I’ve noticed a general agreement that the arts and culture world needs ‘problem solvers,’ people who can advance creative solutions with limited resources. But from observing countless cultural conversations, I’m emerging into a different view.
From my experience, we’ve got PLENTY of problem solvers. We’re swimming in them. Extraordinarily resourceful artists, managers, board members, and communities, make something from nothing everyday. We’re a ‘can do’ culture with a ‘will do’ spirit. God bless us, every one.
Problem is, we’re not particularly good at DEFINING the problem we’re solving. Conference sessions go directly from challenge identification to solutions without stopping to reflect on the deeper dynamics or context in play. Board meetings descend inevitably into tactics, skipping over observation and strategy, in part because we’re great problem-solvers, and in part because reflection is perceived as ‘theoretical’ and ‘detached.’
So, in our conferences and convenings, I suggest we declare partial victory on problem solving, and declare war on problem definition. I wonder what a conference would look like with that as a primary goal. Here are some handy tips to lead us in that direction.
Truer words have never been spoken.
It doesn’t matter how good you are if you’re doing the wrong thing.
I’m not sure I agree about the need to define the problem, Andrew. I’ve been listening to this conversation for over 25 years and I’ve heard no end of definitions from many of the best minds in the business. Just cull through ArtsJournal for the last few years and you’ll find the problem endlessly defined and processed in each of the ten ways described in your Litemind link — that is with one notable exception: Few of these thoughtful insiders have asked the outside world to define the problem from an external perspective.
Rather than extending this insiders-talking-to-insiders process indefinitely, why don’t we spend the next 25 years asking the customers what they think? Maybe their perspective will help us frame the problem — if they think there is one — in a solvable way.
@Trevor: Good thought but may I offer a refinement? In addition to talking to customers, how about talking to NON-customers? You don’t even have to talk to them directly: try reading the “feedback” commentary after an online arts-related piece of journalism. I know it hurts sometimes, and it’s easy to dismiss the commenters as philistines, but truly, there’s no better way to get a quick read on prevailing popular sentiment and to use the information to start the insider conversation.
I think you’re right, Andrew, about the tendency to rush into quick problem-solving. It’s endemic in the arts field (in England it’s called “ready, fire, aim!”) and ingrained in part because of the insistence of funders that we propose new projects all the time, and the lack of room funders typically allow for constructive failure (the platform for all innovation).
In our innovation programs across the country, including the Innovation Lab, we’ve found it’s essential in the first phase of incubating productive new thinking to do three things:
1 Compose a team not of the “usual suspects” that involves outside voices
2 Include artists in the team as full members (not to bring “the artist’s perspective”)
3 Spend a lot of time up front questioning prevailing assumptions to overcome organizational norms (otherwise problem definition can get stuck just going round in circles)
As Trevor says, it helps a lot to be provoked by new external voices, but organizations can also do effective internal work, if they use reliable methods to make assumptions explicit, stand outside their culture, and move beyond in-built mental models. Teams that work this way find it exhilarating — and it has the terrific side-effect of enabling new forms of shared leadership, that the sector is still struggling to adopt.
I could not possibly agree more with this post, and also with the comments above (particularly Trevor’s). Having been a performing artist, an arts manager and now an arts funder, my core frustration with the sector I love so much is the shocking degree to which its collective understanding of its challenges is based on assumptions or legends or psychological needs rather than on critical thinking. In my darkest moments of deep frustration on this point I start to wonder whether a sort of natural-selection process is at work, a version of the old cliches about the arts being the refuge for those who can’t do math.
What brings me back from despair on this point is a consistent observation that the next generation of artists and arts leaders are enormously smarter than my own (baby-boomer) generation. The 20something and 30something emergent leaders who I regularly interact with professionally and personally are far less likely to take things as a given than are my own peers, and far more comfortable and skilled at critical thinking based on real information. They are collectively subversive, thank goodness: politely but firmly disrespectful of the tired old cliches and half-truths and victimhood-based assumptions than are their elders. They are, bluntly, smarter than us; and what may be the ultimate salvation of our woolyheaded sector is being able to attract so many of them.