#6: How to Balance Risk Taking at an Arts Organization
How to balance risk taking with sustainability at an arts organization. And how you can make sure a new idea is not really that risky after all.
Then, Aubrey covers how to find common ground in negotiations, sharing lessons we can learn from big organizations like the Met Opera, smaller organizations like the California Symphony, and a Harvard Business School professor.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Aubrey Bergauer: Hey everyone. I am coming at you today from San Francisco. I'm at home, and I have been here hosting my brother who's been in town the last two weeks. He lives in Texas and decided to get away from the triple digit heat and come here. And he came to Yosemite with me for those of you who followed along on that, I got to say so many of you reached out and just like the nicest, most wonderful way, asking about my trip to Yosemite a week or two ago now. And if you've been listening to the podcast, you heard me mentioned this on the last episode, I was getting ready to go out there and accomplish this milestone goal I had for myself to hike Half Dome. So just a quick update to close the loop on that is that we did it. It was amazing. The weather was wonderful. I just feel so proud and just love doing that with people I love: my brother, my partner, friends who I went with. So it was just all around. Really a wonderful weekend. So thank you all for asking and cheering me on. I felt it, it meant a lot, so I'm grateful.
And now, here we are officially into summer and I feel like I'm cruising along. I just wrapped up my last summer conference talk last week. It was called Hot Justice. That was a virtual event. It was a panel discussion put on by the organization called Artist Magnet. If you haven't heard of them. Look them up, David Mack, who leads it, I think is brilliant. And the event was all about how the intersection of the performing arts, all disciplines performing arts and digital media can provide revenue, generating opportunities for art makers who have historically been and are currently being excluded from establishment, institutional funding. So a pretty meaty, heavy topic there. And I have to say, it turned out to be a total highlight, honor beyond what I expected. David brought in incredible speakers of various backgrounds, very different backgrounds than my own.
And that means I learned a lot too; really pushed me to expand my own thinking. So I'm really grateful to have been offered the space to weigh in on that topic. I don't take that lightly. They're going to be posting that to YouTube. So if you follow me online, I'll definitely share the link once it's live. I thought it was just, just really valuable and interesting content to benefit all of us.
Today, to get to the task at hand, we are talking about two different topics, answering two different questions on today's episode. The first is balancing risk management as we're trying new ideas and working towards sustainability in our organizations. That's a question so many of us are asking right now. So lots to say on that.
And the second question or topic of today is about finding common ground in negotiations. There are lots of union negotiations happening right now, all over the place, across the country. And even if you're not in the thick of it right now, in some ways that's maybe even better because so much of the work of finding common ground happens long before you ever come to the table.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here, so we will get into it. We'll unpack it all later in the show. This is episode six of this eight episode pilot season. I cannot believe we have only two episodes left. That's kind of mind blowing. And as we hit it today, I want to thank our sponsors Descript and Lume Cube. You've been a part of this whole season and you have made it possible. So thank you. I really believe in what they're doing.
I'm Aubrey Bergauer, and welcome to my podcast. If we haven't met, I'm known in the arts world for being customer centric, data obsessed, and for growing revenue. The arts are my vehicle to make the change I want to see in this world, like creating places of belonging, pursuing gender and racial equality, developing high performing teams and leaders, and leveraging technology to elevate our work.
In this show, I'm answering your questions on how to build the vibrant future we know is possible, both for our institutions and for ourselves as offstage administrators and leaders. To submit a question, send a voice recording to hello@aubreybergauer.com.
[00:04:13] Eric: Hi, Aubrey, this is Eric from Arlington, Virginia. My question is, can you talk a little bit about how an arts organization should think about balancing sustainability and risk management, with risk taking and strategic planning and strategic goals. Thanks for your work. Looking forward to your answer.
[00:04:30] Aubrey Bergauer: Hello, Eric from Virginia. I am so glad you asked this; so glad you were thinking about this. This topic is coming to the forefront right now. Boy, is it ever at this idea of how do we balance sustainability, risk management, strategic planning, goal setting. Here's what we know. Audiences are not coming back at pre pandemic levels. We know this, we also know support funding is soon coming to an end. By support funding I mean Shuttered Venue Operators Grants, or PPP loans, all of those kinds of things. We know that that funding source is soon coming to an end, and that has really buoyed us thus far. Thank goodness. We'd know the old way isn't working. And so therefore we are being faced with how to try new things, how to figure this out. So let's talk a little bit about strategic planning. Here's what I don't like.
