JAM 45

> Working together

ISSUE 45 | JANUARY 2012

Dancing with digital Go live Keep calm and carry on. Really?

> The next generation

> Producing the future

> The team meeting is dead. Long live the team!

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Contents

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> Regulars Spotlight....................................................................3 Research round-up...............................................4 Arts Marketing Standards................................12 Just a minute........................................................ 22

60 Good work!

This issue of JAM was compiled and edited by Helen Bolt and Julie Aldridge. e helen@a-m-a.co.uk JAM is published by the Arts Marketing Association 7a Clifton Court, Cambridge CB1 7BN t 01223 578078 Tw @amadigital e info@a-m-a.co.uk w www.a-m-a.co.uk Designed by Sugarfree t 020 7619 7430 w www.sugarfreedesign.co.uk

Make JAM for the AMA JAM is always on the lookout for new writers with good ideas for case studies and features, especially from some of those smaller organisations out there.

If you would like to contribute, please e-mail: helen@a-m-a.co.uk

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Arts Marketing Standards

Go live

Just a minute

(

Research round-up

> Working together Dancing with digital............................................ 6 Case study: The next generation . ................8 Go live .................................................................... 10 Good work! .......................................................... 14 Case study: Producing the future .............. 16 Keep calm and carry on. Really? ................ 18 Case study: The team meeting is dead.... 20

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> EDITORIAL

Working together

T

he current rapid pace of change is not only happening with regard to technology but includes audience and visitor behaviour, patterns of demand and visitor profiles. The increasing diversity of artistic practice, and the extent to which people now expect experiences to be participatory or customised, have introduced a whole new approach to working with the public.

New ways of generating data and insights have arisen, improving our ability to understand audiences, but also adding to our workload and to the list of things we need to share with others in the organisation.

The impact of changing politics and the current depressing economic situation has also led to many arts organisations changing core elements such as business models, income streams, staffing structures and budgets. And many have revisited

the company culture and the way in which they innovate and experiment.

These changes have proved incredibly positive for some arts organisations while for others the pace of change has proved to be pretty exhausting!

Now, more than ever, we need to work together for support and success.

In this issue’s Research Round-up, Heather Maitland asks, ‘Are marketers having an identity crisis?’, ‘Should we be artists or scientists?’ Turn to page 4 for some thoughts and conclusions.

Kingsley Jayasekera reveals how Sadler’s Wells has embraced the dawn of digital technology (page 6) and Baba Israel describes Contact’s Re:Con project for developing young people (page 8).

Tom Hunter brings us seven insanely great ideas for managing internal innovation on page 10, while Alasdair Cant gives some top tips for boosting morale in the workplace on page 14.

Matthew Austin considers the rise of producer as marketer and how we can work together for shared success (page 16), while Mark Wright wonders if the phrase of the moment, keep calm and carry on, is really the best idea (page 18) and Lisa Baxter (page 20) offers some practical teambuilding ideas.

Dancing her way into the spotlight (below) and the AMA office is Jacqueline Haxton, our recently appointed new Events and Membership Administrator, and in this issue’s Just a Minute (page 22) we get to know Jane Richardson, Marketing Manager at the British Library.

Helen Bolt Editor, JAM e helen@a-m-a.co.uk Tw @amadigital

> SPOTLIGHT

Spotlight on Jacqueline Haxton

I

’ve always had an interest in the arts – particularly dance – and studied ballet until I was 17 years old. Although I would have loved to have taken my dancing further it was clear I was no Darcey Bussell.

Instead I became Dance Editor of the student magazine Sheff Press while studying art history at Sheffield Hallam University. It was fantastic. I was able to watch dance for free almost on a weekly basis. I reviewed some great companies, from the Michael Clark Dance Company, Candoco and Lea Anderson’s Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs through to the Northern Ballet Theatre and Rambert.

After graduating from Sheffield I briefly worked for a fine art auction house in Nottingham before moving to London in 1995 to work in the newly formed development team at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. The team was set up to raise the £10 million

participatory funding needed as part of the Lottery-funded rebuild project of the theatre. As one of the first arts-based projects to receive Lottery funding, there was some media backlash when the project was announced. I remember on my first day at Sadler’s Wells standing on the Victoria line and reading the tabloid headline, ‘Tutu much’.

It was a very interesting time at Sadler’s Wells. The programme was so diverse, from the premiere of Matthew Bourne’s all-male Swan Lake through to Penn & Teller! The highlight for me, however, was presenting Dame Ninette de Valois with a bouquet of flowers at the final performance of the theatre in June 1996. Dame Ninette was seated in the centre of the stalls with the spotlight on her and the whole auditorium giving her a standing ovation.

Shortly afterwards the bulldozers moved in and the Sadler’s Wells as we

now know it was built.

After Sadler’s Wells, I moved into the voluntary sector, working for the deafblind charity Sense, and then at Diabetes UK as Website Manager.

More recently, I’ve had a career break to look after my young family. I’m lucky that the AMA has given me the opportunity to return to work and as Events and Membership Administrator I’m involved in most areas of the organisation’s work.

I now live an outnumbered life with my three sons and a husband.

Weekends are spent on the side of rugby pitches shouting words of encouragement. Visits to the theatre are sadly too few and far between.

Jacqueline Haxton Events and Membership Administrator, AMA e jacqueline@ a-m-a.co.uk JAM 45 > 3

Are marketers having an identity crisis?

Heather Maitland asks, ‘Should we be artists or scientists?’

Illustration by Sugarfree

W

e’re arts marketers: we’re about people, not money, said the Marketing Officer, complaining about her department’s financial targets. I would have been more sympathetic if the organisation had not teetered on the brink of insolvency just 18 months earlier. This kind of detachment from organisation goals is common, concludes the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). Marketers need to focus on added value for shareholders, not on woolly concepts like creating customer demand. They have lost touch with what marketing is for.1 But how is this relevant to us? We are arts marketers: we don’t have shareholders. True. We do have stakeholders, though, and our organisations have objectives – the only difference is that they are cultural and social as well as financial.

Research by Cranfield Business School shows that this detachment from the ultimate purpose of marketing is damaging.2 We are expendable unless we can prove we contribute to organisational objectives. To do this we need to be analysts as well as artists.

Seth Godin agrees that we need a science hat as well as an art hat, switching between them depending on the task in hand.3 George Torok agrees but places the emphasis differently: ‘Science should lead and measure and the art should inspire and create’.4 Although it is a shorthand for huge complexity, Professor Susan Greenfield endorses the idea of left-brain or right-brain dominance as a ‘mental model’ that allows us to explore different ways of thinking.5 In this model, the sequential and analytical processes we need to evaluate what we do are left-brained ways of thinking. The holistic and intuitive approaches that enable us to be creative are right-brained. Peter Legge of Marketing Today argues that we should not think in terms of a battle but more ‘left brain manages right brain’.5 Is it possible to be both left-brained and right-brained?

