of the nonprofit sector which merges practices with other sectors and approaches each social mission as its own unique battle. This point of view advocates an entirely fresh way of thinking and allows for a complete evolution to something new (if that’s what’s best). For better or worse, this often means taking a lot more risks. Dan Pallotta is a prime example of a nonprofit thought leader on the left side of the spectrum.
Definitions of the word liberal include broad-mindedness; having political or social views favoring reform and progress, and being not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition. Though I’m a self-described nonprofit liberal, I don’t always agree with folks like Dan Pallotta. Ideology reform, however, is at the core of many of my nonprofit beliefs. I believe that:
- Calculated risks that challenge sector constraints are absolutely necessary and breed progress
- Publicizing individual nonprofit failures is critical and the benefit to the sector of sharing failures far outweighs individual organization’s potential donor loss for making the mistake
- High administration costs may be necessary in the future and a sign of competitive, forward-thinking organizations
- Social change-makers are not just nonprofit workers. Donors and connectors are change-makers as well
- Business leaders may bring the most innovative ideas to organizations in the future and nonprofit leaders’ skill sets may bring the most innovative ideas to the business world
- Nonprofits are businesses
- Social change belongs to all sectors, and intersectoral partnerships– when they aren’t effective market solutions– will be powerful tools for learning and evolution for all sectors
- Because nonprofits have different missions, they cannot always be grouped together or taught to abide by specific nonprofit management rules
- We must lower the education barrier for nonprofit management positions
- Nonprofits must try very hard to attract talent, and that talent will pay off in the end.
More conservative nonprofiteers have their own educated guesses grounded in nonprofit tradition and sector differentiation. And in fact, the conservative ideology has gotten us far. After all, there are over 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States- most of which develop and adhere to a more conservative approach because a) it’s tried and true, or b) out of sheer necessity. For one, it’s easier to get foundation funding with low administration costs- and hey, if the system ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
And maybe the system’s not broken… but it can certainly be improved to make organizations more effective and sustainable. This is something both “liberal” and “conservative” nonprofiteers seem to agree upon.
Where do you stand on the nonprofit management ideology spectrum? Do you value the merit of popular nonprofit practices and tradition, or do you believe that the future of nonprofit leadership lies in a more open-minded approach?
*image from ttoes.wordpress.com
Museums and Cultural Nonprofits: Social Media Doesn’t Belong to the Marketing Department
August 2, 2010
Social Media Marketing has become a common practice in the business world, and of course, nonprofits have picked up on the benefits of this kind of marketing, too. More than that, nonprofits are rocking the social media marketing scene.
But in our nonprofit world– which emphasizes the importance of building relationships to secure donors– pairing social media solely with marketing can cause big problems and overlook the benefits available to organizations through this media. Museums, in particular, have a lot to lose when educators, program creators, fundraisers, and even board members or power players say, “Social media? Why, that’s a marketing thing!”
Development Department: social media helps create connections. Social media is mastered by nonprofit organizations because it’s a low-resource way to connect with individuals. While it’s true that word of mouth marketing is the most powerful kind of marketing, and folks on social media share views on organizations through this media, the connections created have the potential to serve as catalysts for donations in the future. Viewing social media as purely a marketing department endeavor means that your museum may leave many connections to go flat because these connections must be built upon (like any relationship) and a marketing department trying to reach a wide audience may not have the capacity to cultivate these individual relationships. Moreover, this relationship cultivation is often thought to be the job of development folks! This is not to say that development must be running social media, but social media (and communications with the marketing department regarding social media) should be important in the development department. One way to get the development department more constructively involved might be for Marketing to hand over a list of folks who have been engaging with the museum through social media, and for Development to follow-up and be sure to cultivate those relationships. There may be opportunities for future funding in these relationships.
Education Department: social media can teach people things. Many museums do a great job of engaging visitors with educational content through social media so that the visitors’ learning doesn’t end when they exit the institution. In fact, this idea of taking the institution home is powerful in building both connections to the organization and to educational content. What happens when the education folks don’t share educational material through social media? An opportunity to continue sparking interest in a topic or idea is lost. What happens in most institutions is that the marketing folks provide the educational content (or at least link to educational content supplied by the education department). This is not a problem– that is, as long as Education is working alongside Marketing to make sure that facts are correct and that cool information is free-flowing. Education must realize that social media can be an extension of the topics discussed at the museum– and a fun way to learn at home! Obviously, to be most effective, educational resources may need to evolve into new technologies and utilize other forms of new media (mobile apps, for example), but social media should be seen by the department as an educational resource offered by the institution, in a sense.