I do not like spending six to eight months on a process that is very laborious, very intensive, bringing all of these stakeholders and taking a lot of time. And it comes back with, I've seen this at so many different organizations. This is why I don't personally take on a lot of strategic planning work when organizations reach out, asking if I offer that because you do this whole process and it comes back with:
Goal number one, increased revenue. Goal number two, develop greater relevance in the community. Goal number three, grow our donor base. Do we really need six to eight months on a process to tell us these things? No, we know we need to increase revenue. We know we need to grow our greater relevance in the community and expand our donor base. We know these things, so.
I'm being a bit snarky here, but it's not off base because I see this happen so often with so many organizations. And so that is what I don't want to happen. I don't mind planning and I don't mind a process that is for sure. I'm a big planner and I'm big on process. So, and I'm big on strategy. So all of these things I like, but what I don't like is the way it kind of often tends to work out and how I'm describing here.
So instead, what should we be doing? Instead, I believe the plan should be about, or at least start with, asking questions. Why aren't our audiences coming back?
Well, a lot has changed in the world over the past couple of years. There's probably multiple reasons for that. There are probably reasons that were in place even before the pandemic happened, because that was the trend before the pandemic, that audiences were on the decline. So why aren't audiences jumping to come to our arts organizations?
Okay. That's a question we can be asking. What are our renewal rates for donors and subscribers? Not just everybody across the board, but do those renewal rates vary by first year subscribers, first year donors, versus those who've been with us two years, three years? Usually the answer is, yeah, there's different renewal rates, usually donor behavior and new subscriber behavior is different. They're less loyal, therefore, because they're newer.
Therefore, their renewal rates are different, but let's find out. And then how do we solve for that? Is there a different onboarding process? Is there something different we can do for those important groups of lucrative people that we need to keep into the fold? What other questions do we have? Good data always starts with a question. That's true for research projects. That's true for quantitative data gathering, extracting information from our CRMs. Good data starts with a question or questions. Plural. Then develop the plan around that. What does this mean? Does it mean we need to do some new audience research? Is it that we need to focus on some retention work that needs to be done? Hint, the answer is almost always, yes. We need to be doing these things. Is it that we need to double down on the patron and customer experience? Is it website work also? Always, almost always a yes, probably. Is it a marketing review? Is it looking at every single department. How are we interacting with our community? Not just making it the job of the education or community engagement team, right? You know, this is how we develop the plans. Asking the questions and then developing the plans around how do we get answers to these questions? Any good strategic plan should include two things. That's one. Any additional data gathering if needed. Again, go deep into the CRM, hire a contractor or firm to do this. And the second thing- and this is now sort of segwaying into the next part of the answer - is pilot tests. Any good strategic plan includes pilot test. Not we've determined our strategy, we've determined how we're doing it. Let's hit the gas pedal and go. No, no, no, no, no. This is now the answer to your part about risk-taking and balancing that.
How do you test what you think you need to do? You have formed hypothesis after gathering the data. Is there a different version of the subscription renewal brochure this year? For example, if you're a bigger organization, do you do that for just a subset of your audience? Do you test on a small segment of your audience? At a smaller organization, you can do a test and then measure the results. How did it compare to last year? You know, there's different ways to do that.
At the California Symphony, we had five different versions of the brochure. The cover and inside wrap, those pages were different for each version. The innards, all the inside pages with the actual programming and concert descriptions and all of that, that was the same, but this outer cover rap pages were different depending on the segments that we were mailing to the headlines on the front and back said different things.
