I have a request from someone I know in classical music management. This friend has seen me make radical suggestions here, and wants me to make sure we all understand something — that these changes would be hard for big institutions to make.
Of course I know that. The first thing any big classical music institution needs to do — a major orchestra, let’s say — is survive. To survive, it needs to keep doing what it’s always done. That’s what its current audience wants, and its current donors. Can’t do without those ticket sales, and those donations!
But those sales and those donations won’t always be there. However slowly, they’re fading away. Everybody in the business knows that.
And so even while the big institutions keep doing what they do, they also have to do new things, whether they adopt my suggestions (anybody want to try that?) or go another route.
Gotta change! To meet the future. But this isn’t easy. These institutions, as I’ve seen in the past firsthand, are maxed out doing what they do. Maxed out in money, staff time, energy. So how can they launch themselves on new paths as well?
I can’t answer that for them. Can’t do their internal planning (though I could certainly help them break down the new path into single steps, help them ease themselves onto it).
But the larger question, how they go down two tracks at once — whatever the answer is, they have to do it. No choice there, if they want to have a future. My friend knows that.
So much sympathy to my friend, and to everyone in these institutions! But they have no choice. Got to stretch themselves, move forward. if they want to survive.
Perhaps the classical music world could learn something from disruption in the business world. After all, it *is* the business side you’re talking about. You might find this book, Dual Transformation, interesting. Here’s a summary from the authors’ website: https://www.innosight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Dual-Transformation.pdf
I’ve heard about that book! Thanks for linking to it. The business world accepts these challenges. Too often, people in classical music say, “But we CAN’T do it, because…”
The ‘we can’t because’ refrain is far from unique to the classical world. Another great book I think many of your readers would get a lot out of is called ‘A Beautiful Constraint’, by Adam Morgan and Mark Barden, written for ‘challenger brands’ but applicable to anyone.
One of their ideas is that when discussing new ideas, everyone should use the phrase, ‘We can if…’ and not ‘We can’t because…’. (Note: it’s not even ‘we could’, but ‘we CAN’. Subtle difference). You’re free to think of the obstacle in your own head, but if you want to share it with the group, you have to formulate it as ‘We can if…’. I’ve tried it in workshops myself. It can have a magical effect.
The plaint “It can’t be done” (in myriad variations) is one I’ve heard in most of the computer-tech jobs I’ve worked over the years. It’s reflexive groupthink. Individuals in an organization have developed skills and work habits (and, more importantly, patterns of thought) that are keenly adapted to those set ways. Such a skill set is often what defines an individual’s status and value in the organization. Those individuals sometimes will reflexively resist anything that might de-value those skills.
In my experience “It can’t be done” is often a way of saying “I’d have to learn how to work differently!” And that is a very hard barrier to overcome. I can’t say I’ve ever had more than limited success at it. As Angus says above, a good starting point is to change the language for discussing the problem. For that matter, even the word “problem” needs to be carefully defined. In wise tech-speak, a “problem” is some difference between what’s desired in a given system and what now exists. Defining the problem is step #1 in solving or mitigating it. Greg’s done great work in that area (not to disregard his thoughtful advice on ways to address the problem).
And thanks, Angus for the book recommendation. I’ll look for it.
Thanks, Bill.
So many examples, as you say, from tech. Two from my experience that involve classical music:
One organization I’ve worked with has a Windows-based system. I and many others involved with the group have Macs. When we get email with attachments from Outlook in this organization’s system, the attachments show up as unreadable winmail.dat files. Or at least they do on my MacBook Pro. When I sent a message to IT about this, they told me it was my fault. I should do my email by getting online access to their system, and using their installation of Outlook. Or in other words I should change my email workflow, established over many years, just to suit them.
Worse than that — a performing arts center somewhere in the world has two main concert spaces. Once they had separate computer systems, forcing subscribers to the concerts to buy tickets to each hall separately. You couldn’t do a single ticket order for both halls together. And if you wanted to buy a subscription package, it had to be for one hall or the other. Couldn’t mix and match.
When a new marketing director said this didn’t make sense, the answer was that it couldn’t be change. Which I’m sure translated — just as you said! — to “this would be a lot of work, and we’re not even sure we know how to do it.”
The marketing director was shameless enough to try something that wouldn’t always work, and maybe only worked in this case because the marketing director was very new. They pretended to be someone from a very small town, who just didn’t know much about all this technology, but who just couldn’t understand how these experienced professional IT people couldn’t fix what seemed like a simple problem. It worked. Shamed IT into solving the problem. I wonder if they knew they were being played!
Hi Greg,
We just tried a new Friday night concert format.
Shorter concert. No intermission. Speaking from the stage by Music Director and radio personality.
We sold more single tickets since the concert was heavily promoted by the radio station.
However donors and regular subscribers were upset by the change.
How can you fix the plane in mid-air?
Is is worth alienating major donors and long-time subscribers to gain a few more single ticket sales from one time attendees who likely may not return.
Apologies! I thought I’d replied to your comment and posted it along with my reply. But that must have gotten lost in the ether. Another lurch of my Amtrak train, maybe.
I have to be briefer now than I was then. Seems like you’re talking about a one-time event. If it doesn’t do much for the institution in the long run, and alienates core supporters, then of course it’s not worth doing.