Power Players: social media keeps your organization relevant. Community engagement and community cultivation are gaining more and more ground in conversations and initiatives involving the future of museums. Social media is a step to help do this. Some of the best museums are already onto this fact enough to devote portions of their websites to social media communications. Being active in social media helps break the mental barrier that museums are slow-moving places that idolize the past and have little to do with the present or the future. The current types of social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc) may be trends, but there’s an argument that social media has already changed the way we communicate on the whole. Board members, Vice Presidents, and Presidents may not be doing their organization any favors by letting them fall behind in current communication methods. In fact, social media is generally low resource– why not rise to the top if you can?
Organizations that do not acknowledge the interconnectivity that social media provides among departments may function less efficiently and effectively than organizations that embrace this new way in which much of the world communicates. Social media doesn’t need to leave the Marketing Department (and arguably shouldn’t), but this idea that social media doesn’t play a role in individual departments or the institution as a whole as it relates to the broader community? That, I think, must leave as organizations prepare for the future.
It requires a thought change, or a breaking down of a vertical ladder. In order for social media to work best for museums and cultural nonprofits, then everyone must work together to maximize the resource because it blurs the lines between so many departments. As a whole, businesses are becoming more organic and interconnected. Maybe social media can be the catalyst that brings this kind of organizational change to museums so that we, too, may function more efficiently and reap the benefits of this kind of collaborative culture.
Getting this post via e-mail? Click here to see the video.
Check out this video above, which I discovered thanks to Jennifer Souers of MuseoBlogger. Whether you work in a museum or not, it’s sure to bring a little smile to your face– not a warm and cuddly, feel-good smile– but a it’s-funny-because-it’s-true kind of smile. But this little video gives museum professionals something interesting to think about as well.
Sometimes it takes somebody outside of our niche to show us how our tribe/institution/industry is perceived, and this video can provide some insight for folks working in museums and cultural nonprofit organizations. For better or worse, this video shows us how museums and museum professionals are perceived. We must ask ourselves: is this how we want our professions and institutions to be viewed?
Below are some red-flags that emerged for me while watching the video. I’ll call them ‘misconceptions,’ though it could be argued by some that these are not misconceptions at all. If museums are increasingly becoming places for community, let’s make it clear. If we want folks to be sure these things are misconceptions of museum professionals then let’s do what we can to prove it.
Misconception #1: Museum professionals are nothing like normal people. Kim the cat says, “Chances are, the museum people who decide what gets to be put in the museum probably don’t have anything in common with you.” I laughed at this because museum professionals (administrators, scientists, exhibit designers, researchers) often try hard to be accessible to the public, despite their often-vast knowledge of very particular subjects. (High levels of education is what Kim seems to identify as the leading barrier between museum staff and visitor). It’s a funny statement, but it also means that museum professionals, despite their efforts, aren’t doing their jobs right because their professional backgrounds can create a disconnect. Building upon the growing sense of community that museums are currently nursing may improve this, as well as incorporating accessible and engaging on-site professionals that can tell a personal story or two. Lesson: If museum professionals want their displays to exhibit accessibility, then museum professionals must be accessible themselves.
Misconception #2: Museum professionals think visitors can’t handle context. Kim says,”Blank walls are good so that the visitors won’t have to deal with too much context or history.” There are some valid reasons why museum professionals keep the walls blank. For instance, to draw attention to the formal elements of the art. However, when a visitor comes across an object and little context is provided, it can produce a negative effect. As the video hints, one effect is the notion that museum professionals draw academic boundaries to make themselves and the objects they display inaccessible. Moreover, in the video Kim points out that museums tell the community what to think. In this era of new technologies and social media, some museums are aiming to allow visitors to be their own curators. Lesson: In order to increase accessibility, museum professionals should provide enough context that visitors may draw their own conclusions and connect to the object in a meaningful way on their own.
Misconception #3: Museum professionals fuzzy up concepts such as value and importance in order to appear authoritative. The video does more than hint that it’s unclear how museum professionals determine importance and value in regard to museum exhibits (namely, deciding what goes into the museum and what stays out). Perhaps professionals are fuzzy in communicating this process because cultural gatekeeping isn’t completely understood on the whole. Kim simply advises museum professionals to use tidy and sharp labels, and only use language that sounds academic, “otherwise, the authority effect won’t be so convincing.” By including enough context, making scientists and historians personally accessible, and allowing visitors to draw their own conclusions in regard to objects, only some of this misconception could be corrected. Lesson: Museum professionals must be communicative in regards to the exhibit design and creation process by explaining decisions that affect how the ‘story’ is presented.