The offer they were getting said different things. Same thing with the renewal form, we had five different versions of that. And that's at a regional orchestra. I mean, professional couple million dollar budget, but all this is to say, it's not crazy work, it's work that needs to be done. And so maybe a different way to AB test it is, you know, you do something slightly different and you're measuring the results year over year versus testing something on a subset of your audience. Development appeals. What's going to be different on the next development appeal. That is a pilot test. So maybe for example, the answer is we are going to really focus that appeal letter on storytelling, not just "ticket sales, only cover 40% of our budget" or these days 30% or less, you know. We're not going to talk about those statistics that are just me, me, me, us, us, us because we know that's not the most effective way. And we're going to test. Research says storytelling is more impactful. So what's that story of that person who is really impacted by our work. How do we tell that story?
Also, the research says, this comes straight from Jennifer Aacker at Stanford. She says storytelling, focusing on the story of one, but then combine that with a statistic. "The truth is we serve 5,000 kids like that every year," after you tell the story. You know, something like that. That is the most impactful combination for this type of solicitation. All right, there you go. A little pro tip there. So next as you're developing your pilot test, how are you going to measure if that test was successful?
As I mentioned year over year is one way to measure that. If you got to go back to a pre pandemic year 20 18, 20 19, if you need the last quote, unquote, normal year to compare to that's fine. That can be your baseline. Another way to measure if a test was successful, look at the response rate. We tend to sometimes look at "how many people did we mail to and how many people converted" or how many people did we send the email to? Right. We tend to look at sort of those kinds of numbers instead of yeah, but what was the response rate? What's the percentage of people who actually took the action we needed, not just how many did we blast it to? Since we're working with smaller numbers. Now, a lot of times, given that these pools of people are smaller than pre pandemic, that's where response rates become even more important.
Is the response rate higher than the last appeal? Those kinds of things. If it's a messaging thing we're testing, email website, social media content, what's the click through rate. What's the engagement rate, not just how many impressions did it get? That's not a fact- who cares? Who cares if a bazillion people saw the thing we're putting out there if nobody converted or a very few converted. So let's start looking at the engagement rates, conversion rates, click through rates. Then after all of that, the next step in the plan or process is to iterate. What worked about that pilot task? What do we know what's successful? And we want to keep it the next time we do this.
What needs to be tweaked further because we have some indication of success or maybe we see where it went off the rails a little bit, and we're not ready to scrap the idea just yet. We see some potential still that we want to tease out there.
Successful organizations in any sector are the ones iterating. Test measure, assess, evaluate, determine how to do it a little better next time. That needs to be part of the plan is what I'm trying to say. The last podcast episode, we talked a lot about this. We talked about iteration, the Kaizen method, all of that.
So anybody who wants more on iteration, please go back and listen to that because there's a bunch there. There. But all of this is to say, When we're talking about creating a strategic plan, balancing the goals, risk management. With all of this kind of process, we can create a much more concrete plan from there. So for example, let's say we do all this work and we decide pillar one of our plan going forward is storytelling. We will be better storytellers and all we do. Maybe it's not just the appeal letter, but this means across all we do. So the story behind the music in our copywriting, website, social media, et cetera. Maybe that appeal, like I said, is the story about somebody impacted by your work? Child or community member or something like that. Instead of now, I'm going back to sort of marketing copy, not come see us or not. Who's on stage this week. Artists, artists, artists, artists, artists, pictures of us, us, us, us, us.
Not we serve 10,000 kids each year only, but the stories behind all of that, why did we program this? Why did we invite this particular artist? What makes them good? And hint, spoiler: what makes them good is not their bio that's a list of what schools they went to and every concert hall they've performed in.
There are other things besides that, that make somebody interesting and appealing. Not that those credentials don't matter. That's not what I'm trying to say. It's that for most people, other things are what are deemed important. So we really have to get in that mindset. What is the story that's interesting? And we've all heard stories about the artist and. Composers and repertoire that we find interesting along the way. So we really have to tap into that and go back to that. What is the story behind the work we're doing on stage off stage in the community? Okay. Maybe another part of the plan, another pillar, is retention using that example again. So now we say we're not spending so much of our marketing dollars this year on radio and outdoor.
