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.

Keywords: effective leadership, organization change, implementing change, leadership process

INTRODUCTION

How can an arts leader best decrease resistance to change as well as bring about substantive change to an arts organization? The starting point can be to identify the most common sources of resistance to change and then implement proven successful leadership practices to overcome that resistance to successfully bring about substantive change. As a leader of an arts organization attempting to implement change, how can you overcome the sentiment of “we’ve always done it this way?” Would the best approach be to distance yourself from the group and hand down new guidelines from on high? This is indeed an approach that has been used extensively in past Western leadership practices with varying degrees of success. Coercion and consensus are two different approaches and both can yield different results in the short term and long term.  Our examples of leadership theory will include the ancient leadership theories of Lao Tzu, the theory of reverse dominance and constructive dissent by Grint and successful leadership tactics identified by Kotter.

A leader’s overall reference point for the organization can make or break that organization’s success in moving forward with change. Whether the leader is focused on short term or long term goals can affect the decisions toward implementing change, as well as the leader’s focus on group involvement versus distancing themselves from the organization. This paper will cite contemporary leadership authors, leadership professors and leadership journal

articles to discover leading causes of barriers to change and some of the best practices in overcoming those barriers within arts organizations.

BARRIERS AND RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

Analysis of hunter-gathers animal groups show that resistance to leadership is common. This scenario of followers resisting the leader is called “reverse dominance” (Grint, 56). We can observe this same phenomena in human organizations where a collection of individuals form to resist the dominance of an unpopular individual leader (Grint, 136). In an arts organization, this can develop into an inability to change, transforming the group into a fatalist community beyond repair (Grint, 134).

One barrier to group change is the collective identities already in place for the group. The mindsets of “we’ve always done it this way” and tradition are associated with its past are deeply entrenched in the memory of the group members. A failed leadership approach is to enact change on this group as an authoritarian, whereas a successful leadership approach can be to manage the continuity of change and not just the primary introduction of change (Bolden et al, 1376-1380). The mindset of “we’ve always done it this way” might be particularly prevalent in performing arts organizations where the members only work with that same organization and have set, over time, into a rigid process of bringing their projects to the stage.

The leadership approach to enforcement of uncomfortable change in the past was to distance the leader from the group. The contemporary approach in Western democracies, however, is to minimize the social distance between leadership and the group. This is in part due to the desire of transparency created by increased media communication and public access to information (Grint, 119-120). In a nonprofit arts organization where leadership changes every

two years, the distancing approach could be even more disastrous than with a long term individual leader.

A key to good leadership is providing a path for others to accomplish tasks. This can be done more successfully with interpersonal influence than with coercion. Lao Tzu said:

A leader is best

When people barely know he exists

Not so good when people obey and acclaim him

Worse when they despise him

But of a good leader, who talks little,

When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,

They will say:

We did it ourselves

(Lao Tzu, cited in Manz and Sims, 1991: 35)

It would be a mistake for a leader to think that one of their hurdles is overcoming consent. In fact, the difficulty in the most difficult problems is not necessarily to get consent, but rather to encourage open dissent. An authoritarian leader can easily create consent but that is often destructive and leads to the irresponsible passive follower which in turn creates the fatalistic community. A healthy organization needs constructive dissenters who are willing to speak openly with his or her boss or leader (Grint, 29-30). Particularly with volunteer nonprofit

board members, constructive dissenting should be encouraged for the overall health of the organization. A volunteer in a dysfunctional organization culture can easily become an ineffective wallflower to the group dynamics and forward growth.

There has been a shift in leadership power over the last 40 years. The old paradigm of leadership in power has shifted to power given to the followers. Power is no longer automatically assigned to leadership and the contemporary social contract between leaders and followers is that leaders wield less power and are expected to have increased transparency (Northouse, 11). The roles of leadership and management have many overlaps in function and duties, but one differentiating role function can be that leadership is a multidirectional influence relationship and management is a unidirectional authority relationship. It can be said that leaders and followers work together to create change, whereas managers and their teams join to sell goods and services (Rost, 1991, pp. 149–152).

An alternate view that compares leadership and management is Kotter (1990) who argues that the function of management is to provide order and consistency to the organization, whereas leadership is the focused on producing change and movement. Management is about order and stability and leadership is about seeking adaptive and constructive change (Northouse, 13).

