MONDAY BYTE — January 16, 2017
On this Martin Luther King Monday, days before the inauguration, I’m thinking about the fear of the uncertain future and how we choose to deal with it. How would Dr. King deal with our uncertain times?
He said, “If you can’t fly then run. If you can’t run then walk. If you can’t walk then crawl. But whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
and
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”
With uncertain times we may fool ourselves into believing that things will move ahead in predictable ways, that cause and effect will unfold as predicted. So we make plans, organize our hopes and dreams into action steps and we move forward. We need to think this ways because what else is there?
But there’s a paradox we all need to confront. On the one hand, our lives are full of randomness, luck (or lack of), chance encounters and outcomes, and forces beyond our control. These are our circumstances, for better or worse. And on the other hand, there are things we can actually control—our work habits and choices, our behavior with others, and how we respond to change.
So on the one hand, we are at fortune’s whim, and on the other, we are the captains of our destinies.
Both are true.
Our life experience is a balance between what happens to us and what we make happen.
I’ve been reading Timothy Askew’s excellent The Poetry of Small Business: An Accidental Entrepreneur’s Search for Meaning. It may seem like an odd fit but it’s actually great for any arts worker or freelance musician—if you want a more humane way to deal with the business of making your life as an artist.
In a chapter on luck, Askew writes “Randomness may seem scary, but it’s actually a true blessing. Believing in randomness is the first step in realizing you can’t control the universe.”
So yes, we need to move forward with our plans and work consistently using our best intentions and strategies. But we also need to be fully open to and present with the unexpected. The unlikely meetings and conversations that blossom into resources, collaborations, inspirations, or opportunities. As well as the unanticipated challenges and hardships.
Being a self-employed artist is like riding a wave. There are times you’ll need to swim hard for—or against—the current, and other times when you can float easy.
Art, entrepreneurship, and life all ask us to ride the wave of uncertainty, to sail forth into an unknown future. We do this despite the randomness of luck, of natural and man-made disasters, and of other people’s actions.
What helps is having a solid understanding of how existing systems have worked, so that we can better maneuver through, around, and past them. That goes for politics as well as the music profession.
This past weekend at the Chamber Music America conference, Michael Kaiser outlined his concerns for the future of the arts in the US. Kaiser is the former president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in DC, and now heads the DeVos Center for Arts Management at the University of Maryland.
Kaiser’s concerns for the future of the arts are covered in depth in his recent book Curtains? The Future of the Arts in America and here are the top 5 he outlined at the conference:
Quality
Kaiser is worried about conservative art-making: that we’re offering programs that we think will sell instead of our most creative and challenging work. In an increasingly funding-focused arts world, presenters and artists have become increasingly conservative. People worried about concert series surviving tend to focus on giving audiences what they already already know and like, as opposed to taking artistic risks. And Kaiser believes our art and our concert series suffer because of this.
Marketing
Kaiser says we should think much more like sports franchises. Athletic teams build loyal fan bases, making the most of fans’ interest in players, through marketing, communications, community partnerships, and special events. Teams create a sense of anticipation in advance of games and make the details of the sport understandable and relatable to newcomers.
Lack of arts education
Decades of cuts in arts funding to K-12 schools have resulted in lost generations of arts audiences. This means that today’s children are unlikely to become concert goers and donors in their 50-70s, when they’ll have the discretionary income and time for these activities.
Technology
We all compete with the screen. Live ticketed performances compete with streaming and recorded music for low or no cost. We have become an attention economy within a culture of decreasing attention spans. Kaiser quoted a Microsoft study that found that attention spans are now at 8 seconds—shorter than that of gold fish.
Lack of diversity
When it comes to hiring, programming, and board membership, too many arts organizations and ensembles engage in tokenism. Offering an occasional work by a female, Latino, or African-American composer, or having one person of color serve on your board—that is not diversity.
In terms of ways to deal with these factors in our uncertain times, Michael offers a FREE online course on the platform Coursera. Check out The Cycle: Management of Successful Arts and Cultural Organizations.
Independent freelance musicians often create their own ensembles, series, and festivals. This course can help demystify the cycle of creating a fanbase and community of supporters to help make your projects and your career sustainable.
The course material is available upon enrollment for self-paced learners. New scheduled sessions begin each month. (The next session starting Feb. 6.)
Questions for the week, for these uncertain times:
1. Is your mindset helping you make the most of opportunities? Think about how open and ready you are to deal with random luck and random challenges. This is about being resilient and curious as opposed to trying to control what you can’t.
2. How are you dealing with a changing arts marketplace? Think over Michael’s concerns for the future and how they factor into our career plans. Think about your plan and system for getting your best work done and building a sustainable career.
3. What learning sources are you tapping? The influences you have include key conversations, books, articles, conferences, and lectures. Feed your mind and your soul. I’m always amazed when the right book, article, the right teacher or coach, seem to magically arrive. That comes from being open and curious—inviting in the luck!
4. What next step on the staircase can you take this week?
As always, I love to get your thoughts, feedback, and questions on any of these ideas—send them to Angela@BeyondTalentConsulting.com
best,
Want to work on a custom-tailored plan to improve your career trajectory and luck? Let’s set up a time to talk – reach me at Angela@BeyondTalentConsulting.com
Dream Big, Plan Smart, Live Well
