Facilitated by Melissa DibbleManaging Director, EmcArts

EmcArts Inc. | 127 West 122nd Street | New York, NY 10027 | www.EmcArts.org

TCG 25th Annual Conference

Shift Your Assumptions & Change the Game: New Practices for a New Era

Friday, June 19th, 201510:30am – 12:15pm, and 1:30pm – 3:15pm

EmcArts Inc. | 127 West 122nd Street | New York, NY 10027 | www.EmcArts.org

Introductions

What’s one time in your life you did something discontinuous?

What complexity prompted that discontinuity?

Consider for 2 minutes

Get together by birth month & share

Identify complex challenges that the theatre community in the USA is facing

Consider shifts in assumptions that will be needed for adaptive change

Use some techniques that may be of value back in our home organizations & communities about adaptive change

EmcArts Inc. | 127 West 122nd Street | New York, NY 10027 | www.EmcArts.org

Our goals today

Courtesy Jamie GambleImprint Consulting

Complex situations are ones inwhich this….

Source: Jamie Gamble

Defining and measuring success

ComplicatedComplex

Chaotic

disorder

Simple

Simple

ComplicatedComplexTo have the arts sector at the table consistently in civic and neighborhood planning

To improve access to arts events via shared

online ticketing

To make uniform financial data available for public

scrutiny

The Cynefin framework

What challenges does the USA Theatre sector as a whole face, in each of these domains? Source:

David Snowden and others

Self-facilitation guidelines

1. Agree first on a scribe to capture your outputs

2. Decide if you want someone else, or that person, or no-one, to guide the conversation

3. Go round and introduce yourselves, briefly

4. Give space for all the voices in your group

5. Be concise in what you say – don’t hog the air time!

6. Listen appreciatively, to build on what’s been said

7. Ask questions to clarify and explore what others say

The Cynefin framework

Choose ONE complex challenge you see as particularly important and pressing…….

Source: David Snowden and others

Criteria for selecting a complex challenge

1. The challenge does not have any standard or established solution.

2. We either have not yet developed a response to this challenge, or our current responses aren’t proving effective.

3. There is a sense of urgency to address this challenge.

4. If we successfully tackle it, it is likely to have significant impact on our sector’s ability to create public value.

5. Is there a natural sequence to addressing these challenges? If so, which one comes first?

1. To create New Audiences/Participants in theater

2. To define success as appropriate to the type and stage of the project (not defaulting to usual definitions/measures)

3. To embed the arts into daily life & expectations (not an add-on, a luxury)

4. To link/intertwine and demonstrate the relevance of our theater work in the wider culture

5. To understand who “drives” the organization and the art-making

Challenges identified by groups

EmcArts Inc. | 127 West 122nd Street | New York, NY 10027 | www.EmcArts.org

EmcArts Inc. | 127 West 122nd Street | New York, NY 10027 | www.EmcArts.org

Visual Thinking Strategies

A technique based on:

•Inquiry•Attention to data•Shared sense-making

Developed by Abigail Housen and Philip Yenawine

Questioning our underlying assumptions

Developing organizational assumptions

Assumptions evolve as repeated successful solutions to problems.

What was once a questionable hypothesis about how to proceed becomes a reality that is taken for granted….

In order to innovate, organizations have to resurrect, examine, and then break the frame created by old assumptions.

Edgar Schein, Leadership and Organizational Culture

Questioning organizational assumptions

Complex Challenge

EVIDENCE that appears to contradict

the Assumptions

ADAPTIVE RESPONSE

New HYPOTHESES

for future success

What we’llDO DIFFERENTLY

to test them

Considering this complex challenge

1. What are the key assumptions we’ve held that have turned this into a challenge?

2. What evidence is there that suggests these assumptions may no longer be true?

3. What alternative hypothesis, or way forward to achieving our goal, might we test?

Simple

ComplicatedComplexTo have the arts sector at the table consistently in civic and neighborhood planning

To improve access to arts events via shared

online ticketing

To make uniform financial data available for public

scrutiny

We have assumed……

Our work in the arts exists separately from these community issues

City Hall and other agencies do not want us at the table

We have little to contribute

Complex ChallengeTo have the arts sector at the table consistently in civic and neighborhood planning

OLD ASSUMPTIONS

Our work in the arts exists separately from these community issues

City Hall and other agencies do not want us at the table

We have little to contribute

CONTRARY EVIDENCE

Artists and organizations are affected by planning

Many artistic works reflect neighborhood life

Our recent civic memberships and approaches to City Hall have not been rebuffed

Our impact data are convincing and our trustees well connected

Complex ChallengeTo have the arts sector at the table consistently in civic and neighborhood planning

OLD ASSUMPTIONS

Our work in the arts exists separately from these community issues

City Hall and other agencies do not want us at the table

We have little to contribute

NEW HYPOTHESES

Our work in the arts can deeply inform these community issues

If we’re proactive, we will be respected for engaging with civic agencies

Working with other sectors, we will better understand how to maximize our contribution

Complex ChallengeTo have the arts sector at the table consistently in civic and neighborhood planning

NEW HYPOTHESES

Our work in the arts can deeply inform these community issues

If we’re proactive, we will be respected for engaging with civic agencies

Working with other sectors, we will better understand how to maximize our contribution

WHAT TO DO DIFFERENTLY

Promote artists, organizations and their work as keys to civic vitality

Hold civic planning meetings at our venues

Gain fluency in the language and interests of other sectors

Exchange data and convene to find common ground

On a page, capture:

1. Underlying assumptions we’ve held in the past around the challenge

2. Evidence that contradicts these assumptions

3. One or more alternative hypotheses we might explore to reach our goal, that better fit the evidence

1. The response results from a shift in underlying organizational assumptions

2. It’s discontinuous from previous practice

3. It provides a new pathways to creating public value

It’s broad enough to encompass many possible strategies, but narrow enough that it sets us in a specific new direction.

An adaptive response

Facilitated by Melissa DibbleManaging Director, EmcArts

EmcArts Inc. | 127 West 122nd Street | New York, NY 10027 | www.EmcArts.org

TCG 25th Annual Conference

Shift Your Assumptions & Change the Game: New Practices for a New Era Friday, June 19th, 2015

Check out: www.ArtsFwd.org