Employers of marketing graduates rated them as having relatively strong analytical and interpersonal skills but they were weak at problem formulation, decision making, persuasion and negotiation, the things that turn information into strategy.7 The CIM believes that marketers prefer action to analysis. We are so driven by our to-do list that we don’t stop to reflect, analyse and 4 > JAM 45

draw conclusions from what we do.8 To learn and improve, we need to do something, review it, draw conclusions, plan what to do next time, implement it, review it and so on. Peter Honey and Alan Mumford argue that because we have dominant learning styles we get stuck in one stage of this learning cycle.9 However, there is also evidence that we are not so great at being creative. Around half of senior marketers surveyed

by Cranfield Business School agreed that their marketing lacks novelty, their promotional strategies are routine, they focus on proven methods and create dull campaigns.10 How can we be both creative and analytical? The CIM argues that marketing departments need a mix of leftbrained and right-brained thinkers. But do diverse teams work?11 Research indicates that the more diverse the team, the better they perform complex tasks, producing higher quality ideas. This may be because diversity increases levels of tolerance within the team so they are more likely to accept innovative solutions. However, with straightforward, process-driven tasks, more diversity means more conflict because it is difficult to agree common goals.12 Differences in ability levels within the team can cause communication problems that lead to conflict and reduced creativity.13 Diversity means better performance only if the members interact effectively.

This effective interaction needs a certain amount of conflict. Where team members are too similar and stay together too long, they sink into conventional ‘group think’.14 Effective analysis and interpretation of information depends on the ability of team members to challenge each other and give constructive feedback. This risks upsetting other members so teams that need to stay together in the long term tend to be reluctant to rock the boat. There are higher levels of constructive conflict where teams have both right-brained and left-brained thinkers. The problems arise when the conflict becomes personal.15 Specialists can hold teams back. When they have relatively low levels of skill, they lack the experience to cope with ambiguity and chance. Skilled specialists, however, mean better performing teams.16 So how can we create diverse marketing departments?

We can recruit more effectively. Do a skills audit and look

> RESEARCH ROUND-UP

… we should not think in terms of a battle but more ‘left brain manages right brain’.

for people to fill the gaps.17 Take a look at the middle pages for Julie Aldridge’s introduction to a set of marketing standards that will help you devise an effective audit.

We can manage our existing teams better, creating an environment that promotes sound decision making. Team members need a psychologically safe place in which they can challenge the status quo, where there are many right answers and dialogue is a way of life.18 They need to focus on clear goals. The scrum approach to marketing uses a rugby metaphor. The cross-functional team achieves a long-term goal by passing the ball back and forth, working in short, intensive spurts designed to achieve well-defined tasks.19 Holtzman and Anderberg also emphasise the importance of clear objectives, using the ‘lift pitch’ test to ensure members can clearly articulate what the team is trying to achieve.

Can they explain their goal to a board member in the time it takes for the lift to move between floors?20 Effective systems and processes are important. Turn the objectives into performance indicators and create a dashboard that evaluates each campaign in a standard way.

Start every team meeting with a 15-minute discussion of the dashboards, asking ‘So what?’ Create a clear, concise and consistent template for strategic marketing and campaign plans so they can be shared easily. Create an online store for images, artwork, logos, copy, e-newsletters, etc., for easy access to the marketing assets.21 If you don’t have a team, Bill Lucas recommends creating one. Find a critical friend to challenge you with constructive feedback. Appoint a ‘lay consultant’ from a very different line of work to give you an alternative perspective.22 Collaborate. Aviva, O2 and Heineken bring together their marketing teams to discuss issues and share good practice.23 And we can all develop our own abilities to switch between analytical and creative modes of thinking.

Identify your weaker styles and work to strengthen them. Both Peter Honey and Bill Lucas offer dozens of ideas. For example, develop your ability to reflect by studying people’s behaviour at meetings when agenda items do not involve you or develop your interpretative skills by trying to spot inconsistencies and weaknesses in other people’s arguments.24 We need to become whole-brained because, as Grant Halloran points out, the conflict between creativity and analysis is counterproductive: ‘Marketing is neither art nor science.

Marketing is business.’25

Heather Maitland Consultant and Associate Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick e heather@heathermaitland.co.uk w www.heathermaitland.co.uk

1. Insights Team, A Tale of Two Disciplines: Managing Marketing People, Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2005 2. Evmorfia Argyriou et al., The Future of Marketing, Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2009 3. Seth Godin, ‘Is marketing an art or a science?’ 2009, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ seths_blog/2009/05/is-marketing-an-art-or-a-science.html, consulted 2/11/2011 4. George Torok, ‘Marketing art or science?’, 2007, consulted at http://georgetorok. blogspot.com/2007/07/marketing-art-or-science.html, 2/11/2011 5. Bill Lucas, Power Up Your Mind: Learn Faster, Work Smarter, Nicolas Brealey Publishing, 2001, p. 11 6. Peter de Legge, ‘Marketing: the art vs. science debate’, 2006, consulted at http:// marketingtoday.blogspot.com/2006/10/marketing-art-vs-science-debate.html, 2/11/2011 7. Scott G. Dacko, ‘Narrowing the skills gap for marketers of the future’, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 3, vol. 24, 2006, pp. 283–295 8. Insights Team, op cit., p. 12 9. Peter Honey and Alan Mumford, The Learning Styles Questionnaire: 80 Item Version, Peter Honey Publications, 2000, p. 6 10. Evmorfia Argyriou et al., op cit., p. 8 11. Insight Team, op cit., p. 5 12. Malcolm Higgs, Ulrich Plewnia and Jorg Ploch, ‘Influence of team composition and task complexity on team performance’, Team Performance Management, 7/8, vol. 11, 2005, pp. 227–250 13. José M. De La Torre-Ruiz, J. Alberto Aragón-Correa and Vera Ferrón-Vílchez, ‘Job-related skill heterogeneity and action team performance’, Management Decision, 7, vol. 49, 2011, pp. 1061–1079 14. Terri Kurtzberg, ‘Creative styles and teamwork: effects of coordination and conflict on group outcomes’, UMI dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI, 2000 15. Kang Yang Trevor Yu and Daniel M. Cable, ‘Unpacking cooperation in diverse teams’.

Team Performance Management, 1, vol. 17, 2011, pp. 63–82 16. José M. De La Torre-Ruiz et al., op cit.

17. Rohan Miller, Richard Mizerski and Katherine Mizerski, ‘Towards the development and application of a skills audit for marketing and communications professionals’, in ANZMAC 2000, ‘Visionary Marketing for the 21st Century: Facing the Challenge’ 18. Bill Lucas, op cit., p. 164 19. Ken Schwaber, Agile Project Management with Scrum, Microsoft Press, 2004 20. Yair Holtzman and Johan Anderberg, ‘Diversify your teams and collaborate: because great minds don’t think alike’, Journal of Management Development, 1, vol. 30, 2011, pp.