With both previous examples we see the importance of leadership being able to enact change. The enacting of this change is most successful when it is implemented with the followers rather than as orders directed at them. Particularly with nonprofit volunteers, it can be seen that

non-paid volunteers would be even more resistant to having orders directed at them versus a paid employee.

If leaders do have power, then coercion is certainly one of those available powers. Coercion effects change but does so with the use of force. If change is forced on a group against their will there is often the inclusion of penalties or rewards in the work environment. It is important to note that coercion itself is not leadership. For our arguments, we will says that coercive people are not models of ideal leadership (Northouse, 12). With coercion off the table as an available tool for effective leadership, we again turn to the importance of enacting change as a group team. Although leaders often get the blame or praise for the success, or lack of, after change has been implemented, the reality is there is often an entire team of people and processes involved in bringing a project to completion. The model for success of a team is a leader than can actualize the team members to peak performance. The reason we typically focus on a leader as being sole responsible is explained by Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist from the turn of the 20th century, that followers actually want their leaders to be god-like in their powers (Grint, 9).

LEADERSHIP TOOLS TO FACILITATE SUCCESSFUL CHANGE

If management is about coping with complexity and leadership is about coping with change, then what are some of the tools that successful leaders can use to facilitate change? John Kotter (Kotter, 1990: 104) identified eight activities a leader must engage in to successfully bring about change:

1. Creating a sense of urgency.
2. Forming a guiding coalition for change.
3. Articulating a clear vision.
4. Communicating the vision.
5. Removing obstacles.
6. Planning short-term wins.
7. Producing continuous change.
8. Institutionalizing new approaches.

Kotter’s eight leadership actions for successful change provide a fluid time line that can be utilized repeatedly. The first steps of urgency and coalition provide an immediate need for change along with the base support from the group for that change. Urgency and coalition support provide the reason and forward motion to promote change in the first place. With either of these elements missing, the leader of any arts organization may find themselves stalemated without a reason for change or any support to move forward. This can be true in any size of organization from a small arts nonprofit up to large scale for profit organizations. As with Grint’s constructive dissent theory, forming the coalition could include listening carefully to opposing views to understand their frame of reference and to encourage open debate and constructive dissent. Hopefully the obstacles of group dissent have already been addressed in these steps so they do not have to be added again to the fifth step of removing obstacles. This series of actions suggests that dissent within the group should be addressed first before starting to outwardly enact the changes proposed and agreed upon by the group.

Kotter’s steps of articulating the clear vision and communicating the vision are the steps to guide the coalition forward on a unified front with a well understood direction by the entire team.  Removing obstacles could also be part of the short term wins to give the group the experience of success. Framing the short term wins as milestones can also improve the forward momentum of the group for when they tackle the long term wins in the future.

Kotter’s step seven of producing continuous change is perhaps the most transformative in terms of groups dynamics. The small town arts organization that has been running for many years would most likely have many group cultures in place and chief among those might be adversity to change. The first changes enacted within this group might be the most challenging for the leader as they address not only group cohesion but also the historical practices of that group. As each change is successfully implemented and the small wins start stacking up, the group dynamic can slowly change to endorse change as part of it’s organizational dynamic. They key is Kotter’s use of the word “continuous” when applied to change. One change will not change the group dynamics for the long term but continuous change can ease the way for future forward movement of the group.

Though management and leadership processes are both important and complementary, Kotter encourages leadership to switch focus toward processes that are more dynamic and strategic instead of relatively inflexible and bureaucratic processes. (Bolden et al, 420-423). Dynamic leadership processes can be better informed if the leader has a deep understanding of where team members stand on specific issues. This can be accomplished in part by having open communication with individual team members away from structured organizational meetings. The informal atmosphere encourages a more authentic connection and also encourages informal and hopefully open communication from both parties. This can be particularly successful with smaller organizations where a few interpersonal relationships can make or break the health and success of that organization.

