One of the more metaphorical moments of my two-performing-arts-conference visit to New York City this month is captured in this photo. I took it in the Times Center during the first day of the International Society for the Performing Arts congress after several days at the Arts Presenters conference.
The symbolism? Something’s broken in the professional, corporate, nonprofit arts. And while I heard lots of smart people exploring lots of thoughtful answers, I heard very few conversations seeking to define, describe, and detail the problem we were trying to solve.
Interesting photo and comment, Andrew. I’ve always loved your metaphors.
Interesting note about problem-solving as well. We do seem to spend a lot of time throwing around answers to questions and problems we may not have fully explored. But is the standard problem-solving technique (of fully defining the problem first) always the best? Does it fit every circumstance? Or does focusing on the problem leave us, well, focused on the problem?
I’m of the school that says you can’t fix a problem you can’t define, so I’ll take a stab at stating the problem:
Arts and culture in society have moved well beyond the narrow scope of disciplines and experiences encompassed by the corporate, professional, not-for-profit arts. The importance of art and culture in society remains the same as it has for thousands of years, but the field conflates “art and culture” with four or five once popular art forms, delivered in narrowly prescribed professional formats. Professionals, funders, and donors fail to recognize that these art forms are niche interests, and for many are nothing more than acts of historical conservation. A clear eyed view of one’s place in society and in the creative and entertainment marketplace is the missing piece needed for innovative, effective action. The organizations that see their position clearly are the organizations responding intelligently and moving forward successfully despite the trials facing the overall field.
Well, there, that should cause a ruckus…
Sherri,
Great reflection on whether thorough problem definition is always required. My instinct is to say that ANY productive problem solving endeavor begins with at least a sincere and overt attempt to frame the problem to be solved. But the conversation always evolves from there to revisit and reframe the problem as learning progresses.
So to strive for ”full definition” of the problem before diving into solutions is probably a mistake. But a continuous effort to frame the problem as well as it can be framed is essential.
(As I write this, I see that the reCaptcha for my comment is “two muses” — how appropriate…)
I like Sherri’s point too. I’m not sure if I’m adding anything or just restating what she and Andrew say, but here goes:
Perhaps one root of the issue is that we start by assuming that there is such a thing as “the” problem? Most significant social problems sit at a nexus of many interweaving forces — they’re “structural holes,” as one theorist put it, or “grossly overdetermined,” as one of my favorite thinkers on this topic, Charles Lindblom, once argued.
This has at least two immediate and unfortunate implications. First, there is no one “right” way to frame the problem, so efforts to achieve consensus are either doomed or inherently distortive — this, I think, is part of what Sherri urges us to confront. As she also notes, it can be overcome by a certain insouciance regarding decision methodology: one can choose to “ready, fire, aim” or “fail forward, fast” as a strategy, to see how far one can get in a world lacking omniscience.
Fast-forward strategies may succeed in darning structural holes sufficiently that the organization or entrepreneur doing the darning can prosper — sometimes astonishingly so (cf. Google). However, as Andrew notes, fast-forward strategies can’t dodge the second consequence of overdetermination; namely, “the problem” fights back. Complex problems change in response to efforts to solve them. I don’t just mean that they expose new aspects of themselves as other aspects are “solved” (which they certainly do), but also that they actually change form as the stresses and influences that create their shape are distorted by the change efforts (cf. Google in China). In a sense, you can almost never close a structural hole, you can only change its shape and location.
I agree with Andrew that too many change efforts fail because they understand themselves to be one-time efforts to address one-shot problems — when what they actually are, or ought to be, is efforts to create processes to manage over and over (or “re-solve, rather than resolve”) dynamical challenges that one can never wholly, perfectly grasp or manage.
I suspect, if we looked at other industries, we would find that theatres problems are akin to those of any one-venue business in a world that is increasingly chain-oriented. Outback does better business that almost any independent restaurant because it’s linked to a bunch of other Outbacks that collectively have the financing and power to advertise like crazy. Theatres tend to be location and community oriented. Furthermore, we compete with other storytelling-based cultural forms that are more convenient to consume and cheaper to access. And the not-for-profit model requires us to subsidize our business with donations, but the pool of donations for the arts has been slowly shrinking and is particularly constricted recently. Which sometimes puts us in the position of arguing that theatre should be funded rather than relief efforts in Haiti or battered women’s shelters. This is overly simplistic, of course, but when I decide where to donate my minimal spare income, these are my choices. There’re some of the problems. Essentially, we’re built around a model that may no longer be the best way to create theatre.