75–92 21. Chetan Saiya, ‘Six steps to better marketing operations management’, consulted at http://www.thewisemarketer.com/features/read.asp?id=73 on 2/11/2011 22. Bill Lucas, op cit., p. 165 23. Russell Parsons, ‘Brands team up to create future marketers’, 2011, consulted at http:// www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/industry/brands-team-up-to-create-futuremarketers/3030891.article on 2/11/2011 24. Peter Honey and Alan Mumford, op cit., p. 29 and p. 33 25. Grant Halloran, ‘Marketing: art or science? Will people ever agree?’, consulted at http:// www.orbisglobal.com/Marketing-Management-Resources/marketing-art-or-science/ on 2/11/2011

JAM 45 > 5

Dancing with digital Kingsley Jayasekera reveals how Sadler’s Wells has embraced the dawn of digital technology

Tommy Franzen, ZooNation’s Some Like It Hip Hop, photo by Ed Miller

T

hings used to be so simple.

For good or ill, the world of arts marketing remained unchanging, relying on those campaign essentials of press advertising, direct mail and leaflet distribution to communicate our message and attributing any significant success to that mystical but immeasurable force, ‘great word of mouth’.

The arrival of ‘digital’ has really shaken things up, forcing us to change how we plan campaigns, recruit staff and spend budgets. In the time I have been at Sadler’s Wells the impact of digital has been marked. Online sales have increased from 20% to 75%.

Email has increasingly replaced direct mail and social networking sites like Facebook have demonstrated massive potential to spread information, ensuring the power of word of mouth reaches further and travels faster.

Nowadays an understanding of digital marketing is essential for marketing staff. Not just how you use Facebook, Twitter or YouTube but Google Adwords and banner advertising. But for the arts, the shift online has usually been more one of adaptation to circumstance rather than organisational strategy. For many of us, social media fell to marketing not through any great plan but simply

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as organisations went through the first rush to have any kind of presence on sites like MySpace. Marketing Assistants became Twitter and Facebook managers simply because they were the only people young enough to already be users, and bloggers were ignored completely until they picked an online argument.

Meanwhile websites remained areas of contention, shared or fought over by every department.

I was fortunate at Sadler’s Wells in that I could build a team encompassing marketing, digital, press and ticket office into one department.

This type of joined-up structure has always had advantages but in the digital era may become essential.

The rise of social media means the boundaries are blurring between marketing and press departments, just as the boundaries between the public and the press have been blurred by the rise of the blogger. Newspapers are shifting online and making greater use of resources like video and increasingly everything we do drives the public to online ticketing.

For Sadler’s Wells, a venue that specialises in presenting dance, a very visual and diverse artform, embracing digital made perfect sense. The fact that 70% of income for the theatre comes from ticket sales fortunately meant there was no doubt about where digital should sit within the organisation. When we built a new website it was agreed it was purely a marketing-led project (in fact, no one apart from myself and our web manager were involved in the brief to the agency or design approval) which must have made it one of the easiest web builds of all time and

ensured the focus remained primarily on our customers. This approach, plus a strict discipline over email use (just two emails per month; no, you can’t approve our copy; no, we won’t send out a solus email about your dying show at another venue) created a decent playing field where digital could work at its best.

The biggest shift has of course been the growth of Facebook and Twitter.

Their role as a means of personal communication gives them huge power, but this strength is doubleedged. Over the years different staff members have taken responsibility for our Facebook and Twitter accounts but we have tried to set a tone for our social media that is appropriate to Sadler’s Wells. In recent years a number of arts organisations have found themselves in the middle of social media storms and for any of us this is always a real risk. At present Sadler’s Wells has no formal policy on social media usage or online risk management but until we do I hope the close relationship between marketing and press teams, added to a clear internal understanding of the Communications department’s role, makes us reasonably prepared.

In fact the challenges digital brings in many ways are greater for those who fill press rather than marketing roles. Marketers are always actively pursuing new ways to reach the public (that dread fear of being asked what more you can do to get an audience for a terrible show never goes away).

In contrast many press officers still work within a framework which mainly concentrates on generating editorial coverage in newsprint and dealing with critics on press night. Their focus

> FEATURE

is often on the press itself, rather than the public they reach through the press. The rise in citizen journalism and the move online by newspapers is adding so much more to their roles.

Plus of course they have to deal with the outcome of anything that goes wrong …

If social media maintains its influence I can see a need for more specialised roles in larger organisations; digital communities officers who look after all this output, generating and commissioning content in text, video and photos.

Last year we actually recruited someone into this type of role for our

long-running hip-hop dance project Breakin’ Convention. Unsurprisingly they were already an active blogger in the sector.

The challenge is how we create a new effective style of marketing that encompasses digital. No one can deny that many traditional marketing methods still work and work well, so what do we keep and what do we lose?

We certainly cannot keep adding more lines to small budgets; cut your cake too thin and it crumbles. At Sadler’s Wells we have cut back on print distribution and direct mail but have not yet moved a significant part of our budget online. The emphasis has been

The biggest shift has of course been the growth of Facebook and Twitter. Their role as a means of personal communication gives them huge power, but this strength is double-edged. on cost saving, not reallocation.

Within arts marketing there seems to be a real desire to embrace the opportunities that digital offers. For those of us who have spent years putting ads in papers and leaflets out in racks, digital offers something very exciting – the chance to get a live snapshot of the public mood.

ZooNation’s hit show Some Like It Hip Hop, which Sadler’s Wells coproduced, has been a huge Twitter story and to be able to observe the point where a show takes off, seeing that word of mouth happening in front of your eyes is thrilling.

Certainly while things are not as simple any more, they are much more exciting.

Kingsley Jayasekera Director of Communications and Digital Strategy, Sadler’s Wells e kingsley.jayasekera@sadlerswells.com b www.kingsleyjayasekera.blogspot.com w www.sadlerswells.com JAM 45 > 7

The next generation Baba Israel describes Contact’s Re:Con project for developing young people

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ngaging young people is a perennial quest for the arts.

Not only will they be our next generation of audiences, but our creative and future leaders too.

Unfortunately we’re pretty much facing a perfect storm, with an explosion in competing demands on young people’s time and attention, along with an economic crisis that’s cut their income and left one in five school leavers and graduates aged 17 to 24 out of work.

Last year at Contact we decided to address both these issues with the creation of Re:Con, our young programming and producing team.

Looking around we saw that while many theatres offered Takeover-style events that allowed young people to programme over a limited space of time, there was little in terms of longterm entry-level programming and producing training.

Designed by Kate Catling, our Programming Manager, Re:Con was structured as a year-long programme for four young people aged 18 to 25. Moving through different stages the project started with the team members seeing shows and events, including the Edinburgh Festival, and reporting back to us from a programming perspective.

We devised a focused feedback form that not only asked about their subjective and artistic opinions, but also practical information such as number of cast members, marketing materials, how busy the show was and a breakdown of the audience.

As a result of this work a number of very successful events were chosen for the artistic programme. This was important to the participants as it 8 > JAM 45

showed there was a through-line to their work and their decisions had demonstrable results.

From there the team started working on existing Contact projects such as Flying Solo, our festival of solo performances; Re-Play, a festival produced in partnership with The Library Theatre Company; and Playspace, a digital technology and performance project which they worked on with the BBC. This gave them valuable producing experience before they tackled their own selfdesigned project: Lost & Found.