Through the necessity of follower support for successful leadership, social perceptiveness is also a key to successful leadership changes. A departure from the old “distancing” method of leadership, social perceptiveness means understanding the unique needs, goals, and demands of different organizational members and interests (Zaccaro et al., 1991). The leader must know the pulse of the followers on any issue at any time and be flexible in reacting to and understanding others. The capacity to change and adapt behaviors after understanding others’ perspectives can be as important as the leader’s ability to communicate their own vision. Leaders need to also function as mediators when there is resistance to change or interpersonal conflicts about change. Skill in conflict resolution and social perceptiveness are important aspects of leadership competency. Leaders should coach followers and encourage them to completion of organizational goals (Northouse, 50). A transformational leader can engage with others in a way that both leaders and followers inspire each other to higher levels of motivation and morality. This process could be described as ‘winning hearts as well as minds’. Transformational leadership is a distinct style that can be particularly beneficial in times of change (Bolden et al, 538-542).

Another successful leadership approach is that of quite leadership, or ‘covert leadership’. Henry Mintzberg described this style of leadership as to the subtle ways in which a conductor can extract specific types of performances from musicians. Mintzberg says:

‘Quiet management is about thoughtfulness rooted in experience. Words like wisdom, trust, dedication, and judgment apply… Indeed, the best managing of all may well be silent. That way people can say, ‘We did it ourselves.’ Because we did. (Mintzberg, 1999)

Framing is an important tool the leader can use when introducing change. The leader can identify the most clear way to explain the upcoming change and create possible scenarios for how the changes will be implemented. The leader can also look at how implementing the change will affect the company’s mission and the individual careers of the organization members (Northouse, 49). Framing is also a tool that fits into Kotter’s steps of garnering group support and establishing clear communication within the organization before enacting change. It’s important to note that although framing can be used as a successful type of debate tactic, it should not be used when working to fully understand a dissenting viewpoint. The dissenting viewpoint should be fully and attentively listened to and understood before attempting to use framing as a leadership tool. This approach to framing would be supported by Grint’s concept that a healthy organization should encourage constructive dissent, and constructive dissent includes giving time and understanding to those dissenting views.

CONCLUSION

The power of contemporary leadership comes from the followers. For a leader to successfully implement change they must have the support and power given to them from the followers. Full and unilateral consent at all times is not the sign of a healthy organization. A successful leader should encourage an atmosphere of open communication and debate with team members. The leader should also know the pulse of the organization and be able to identify the individual and group perspectives of any issue at any time.

It’s quite possible that the most successful leadership style of all appears to be invisible and the group appears to function successfully on it’s own.

Works Cited:

Bolden, R., J. Gosling, B. Hawkins and S. Taylor.  (2011). “Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organizational, and Societal Perspectives.” Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Grint, Keith. (2010). “Leadership: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions).” Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Kotter, J. P.. (1990). “A force for change: How leadership differs from management.” New York: Free Press.

Manz, C. C. and Sims, H. P.. (1980). “Self-management as a Substitute for Leadership: A Social Learning Theory Perspective,” Academy of Management Review, 5.

Mintzberg, H.. (1973). “The Nature of Managerial Work.” New York: Harper and Row.

Northouse, Peter G..  (2012).“Leadership: Theory and Practice.” SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.

Rost, J. C.. (1991). “Leadership for the twenty-first century.” New York: Praeger.

Zaccaro, S. J., Fleishman, E. A., Mumford, M. D., Levin, K. Y., Korotkin, A. L., & Hein, M. B.. (1991). “Taxonomic efforts in the description of leader behavior: A synthesis and functional interpretation.” Leadership Quarterly, 2(4).

As I’m writing this, I’m full of fire and energy and focus. I wanted to share with you what brought me out of that. Maybe this is more for entrepreneurs, artist and writer types. But my feeling of worthlessness came from the overwhelming experience of not being able to harness and focus all my ideas.

If you are a producer of content and you are not producing content, then you are worthless. You are something else. Ok, I know this sounds harsh but I hope that fellow artists and content creators can relate. Artist types have the opposite challenges that many people face. We don’t have a problem coming up with ideas, we have TOO MANY ideas to sort out. And we don’t have a problem of jumping off the cliff creatively so the angels can brace our fall. We’re used to that trajectory and it’s part of our natural creation cycle.

The answer I found is organization. I took a class last year with Berklee School of Music on Project Management and it was an awesome and mind blowing class. But in managing my own time, I kept finding that a Project Management approach was cumbersome. The main reason is that I am primarily managing my own time, so any extra steps and hierarchy and sub-levels is wasted time.

