{"id":26,"date":"2011-10-09T16:05:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-09T23:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/?p=26"},"modified":"2011-10-09T16:05:55","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T23:05:55","slug":"learning-to-live-in-a-post-strategic-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/2011\/10\/learning-to-live-in-a-post-strategic-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Live in a Post-Strategic World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Piestewa Peak, Phoenix Mountain Preserve, Phoenix Arizona<\/p><\/div>\n

This was supposed to be a book.<\/p>\n

I should have known better.\u00a0 Every time I think I\u2019ve mastered something, events conspire to remind me that there is (so much) more that I still don\u2019t understand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An experienced hiker (which I\u2019m not) would have understood this immediately.\u00a0 Having approached a mountain first seen from a distance and then having climbed to its summit, the experienced hiker would have expected the view to\u00a0reveal so many MORE mountains still to climb.<\/p>\n

Like many people who endeavor to advance the marketing, audience development, public relations and ticket\/admissions-selling functions for arts organizations and cultural destinations, I think I\u2019m pretty good at evaluating a situation, engaging the insights of others, assessing options and ultimately making a strategic decision.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019ve spent most of my career doing that.<\/p>\n

But lately, I\u2019ve come to question whether strategy really matters.<\/p>\n

Strategy is the ability to stick your flag in the ground and declare out loud, \u201cThis I know!\u00a0 This is certain!\u00a0 You can safely stand with me here.\u00a0 Upon this solid foundation we can stake our future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, faced with profound global economic difficulties, intransigent national political challenges, worrisome demographic trends and (the opportunity of) ever-fast-evolving technologies, it is extraordinarily hard\u00a0to find and agree upon a stable place upon which to build a strategic plan.<\/p>\n

So I launch this blog with the suggestion\u00a0that we live in a post-strategic<\/em> society in which the act of\u00a0having a plan is not nearly so important as the continual effort to adjust to an even better one.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t surf either, but I imagine that the expert surfer already understands\u00a0that success is measured not by one final result, but by\u00a0their ability to sustain themselves from one moment to the next.\u00a0\u00a0It’s not the goal that matters but rather the ability to make continual adjustments that allow you to advance from your current situation to\u00a0your next – whatever it may be.<\/p>\n

I ask a lot of questions.\u00a0 I generate\u00a0many ideas.\u00a0\u00a0And those who know me know that I’m not shy about offering opinions, either.\u00a0 I was INTENDING\u00a0to\u00a0fill a\u00a0book with a whole lot of all of that.\u00a0 Yet, two years into the effort, I realized that\u00a0such a publication would have implied that I’d actually FOUND some answers or\u00a0figured\u00a0 out some fundamental truth.\u00a0\u00a0The truth is I don\u2019t know that I have found ANY of the answers. \u2013 nor do I believe that anybody else has quite\u00a0figured\u00a0it out either.<\/p>\n

Please understand that\u00a0I am\u00a0not advocating the wholesale abandonment of strategic plans and the lengthy processes that arts & cultural organizations go through to create them.\u00a0 I am solely suggesting that they are completely\u00a0inadequate to the challenges we face.<\/p>\n

I don’t (yet) have a better suggestion.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But\u00a0together, I hope we’ll use this blog to explore the possibilities…<\/p>\n

# # #<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was supposed to be a book. I should have known better.\u00a0 Every time I think I\u2019ve mastered something, events conspire to remind me that there is (so much) more that I still don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 An experienced hiker (which I\u2019m not) would have understood this immediately.\u00a0 Having approached a mountain first seen from a distance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[6,5,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-26","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-strategy","7":"tag-audience","8":"tag-marketing","9":"tag-strategy","10":"entry","11":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}