A week-long festival of new and experimental theatre, Lost & Found took place across the city of Manchester, staging performance art in music shops, poetry in cafes and music on the trams, the latter brought about in partnership with Metrolink.

It was an ambitious undertaking and, at first, we were worried it may have been too ambitious. But, one of the most important factors when working with young people is getting the balance right between providing support and experience, and allowing them free reign to pursue their own ideas. In this case we were glad we allowed them to follow their imaginations because Lost & Found was a massive success in terms of audience numbers, feedback, documentation, the external relationships the team forged and press coverage.

As a year-long project Re:Con had a number of goals. First, we wanted young people to contribute to Contact’s artistic programme. Contact isn’t a hierarchical organisation with an artistic director at the top who decrees what is programmed when.

We believe a broad dialogue is critical, especially with young people. Young people are embedded throughout our organisation: they sit on our board, they work as front-of-house staff and a young people’s panel helps select every full-time member of staff. Re:Con brought this fresh and important viewpoint into our programming department.

We also wanted to give a group of young people the tools, confidence and skills to advance as creative leaders, bridging the gap between potential and employment in a difficult job market. One of the keys to Re:Con was that it provided young people with a full package of skills.

Again, while many programming schemes for young people focused on their creative ideas and opinions, we wanted to also provide them with the practical nuts-and-bolts skills of producing, including negotiation, budgeting, project management and logistics.

It was also important to us and the participants to document their progression. We created a profile of what we thought would make a good programmer and producer and then

We also wanted to give a group of young people the tools, confidence and skills to advance as creative leaders, bridging the gap between potential and employment in a difficult job market.

> CASE STUDY

Re:Con 2010/11: l-r Alex Browning, Rachel Moorhouse, Phil Brankin, Jennifer Gaskell (left image) Lost & Found 2011

we brought in an outside facilitator who measured the team against those areas at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of their journey. This allowed us to see how they were developing, tackle any weak points and to show to the participants their own professional progression.

Managing young people is always a two-way process and we learnt as much from Re:Con as, hopefully, they did from us. For example, we learned the project needed a longer time frame. There can be a tendency to design short-term projects with clearly defined quick goals and results.

Initially Re:Con was a six-month project, but we quickly extended it to a whole year so the members had more time to grow, make decisions and develop.

We also learned to commit to the project and to allow the young people the freedom to shape their own learning experience. Re:Con was not seen as an ‘additional extra’ or ‘supplementary’ to our core work, but an integral part of our organisation.

The legacy has been a festival, which will be returning this year, and four young people who have been helped to start their careers in the arts.

Baba Israel Artistic Director, Contact e babaisrael@contactmcr.com Tw @babaisrael w www.contactmcr.com JAM 45 > 9

Go live Tom Hunter brings us seven insanely great* ideas for managing internal innovation Illustration by Sugarfree

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here’s an intersection between great artists and great entrepreneurs, but at the same time there’s often an associated mythology that true innovation is the province of the individual visionary or the start-up company plotting world domination from a garage somewhere in Silicon Valley.

Of course the truth is that all companies need to innovate and embrace change if they are to remain resilient and, dare I say it, relevant in a creative marketplace, and it’s my belief that it’s not always the current leaders of an organisation (or teams of consultants) who are best positioned to create change within a company. Rather it’s the staff that most often have the freshest vision, the best tools, the skill and the will to lead the charge towards internal innovation.

These are the key lessons we’ve learnt in the build-up to launching LondonCalling.com 1. Borrow from everywhere While ‘thinking outside the box’ may be a vastly painful cliché of Dilbertesque (dilbert.com) proportions, looking outside the box is often the first step

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to truly great innovations. Don’t just look at similar organisations – what’s the museum down the road doing?

– try also looking at other sectors for your inspiration: what can an experimental theatre company learn from a mobile phone app? What merchandising secrets can we learn from the Disney Store? What could our box offices learn from a five-star hotel concierge? Inspiration most often comes from making fresh connections between great ideas that already exist.

2. Look for blue oceans Life in a red ocean is bloody and competitive, whereas reaching a blue ocean often requires a somewhat lateral leap from your accepted business practice into unmapped territories. Cirque du Soleil is often cited as a classic blue-ocean company, shedding the perceived negative aspects of the circus – cruelty to animals, cold big-top tents, scary clowns – to focus on a new type of offer that moved into prestigious venues and emphasised acrobatic skill alongside theatricality. Likewise, London Calling’s shift into the area of consumer websites is a blue-ocean move. The internet ocean might be crowded, but the business model and governing thought

process – recommendation, not critical review – is different enough that in our view there’s room for everyone to play.

3. Testing beats focus groups Which is the best way to try out a new idea: do it, or talk about it? The two main problems with focus groups are, first, that people feel compelled to come up with suggestions and thus risk adding complexity to your original elegant idea, and second, that people are notoriously bad at really knowing what they want, especially when you haven’t built it for them yet. Innovation is not the province of the lone visionary, but neither does it thrive best under pressure from too much perceived wisdom or crowd-sourced dogma. The key to a successful innovation loop is to go build your idea, then measure and learn from the results, then repeat, repeat again, and adjust course as needed.

4. Encourage objections We need to remember that not everyone seeks change or is best suited for the fast-paced flux of innovation. Likewise an idea that’s not robust enough to take a little criticism head on probably isn’t such a strong idea after all.

As innovators it’s our job to be the

> FEATURE

crazy ones and jump ship into chaotic waters from time to time, but learning to actively seek out objections is a key part of managing change, and when tampering with the DNA of your company’s core vision it helps to make sure everyone’s on the journey with you (or at least waving flags from the sidelines). Sure, handling objections can appear wearisome – why can’t they just get it? – but there’s nothing more certain to damage a project in the long term than someone who’s only keeping quiet now so they can relish an ‘I told you so’ moment later on.

5. Embrace crux moves The crux is a term originally employed in rock climbing to describe a particularly complex or dangerous set of moves needed to complete an ascent. Climbs are rated with numbers based on their difficulty, but these aren’t defined by the overall climb but rather the most challenging single moments of the route. Likewise, your project will be made up of thousands of smaller decisions and moments, but it is a few pivotal moments that will define your final destination.

Pivoting, or the timely 180 degree turn, is a time-honoured part of the innovation game. For instance, the 140-character social media monster we all know as Twitter

was originally just a side project that allowed remote teammates to talk about their ‘proper’ project together over the internet, until one day they realised the side project was way more interesting than their original idea and made the decision to cut losses and about face.

6. Rewind So you’ve borrowed, tested, faced down objections and embraced pivotal moments along the road to delivering on your original innovative insight, and now the final moment is almost here. There’s just one problem – now you’re the one who thinks your project sucks. Don’t panic. This can be a good thing. The stated goal of a start-up mentality is to learn (fast) how to build something that your audiences and customers will love so you can get on, make it and then get busy encouraging them to buy it.

Learning to say ‘no’ at the right time and pressing the rewind button if something isn’t right is always better than ignoring a problem and planning to come back and fix it later.

is when they deliver. Having insanely great ideas can be fantastic. The only thing better is the day you launch your idea on the world and set it free to delight your audiences.

