{"id":1461,"date":"2010-12-09T08:40:29","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T16:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2010\/12\/the_fine_art_of_self_destructi\/"},"modified":"2010-12-09T08:40:29","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T16:40:29","slug":"the_fine_art_of_self_destructi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/the_fine_art_of_self_destructi.php","title":{"rendered":"The fine art of self destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been referring lots of friends and colleagues to the fabulous keynote by Russell Willis Taylor at this past summer&#8217;s League of American Orchestra&#8217;s conference. Now, I&#8217;m pleased to discover that talk in video form online (you can download <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artstrategies.org\/tools\/publications\/2010\/06\/there-are-no-crises-only-tough-decisions\/\">the text and slides from the presentation<\/a> from the National Arts Strategies website).<\/p>\n<p>In the rather provocative talk, Taylor turns to satire to suggest the 12 steps to assure quick and decisive failure as a cultural nonprofit. If we&#8217;re going to make our own lives miserable, she posits, let&#8217;s really go for it.<\/p>\n<p>As a crib sheet for those of you anxious to get started making your own organizations dramatically unsustainable, here are her 12 rules of assured destruction.\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rule 1: Keep fixed costs as high as possible, and variable costs as low as you can.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 2: Confuse core values with core competencies.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 3: Believe that growth only means getting bigger and more expensive.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 4: Never make empirical decisions. Ignore data.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 5: Create more value for employees than customers.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 6: Fear new technologies of all kinds.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 7: Pretend that lliquidity doesn&#8217;t matter &#8212; a lot.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 8: Blame your customer.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 9: Pursue transactions rather than relationships.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 10: Compete rather than collaborate.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 11: Ignore the global pro-am revolution.<\/li>\n<li>Rule 12: Don&#8217;t accept that uncertainty is the price of innovation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well worth a watch.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"480\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/KkiLmMvjnzI?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/KkiLmMvjnzI?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"><\/object><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been referring lots of friends and colleagues to the fabulous keynote by Russell Willis Taylor at this past summer&#8217;s League of American Orchestra&#8217;s conference. Now, I&#8217;m pleased to discover that talk in video form online (you can download the text and slides from the presentation from the National Arts Strategies website). In the rather [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}