Most of the time I'm cutting that stuff anywhere I go these days and have been for the last several years. Instead, we're going to reallocate those marketing dollars to digital remarketing. If you do not have that set up already say, we are going to invest in that it doesn't cost that much to do, but we got to do it. Retention means, maybe we're saying in the pillar of our plan, it means we are not emailing the whole database every time we send an email that goes out, we are going to focus on segmentation because segmentation translates to better retention. So that means, we're saying only newcomers, get this kind of message. Only subscribers get those kinds of messages. Donors, get this other message over here. And it always, usually I can't say always, it usually is variations on a theme. There are some language we know. It's not that every one of these communications is entirely different. Maybe sometimes it's a line or two. And you might be thinking well, Aubrey, that's a lot of work to have a different email, go to different people with just a line or two of copy different.
[00:16:04] Aubrey Bergauer: Yes. Do we care about growing our audiences and making those retention numbers higher and getting those people back and getting those donors to renew it, expanding the donor base? Yes. If we care about those things and this is work that needs to happen, we get better at it. We get faster at it. We get more efficient at it.
That's all part of iteration too. So. That also means, here we go, for some organizations, less emails on the whole. Some organizations, you guys, you're blasting people all the time. Calm down. There are times where an email a week is necessary. I don't really think we should be emailing our people more than once a week, unless there's a specific period in time coming up on the deadline for the appeal, for example.
But again, it goes back to look at those click-through rates and response rates. If we are just inundating everybody, it's not helping us. And I don't mean well, X people donated .No. Let's look at the response rates. Because if we're looking at those numbers, eventually more people in the end will be converting or will be converting to higher amounts, so different metrics in our evaluation. Here's what I'm trying to say.
Maybe another pillar to finish this thought is we want to look more like our community we've seen in our goal setting that this is important to us. That means representation, not just in our repertoire, where else? We know: in our board and our staff and our artists.
So many ways that we can look more like our community besides just the composers we program. Besides just in our repertoire. So all of that is how we can make a more effective strategic plan in my opinion. And the plan includes this testing, iterative work.
[00:17:43] Aubrey Bergauer: Also, this is very important to say. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. This is good news for us, such good news. Some of the things that feel different to arts organizations, even some of the things I've listed already, are not new at all. They're just newer to us in the arts. Things like e-commerce. At the end of the day we are largely e-commerce businesses now in 2022. So let's look at what the best practices are for other e-commerce businesses.
There's a lot out there. A lot of research, a lot of data, a lot of best practices. We don't have to test some of those things, because it's been so demonstrated , in terms of what is the most effective best practice way. Putting the customer and community at the center of our work that U X research user experience research. This is something that's newer to the arts, more organizations are doing it. It's been a big part of my consulting work over the past three years or so.
That is not new as a concept. UX research has been around for a long time, centering the customer, trying to figure out how to solve the problems they have so that we are more relevant to them. That's not new. That has been done in so many other industries. It's just newer to us. So that means we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There's a lot out there on that too, that we can emulate and adopt. Becoming a media company. That's another one. How many organizations said over the pandemic "we are a media company now." That's not wrong. That's fine. But let's talk about streaming as a part of a larger digital strategy. That's not new. That's been done long before lockdown. It's just, again, newer to us that we're really trying to figure out digital strategy and how to make streaming a part of that. Lots more to say about that. If anybody has questions, please send them in. Content, content, content, same thing. Content marketing has been around for years and years. And yet still so much of what I'm brought in to do for organizations is to really talk about how do we make content part of our strategy?
So again, so much out there from other places. I mean, it's like, Google-able, this is not even something we have to pay to learn about. So this is great. Again, good news for us. Fair and equitable hiring practices, revamping performance review; some of these things that are very structural in terms of the backbone of who we are going to be. These are building blocks of setting company culture and building blocks for some of these other goals. Representation. Becoming more relevant.
[00:20:01] Aubrey Bergauer: Revamping subscriptions. Oh, here's one that I'm very excited about more and more these days. Revamping subscriptions to match the broader membership /subscription economy. Well, there's a lot to say about this too, but the short version is there's so much out there in other industries where the subscription model is dominant, dominant, and yet here in the arts, it's on the decline to the point that some people are saying it's dead. It's not dead when it's in every other industry and so much of our lives is on subscription these days. It's not dead. It is thriving. So that means there's a disconnect between what we're doing and what's working elsewhere. We can learn from that. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. All of this is to say these things, these ideas from other industries, other sectors have been vetted, tested, authenticated in other industries, other B to C companies, business to consumer companies.
