Are you an expert? You must be a failure

Recently I was introduced to Jonah Lehrer at the Theatre Communications Group annual conference in Chicago where Mr. Lehrer was a keynote speaker. His speech inspired an earlier blog post, and convinced me that I should probably read his book How We Decide. I am just about a quarter of the way through it, and I must admit that I am finding it a bit dense, although completely fascinating. Instead of reading right before going to sleep, I am waking up a little early to read because my brain needs to be fresh to process some of his ideas.

In the second chapter of the book, entitled "Predictions of Dopamine," Lehrer examines two subjects--TD Gammon (a computer specifically designed to play backgammon competitively) and Bill Robertie (a man who is a world-class expert in chess, poker and backgammon). In his examination of these two subjects, I learned two amazing lessons:

1. If you want to be an expert, you need to fail a lot! Lehrer quotes physicist Niels Bohr who defined an expert as "a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." Demonstrating this principle was TD Gammon. TD Gammon was leaps and bounds better than earlier computers at playing backgammon primarily because it was programmed to learn from its mistakes. When TD Gammon was ready to compete, its inventors wanted it to go up against a world class champion so that it could learn, so they recruited Bill Robertie. In describing his first matches with TD Gammon, Bill said "The first time I competed against TD Gammon, I was incredibly impressed. It represented a big improvement over any other computer program I'd ever encountered. But I knew I was still a better player." The next year, when Bill returned to play TD Gammon after a year's worth of almost a million errors in played matches, it was a different story. TD Gammon had become an expert by studying its own mistakes.

2. It isn't good enough to make errors, you must systematically study them. In determining how Bill Robertie could become a world-class expert in three games, it became clear that his success was linked to his systematic study of his failures. Lehrer quotes Robertie who states "It's not the quantity of practice, it's the quality. The most effective way to get better is to focus on your mistakes." In Lehrer's study of Robertie, he noticed that after Robertie plays a game, he painstakingly reviews what happened, and every decision is critiqued and analyzed. Even when he wins, he insists on searching for errors. In my professional life, I have been accused of being a perfectionist more than once, and direct reports have questioned whether I am ever happy with a result as I constantly analyze decisions, even on the cusp of a great victory. From a management perspective, I can see how that could be construed as having an insatiable appetite for perfection, but I guess I view learning in much the same way as Robertie does. Celebrating success is important, but in situations where you need to learn, and learn quickly, you need to focus on the mistakes even in victories.

Lehrer concludes that "mistakes aren't things to be discouraged. On the contrary, they should be cultivated and carefully investigated." I believe as managers we are responsible for creating environments where admitting mistakes is encouraged, so that as a team, we can all learn from them. In an age where people only want to talk about "best practices," we should also be discussing "worst practices." As it seems to me that you can only get to the "best" by surviving and learning from the "worst."

Recently I was sitting on a funding panel with a representative from a large influential funder, whose organization was supporting projects that could either be great successes or massive failures. It was considered by the funder a "success" to have either outcome, as long as a detailed analysis of each project was made available to the public to learn from. I thought this demonstrated very forward thinking on the funder's behalf, but the funder admitted to me that the public analysis requirement was a significant deterrent to applicants, as they were afraid that public failure would make them less desirable for funding from other sources.

As a field, failure should be celebrated, as long as we are relentless in our analysis of each failure and learn from each incident. Shame should be reserved for those organizations who are complacent in situations that demand change.

Perpetuating the Myth

I've just returned from the Theatre Communications Group Annual Conference. The theme for the conference was "Ideas into Action," and it built upon the previous year's conference where the field took a look at some of the major issues facing all of us. The idea was to take what we discussed last year and to explore "bold new solutions."

The first session I attended was entitled "Theatres Becoming Centers in the 21st Century." I attended partially because my Artistic Director, Molly Smith, was speaking, but also because I wanted to hear some ideas from other centers from around the nation as we move toward the opening of the Mead Center for American Theater. The one thing that stayed with me through the entire conference from that session was the quote Molly used to open her remarks--she referenced a quote by R. Buckminster Fuller in which he said: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." It made me think that as a field, if we generally agree that our business models have significant issues, then why do we spend so much energy devising band-aids for them instead of building new models that make the existing ones obsolete?

Later that evening, I had the pleasure of listening to a wonderful speech given by Jonah Lehrer, the author of the book "How We Decide: the New Science of Decision Making." He kept me captivated throughout his entire manifesto, but a single story stood out among the rest (well, at least to me). The story goes that Procter & Gamble decided they wanted to invent a new soap to make mopping more efficient. After several months of failed attempts to create this novel soap in house, they hired a creativity firm to work with them. The firm spent nine months studying homemakers as they mopped their floors, and in the end, they concluded that a new soap wouldn't revolutionize mopping because mopping as a means of cleaning was essentially flawed in itself. After observing one woman cleaning up coffee grounds on the floor with a damp paper towel, an idea emerged--what about getting rid of the mop entirely, and fastening a damp paper towel to the end of a stick? And the Swiffer was born.

After more than 50 years of success, where should the resident theater movement look to throw away a mop, and replace it with a Swiffer? In looking back on my scribbled notes, it looks like I came up with four different ideas:

1. Arts Education/Community Engagement. The idea of having an education department at a resident theater is relatively new. Maybe 15 years or so ago, funders started to route resources to student and community programs. Theater companies took note, and started developing more education programming, however the programming was almost always intended to compliment the more "formal" arts education that students were getting in the schools. Fast forward to present day where the focus of our schools have become glued to developing the highest standardized test scores. In this environment, arts education has been highly marginalized, if not all together eliminated. Who is teaching creativity, at a time where we frequently hear from top corporations that creativity is a key component to success in today's ever changing world? Do we need to look at our education departments to figure out how to serve this essential need by ourselves instead of being a complimentary service to our school systems.

