So in order to learn more about administrative design and its impact on output (artistic in this case), I’ve had to jump into literature from the business world. The closest I can come to study examples is in the health care field, which share our mostly not-for-profit status.
What I have learned is that the success of administrative designs in business and health care is determined by how well a product or service sells and/or how well a particular constituent group is served. It appears that in the best of cases, administrative designs are created to serve an identified market. In other words, the messy of process of creating a product or service while imagining and researching its potential market should include how a business, or in this case a not-for-profit should organize itself to best move the product or service to its market.
What came immediately to mind was how poorly arts enterprises manage their markets.
My experience has been that products are imagined, invented and “manufactured” with little regard to a market. In fact, at times I have experienced even a disregard or low regard for the marketplace. Nonetheless, it’s rare for arts organizations to create programs and services in an interactive, flexible manner, in a process that is thoughtful and fully knowledgeable of its potential market.
So if the most effective administrative design (or even organizational design) emerges from the essential need of most effectively moving products and services to market, we in the arts community have a problem.
I’ll be continuing my education (and blogging) on this topic for some time — it’s intensely interesting to question and probe the long-held customs and ways of doing “business” in the arts sector.
3 responses to “Learning about Administrative Design”
interesting topic 🙂
This is an extremely pertinent topic with a complex set of variables. My initial thought is the lack of resources for market research (at least here in Canada).
I don’t think its a chicken and egg problem. We need chickens (artistic directors et al) with a clear appreciation for what marketing can add to their understanding of the audiences they serve.
I’d like to know about efforts to include marketing courses or training in arts schools.
Hey Jim! I had a couple thoughts after this post.
First, because traditional arts training encourages artists to focus on being unique, innovative and authentic, as well as technically proficient or excellent, they must learn to be confident in their own individual identities and most go through some period of intentionally ignoring what “the market” would ask them to create.
I sense a gap between this phase of development and a later one that requires artists to be “business-minded,” or to transfer their personal creative practice to students upon becoming an educator. These two stages seem distinct to me, without a comfortable transition from the former to the latter. From my experience, some artists are able to live these two stages simultaneously (which is most advantageous), but many more feel fully engaged in the first stage and taken by complete surprise at the demands of the second.
If most artists feel best focusing on their unique contributions to the world, it is obvious where the dismissal or disdain for “the market” you mention comes from.
As Lucy mentioned, there may be a need for arts education to include frank exploration of “the market” for each artist. It could also be that the sector as a whole needs this lesson, though I suspect it needs to start with artists instead of managers. The harsh reality is that the niche markets for high/conceptual/elite art are dramatically smaller than the markets for more easily accessible offerings. Even as I type that sentence, I feel a nagging shame about asking artists to be proud of supplying the masses. Does that deny the core purpose of art? Or is it noble in its effort to unite the greatest number of people in the experiences that artists know to be infinitely enriching?
Lastly, many arts managers are former artists, or at least people who have engaged in personal art practice even if they don’t self-identify as artists. I find it very likely that early lessons in high/conceptual/elite art linger well into their careers as managers. It is logical then, that these people would struggle with serving “the market” after being taught, on some level, to ignore it and explore, express, create, and not to “sell out” or pander to a target audience.