Again, we don't have to reinvent the wheel, which means it's not so risky. So if the whole part of the question was about balancing risk, it's not risky when there's mountains of the data research and case studies across other e-commerce and B2C organizations out there. So that is in our corner. And when we're doing this work, doing this planning, doing the strategic thinking, it allows us to move faster, which is good. That said, for anyone still wary of all of this, it goes right back to the first part of the conversation. Then go back to pilot test. See what works, measure the results. Evaluate. If you're not sure, test it. I say this all the time for not sure. Let's run a little test. How do we see if that idea has chops? You know, how do we see if that idea will hold up? Well, we got to test it somehow. That's how.
And we can do these tests on a small scale is what I'm trying to say. Now, usually when I talk about all of these topics, there's always somebody who says, " you know, we're doing some of those things." Great. If things are working for you, you don't need any of this. If you got something working for you, by all means, keep doing it. Ride that train of success as long as you can. But if it's not, then some is honestly not enough. We have work to do.
And I think I'll wrap all this up by saying balancing strategic planning and risk management with strategic goals. These things don't fly in the face of one another. They are not mutually exclusive by any means.
So make the plan on how to test; that's risk management to put a finer point on it. Don't change a million things. This is important advice. Don't change a million things. It's expensive to do. And it's difficult to measure when there's too many variables, right? So keep it simple. No problem.
And sustainability means we have to be doing this. It goes right back to the idea that the old way of doing business and arts and culture is definitively not working. It is definitively not sustainable.
I can't tell you how many organization leaders have said to me. " Wow, the pandemic saved us." Meaning it was more sustainable for them not to be producing art and to be getting these rescue grants and funding, generous donors during a time of great need. It was more sustainable to be doing that than to be doing things the old way. I get it. What we do is very costly to produce our art forms are not cheap. They're very labor intensive, very people intensive, very time intensive. They don't scale with efficiencies. We know this about our business, which is again, these are pre pandemic conditions that were exacerbated and still true today. These trends are not changing, right? So this means again, the old way is definitively not sustainable. Therefore we must do something different. Must be better about finding our way forward, testing, iterating, developing plans that start with questions and then seek to answer those questions. Is the how, how we do all those things.
The good news in all of this is that these trends that existed before the pandemic can be reversed. Trends of any kind can generally be reversed, but not on their own. That doesn't happen on its own without massive outside force. So what that means is trends can be changed. Trends can be altered, but that means we got to do some things differently in order to be that force that moves things in a different direction.
Eric, I hope this helps clarify things. I'm so glad you're thinking about this. So glad you're asking about it. Great question.
[00:24:16] Aubrey Bergauer: So I've been creating content for a while now. First as manager of audience development at the Seattle Opera, then later as the head of marketing at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival, and now as an individual creator and working with organizations on their content strategies too. And I'm not being dramatic when I say that the program that was a total game changer for me is Descript. I learned about Descript earlier this year when I was invited to join the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program. And I loved it so much because I'm not an editor yet Descript makes editing as easy as editing a Google doc. I'm not even kidding.
Now I use Descript for all of my videos, audio content, Instagram Reels, and even recording this right now. I recommend Descript for any individual or marketing team, and I'll drop the link in the show notes for you. Thank you to Descript for supporting the business side of the arts. I'm really grateful.
[00:25:14] Carlos: So in negotiation, we talk about power. Do you see there are moments that somebody is more powerful, or do you always think of it as equal powers or does it help you to see the difference? And I wonder if by finding, sharing ground, if there has been a time where you've needed to actually speak that and say, let's find our common ground, if that's helpful or not. Thank you so much.