Good luck.

Tom Hunter Editor-in-Chief, LondonCalling.com e tom@londoncalling.com *This article is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs, 1955–2011

7. Real artists ship* Sometimes something isn’t right and you need to press cut and start over, but ultimately the real test of a successful innovator

JAM 45 > 11

Arts Marketing Standards & Training Needs Analysis AMA Conference 2011: www.leocinicolo.com

Essential tools for arts marketers to plan and succeed in today’s turbulent environment

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hose of us working in the arts and cultural sector today will be aware of the rapid pace of change in which we’re now working. The word ‘change’ was mentioned over 100 times in the AMA Conference 2011 Report (AMA members: download from the resources page at www.a-m-a.co.uk).

Keeping up to date on latest thinking and best practice has become more and more important for those working to bring art and audiences together. It is therefore essential that arts professionals have the right skills and resources to make a real difference to their organisation and their audiences and also requires the whole organisation to operate to the highest professional standards.

The AMA is committed to raising the standard of arts marketing and has contextualised the marketing National Occupational Standards (NOS) for the arts and cultural sector and created an online suite of training needs analysis tools (TNA). For the first time there is a set of standards that explains the skills and knowledge marketers should have at each stage of their marketing career.

These are intended as a tool for the arts sector to help us to work together to raise standards of marketing, management and audience development and to continue to improve our ability as a sector to bring art and audiences together.

Find them online at: www.a-m-a.co.uk/tna

The Arts Marketing Standards Those working in marketing, audience development, press and PR, digital marketing or related roles within cultural organisations across the UK could use the standards to: • carry out a training needs analysis – building understanding of where their current strengths and skills are and gain a clearer insight into their skills gaps • plan professional development and training for the future to help maximise potential within their current role • think about training and development needs for the future in line with career progression plans and ambitions.

The Standards have been broken down into the following modules: • provide marketing intelligence and audience, visitor and participant insight • provide strategic marketing direction for the organisation • develop the audience, visitor and participant proposition • manage and provide marketing communications • use, research and develop audience, visitor and participant information 12 > JAM 45

• lead marketing and audience development operations • work with other internal departments and third parties • manage and develop teams and individuals.

They place an organisation’s stakeholders such as audiences, visitors, website users, participants and/or their various further publics, at its heart. This recognises that marketers are involved in addressing the requirements of a range of stakeholders involved with the organisation and its markets. As well as the ultimate audiences / visitors, these can include venues / touring companies, funders, suppliers, and also an organisation’s board of directors.

Find more information and take a look at the Standards online at www.a-m-a.co.uk/tna The Arts Marketing Standards have been produced with support from the following organisations:

> marketing standards

The Training Needs Analysis Most people already take part in an appraisal system but it might be worth considering working through the AMA’s Training Needs Analysis questionnaire at www.a-m-a.co.uk/tna to inform those appraisals and to think about your development in between these annual reviews. (Please note the TNA is available only to AMA members.)

On completing the Training Needs Analysis an outline Personal Development Plan (PDP) is produced highlighting: • key strengths that already exist and which could be built on over time to become an expert in a particular area/s of marketing • current training and development needs in line with the role held in the current organisation • future training and development needs in line with future ambitions.

Use the tools to: • Support training programmes, courses and workshops – download the ‘trainer’s toolkit’ for information on how to use the tools • Support marketers’ appraisals, training plans and future career progression – download the ‘marketer’s toolkit’ • Plan marketing role/s and job descriptions and support appraisals / performance reviews – refer to the ‘employer’s toolkit’ introducing the tools to line managers, etc.

All toolkits can be found at: www.a-m-a.co.uk/tna

The online Training Needs Analysis can be completed one module at a time and the results saved for returning to later. The results can be seen instantly at the end of each module and a Professional Development Plan comparing results across the modules becomes available once five or more modules have been completed.

Plan your future career

progression The training needs analysis process helps to identify current and future training needs in line with ambitions.

To give an at-a-glance view of the skills and knowledge needed to start building for career progression there are also some job description templates outlining the skills that might be needed at each level / job type available to download at www.a-m-a.co.uk/tna Obviously the detail within the roles will vary for different organisations, e.g. a marketing assistant in a small company may well have wider responsibility than a similar post in a much larger organisation, which should be reflected in experience required. While the template offers suggestions from the marketing standards for press, box office and digital roles, there will be additional skills and knowledge required for these roles not relating to the marketing standards.

JAM 45 > 13

Good work!

Alasdair Cant offers some tips on boosting morale in the workplace

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orale is defined as ‘a psychological state of a person as expressed in self confidence, enthusiasm and/or loyalty to a cause or organisation’.

Morale at work is not a tangible product that can be bottled and dispensed as required. Yet it affects everybody, and everybody can affect it. Like many of the unseen forces in our lives, morale is often something that is simply there – ebbing and flowing all the time. Once we become more aware of it, we can choose to be passive or active in how we respond to the prevailing mood at work.

The expression ‘it’s all in the mind’ is often used glibly and even in a belittling way, but there is sometimes a helpful truth hidden here. An honest exploration of our own state of mind in relation to our workplace is crucial before taking any practical steps to lift morale. It is useful here to borrow from one of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh characters. Eeyore represents one end of the negative spectrum.

When bid ‘good morning’, his response is to ask ‘What’s good about it?’ This is Eeyorish behaviour and too much of this in our work can make the atmosphere gloomy.

We can look at any situation. For example, with pressure on resources and need for creative ways of smarter working, many workspaces have adopted ‘hot-desking’. Let’s imagine we arrive at work, and our desk has been left untidy by someone else.

How we react to this tells us as much about our current state of mind as the situation itself.

‘That’s typical! This has happened

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before. I’m always the one to clear up after them. Everyone’s so selfish around here …’

This kind of thinking pattern makes us feel worse about those around us and knocks morale. The reaction may be understandable, but the statements are unlikely to be true. You may feel angry, but a more balanced approach is to keep it in perspective, then address the problem constructively but assertively.

Generalising: Is it really typical? How many times has it actually happened in the last month? Are you sure you always do the clearing up for others, and is it fair to describe someone or everyone as ‘so selfish’, based on this incident, even if it is a recurrence?

Catastrophising: This is where you are aware of a difficult situation, (such as funding squeeze or cuts on the horizon) and decide in your head either consciously or unconsciously that the worst-case scenario is a probability rather than a possibility.

Negative spin: This is where you focus on one negative event to the exclusion of everything else, thereby giving too much authority to the event, allowing it to dictate your thinking about the entirety.

For example, you get home in the evening declaring that the day was dreadful and the working atmosphere is awful. This is often based on one or two difficult situations and behaviours encountered. It disregards anything that has gone well and other positive interactions.

These are just a few examples of thinking patterns I come across

most frequently. The opposite of Eeyorish behaviour is Tiggerish. The character Tigger is as upbeat as Eeyore is downbeat. It’s not just a good morning, it’s a fantastic morning because every day is new with lots of potential, never mind the problems.