One solution, I think, is (as Rick Robinson said) to separate the two kinds of events. So that the core supporters never have to go to anything but the kind of concert they like. And that, conversely, the new things are prominently advertised as new and different, to attract new people.
The National Symphony in Washington, DC where I live has done that successfully. They have a series called Declassified, for people who don’t normally go to orchestra concerts. It does pretty well in drawing an audience, and doesn’t cut into the number of regular orchestra performances the NSO does. So the core audience is happy, and the only people who might complain are the musicians. But they don’t have much choice. It would be hard to find a major orchestra these days that over the past few years hasn’t done more and more performances that aren’t strictly classical. Though the big orchestras may not talk about this, it’s how they survive.
AS years go on, the arrangement I suggested might prove difficult for the core audience. Because what happens if ticket sales and even donations to the core concerts drop by quite a bit? Then clearly the orchestra can’t afford to do as many, and will most likely have to replace them with something new. Now the core audience might be hurting. Fewer of the concerts they love! But then if they look around and see the empty seats, they might understand why they have fewer concerts to go to.
How this evolves — if it plays out this way — would be interesting to see. I’d think the new-style concerts would have to be seriously artistic, whatever the music played on them would be. Can’t just keep adding pops and entertainment events, along with “hi, this is classical music” explanatory shows. The orchestra would have to reconceive itself in new artistic ways, to make what used to be supplementary concerts the artistic equals of the older ones.
Detroit Symphony Orchestra (where I serve on the Board of Trustees since quitting) has developed an in-house team over some years for video and webstreaming via grants from Mellon. They have reduced costs over time. The LAO Futures Fund seems made for symphony orchestra innovation such as this, although the process is pretty long/slow. It’s perhaps easier for small- and medium-size orchestras to experiment for what resonates; less PRIDE in the way perhaps.
This is why experimenting small and cheaper (quick ‘n dirty) can grow into major shifts and new product lines (again thinking distinctly commercial). In fact, a “grassroots” series is more relevant anyway, at least initially. Third-party vendors/artists, as Liza suggested, can get a performance series started. Once the music “speaks for itself” to newcomers, likely offsite, then the artists could be gradually subsumed into the hall with the new following. Again, DSO has had some success with this model hiring New Music Detroit.
That’s a heartening story, Rick. The key point, to me, is that the DSO was willing to make a serious commitment. Of course Mellon helped, but they wouldn’t have given the support if they didn’t think the DSO was committed. An orchestra or any other classical music institution that seriously wants to do these new things will find a way past all obstacles.
Not that anything is simple… but if/when the arts need to work both sides of the coin, it’s best to start small and build the customers/users for the new product/service.,both inside and outside the concert hall. For example, how hard would it be to install HD cameras around the stage, hire a VJ to mix content, hang a large HD screen in the back of the hall, limit the light via curtains, sell pricey tickets for value-added content (close-ups of performers, running narrative, music score, user comments) and the right to use cellphones? Give “new users” something of what they really expect. Start small, make sure veterans DON’T come by accident, and grow a new base.
How hard would it be to start a performance series in a warehouse or roomy bar that removes the formality while teaching the art form to small- to medium-sized social groups?
A commercial business (and an orchestra or presenter IS partly a commercial business) would say, If 78% of Americans can’t/won’t use our product, let’s make a cheap, indispensable product (freemium) to get some hooked; then many will upgrade to the premium product. There are even GRANTS available for some of these freemiums for some non-profits. Getting bold on a small scale doesn’t seem like “rocket science” to me.
Absolutely right, Rick! Start small, and do things that aren’t rocket science.
Maybe I’d add two thoughts. One is that one big institution I’ve worked with was surprisingly clueless about strategy. That is, about doing something new and planning how it should unfold over a few years, and how it would fit into a larger concept of the institution’s future. It was more like, “Hey, let’s do this!” and then two years later, “Wait a minute! We’re losing money!” And then shutting the thing down.
My other thought is about your first idea, which I love. While also thinking that the steps involve might not be so simple for many organizations, and might not be inexpensive. So a substantial commitment is required.
And with so many steps involved, an organization that’s never done anything like this might have an awkward fail. Like the National Symphony and Kennedy Center, at the start of last year’s season. Two innovations crashed into each other. For the first time, they streamed a concert live. For the first time, they began with a video (to introduce the new music director).
You might remember my blog post about what happened. The microphones for the streaming hung over the stage on big black wires. The video screen hung behind those wires! So when they showed the video, we watched it with big black wires partly blocking the screen. Hard to believe from major institutions, but it happened.
I think many orchestras don’t have in-house expertise to pull off the wonderful thing you’re suggesting. So they’d have to hire an outsider, maybe gulp at the size of the budget, but accept it. And then do everything the outsider said, no matter how much that rankled some people on the inside. It’s a lot to ask, I’d say, from my knowledge (some of it firsthand) of how orchestras work. But they have to do something like this, if they want to move forward.
Thanks for posting, Rick. You always contribute something good.
I think more support for the small scrappy organizations trying the really new would help everyone. The big old institutions can continue to survive on their base while the scrappy outsiders do the real experiments. When the small scrappies find something that works, then the big establishments can adjust to something that has been proven and is therefore less risky. Everyone wins.
Such a good point, Liza! Would you possibly mean your own terrific Go Go Symphony? :-))
Maybe 🙂