[00:25:40] Aubrey Bergauer: Wow, this is such a thoughtful and real question. Thank you. I really appreciate you bringing this up. A few things come to mind on this topic of finding common ground and negotiations. The first is I have got to give a shout out to Jessica Phillips. I think she is in so many ways just to be expert shining, beacon of light on this topic. Jessica Phillips, if you don't know that name, she is a clarinetist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
That says a lot right there. And in addition to her, just incredible musical talent. She was formerly chair of the players' committee there for two rounds of negotiation, including the, I think it was 2014, thereabouts, where it was highly publicized. Very contentious. I don't think that's saying anything anybody following that at the time didn't know. So she led the musicians through that really important time at the Met Opera. And Jessica and I met, gosh, 2019 I think is when we met in person for the first time and really hit it off. I got to say, she is so thoughtful. Talk about finding common ground, wow she does this better than anybody. She is always talking about expanding the pie. How do we create more value for all of us involved? All of us, every union at the Met. The management as well. How do we all make the pie bigger? And that viewpoint, that approach. Can we just clone her and make this spread like wildfire? It's just so refreshing, but also so strategic and so lucrative. She now teaches this in her classes at both Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music.
Can't say enough good things about her okay. Jessica Phillips shared this example with one of my online programs I ran, last summer's Leadership Development course I offered, and I remember her giving this example of costumes . Let me back up a bit though. I remember at the Met on this exact topic of trying to find common ground, she said they developed system where they have, I think it was four meetings a year or something like that, where every single group came together, the different unions, different constituencies came together to talk about cost efficiencies or something like that. Really the idea is that these are things we're not bringing up at the bargaining table, or at least not yet. It's outside of the bargaining period. And really just sharing information to this goal of finding common ground. And. Oh, at some point, if I'm recalling the story correctly, there was something about costumes and under the guise of cost efficiencies, you know, people were saying, "wow, Sometimes these costume bills just really run large, right? I mean, they're extravagant, it's the Mat. They're not holding back, what are we doing here? And. Then at some point, one of the costume makers spoke up and said, "you know, I made that costume. And that costume was featured on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. " That costume has value is what everybody started realizing. So it's not just, oh, this is a big expense line on the budget, but wow. Look at the asset that this costume is. Wow. It really is a work of art. It was deemed so by one of the world's largest visual art institutions and look at the honor that that is. And you know, it just really reframed things for everybody is the point of that story. So it was just, yes. Let's talk about finding common ground. What a way to move people closer together and understanding that this thing, that again, could have been seen as just a big expense line on the budget. Really know there was value here. So I really remember that story of just a beautiful example of, of finding common ground.
So what I take away from that, and this is what I say when I'm talking about negotiations, is that the time to find such common ground is before we ever get to the bargaining table. This is so important. We don't want anything to be a surprise when we come to the bargaining table or at least I'll speak for myself. I don't. I definitely don't want to be surprised when I get to the negotiation. I want to have a very good sense of what the topics are, what are the things that we need to address, need to uncover, need to think through together? And just to share some of my own tactics, I remember when I first started at the California Symphony.
Many of you know, it was a total turnaround story and we were coming off of- this is not hyperbole 30 years, if not balanced budgets. I mean, I think it's seriously, it was like two or three balanced budgets over the prior 30 years. And I'm coming in there. I knew this was the reality. I knew it was coming in for a turnaround. And knew that I needed to bring the orchestra along. Again, well, before we ever got to the bargaining table. And this is a constituency where information doesn't always flow as well as it could. And especially at a regional orchestra, the frequency of performances and rehearsals is less. Therefore we weren't seeing just seeing the musicians as often as you would at a larger institution that has a higher cadence of performances. So I decided, I can't remember, I think at that first year, it might've been every concert set and then I dialed it back a bit, but I did these "Updates with Aubrey" and they were pretty casual. It was, you know, after rehearsal, anybody who wants to stick around, come to, 15, 20 minutes of Updates with Aubrey, I'll share some updates on where the finances, what are we doing? What's on deck. How are ticket sales tracking, fundraising tracking, those kinds of things. And so. My goal with that was very intentional. It was to this exact point of, I want it all to be on the table before we ever get to the table, all transparent all out there. And that meant sharing financials. That meant trust that nobody was going to go blab things publicly that really weren't suited for public consumption.
I also also strategic and intentional wanting to share victories as we had them because the silver lining of a crisis or a turnaround is there sometimes I think quite often are some easy. I use that word sort of in air quotes, easy victories, easier victories maybe is the right word, to be had. if the only way to go is up, right. So wanted to also balance with, yeah, let's share some successes. Let's talk about a new donor that just came in or new increased major gift or what are those things? So really it was trying to balance the reality of the situation, but also what we were doing as we were turning the ship. So I made those optional, that's the great thing about artists I think. Well, I can say this is especially true for orchestral musicians since that's what I know the most, but they all pretty much talk to each other.