Some of this is needed. Too much of it results in denial and unrealistic expectation, and is also maddening to live with.

We can begin to address them by being honest with ourselves about how we’re interpreting what’s going on at work. These negative thought patterns can be as true for whole groups of staff as for individuals, and the first step is simply to recognise the thoughts and the feelings associated with them. Then we can rationalise and deal with behaviours more effectively.

The diagram shown here is used in any cognitive behavioural approach.

Morale, like stress, often worsens when negative events are (or seem to be) beyond our control. The reality is that stuff happens, but if we can take back some control over our responses to it then we are part way there.

There is no antidote to dealing directly with a problem that is affecting morale. This is a shared responsibility, although a manager may have to take more responsibility

> CASE STUDY

and initiative. However, most difficulties that affect workplace mood are external factors outside our control, such as uncertain funding.

What can we do on a practical level to keep up morale in the workplace?

• Morale lifts when we can complete a task. Ensure that job descriptions are being adhered to, and that there are clear beginnings and endings where possible. This contributes to a sense of achievement.

• Communication from management should be clear and transparent.

Avoid a vacuum building up, as rumours will abound. Avoid general negativity from being communicated as it only contributes to a gloomy backdrop to workplace morale. Be clear, specific, honest and balanced – upbeat without being unrealistic.

• Watch and listen out for the kind of language being used, and challenge it if it is becoming too negative or equally corrosive. The ‘circular conversations’ go round and round and, without any conclusion, worsen the mood.

• When morale is low, it can become a downward spiral. Do something counter-intuitive. It takes courage but helps to shift the negativity.

• Organising an activity together such as joining a charity walk as a team, ten-pin bowling, chutney making … shifts the dynamic and perspective, helping the group to look outside themselves and builds the team too.

• Create some traditions together – celebrate festivals, birthdays, etc. – organise Secret Santa, small thoughtful gifts, etc.

• Don’t overlook the impact of the physical work environment – where possible keep spaces clear and with as much natural light as possible.

Flowers or greenery, a bowl of fruit, etc., can lift spirits and signals that someone cares.

• Small acts of kindness and thoughtfulness mean a lot when a team is facing difficulties. It shows that people are not so caught up with their own stuff that they have lost perspective and become selfish. Saying thank you and a genuine word of encouragement can go a long way to lift morale.

Finally, no self-respecting article on morale in the workplace would be complete without mention of cake…

Need I say more?

Alasdair Cant Alasdair Cant and Associates e alasdairc@cambridgetraining.org w www.cambridgetraining.org

AMA Conference 2011: www.leocinicolo.com

JAM 45 > 15

Producing the future Matthew Austin considers the rise of producer as marketer and how we can work with them for shared success ‘My work is made up of a series of hunches, a strong desire to get on with people and a willingness to combine hunch and desire to make theatre. I have an OK level of understanding of theatre-making processes from devising new work to production, from budgeting to contracts, from marketing to fundraising. But I wouldn’t claim to be an expert in any. The on-going mystery of my working life is why someone doesn’t tap me on the shoulder and ask me to sit down. “Excuse me, mate, you’re just making it up as you go along, aren’t you?”’

David Jubb, BAC, in The Producers

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feeling many of us may be familiar with, regardless of what we do. But a feeling that is probably keenly felt among independent theatre producers who may have arrived at being such a thing from a slightly roundabout route; from being stage managers, fundraisers, marketers, bar managers, technicians, actors, musicians, you name it, these days it seems that everyone is a producer.

But what does a producer actually do? Good question. I tried to answer this with a group of independent producers recently. We wrote down on big sheets of paper all the words that came to mind. It was a long list, ranging from the practical (fundraising, budget management, marketing, casting, recruitment, advocacy, project management, van driving, travel-booking) to the creative (being in the rehearsal room, giving feedback, writing, reading, researching, dreaming, watching, laughing and talking) – the list goes on … Every producer is slightly different but what unites us is that we all have rather a lot on our plate. (right) A producer’s forum being held in front of Electric Hotel – one of the site-specific Mayfest 2010 shows.

Photograph by Rob Edwards

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So what? Don’t we all? Well, yes, of course – but hidden among the alphabet of producers’ tasks, between ‘map-reading’ and ‘maths’ is that word ‘marketing’. It’s now part of the everyday life of many producers. And many of them are very good at it. They are the bridge between the artist and audience; they’re the match-maker.

They know their artists well (and are naturally much closer to them than a marketing department might be), they understand their audience, they know how to write about the work and what imagery will best communicate it; they’re often well connected in the industry and can pull in an audience at short notice.

Many small organisations don’t have the financial resources to have an in-house marketing professional, or hire in freelancers, which means that responsibility for marketing is often handed over to a producer, administrator or intern. The people in these roles have to learn the basics of how to deliver a marketing campaign,

> CASE STUDY

and fast. How can independent producers run a decent, well-planned, intelligent marketing campaign that goes beyond the basics, with limited resources, no manpower and no formal training in marketing?

It is about knowing your audience, knowing what interests them, and how to reach them. Whether you get that knowledge from quantitative data and analysis or you just have a pretty good hunch, it is meeting your organisation’s objectives that counts, whether that means getting the audience engaged or making sales or both.

We can help producers and administrators to market their own artists’ work, which will in turn make our jobs easier. Imagine receiving a brilliant touring pack from a theatre company which answered all your questions before you’d asked them; imagine a producer suggesting a really innovative campaign which they can run while you look after the core marketing. Well, I think we can make this happen:

4. Share best practice in the widest possible circles. Send independent producers good-quality marketing packs or ideas for interesting campaigns. Pass on nuggets of information from training and conferences. Share articles on social media.

1. Give feedback If you work in a venue and deal with small-scale touring companies and independent producers, ask if they’d like constructive feedback on the marketing materials they provide. What would be really useful for them to tell you about a show? What would help you sell it? How are their press releases and direct mail letters looking?

The divide between producer/programmer and marketer is shrinking and we can all learn from each other and ultimately make better informed decisions about the work we choose to produce, and how it’s communicated to our audiences.

3. Be clear about what you will do at your end (if you work in an organisation that works with independent producers) – often there is lots of duplicated activity. Tell producers what your bottom-line marketing activity is which, if they know that’s being looked after, could then free them up to come up with a more imaginative idea of how to engage audiences in the work.

6. Mentor. Many producers are desperate to develop their marketing skills, and mentoring is a great way to help those who work on their own or in small organisations.

Mentoring gives the mentee a sounding board, helps them learn new skills and can give the mentor first-hand experience of another organisation.

Photograph by Jesus Madriñán

2. Work together If you work in an organisation which has distinct marketing and producing/programming teams, ask to go to programming meetings; encourage producing teams to consult you when they’re budgeting or deciding on targets; get in on the process as early as possible so that at the start of a season you’re not presented with impenetrable copy, a terrible image and an unrealistic target. Perhaps even shadow a producer for a day or two to see how they work.

5. Join a board. Lots of smaller organisations are crying out for marketing and professionals to join boards and give advice on marketing strategies. You get the satisfaction of giving something back, as well as being able to guide an organisation’s marketing activity.

