reflections
We're always grateful for the opportunity to work with good people doing good things across arts and culture. As always, our reflections come with a heartfelt thanks to those who’ve trusted our tiny team of two, to help them create the balance they need to keep moving forward.
We’ve gained a lot from our experiences, and as we look forward there are key themes and learnings that we'll carry with us and believe will be important.
1. arts and culture matter!
We’ve always believed that arts and culture are essential to the inclusiveness, accessibility, economic performance and sustainability needs of the environments and communities we live in.
This has been consistently reinforced in the difference we see the arts making to people’s lives in both small and fundamental ways.
We’ve also seen the importance – more than ever - of treating culture as a public good and human right, rather than an industry or market determined solely by economic criteria. Rethinking and reframing culture in this way, helps to unlock more progressive strategy, policy and collaboration, repositioning the arts as an essential part of life to be invested in and enjoy the benefits returned.
The mix of traditional and new art forms, the rise of new writing, artists, producers, venues and the changing appetite of new audiences, all point to an ongoing desire, appreciation and need for arts and culture to continue to play a central and important role in our lives.
Collaborative leadership and long-term investment in this sector will be critical to ongoing survival and success.
2. authentic leadership
We’ve talked a lot about the art of leading with people this year, very much focussing on authentic leadership at all levels.
We believe it will be authentic leaders who genuinely connect to their teams, build trust, inspire a true sense of direction, belonging and positive culture for their organisations and those they serve, who will succeed in moving things forward. Those who focus on identifying and fixing issues in isolation rather than prioritising what they want to achieve may struggle and lose sight of what matters most.
Putting on the big boots, our June blog, featured Winnie the Pooh’s definition of leadership as leading a long line of everybody, which chimes exactly with how we’ve seen it work well in practise
As we shared, authentic leadership is more than one person leading one expedition. It’s about creating a movement that involves and indeed needs, everybody to come along. Sharing both the direction and an active interest in working out how to get there using collective strengths, knowledge and ideas is key.
Authentic leadership reflects a true confidence and commitment to understanding and clarifying for others, who we are what we do and why we do it and then helping them translate the part they can play, using their unique capabilities.
Only when leaders and their followers are fully connected to this shared mission and approach, do we see them successfully come together on their expedition.
3. great audience experiences
Whatever the position and in whatever part of the sector, we’ve seen how multiple roles directly or indirectly play into the audience experience.
Everyone plays a part in the eventual delivery, and this year we’ve become keenly aware of the increased levels of audience expectation. (As Nurse Andrew commented in the Q and A of a brilliant new play by Barra Fitzgibbon recently, reflecting the aftermath of COVID lockdown, ‘everyone stopped clapping and started demanding pretty quickly!’) Sadly appreciation and tolerance can both become short-lived in worlds that change and move at pace.
If the experience really is everything, then it must be delivered through the actions of everyone involved. When this happens in positive ways, the experience becomes exactly what was expected - but also somehow more.
We explored this in our February blog, Meeting anticipation which looked at how memorable experiences are triggered across multiple moments and interactions and involve a range of emotions connected to our hopes, wants and desires. Sometimes those we expected to be satisfied, but often small incidences of joy, intrigue, curiosity, learning or surprise that simply make us feel something we anticipated feeling, but didn’t know what to wish for or how to define.
We’ve seen art that unexpectedly delights, a play that challenges, a show that entertains and a film that exposes truth. We’ve learned that if we continually evolve how art is made, who makes it and how it’s experienced, it will serve us well in reflecting and connecting the societies we live in now and those we want to build for the future - helping us understand, anticipate and appreciate it in different ways and through different perspectives.
So, looking ahead, when you consistently manage, deliver and even exceed expectations, what’s next? Whatever it is, it will require us to address the task of how we can better manage and deliver the entire experience - every single moment of it!
4. honest brands
As an honest brand, who you are, what you do and why you do it visibly leaks out of every touch point and interaction – whether you like it or not!