So in that sense, it was great. I didn't have to have tons of people there. It was whoever felt, you know, self-interested that they wanted to come and listen to what I had to say and hear the updates and yeah, they all pretty much talk to each other. So that word spreads in a good way.
So yeah, the time is before the table is the whole point of that. And I think there are things we can do, whether it's a formal setting, like what Jessica had shared about the Met Opera four times a year, they come together, or a little more informal. After the rehearsal. Four times a year, five times a year, I'll share some updates, that kind of thing. We don't want it to be a surprise. We want to build that common ground year round is what I'm trying to say here. I also on this topic, want to offer one more resource. This is on negotiations more broadly, but also definitely hits this question and this topic. Deepak Malhotra is my favorite person to listen, to read from, learn from.
On the topic of negotiations, Deepak Malhotra is a professor at the Harvard School of Business and his expertise, his negotiations, his book is called Negotiating the Impossible. And it is about, in his words, negotiating without money or muscle. And, money that's obvious when you don't have tons of money to come to the table with, or muscle, I interpret as power in the traditional sense, the big guns, all the lawyers or whatever else, clout maybe.
He says, what do you do when you don't have either of those things? And I just think of even just this, that subheading of the book. And I'm like, wow, holy cow, is he talking to arts organizations? We very rarely have money or muscle. And so that's what captured my attention. And made me pick up the book in the first place. And regardless of what we are as an arts organization and who's at the table, artists stage hands, actors management, you know, whoever. His whole point is there are other currencies besides money or muscle that kind of leverage. So just share a quote from him. He says negotiation is not about any one currency. Negotiation, regardless of the context of the issues involved is fundamentally about human interaction. The question we're always trying to answer in negotiation is this, how might we engage with other human beings in a way that leads to better understandings and agreements?
But our understanding is what common ground is. Right. I think that sums it up pretty well. And a couple of things are still coming to mind from his book. The whole book is just wonderful. And I have so many notes for it that I use to this day whenever I'm in a negotiating setting, not even just union negotiations, but any type of negotiation really. He says, be firm on substance, but flexible on structure.
Meaning, stick to what we know actually needs to be addressed and that's the substance, but flexible on how we get there. And how we get there allows for more currencies. And I think that this really plays into this idea of common ground. Do we need more time for something? Do we need less time for something depending on what the issue is? Who all is involved. What's the flow of meetings. What's the structure of the bargaining session itself? All these kinds of things, flexible and structure really opens things up and allows us to help find this common ground, like, like really I'm paraphrasing, but let's pick our battles and where we're going to be rigid as what he's saying. And to me that again is common ground going back to Jessica Phillips. How do we make the pie bigger? What are we. What are we willing to open up our thinking about, and that's helpful when we approach it that way. He says it's about understanding, not what each party wants but why. And that also really opens things up when we understand why somebody wants something. Again, true in any negotiation, not just unions by any means.
When we understand why somebody else or another party wants something, then we can expand the different ways on how to solve for that. Like, it really becomes an exercise in. Psychology or feelings or how is this thing addressed? And there might be multiple ways, multiple whats to achieve on how to get there.
I could go on and on about this. I can not recommend the book enough. He has talks online as well. You can go on YouTube and Google Deepak Molhotra. I've watched several of his videos on negotiation. I just can't get enough because I think his approach is the approach we need. And speaking from experience, anytime I've adopted any of his recommended strategies, it's worked for me and worked well to get to the resolution and agreement that I felt served everyone involved. So I hope that helps, Carlos. Thank you so much for this question.
Hey Off Stagers. Okay. You're here listening to this podcast where I'm answering questions, and one of the questions I get asked often is how to apply these topics, ideas, and action items to your own organization. If you've been listening to the podcast and thinking, how can we do this more effectively at my own organization? Or how can we hear more specific insights that apply directly and uniquely to my own organization or situation? I'd love to hear from you. I'm currently lining up clients for Q4 of this year. That's late fall 2022 and into Q1 of 2023.
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