Misconception #4: The work of museum professionals is about the objects. This video talks a lot about object-worship, and introduces the museum as a place that houses important things. In some ways, this is true– but museums tend to be fueled by ideas, theories, symbols, and a greater notion of sparking and expanding education, rather than objects themselves. This misconception makes sense: museums take great care to preserve and display objects because of what the objects represent. To call a museum a place of things is right- but also wrong. Museums’ missions are most often about ideas, and the objects are meaningful symbols of important stories. Lesson: Museum professionals must emphasize the stories and lessons that objects symbolize or represent– rather than focus on the object itself, as that appears irrelevant (because it’s missing context).
Misconception #5: Museum professionals only care about the wealthy. If this isn’t a misconception, then it should be. Kim the cat says, “At first I thought there must be some law against having poor people on a museum’s Board of Trustees, but then later I found out that actually there isn’t any law like this. This is just the way they like to do it.” What’s missing here is an explanation: the Board often secures significant funding, and the wealthy attract other wealthy folks who can give to the museum and help keep its doors open. But with or without the explanation, it’s still a telling and jarringly true statement. Many museums are placing more focus on diversity, and are arguably gearing themselves away from a white, upper-middle class visitor and donor base. There’s a lot of work to be done (3 of 17 of the top 25 most visited museums in the US are run by men. Over half have PhDs indicating that many have similar academic backgrounds). Lesson: In order for museums to connect to communities, it may help to have a Board and staff that match the community demographic. Or rather, having an all-wealthy and homogeneous Board can be off-putting for visitors who do not fit that bill.
Misconception #6: Museum professionals are magical masters of time-freeze and corps display. Do museum people fight nature every day, as Kim states in the video? Maybe– and it’s probably not a terrible misconception either. Museum professionals certainly go above and beyond to preserve objects that tell important stories about culture and the world around us. However, this time-freezing becomes wrapped up in Kim’s little paper, “An illustration of how everything in a museum is something like a corpse.” Museums are certainly doing a great many things to remain relevant and to shatter the notion that museums are merely houses for old, irrelevant things. However, the old stereotype lives on. Lesson: Old habits die hard, and despite recent efforts, it will take a lot of collaboration, forward-thinking, and community engagement for museums to break away from past reputations.
But it will be well worth the effort.
The Organization May Have Zilch, But You Won’t
July 12, 2010
Nonprofit employees have the most honed leadership characteristics.
Does that sound silly? I’ll admit I am biased– not because I am a nonprofiteer or graduate student in Public Administration but because nonprofit management trends are on the rise and I am entrepreneurial (which, they say, comes with the Gen Y territory). Entrepreneurial traits such as vision, adaptability, flexibility, and a willingness to do some bootstrapping (thanks, Guy Kawasaki) are necessities when you work in a nonprofit organization that has limited monetary resources.
When an organization has limited funds, employees must rise to the occasion and they do. For example, according to a recent study, small nonprofit organizations are outperforming larger organizations online. These organizations with “zilch” saw an increase in online giving, had greater e-mail click-through rates than richer organizations, and generally had greater ROI from online outreach. These organizations are truly doing more with less.
A small organization with limited funds has the ability to have open communication among employees and a horizontal structure. The professional benefits don’t stop there: working for an organization that is doing more with less allows you to build doing-more-with-less into your professional mindset. And wiring yourself to think this way makes you a better leader. Here’s why:
When you’re on a small team, you get to wear a lot of hats. Whether this is exhausting or invigorating depends on your outlook. The required diversification for your skill set, however, is likely to be extremely beneficial in the long-run. In organizations with limited funds, it’s not unlikely to have a marketer who writes grants and has experience in program delivery. This person, regardless of formal title, is a marketer, fundraiser, and program coordinator in one. In this single position, the employee gets a chance to experience nonprofit management and exert leadership in several different roles. This person sees more than just one corner of the office, and developing and exercising these multiple skill sets- though famously contributing to nonprofit burnout- may provide a greater long-term advantage to nonprofit employees than the short-term disadvantage.
When the organization has zilch, everyone gets to bring their individual strengths to the table and you get to pick your area in which to shine. This makes shining much easier. Love shooting footage on your flip camera? Go make some videos for your organization (I pieced together these ones). When I worked at Pacific Science Center in Seattle, we saved thousands of dollars on our large-scale public events by summoning talent of internal staff members who were talented face-painters, astronomers, magicians, food composters, marine experts, or scholars on the physics of bubbles– and they were as excited to show off their talents as we were thrilled to show them off.