Matthew Austin Co-Artistic Director, Mayfest e matthew@mayfestbristol.co.uk w www.mayfestbristol.co.uk Further reading: www.the-producers.org

JAM 45 > 17

Keep calm and carry on. Really?

Mark Wright wonders if this really is the best idea

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new fridge magnet appeared recently in the kitchen of the Wright Family residence.

You have probably seen the one – bold, clear and exuding understated authority: Keep Calm and Carry On, it suggests.

I like it and it makes me smile but, while searching in vain for a cache of chocolate nestled in the salad drawer, it made me think about some of the work I have been doing recently, particularly in the cultural sector. Is now the time for leaders in the sector (and I include you in this) to really follow the fridge magnet message or actually do the opposite: get agitated and innovate?

It is probably not a coincidence that since the beginning of the current economic recession, many of us have taken ironic solace in the red and white mantra of Keep Calm and Carry On, now seen on T-shirts, coffee mugs and staff-room walls across the country. Originally designed in 1939 as a morale-boosting, but fortunately never used, message to the British public in the event of hostile invasion, the Economist referred to the popularity of this now iconic poster as a ‘nostalgia for a certain British character, an outlook... [that] taps directly into the country’s mythic image of itself: unshowily brave and just a little stiff, brewing tea as the bombs fall’.

In a not entirely unrelated leap, I have spent quite a bit of time recently in Helsinki, being with amazing people working for a certain mobile phone manufacturer. One of the first Finnish words they taught me was sisu. This is a deceptively complex term, broadly translating as ‘gritty determination, 18 > JAM 45

perseverance and acting rationally under pressure’. It now embodies a national characteristic and having sisu is seen as a badge of honour. It came to the fore in the response of the Finns to the almost overwhelming Soviet invasion of their country in the Winter War of 1939–1940, and is still seen today as the name of an indefatigable and ubiquitous make of Finnish construction lorry. These lorries continue to roll inexorably through the harshness of the arctic winter, regardless of the extreme conditions, without fuss, without fanfare.

So, just as with the fridge magnet message, sisu represents a fine sentiment: determination in the face of adversity. But I see a need for something else. I see a need for leaders to do more; to consistently create the environment for other people to be creative, playful and brilliant. And that is really tough in the current climate.

The prevailing societal and economic conditions we found ourselves in, if left unresisted, nudge us all towards a mind-set of prevention, caution and minimising risk. It is a very basic human driver, both for us as individuals and as groups and consequently in the cultures we create: we don’t want to get hurt and we seek to protect ourselves and those we care about.

The psychologist Dr Michael J. Apter

got to the heart of it in his work on motivational states. His Reversal Theory research found that we cannot be in two emotional places at the same time; if our perceptions of our experiences are serious then we won’t respond playfully, if we find comfort in conforming then we won’t want to be the class rebel, when we assess others on mastery, we move away from empathy and when we find ourselves threatened, we will increasingly act at the expense of others.

I am hugely simplifying Apter’s conclusions but my point is this: how we perceive our prevailing environment influences our emotional state and that, in turn, directly affects our behaviours and interactions with others, and therefore the decisions we make and the working cultures we develop.

The good news is that we are not powerless in this situation. What is needed is an active state of choosing – a very conscious decision to break the cycle of drift.

The inherent challenge, as you will probably have already worked out, is that it isn’t easy! It takes huge and sustained effort to change embedded mindsets and self-limiting assumptions, particularly in complex organisations. However, if you feel inspired to address your leadership responsibility (remember: leaders create the environment for other

But I see a need for something else. I see a need for leaders to do more; to consistently create the environment for other people to be creative, playful and brilliant.

> FEATURE

people to flourish), then the weak point in the prevention cycle is ‘behaviour’. It is a causal cycle that works both ways, so by actively choosing the behaviours you want to demonstrate, you will change how you feel and think. In the words of the US psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, ‘it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting’. Or if you prefer the Alcoholics Anonymous version, you can always ‘fake it till you make it’.

So if you need your team or your organisation to be more adventurous, more playful, more creative, more challenging, more curious, then start with your own behaviour, even if you don’t feel it yet! And as you consistently embody these behaviours then those around you will begin to mirror them and it will change how they feel too. You will have successfully put Apter’s Reversal Theory into practice.

In creating a working environment that actively rails against the prevailing prevention mindset by behaving in an expansive, playful, rebellious way, you will also generate a hidden and maybe paradoxical bonus. You will have established a culture of ‘adaptive resilience’.

This shouldn’t be confused with the traditional idea of ‘organisational resilience’ which is about rigorous systems and processes, designed to get everything back to how it was, regardless of the disruption. A simple example would be the suspension systems in our cars, designed to absorb changes in the road surface and return to a steady state as quickly as possible. In this context think

about Blackberry’s recent back-up server problems, last winter’s airport disruption, our emergency responses to natural disasters. Success is measured in the time taken to get everything up and running again.

Organisational resilience is understandably highly prized, essential in almost any system and also intrinsically linked to a prevention mindset.

By contrast, in creating an environment of ‘adaptive resilience’, you foster and celebrate a promotion mindset, where there is little or no desire to return to how it was.

Instead, teams actively want to evolve, grow, shrink, reinvent themselves and establish fresh relationships with customers, audiences and stakeholders. In this place, behaviours of play, support, challenge, competent failure and mutual respect are supported by an emotional security brought about by absolute clarity for the deep intent of the team.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know it all sounds idealistic and fluffy.

However, this is also a place of purposeful urgency, continuous feedback, personal responsibility and difficult decisions. It requires

each individual to contribute not only their skills and time but also their discretionary gifts of passion, curiosity, insight and courage. There is also an absolute and explicit need for self-organising capacity in the organisation; this alone is often a massive trust challenge for those with leadership and management responsibility.

So this is the challenge: how much do you want to embark on this journey, to start leading the context, not the content, and to create a promotion culture of playful rebelliousness?

Or would you prefer to ‘keep calm and carry on’?

Mark Wright Director, People Create Limited e mark@people-create.co.uk w www.people-create.co.uk t 01347 889109 / 07788 768543 JAM 45 > 19

The team meeting is dead. Long live the team!

Lisa Baxter gets creative with practical team building

Illustration by Sugarfree

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’ve been asked by the AMA to write a piece on practical team building. Now, I’m no teambuilding expert but my work creates great teams ... I’ll give it a go.

In my mind, team building is about creating a climate of positive, productive co-working where the talents of the team are valued and realised in relation to some goal or purpose they all share.

So, what is it about my work that I can share with you that will help you practically build GREAT teams?

It is the process that is key. All too often managers are results focused rather than process driven. They tend to concentrate more on getting results as efficiently and painlessly as possible than fully engaging with the combined thinking talents of the team. This can and does limit the quality and depth of the team’s thinking and be dispiriting for those taking part.

In the work I’ve been doing for years, and will continue to do with my new venture, The Experience Business, my whole focus has been

Start

So here are some practical thinking and doing steps to help you build

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process driven. Whether it’s branding, experience design, organisational change, customer services, gallery design and layout, communications, etc., what underpins my approach is how I work with the team. If there is no sense of team at the end of my facilitated sessions then I have failed … and I admit that on occasion I have, with those organisations where group participation is tokenistic rather than genuinely valued by the senior management team.

