The following is an experpt 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.

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

- Acknowledge the reasons change is required.
- Clearly define the Target audience.
- 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 achieveme nt of diversity throughout the CSO family and in artistic programs.

- Take the time required to develop the Plan and allot sufficient resources.
- Recognize that no two change processes are identical.
- Clearly define the audience your organization wants to target and the goals your organization wants to reach.
- 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:
    o     Increase the relevancy of classical music in the lives of more people.
    o     Broaden the diversity of the classical music audience.
    o     Enrich the lives of the people in the communities in which we live and work.
    o     Enhance the lives of the musicians who play classical music.
    o     Become a vital and essential part of the cultural fabric of the communities in which we live and work.
    o     Promote and sustain the art form.
    o     Enable the music to change and grow.