Flexibility and agility are often built-in to the culture by necessity, which facilitates constant ambushes of creative thinking and innovative ideas– and creative thinking is thought to be the most important leadership characteristic of the next five years. In order to do more with less, you need to come up with ideas of how to do more with less. One of the coolest parts of my work at a small nonprofit is sitting down with the CEO and hashing out ideas. Things come up when you work for a small organization that cannot be foreseen: graduate students ask to write a PR plan for you for class, employees stumble upon great new grants that are due next week, community partnerships develop and new events and opportunities arise. When your organization is this flexible, there’s room to be creative, and opportunity is always at your fingertips.
Resourcefulness is a high-demand attribute in both the nonprofit and for-profit world. Though the constant growth and energy often required to work in nonprofits with limited funds may lead to infamous nonprofit burnout, the benefits of this kind of work far outweigh the negatives. The lessons you learn working for an organization that is consistently doing more with less have the potential to pay off over and over again as you continue to lead organizations in the future.
This post is created in conjunction with other members of the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance. Our posts this week (all with “Zilch” in the title), explore perspectives on how nonprofits can do more with less. Check out other members’ posts and get in on twitter conversations regarding these posts by using the hashtag #NMBA.
Celebrating One Year of Know Your Own Bone
July 6, 2010
The original header when I started KYOB in 2009
I began this blog one year ago and it’s come a long, long way in the last twelve months! Throughout the last year, this has been a place for me to share ideas, gather my thoughts, and even do a bit of research. In one short year, Know Your Own Bone won me an award, earned me phone conversations and guidance from Penelope Trunk, got articles re-printed in popular magazines, hooked me up with the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance, gave me the opportunity to write an advance review for the Harvard Business Review, was picked up by wonderful thought leaders, and allowed me to connect with many talented professionals.
Upcoming: Speaking of connecting with talented professionals, please tune in to Rosetta Thurman‘s BlogTalkRadio show, All Nonprofits Considered, from 12 – 1pm EST next Monday, July 12th. I will be discussing the current culture of nonprofit leadership in museums and the arts with young arts professional, Ian David Moss. Please join the chat room and help contribute to the discussion next Monday!
I know many bloggers often feature “best of” posts that link back to previously written articles. Until this point, I’ve never done this in a post. In celebration of my one-year anniversary with Know Your Own Bone, I’ll highlight some of the various types of posts I’ve written. These are certainly not “best of” posts, just a little survey of the themes I’ve covered over the last twelve months. Create a page with all of Know Your Own Bone’s “best of”s, you suggest? That sounds like a great task for year #2.
- The one that gets re-printed most often: 10 Reasons to Visit a Museum
- The one that gets the most Google juice: Where Are Museum Studies Graduate Programs Going Wrong?
- The one that earned me the honor of Brazen Careerist’s Blogger of the Year 2009: Why I Don’t Regret Leaving My Job During an Economic Recession
- The one where I play devil’s advocate: The Raise of The Starry-Eyed Entrepreneur
- If I ever went on to get a PhD, I’d want it to be related to these kinds of ideas: A Theory For Breaking Through Nonprofit Sector Constraints
- A truth that I believe will play a role in the future in a big way: Social Change is Sector Agnostic- and Gen Yers Know it.
- The ones where I call out what I think are silly nonprofit practices/beliefs: (1) The Nonprofit Leadership Deficient Won’t be as Bad as We Think (2) Jeffrey Deitch and the Management-Trained Museum Director (3) A Good Nonprofit Leader is Worth a Million Bucks
- One of my personal favorites: 5 Reasons Why I Chose to Pursue an MPA over an MBA
- The one where I take the liberty of speaking for my generation: The Nonprofit Manifesto For Generation Y Leaders
- The three that were downright fun to write: (1) Discover Your Public Service Identity, (2) 8 Movies With Great Museum Scenes, (3) 55 Low-Resource Ways for Museums to Connect with the Community
- The ones in which I got to read cool scientific studies: (1) How to Lead with Empathy: Read Fiction, (2) When Art Museum Directors Talk Trash, Everybody Wins (3) 5 Reasons to be Proud That You Majored in English
- The one in which my personal finances spilled out into the blog: 5 Unexpected Ways in Which Grad School Loans Are Changing my Lifestyle
- The one that took a few days to write, but I thought was cool: Sizing up the Graduate Degrees of 17 Top Museum Directors
- The personal one about my favorite holiday: Keep The Ride Alive- A Tradition to Celebrate the Power of the Individual
Thanks to all of you who check-in on Know Your Own Bone again and again- especially those of you who subscribe or who have reached out and commented or shot an e-mail or two my way. I love hearing from you all and I am beyond grateful to have such a great group of intelligent and insightful readers!
