Managing Change

What is change management? A well-defined, comprehensive process, emphasizing human resources, programs, policies and procedures, that enable an entity to achieve stated, usually long-term goals.

Change management encourages creative thinking, includes diverse perspectives, and involves a large body of stakeholders things that are common to arts organizations.

Change management also incorporates new ways of thinking for arts organizations, such as documenting and evaluating objectives, goals, outcomes, responsibilities, and Action steps; and encourages organization-wide communication.

Preparing for Change

1. Acknowledge the reasons change is required.
2. Clearly define the Target audience.
3. Recognize that new audiences/constituencies are not monoliths.

EXAMPLE: The mission of the Initiative is to achieve a sense of ownership in the CSO organization by Chicago area communities through the CSOs participation in collaborative programs in communities, removal of real and perceived Barriers to Symphony Center, and achievement of diversity throughout the CSO family and in artistic programs.

4. Take the time required to develop the Plan and allot sufficient resources.
5. Recognize that no two change processes are identical.
6. Clearly define the audience your organization wants to target and the goals your organization wants to reach.
7. Set quantifiable and qualitative goals (also called incremental goals). Its also okay to set tangible, less quantifiable goals (also called stretch goals). In fact, strong Marketing objectives contain both incremental goals and stretch goals.

EXAMPLE: The CSO s Community Engagement Initiatives goals are to:

• Increase the relevancy of classical music in the lives of more people.
• Broaden the diversity of the classical music audience.
• Enrich the lives of the people in the communities in which we live and work.
• Enhance the lives of the musicians who play classical music.
• Become a vital and essential part of the cultural fabric of the communities in which we live and work.
• Promote and sustain the art form.
• Enable the music to change and grow.

The Change Agent

The change agent leads the initiative for change. Where does a Change Management initiative start? Change must come from the top. The organization leadership must be the force behind the change so that staff members are empowered to implement the changes.

EXAMPLE: Community engagement is not an option, but a requirement. Everyone in the organization from the top, down has to talk the talk and walk the walk. When looking for a change agent, pick the right person for your organization s culture. Acquire and maintain relationships with an external confidante. Create a network of peers within and outside of the organization for morale and other support. Don t feel like you have to have all the answers or that you can do everything yourself. Plan for succession so that the change initiative can live on without the key person.

Communications and Change

1. Carefully choose words to identify the target audience.
2. Clarify terms and definitions and be careful of hidden messages
3. that can undermine a new audience or a new constituents sense of ownership.
4. When marketing to diverse audiences, avoid using code words.

EXAMPLE: Does the word "minority" accurately reflect the Demographics of your city or the community you are marketing to? When you say inner city is that area are you referring to? [For example, in Chicago, the high rent Gold Coast area is logistically the inner city.] What do you imply by using the words disadvantaged or underserved? Sometimes it even comes down to pronouns--Should you use ours or theirs when describing your organization? Does it belong to you, or to your audiences?
Code words can also be found in the terminology of your artistic discipline. Be sure to explain insider terms for your audiences so that this doesn’t present a barrier to people who may not be familiar with artistic terminology.

For example, not all audiences are familiar with musical terminology. Even the term classical music can be a barrier to potential audiences. Does it mean classical (with a lower case c) which can include music performed in a concert hall, including jazz, but more specifically referring to music written from 1600 - present with a Western European root? Does it mean Classical (with an upper case C), which is referred to as serious music in the industry and specifically refers to art music written between 1700 and 1850? Don’t assume that your audience knows the answers. It’s up to your organization to define the terms for them.

5. Empower the Target audience to define themselves. It may help to have an individual from the Target community on your planning team. This team member would be empowered to voice any concerns and gauge the appropriateness of the Marketing promotion.
6. Find out how new audiences view themselves, not how we view them.

   EXAMPLE: In the summer of 2001, the CSO performed an inaugural concert performing classical music inspired by Latin America in the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen, which is demographically Hispanic/Latino. To commemorate the event, the CSO Marketing team produced a beautiful promotional piece with a red flame motif. However members of Pilsen s community rejected the promotional piece because it relied too heavily on the stereotypical assumption that Latinos are hot and fiery. The Marketing team realized that they were not as ready as they thought they were to promote the event. They needed more information from the community.

7. Interact with new audiences in their environment, their community, their space. The CSO s Board of Trustees Community Relations Committee held their meetings on site in the communities the Initiative was targeting.
8. Acknowledge barriers, perceived and real, to the new audience s involvement. Re-evaluate the notion of high art vs. low art. Start evaluating the plan from the beginning, especially during planning.
9. How will you track progress in audience diversity? You should build in ways to measure this information using Market research such as audience surveys and focus groups. If you re looking for an accurate analysis you can' t rely on spot checks and eyeballing the diversity of the audience during performances.

The preceding article is an excerpt adapted from Lee Koonce's March 7, 2002 presentation on Managing Change at the Chicago Cultural Center to the participants in the National Arts Marketing Project's Audience Development Training Program.