How do we find our light?
It’s human behavior perhaps, but it’s astonishing to consider how often an organization focuses on seeking out audience rather than helping an audience to find it. While none of us can rest on reputation, engagement is a two-way street.
Making sure our work is sought and found by our intended, impactful audience is the most effective way to encourage a growth cycle. In any organization it's the job of everyone involved to engage with their audience—both the audience that is already in the room, and the audience-to-be, who need to know where to go to be welcomed. Like an actor on a stage, each of us in a mission-driven environment is working on myriad expressive and technical levels at once to "find our light" and be visible to these audiences. Unlike someone on a stage, we can’t hear the audience’s applause, gasps, and laughter. Not, that is, without performance metrics…
Embrace What We Don’t Know (Yet)
A good question holds untapped potential for improvement. Identifying the right question can be even more difficult than answering it. And then, really asking the question takes acute precision, resolve, and the courage to accept facts.
In not-for-profit organizations (particularly arts organizations) there can be a general attitude of discomfort with, and even distrust of, metrics. Data science is in a process of evolution that has experienced rapid and profound change over the past century, including horrific missteps and perversions. I believe the errors only speak to subsequent improvement, and that most organizations stand to profit from becoming more humanely data-driven. We cannot know what we don’t yet know without measurement, and the data is the only way to assess—to hear—our audience as a public.
Accept & Build
Generative thought is a commodity, at least as valuable as any relevant research and unrelenting elbow grease.
Yet in a competitive, goal-oriented environment the process required for generative thought can be stymied (and even trampled over) by urgent work and personal concerns. This obstacle is a threat to both individual and collaborative processes. I model my approach to communications on the concept that it’s every bit as important to capture every helpful idea and input as it is to identify those that won’t be helpful. This means people need to be seen and heard, feel safe to brainstorm and debate as processes separate from decision-making, and develop an instinct for reciprocal cycles with their colleagues.
Calm Behavior; Aggressive Action
We do important work, and there’s a lot of good work that needs to be done. It will not wait.
It’s important that we work in an environment in which there is time and space to think, and for people to be heard. Every idea could contain value. So take time to speak, listen, and allow for generative tangents (especially the unexpected ones). Taking that crucial time, however, requires us to use all the rest of our work time as actively and in as forward-reaching a way as possible. Accomplish aggressively, ahead of deadlines whenever possible, and cultivate calm in every other way possible.