It’s seen and heard in the actions and behaviours of the employees, it is felt by the audiences, it’s what clients and customers tell each other about their experiences, it’s an integral part of any organisations physical and virtual presence in the world.
In our August blog, There’s no place like home we talked of how a brand can be reflected through the buildings, the people, the programming, and both the artist and audience experiences - in different ways at different times - reflecting the ability of an organisation to stay connected to what matters most, what it believes in and those it serves.
Whilst a good marketing campaign can promise just about anything and attract different people in different ways, an honest brand reflects its values, purpose and unique offer consistently across everything it says and does, and then invites others in to enjoy it.
When a brand starts to dilute, change or get distracted it can lose trust and credibility. When it knowingly says one thing but does another, it openly reveals an inherent dishonesty through its messages, ways of working and how it handles its relationships with audiences, employees and partners.
Increasingly we’re seeing people seek out and test for honesty in their choice of brands as trust becomes an increasingly rare and valuable commodity.
5. creating value
Creating value is a two-way contract. Adding value and feeling valued is the balance point for individual, team and organisational success.
One half of the contract is for individuals to adopt a willingness to be involved and to be at their best, but for this to happen, organisations must take equal responsibility for creating the relevant conditions for this to occur.
In our balance workshops this year, we’ve seen both individuals and teams become more involved and empowered as they seek to understand and explore the part they play and where and how their strengths could make a valued contribution. They feel of value and feel they can add value.
In return, some great conversations have opened up between and across teams and between leaders and their employees about what works well and what can be improved or done differently to enable people to be at their best.
Value me, value you (a-ha), our first blog this year, brought to life the notion of the indisputable link between feeling of value and delivering value, identifying the measurable rewards in both staff attraction, retention and real value creation for customers, audiences and organisations.
Can everyone always get what they want? No. But by starting real conversations that focus on shared responsibilities and a shared aim of giving and creating, value goes a very long way to nudging things forward and making things better.
6. fresh thinking
Fresh thinking is an important and useful tool in helping us evolve how we do things - this may be extending our strengths to new areas, using our skills in different ways or being open to trying something new altogether.
Our recent blog, Squirrels also go up! explored how many times the reality of a changing world confuses, scares or bewilders us.
And it goes on to ask, do we as leaders only consider the options we know, the options we’ve previously followed and the options that have always served us well? Or do we consider other ideas, options and ways of working?
The right solution or opportunity may initially appear puzzling, simply because it contradicts anything we’ve previously seen or heard. It sits outside our sphere of understanding or previous experience. However, when we see leaders and their teams embrace fresh thinking, it becomes a central part of creating the balance they need to evolve effectively.
Lasting thoughts
Finally, we are reminded and reassured that we couldn’t have done it with you! How we continue to consult, learn and evolve, is inextricably linked to the relationships we have with our clients and our experiences in the wider world of arts and culture.
In closing the year, we particularly thank, The Kings Head Theatre, Katy Bryant, Lighthouse Immersive Studios, Music Theatre International, The Pleasance Theatre Trust, Riverside Studios, ShowerBox, SOHO Theatre, and Version 2 Lights, for trusting us to help them create balance in 2024 and for inspiring these reflections.
We look forward to more good balance conversations in 2025.
Just as we were enjoying another year working with good people doing good things, 3-2-1 and it’s gone!
But... we’ve gained a lot from our experiences, and as we look forward, there are key themes and learnings that we'll carry with us and believe will be important.
We’re a small, tight team of experienced consultants, who have helped leaders and organisations through the best and the worst of the past thirty years.
We help you create balance - the ability to adjust your position relative to the world around you, so you can survive, succeed and keep moving forward.
Where we share our client stories from the past 30 years.
Sales and Ticketing teams are designed to sell tickets. So, when life shifts overnight to refunds & new dates, it’s a business model re-think. But… it still all starts with a ticket