Leadership Approaches for Promoting Change in Organizations

LEADERSHIP APPROACHES FOR PROMOTING CHANGE IN ORGANIZATIONS

Conrad Askland
December 2018 – Colorado State University

 

ABSTRACT

Nonprofit arts organizations can have a particularly difficult experience enacting change within their organizations. This is partly due to the artist mindset that can have a default resistance to change, group and sub-group dynamics that create barriers to change, an ineffective leadership practices to overcome these challenges. This paper will highlight some of the barriers to change that appear in arts organizations as well as provide various leadership approaches that can be effective in facilitating healthy change within those organizations. Included are ancient leadership theories of Lao Tzu, the theory of reverse dominance and constructive dissent by Grint and successful leadership tactics identified by Kotter.

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Feeling Worthless and Time Managment

On a day not so long ago I was low; that yucky very dark low where the worst of thoughts cross your mind. I searched “feeling worthless” into Google search and found page after page of “you are a child of the universe” type stuff. Those are great sentiments but it really didn’t speak to me. In fact, it made me feel worse. I just didn’t have the stomach to read articles about “you are unique” and “you are special.” Again, great sentiments, but nothing to turn my mental boat around.

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Should I use Pop-Up ads on my website?

Should I use Pop-Up ads on my website? Stats show it increases conversion rates but we all hate them. I actually spent the better part of a day looking into this so thought I’d share what I found out and ultimately what I decided to do.

Great article here:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-pop-up-ads/#gref

on “the good the bad and the ugly of pop up ads”. In a nutshell, it says we all hate them but it has been shown to be effective.

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The Project Management Song

The Project Management song by Conrad Askland.

I wrote this as part of a Project Management class I took with Berklee School of Music. I am currently working on some massive long term projects and took this class to refine my skills in project management. It was well worth it and I highly recommend the class. I’m pretty sure this is probably the first dance song ever written about Project Management.

Failure: How Artists and Entrepreneurs Can Benefit from Failure

Failure-michael-jordan

 

Gerald Slavet, executive producer of the series “From the Top” says:

“There is no such thing as failure in the creative world.”

With each “failure” is the opportunity to refocus, change directions and make adjustments so the final outcome is success. Those few words are extremely powerful IF you are willing to honestly take stock of your progress as you move along on your creative project.

In my title for this blog post I say “Artists and Entrepreneurs” because the process of developing an idea is very similar (or the same!) for entrepreneurs and artists. Both go through this process:

  • You get an idea, a kernel of inspiration for a new work, or are assigned a new property to develop
  • You visualize the possible areas to explore on that property, look at it from different angles or perspectives, a period of discovery to find how many different variations of the final product or create process you can come up with
  • Create a plan to begin creating the property
  • Execution phase: Now you actually have to work!
  • Assessment, Evaluation and Valuation: Is everything going to plan? Does it need adjustment? What are the roadblocks to the final developed property and how do you overcome those? Is this project on a trajectory of success?

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Genius Marketing Tactics of Captain Crunch

Captain-Crunch-back-Pumpkin-Carving2

How did this box of Captain Crunch end up in my kitchen? I love good marketing and I think whoever put together this marketing for Captain Crunch is a genius.

I had mentioned to a friend recently how much I liked Captain Crunch – Crunch Berries cereal as a kid. So when they were in the supermarket recently they saw this and picked it up for me as a surprise. What a fun surprise gift – but what was even more exciting is the marketing behind this product so let’s look at that now…

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