Leading a Culture of Resilience

by David Brownlee, Director of International Strategy | TRG Arts

Let’s go back a decade to the UK in 2009. The arts had enjoyed 15 years of the spoils of the new National Lottery and over a decade of growth in funding from both local and national government.

But a storm was coming. Economically the world’s tectonic plates shifted in 2008. In the UK the not-for-profit arts sector was initially shielded from the new reality thanks to longterm national funding agreements, but those were coming to an end and a general election was on the horizon.

There were many who made a prophesy of imminent disaster and irreparable damage to the sector. In 2010 the National Campaign for the Arts (NCA) launched a UK Arts Index (similar to what Americans for the Arts compiled); a holistic health check of the sector and its impact on society. Starting from our overall index of 100, we expected to track a substantial decline in the fortunes of the sector over the following years.

Arts Council England (ACE) was also worried. They commissioned Mark Robinson to research and write Making adaptive resilience real, which was published in July 2010. One of Robinson’s key arguments was that arts organizations need to adapt as they grow and mature, hence “adaptive resilience.” This seminal paper informed ACE’s new 10-year strategy where Goal 3 was defined: “the arts, museums and libraries are resilient and environmentally sustainable.” ACE’s approach picked up Robinson’s call to be agile and adaptive but focused largely on new approaches to plugging financial gaps.

Fast forward to today and much has changed. Statistical evidence suggests the arts sector has largely adapted and survived (and in some places thrived) despite unprecedented cuts to public funding. The Arts Index shows that even with taking inflation and population growth into account, the combined expenditure of revenue funded per person at arts organizations grew by 23 points since the study started. That equals £600 million between 2007-08 and 2014-15.

In advance of writing its new 10-year plan, ACE commissioned Golant Media Ventures and The Audience Agency to produce What is Resilience Anyway? (published July 2018).

It is a comprehensive review that pulls together key findings from ten years of publications on resilience along with new primary research. As well as drawing together many great concepts, the key advance in thinking in What is Resilience Anyway? is looking at resilience at different levels: individual, organizational, and systematic.

The policy focus to date has been around organizational resilience: keeping individual arts organizations alive. Yes, many times arts organizations can adapt to stay innovative and relevant, but in the arts ecosystem, we need space for new organizations to grow and flourish. In my opinion, if the “good death” of an old arts organization can support the flourishing of a new one, isn’t that good for the sector and the public we serve? We need to focus less on the health today of individual organizational trees and more on the long-term sustainability of the artistic forest.

Both the 2010 and 2018 studies place a strong focus on the behaviors of resilient arts and cultural organizations. But what we can see as the indicators of a robust and healthy organization are the result of a resilient organizational culture. That culture is driven by its people, led by its chief executive.

At TRG Arts, we make no apologies about focusing on supporting and often challenging the executive leaders of arts organizations. Without strong, effective leadership driving strategic focus, departments become islands focusing on (and protective of ) their own goals and targets. A culture of silos becomes prevalent. Even if an organization demonstrates what appears to be resilient behaviors today, without leadership that is constantly striving for greater alignment around key values, its seeming sustainability is actually built on poor foundations.

Acknowledging the good work of Robinson, Golant, and a range of other assessments of the qualities needed in a successful organization, TRG Arts has created its own model of the behaviors that people demonstrate in the most resilient organizations that we support. The eight behaviors encompass everything from ‘strategic execution’ (having a plan and getting it done) to ‘positive realism’ (balancing optimism and a ‘cando’ culture with the challenges of the real world). With this model our aim is to create a tool to help leaders highlight where further alignment is needed in their organization. Using it once creates a baseline that can be used to measure progress in future months and years.

“Adaptive resilience is the capacity to remain productive and true to core purpose and identity whilst absorbing disturbance and adapting with integrity in response to changing circumstances.”

– Mark Robinson

We piloted the model tool in January 2019 at a gathering of dance leaders from around the western world, organized by Dance/USA. We found that, despite very different business models, the importance of the core behaviors resonated with leaders of arts organizations across Europe and North America.

We aim to continue to collect data across different sectors and nations to allow benchmarking with appropriate peers. Over time we’ll be able to see where the greatest alignment for each behavior is and where (and why) there is the biggest improvement over time. Sharing knowledge and learning from exemplars will support the whole sector.

If you’d like to test how your organization and your leadership compares to our growing global benchmark, join us for one of our TRG Arts Executive Summit in 2020.