Category Archives: leadership

How dance companies can have a fast and smooth transition to digital technology advancements for audience development? The answer is to focus on people! People come first: audience, donor, board member, custodian, and every person in your company. In our entertaining performing arts industry, we forgot to give joy to people around us. Greatest companies make everything for their employees and connect with customers, that is why these organizations are ahead of the curve, and are not afraid of changes making good profits.

Let’s talk about our lives. People generally have a good feeling about changes in their personal lives. When you listen to somebody talking about a change in their personal life or about a plan for the future, a goal, you hear lively, positive expressions of hope and drive. For most people, like me and you, pursuing goals leads to self-transformation and creates positive experiences. 

For example, preparing for marathons, getting a new gadget, listening podcasts about self-motivation, and even pursuing higher education. Getting a certificate or a degree empowers us and gives us a boost of excitement and chance to improve even more.

However, when we’re talking about organizations, it’s a different story. Organizational transformation is harder to achieve, slower and more difficult to implement. The average member of that organization feels overwhelmed and afraid about technological changes in their company! Especially in nonprofit organizations where people work for decades and sensitive to even small changes.

I try to attend as many open sessions during the APAP week as I can because there I have chance to hear thoughts of leaders from producing & presenting arts business, as well as meet artists and foundations. This year I had a pleasure to discuss about New Paradigms for New Economic Realities in Performing Arts (APAP 2017) . This session was about “what presenters, artists and agents have to do and what are we already doing differently to survive and prosper in the new economic realities”, according to the APAP. 

One of the first speakers of the session was Joseph Ferlo, President and CEO of the Oshkosh Opera House Foundation and Director of The Grand Oshkosh since 2004. He advocated for horizontal leadership, stating that a presenting theatre is “more than the building, it is a state of mind that needs to reach out to the community”. He stated that for a regional theatre “word of mouth are how the things get done”, thus interacting with the community is very important. Although he was forced out from his theatre (emergency renovation) to go into communities successfully relocating almost all performances in the 2009 season, now he is greatly benefiting from these community relationships. He had to take shows out from the building to the communities that sometimes have never experienced the arts.