The new episode of my “Concept Test Kitchen” explores the PAEI Code, a framework by Ichak Adizes to explore the four functions/concerns of management and their interplay and implications. Full details on this model are available in multiple places, but I’m drawing from the book Leading the Leaders, Adizes Institute, 2015.
Archives for 2017
Sovereignty or service
We often talk about an organization having a mission, as if the organization exists as some separate entity with its own individual will. But increasingly I’m wondering if that attribution hasn’t always been upside-down. Organizations don’t have missions. Missions have organizations. And when change is necessary, it’s important to know which changes which.
Concept Test Kitchen, Episode 1
I’m launching a new experiment with this pilot episode of “Concept Test Kitchen” — a video series presenting interesting frameworks or approaches to arts management (‘recipes for thinking’), so you can share back whether or when they may be useful. Watch below, or on YouTube. And let me know in the comments whether the recipes […]
Defusing beauty
My previous post suggested a multi-layered view of our work in arts organizations, including attention to the nouns of our ‘products’ or ‘outcomes,’ the verbs of our ‘processes’ or ‘practices,’ but also the core ‘source’ or ‘wellspring’ of the work that drives and inspires us. One obvious wellspring for many of us in the arts […]
The shallow breathing of rational management
So much of our training, theory, practice, and focus in cultural management has to do with outcomes and processes. When we look to improve how our organizations ‘work’, we tend to chose between ‘making better things’ (the outcomes or products), or ‘making things better’ (the processes that lead to those outcomes).
Four functions/dysfunctions of managers
A former professor of mine used to say that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into kinds of people, and those who don’t. Now as a professor myself, I would add a third kind: those who cautiously categorize, but feel bad about it. That would be me. […]
Disinterest, distance, and the artist-manager
One of the core actions of aesthetic/artistic attention is to step back – to make a little space between yourself and the object of your attention, so you can see it as it is, rather than see it as you are. Stephen Sondheim captures this imperative (and its implications) in “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in […]
The problem with problems
If you work in the arts in higher education (or any education, for that matter), you are likely talking or hearing more about “complex problems,” or perhaps “wicked problems.” These are shorthand for a wide range of messy, persistent, usually negative aspects of civil or global society — hunger, inequity, racism, terrorism, climate change, sectarianism, […]
Belonging gone bad
The idea of “belonging” has long been a key point of aspiration and advocacy for the arts. Art builds empathy. Art builds community. Art infuses a sense of belonging into a world so desperate for it. In these conversations, the problem is framed as a “lack of belonging,” and arts experiences are the solution. But […]
A new lens on ‘excellence’
Arts initiatives that seek social change often face an identity crisis: They are driven by passion, purpose, meaning, and making, but they are generally described and evaluated by more traditional measures. Worse than the challenge of a square peg in a round hole, “arts for change” projects aren’t pegs at all, but multi-dimensional efforts that […]