Here’s to the start of another year of Know Your Own Bone, with even more thoughts on the evolution of museums and nonprofits, community engagement, and social change. Cheers!
I’ll be honest: when I left my full-time gig at the Science Center in order to become a full-time graduate student last year, I was terrified by how this change would alter my own viewpoints and how I am perceived as a professional. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be taken as seriously if a majority of my time (the “full-time” part) was spent studying sector management as opposed to actively working in the sector.
Even as I am halfway into my graduate school experience, I can already look back and say that I had a right to be as terrified as anyone undergoing a big change (especially when thinking that my experience might be like this)– but I’d never take back the change in perspective that I’ve undergone for the time-being. I know full-well that by this time next year, the status will switch back and I will return to the full-time working world (oh, the magic of a professional degree; the point is to go back). But I will always understand the importance of thinking like a graduate student. Here’s why:
1) It forces you to see the big picture. There are things going on in every industry and the way we do business is always evolving. Currently social media, communication, soft skills, and Gen Y’s public service motivation are shaking things up in the nonprofit world, but even after those things run their course, there will be something else. When you are a graduate student you see these things– and what’s more: you see their collective effect on the industry because you spend nearly every day piecing together the puzzle. Thinking like this is extremely valuable because it helps you to mentally tackle many sector problems at once, and scientifically, this kind of thinking helps build up solutions more creatively than tackling one at a time– which is often done in a working environment. Thinking like a graduate student in this sense means always keeping an eye on the bigger picture of the industry as a whole, and it will result in creative solutions and a more complete understanding of where your difficulties lie.
2) Grad students have built-in microscopes or telescopes. That’s like having science tools built into their brains (for a few years), folks! This is directly related to point #1. People often joke that grad students always think what they are doing is important, even though it’s not. What’s really happening here (and the reason we grad students think what we’re uncovering is so important) is that we have a different perspective. As mentioned above, in professional degrees, we zoom out on the sector. Academic degrees tend to zoom in on a part of the sector. Either way, grad students are thinking in a way that is not common in workplace environments (whether it’s with their internal microscopes or a telescopes). Thinking differently spawns innovation. Grad students see something non-graduate students don’t see (and often vice-versa). There’s terrific potential here. When faced with a problem after graduate school, I’ll strap my telescope back on and see if I can think about things differently.
3) It makes you aware of your own strengths and interests. In graduate school, you can pursue your own interests within your degree. Beyond MPA student, I have no role defining my duties in one specific area (I can choose as I go). There is a lot of freedom in these programs to make yourself an expert on whatever strikes your interest. Similarly, in graduate school you must do everything from public presentations, to writing case studies, to leading debates, to drawing graphs to illustrate possible solutions to market failures. You learn quickly where you shine… and also where you stink. The bottom line lesson here, however, is to keep exploring and taking up new challenges in the working world. It may lead you to interesting solutions to problems. And trying new things helps you learn a lot more about yourself and how you handle certain situations– it’s teaching me a lot at any rate!
4) It gives you a feeling of purpose (which helps you live longer and makes you better at your job). I have two years while I’m obtaining my degree to challenge perspectives, share crazy ideas freely, and sink my teeth into the sector. I feel a sense of purpose when exploring skills required to improve the sector. Feeling a sense of purpose does more than reduce your risk of getting Alzheimer’s and help prevent depression. It actually makes you live longer. Studies have shown that purpose motivates us to accomplish things and grad students spend two years (or more) devoted to developing their purpose and career goals so that they can work hard for you (or themselves) after they graduate. What can people who aren’t in graduate school do to develop this mindset? Make time to focus on what you are doing and why.
5) It keeps you humble. Folks tend to feel like they are improving in their careers based on how many people are reporting to them throughout the years– or at least I felt this way a bit before I came to grad school. Now, nobody reports to me. I study with a lot of accomplished people and I take classes from distinguished professors. This is humbling. Also, full-time graduate students often take a financial hit to attend school (even if they are employed by the university or working a part-time job– or in my case, both). I’ve worked in hierarchical environments and I’ve started at the very bottom– but being broke, living on ideas, and being surrounded by thought-leaders is every bit as humbling as it is romantic and drive-inspiring. I will strive to keep this perspective and treat everyone as an accomplished classmate, regardless of their background or experience. Good ideas come from everywhere, and there’s no need to get cocky about my own.
My name is Colleen Dilenschneider I work in museums and nonprofit organizations. I believe that community engagement is the key to new philanthropy and it lies at the intersection of marketing, program production, and fundraising. I am currently a graduate student studying Nonprofit Management (MPA '2011) at the University of Southern California. Learn more about me 
