ARTSblog

Giovanni Schiuma

Today many organizations have discovered the benefits related to the use in business of the arts in order to explore and solve business issues.

Unilever has largely used arts-based initiatives (ABIs) to spur people’s change and to develop organizational culture. Nestlé has used ABIs to enhance marketing team’s creativity and to develop communication skills and collaboration in terms of ideas and expertise sharing.

Atradius has captured brand value by developing a partnership with Welsh National Opera. Price Waterhouse Coopers has used ABIs to unlock employees’ creativity energy, inspiring and challenging people to think and act differently.

Indeed the arts, in the form of ABIs, represent a powerful management tool for developing workforce and organizational infrastructure that can drive business performance improvements.

Examples can range from the use of art forms to entertain organizations’ employees and clients, to the deployment of arts to develop ‘soft competencies’ of people in the organization, and may include the exploitation of the arts to create intangible value to be incorporated into products or to transform and enhance organization’s infrastructural assets such as, for instance, image, identity, reputation, culture, and climate. Read the rest of this entry »

Leadership. As someone who loves to lecture (sorry, students), even my own eyes glaze over at the word. Go to any business section of any bookstore and you can find hundreds of tomes that boil down to one extended metaphor in the form of a book length advice column:  “The fiction writer’s way of leadership,” The housewife’s way of leadership,” “Leadership:  the Mad Men Method,” “How Would Jesus Lead (HWJL)?”

Okay, I made those up, but among this blizzard of works on leadership, what actually helps? We’ll try to find some answers at the symposium. My views are too complex to reduce to sound bites or slick metaphors, probably because I believe leadership is not solely about the leader as much as it is his or her interaction with co-workers, or followers.

We make too many assumptions that the CEO is The Leader. But one can lead from the middle (director of marketing) or even below (program associate). The weird irony of organizations seems to be that those who hold leadership positions are not necessarily any good at leading. Yet spectacular feats of leadership can occur at any level. Followers influence leaders with their ideas and their ways of working, and more importantly, they influence each other.  Read the rest of this entry »

I recently received my latest issue of US News & World Report.  The focus of the May issue is “Jobs for the Future” and in the article “Choosing the Career Path Less Traveled: Many jobs look great on the big screen.  Here are some that pay off in real life” one of the top “Overrated Careers” is “nonprofit manager”.  Ouch.

Here’s what it says:

Many people want a career in which they can “make a difference.” For many, that means a career helping manage a nonprofit organization that works, for example, on environmental issues, children’s rights, or antipoverty campaigns.  But many of your supervisees end up being volunteers, who, on average, tend to be less competent and reliable than paid employees.  Also, much of the job often involves fundraising, which many people dislike.  Plus, you’re usually expected to be so dedicated to the cause that you’re willing to work long hours for little pay.  Despite all that, nonprofit management jobs that pay a good salary are difficult to find, especially now in our low economy – people donate less in tough times.

Other careers listed include: architect, professor, farmer, and police officer.  For the complete list, click here.  A slight irony – fundraiser was listed as one of the 30 best careers for 2009! Read the rest of this entry »

The following is an open letter to the School Board and the Superintendent of San Diego Unified School District which is currently faced with the challenge of budget cuts.  The letter calls for bold leadership in decision making processes with an eye toward creating opportunity for students to become engaged members of society and future problem solvers.  The letter argues the arts and physical education are essential to an education for an engaged citizenry.

March 24, 2009

Dear School Board members and Superintendent Grier,

Opportunity is knocking loudly at your door, and you have the power to revolutionize education. No doubt these are truly tough times with regard to funding. At the same time, a significant transition is at our doorstep. In a recent editorial in the Union Tribune, County Superintendent Randy Ward called for flexibility in school funding. He is absolutely spot-on. Since the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (NDEA) (Public Law 85-864) put federal dollars toward discipline specific curriculum (science and math), and more recently the No Child Left Behind legislation which unintentionally emphasizes reading and math (because they are tested and test scores are tied to funding), educational priorities have shifted from preparing a knowledgeable and informed citizenry to an emphasis on student achievement.

It is no secret that our society desperately needs innovative and creative problem solvers. Educational leaders must respond to this need with bold initiatives which emphasize the teaching of innovation, community, and creativity along with discipline specific achievement. Education in all cultures has mirrored the needs of societies. I suggest we revolutionize education in the true sense, by returning to some of the core values upon which education in the US was created. For example, when Music was first introduced to the public schools in 1837, it was in concert with the overall goal of education of the time and it was aimed at educating children intellectually, morally, and physically. Read the rest of this entry »

I spend of a lot of time thinking about the structural challenges arts organizations have, i.e. whether or not the traditional nonprofit model is the best way to present non-commercial art, whether having a Board of Directors is a good or bad thing . . . you get the idea.

The irony is that when I work with troubled arts organizations most of their problems have one of three causes: Read the rest of this entry »