I regard my approach as a little like alchemy. In the sessions I facilitate, I bring teams together with their own periodic table of innate thinking skills and unique perspectives. The process allows them to engage and interact purposefully as equals, fuel the creative energy that is unleashed and engage with the chain reactions that ensue. We then focus, shape and channel the results into organisational gold. The gold is what you’re after … but the process builds great, motivated, empowered teams.

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Ban ‘team meetings’ I rarely hold meetings because I don’t find them to be an effective format for group decision making. Usually, a meeting is where a group of people sit down round a table and talk.

Entrenched organisational culture tends to take hold, patterned thinking kills fresh ideas, hierarchies assume authority, and the rest of the ‘team’ assume the role of the supporting cast. Sound familiar? The upshot is that team meetings (in their most traditional, agenda-driven sense) rarely build and nourish great teams.

Believe in the talent of your staff Don’t you get the feeling sometimes that you’re being treated like a walking job description rather than being valued for who you are and what you can uniquely contribute?

We are all individuals with unique talents and different perspectives to offer. Some of us may have natural creative abilities which could energise

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teams in your organisations – but be warned, it will only work if you really want it to.

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Photography by Caroline Greener

> CASE STUDY

A case in point: Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

a team with fresh thinking. Others may be more pragmatic and prefer to pay attention to the detail. Both are essential. We need to recognise and harness these talents in our colleagues in order to make the most of our collective thinking capital, and in doing so build teams where everyone feels valued and can fly.

a broader range of perspectives that can generate more informed solutions. Call your ‘meetings’ something different: a team-solve, a workshop, a meet-up, a lab … whatever will encourage a positive, active mindset.

Be open minded to new ideas and fresh ways of thinking Ever been in a meeting where you put ideas forward but someone always has a reason why it is not a good idea – so it gets ‘killed’ before you’ve had a chance to explore its potential? This is how you kill a team. No one wants their contributions shouted down before they’ve even been explored.

How disempowering is that?

Let go of your authority and facilitate rather than manage or direct. Empower your teams and make decisions with them, not just for them. Give them space to be the engine with you as the oil, not the driver. Create a safe space for ideas to be explored from every angle, for ideas to flow unstemmed and little eureka moments to pop up all over the place like sparklers. The positive impact on your team will be instantaneous.

Use creative thinking techniques I am a passionate advocate of CPS (Creative Problem Solving) and CIG (Creative Idea Generation) because they are fantastic at generating solutions and ideas, and bring teams together.

Encourage your team to generate ideas in an atmosphere of no judgement and ‘anything goes’ (because ideas, after all, are risk free!).

Go beyond the obvious and seek unusual, breakthrough ideas. Slap them all up somewhere where you can then start processing and making sense of them. Once all the ideas are up, organise them into themes and clusters. Now you can spot synergies and opportunities, explore potential and start shaping your solutions.

Everyone feels part of the process, everyone has been heard and has had an input into shaping the solutions. If done well, with genuine commitment to the value of everyone taking part, you will have strengthened your team!

Shake it up and get creative Revitalise the ‘meeting’ format so everyone gets to participate fully and creatively. Post-It note brainstorming is a great way of putting everyone’s ideas on the table. Try lining the walls with sheets of paper and invite people to draw their take on a problem or issue which they all present to the rest of the group. This will tap into

Have fun with this Work is hard enough as it is. We are all guilty, to some degree, of taking ourselves too seriously. So try injecting playfulness into the process.

Create a safe space for ideas to flow and for people to work together. Your team will connect in a much more positive way and be better able to face future challenges as a result.

I attended a creative workshop run by Lisa Baxter as part of the All about Audiences Conference last year. Lisa inspired me to try a new way of engaging with the whole company. Using Lisa’s creativethinking techniques, and with some additional coaching from Lisa, I initially facilitated Creative Idea Generation sessions with senior managers to develop a new communications plan. Beyond my wildest dreams, this evolved into a plan for improvements for the whole organisation and now includes all staff. The process not only encouraged everyone to think creatively, but it succeeded in creating shared purpose and a genuine sense of ‘Team Royal Exchange Theatre’. The results have since been turned into a plan for improvement which will carry the organisation through the next year, if not longer.

Clare Simpson Marketing Director, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Lisa Baxter FRSA, AMRS Founder, The Experience Business: a new strategic insight consultancy supporting clients in shaping and evidencing their value offer to create business advantage, grow audiences and attract investment e lisa@lisa-baxter.co.uk w w ww.theexperiencebusiness.co.uk JAM 45 > 21

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Just a minute

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> JUST A MINUTE

A column to get to know other AMA members in just six questions

What is your first memory of the arts?

My first memory of the arts is my mum taking me, aged 6, to see the Northern Ballet Theatre’s production of The Nutcracker at Darlington Civic Theatre. I loved it so much that we went every year for the next five years, seeing such productions as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Coppelia and Snow White. I still have the programmes which say a lot about me as I’m a bit of a hoarder and can’t help myself when it comes to picking up promotional materials!

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What attracted you to the arts sector?

My interest was primarily in the arts sector with the desire to work specifically in marketing coming a bit later on. I think that it was the diversity of the arts and the enthusiasm and passion of those I encountered as a volunteer that inspired me to work in this sector.

This is what I still get out of working in the arts.

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When and why did you join the AMA? I joined the AMA when I started work at the Museum of London so about 11 years ago now. It was the ideal way to combine professional development with the opportunity to meet like-minded colleagues within the sector and swap ideas and best practice. I’m also a mentor for the AMA which I find hugely rewarding.

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How did you get into arts marketing?

Following a degree in German Studies, and after a stint volunteering for the York Archaeological Trust, I decided that I wanted to work in the arts and went on to complete an MA in Arts and Heritage Management at the University of Sheffield. This really whet my appetite for arts marketing and I got my first paid job in the sector at the British Museum, working in Visitor Services in the days when there wasn’t a marketing department!

I then was lucky enough to get a role within the marketing team at the Museum of London.

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What is your proudest moment?

At the British Library it has to be managing the marketing campaign and ticketing operation for the Henry VIII exhibition. This was a huge challenge for the organisation as it was our first ticketed exhibition. The exhibition was very well received and attracted a record number of firsttime visitors to the Library.

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I was privileged enough to work for the Museum of London when we launched the Museum in Docklands.

I was very proud to be involved as it was a real team effort delivered to very tight timescales.

Out of work it would have to be running the London Marathon in 2010.

And what is your greatest indulgence?

Being able to combine my love of good food and drink with travel.

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Jane Richardson Marketing Manager, British Library e jane.richardson@bl.uk

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www.sumodesign.co.uk

JAM 45 > 23

London’s new favourite website From London’s favourite arts marketing team LondonCalling.com

Capture our QR code to explore LondonCalling.com on your phone or tablet You will need a QR reader app Or go to LondonCalling.com

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