2. Subscriptions. Where is our generation's Danny Newman? When he invented the subscription, it revolutionized how performing arts organizations did business, and it mirrored how a certain generation wanted to "consume" artistic product. Baby Boomers joined Kiwanis clubs, went to church, participated in bowling leagues, and purchased tickets to a large number of shows well in advance at discounted prices. But times have changed--Generation X doesn't act like its predecessor, but we are still using the same sales techniques on them that have worked for decades with Mom and Dad. How do we continue to serve Baby Boomers as they still have the largest disposable income, and work to meet the needs and buying habits of Generation X and the Millenials? We can keep slapping band-aids on the subscription model, by doing things like introducing smaller and smaller "pick your own" packages, or acknowledge that we may need a new mop to clean up this particular problem.

3. Development vs. Marketing. If you read my previous post entitled "The Problem of Silos," you know this is an issue that I have been stuck on for awhile. In my career, I have worked at some amazing organizations both incredibly large and very small, and I can honestly say I have never seen an operation that integrates the needs and priorities of marketing and development well. Almost always, one wins out over the other, the cause of which usually can be tracked back to funding and/or leadership. To solve this, a few organizations have developed external affairs divisions that house both marketing and development activities, however those departments are just as segregated under a Director of External Affairs as they would be under an Executive Director. I proposed a new system in my prior post, but this type of change is daunting considering it would mean dismantling and rebuilding the entire revenue generating departments of an organization.

4. Funding vs. Accessibility. There are a multitude of reports out that show that funding has dropped during the global economic crisis, which has put more and more pressure on earned revenue sources to make up the difference. On the 2amt blog, there has been a heated debate on dynamic pricing, particularly as it is used by non-profit theaters. For those unaware of dynamic pricing, the basic premise is that ticket prices for popular productions are increased as demand increases. Is it a coincidence that dynamic pricing has really gained ground and become almost standard practice during the two years following the start of the global economic crisis? If there is less funding, then we need to make more money in ticket sales. Seems logical to me. The problem is that many times, we are doing excellent work in education and outreach programs that reach populations that will never be able to afford a ticket at our institutions. This used to be addressed by funders who supported lower priced tickets, but as that money has dried up, to keep afloat, institutions have cut discounting programs. So where does that leave us? For me, I have become more and more interested in finding new revenue streams--and hopefully new streams that aren't dependant upon the fickleness of reviews either.

As I wrap up this post, I am more cognizant than ever that as a professor of arts management, the techniques that I am teaching my graduate students are antiquated. I call them "best practices" when a more appropriate title might be "yesterday's best practices." If I continue to teach how I was taught, aren't I just perpetuating the myth that our arts organizations are healthy and ready to take on the challenges of the 21st century? Maybe I should begin my classes by challenging them to throw out the mop.

Outsourcing: Make sure to consider the CONs as well as the PROs

A couple of weeks ago, NPR ran a story entitled "Everyone Else Outsources, So Why Can't the Arts?" Since that time, the story has stuck with me. One positive result of the global economic crisis is that it has forced mature organizations to rigorously examine business practices, many of which haven't changed since the publication of Danny Newman's Subscribe Now! I am consistently amazed at the number of organizations that choose to remain stagnant because change is scarier than doing nothing and watching failure creep up to the doorstep. I applaud organizations that are taking steps to inform the field, as successes and failures will provide beneficial data we can use to plan our next steps. And while I have been accused on many occasions of being too aggressive with implementing change, in this case, I am reminded of a saying that a wise professor in graduate school would always say to me--"just because it is new, doesn't mean it is better."

Let me begin by saying that I support the outsourcing of activities that involve highly specialized tasks. Even in large organizations, most of us are generalists with maybe an area or two of specialized training. In unusual circumstances, many times we need to draw upon an expert with a lot of experience in a certain area. As we approach the opening of the Mead Center for American Theater, I am working with several outside companies that we are outsourcing very specific tasks to including Boneau/Bryan-Brown, SpotCo, Target Resource Group, SD&A, Mires+Ball, Shugoll Research and Allied Live.

Although we outsource work to some of the best companies in the business, we wouldn't be successful unless we supervised their work closely. The best outcomes are usually a result of forming very tight partnerships between on site institutional managers and specialists at the outsourcing firms. One without the other usually ends with mediocre work. In fact, I can't remember a single instance in my career where I hired an outside firm and it removed as much work from my desk as I had hoped for.

In addition, as Russell Willis Taylor asks in the article, one must consider the opportunity cost of outsourcing, particularly in areas of customer service and development. For those of us lucky enough to have been TicketMaster clients in our careers, we know how hard it is to get outsourced sales agents on message and equipped to provide excellent service to our customers (I even tried delivering baked goods weekly to call centers). How can an outsourced entity be as passionate as you are about your institution, and isn't that passion crucial in developing fundraising activities? And we don't like to admit it, but in some cases, we are in competition with one another. In purchasing ads, setting up promotions, pitching stories to the press, calling in favors, taking advantage of remnant space--when you are working with 10-20 arts organizations in the same town, who gets priority when undoubtedly there will be times when the interests of these organizations conflict with each other?

I am eager to see how this experiment in Columbus pans out. To me, this model creates many more questions than it provides solutions, however I think they should be commended for taking an innovative step that I am sure will inform the field in the future.

Just a sidenote--I wonder what BP thinks of outsourcing its drilling rigs at the moment?