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I’ve been skimming through Anthony Weston’s 2007 manifesto, How to Re-imagine the World (highly skim-worthy, since it has fabulous ideas and states them quickly), and actually stopped skimming and began to read when I reached the opening to chapter 9:
Naturally we look to the sticking-points, the places where change is most visibly and powerfully resisted. At the same time, though we may miss the places and ways in which change — complex and radical change — is happening now already, anyway. What if we joined in?
I stopped there, because I do that all the time. I rage against the machine of professional nonprofit cultural organizations and infrastructure. I whine about large organizations in major markets that seem bent on isolating themselves from their core value and their connections to the world. And in my Arts Administration classes, I teach by sharing the large, catastrophic failures in cultural facilities and clueless board governance, and thinking with students about how such catastrophes might be avoided.
But they’ll always be there. And they’ll always be resistant to change (which is how they built up over time into catastrophes).
So, now I’m shifting focus (if I can) toward the “inside track,” toward the individuals and organizations who are changing things already, even if only in little ways. And it’s not just a matter of finding ‘bright spots’ to copy them (although that’s cool, too). It’s about celebrating them, teaching through them, learning from them.
A great reminder that examples of positive change are often unheralded and incremental — but real, and available as models and inspiration if we will only look. Thanks!
Well said, Andrew. Two additional resources to underscore your point. The book The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problem, http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Positive-Deviance-Innovators/dp/1422110664. The authors explain that no matter what you think can’t be done, someone is already doing it. Also, this video of Sir Ken Robinson, where he exhorts the viewer to know that change is happening and we must get involved. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-XTCSTW24Ss.
I completely agree about the importance of moving from talking about what is wrong in the cultural sector to looking for what is working (which, actually, happens to be a lot). In February Helicon Collaborative released a report with the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation called Bright Spots Leadership in the Pacific Northwest http://heliconcollab.net/files/BrightSpots_AllenFoundation_2012.pdf, that makes an attempt to start that conversation. We used Jerry Sternin’s methodology of looking for positive deviance (mentioned by George above) that was popularized by Chip and Dan Heath (authors of the Fast Company article that you link to) to identify arts and cultural organizations that were experiencing above average success in many areas. We studied these peer-identified cultural groups in the five state region to identify what they were doing differently from other organizations that were not faring as well. What we found was that these groups were practicing five basic principles that were actually quite fundamental and timeless (as opposed to the innovation mantra that is so popular in all sectors today). And yet, the way that these principles manifested in each “bright spot” was completely different, filtered through their individual mission and context. So trying to copy the tactics of one of these organizations actually wouldn’t work as well as engaging with the principles in a authentic and sustained way to uncover what works for your organization’s particular circumstances. Interestingly, we are hearing that though these principles were derived from studying cultural organizations, we are hearing that organizations outside the cultural sector are finding them relevant as well. You can find more about the findings and conversation here http://brightspotsculture.wordpress.com/
Interesting article, short and sweet (Although I have yet to read How to Re-imagine the World). I am glad that Prof. Taylor is looking at the inside track for a change, as my experience has been that too many boards tend to look at what is negative and just under their noses rather than look at the path that has been taken and the inovation and positive changes that may have taken place. I remember one particularly awkward moment when a board member phoned to complain that a full stop was missing at the end of a sentence in a magazine we had just published. The fact that the magazine was being published for the first time in its history in full colour, contained more articles than usual and was fully funded because of an increase in advertising revenue seemed to have completely escaped her attention. Other subscribers seemed to have appreciated it though, according to the comments we received.