Here’s an example of the workflow I was working on:

• Research three new topics for new musical theatre productions. Finish script, write finished music, orchestrate and deliver final product. As you can imagine, each of these projects have a massive amount of smaller steps involved, most of them I do myself.
• Produce 60 new albums across various genres. Compose and write lyrics on the fly as they hit me to develop later. Create production templates according to each genre. Have album covers designed, setup mastering templates, locate scores where needed. MASSIVE.
• Re-publish a book I wrote 25 years ago.
• Write a novel. Backburner item that’s been on my mind.
• Expand internet network. Very tedious and detailed list of steps across many websites.
• Develop music licensing releases which includes a lot of tracks, research and genre stem tracks I recorded and created last year. Groundwork laid but SO MUCH to do to release all this stuff.
• Writing lyrics – being able to bring up a genre in a few seconds to throw down some new lyrics idea. Also for script ideas, sometimes I get an idea for just two lines of dialogue for a particular play I’m working on. I need to throw those down in a couple seconds and move on.

I’ll stop there. I mean, I could go on FOR HOURS on all the ideas to harness. And for every new idea I start to work on, I come up with a few more. It grows exponentially from a beautiful garden of creativity to a jungle of overgrowing weeds that choke the trees.

So, feeling worthless stems from not harnessing potential. The answer to harnessing potential is organization. Corporate style formal organization doesn’t always work for artists so how do you harness your whirlwind of ideas?

Here’s what I found and it’s a life changer.

EverNote – Keep all your notes in one place. Researching a topic on the web? Click the Evernote icon and you’ve just saved it for reading later. Assign it to the project folder. Petting your dog and come up with a lyric idea? Open EverNote and jot it down. Saved. Syncs on all devices so you can jot from your iPhone too. https://evernote.com

ToDoist – A turbo charged “to do list” program. Every day I start out by meditating and making a list of the things I want to accomplish. Put this info in ToDoist. Mark level of importance, set due dates, setup sub-steps to any task. It’s a very light form of project management that works great for entrepreneurs, writers and content creators. https://todoist.com/

Google Calendar – For quite a while I’ve used Google Calendar for meetings, chats and appointments. This is my easy “one glance” to see if I have any time obligations coming up. It’s fast and easy – my emails can automatically sync to auto-import certain dates. Also, I’ve synced up my calendar with ToDoist so I can input a task with a due date, or appointment in ToDoist, and it will automatically import into my calendar.

This setup is certainly not my creation. It is widely used and heralded for time management. I just cannot believe that I didn’t know about this sooner. Another approach to “feeling worthless” is to watch puppy and cat videos. If you’re mad about lack of productivity and want to turbo charge your output then check out this setup.

Turbo charging your time management and output means that you have more resources to give back to your community, and more resources to carve out a well balanced life. More time for family. More time for civic duties that make life wonderful.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Have more time management and project management tips for entrepreneurs and artists? Please leave a comment and let us know about it.

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.

I have subscribed to many lists in the past year, probably over 60 different email newsletters and blasts, mostly dealing with entertainment, pro audio and business. When I thought about why I signed up to these groups I came up with these basic reasons:

1. To free download (book or pdf, an “email for widget” or “email for download” exchange)
2. To receive first news of product discounts (one company alone converted me to a $7,000 sale)
3. To receive security and/or product updates
4. To be informed on upcoming shows and album releases by an artist or performance venue

But there’s one thing in common with most of the lists I signed up with: Most of them did not have pop-up ads. Now the ones  I signed up for that DID have popup ads were products I was already very familiar with and was going to sign up any way. An excellent example of this is Universal Audio which had a popup to signup for discount offers. In that case I had already spent months researching their product lines and was considering a major purchase.

The problem with pop up advertisements is they usually hit the consumer too fast. Even if it’s an action based pop up (like a 5 second delay or action based on page scrolling), it usually hits before the consumer has time to digest the information and make the decision to engage in a truly permission-based exchange.

Sure, if you had a top pro you hired then they could create a perfect ad campaign for you where the popups happen at just the right moment for top conversion. One example might be where a pop-up happens when the mouse is tracked to be leaving the page (and I really hate those by the way, makes me feel like a trapped mouse).

For the rest of us just running our websites who want to still retain our air of human decency, don’t use popups. I have an additional reason for thinking in this direction. In the above article they mention Dan Zarrella – http://danzarrella.com – who did a test and results showed that popup ads increased conversion with very little change to drop rate.

Here’s what I love about older tech articles: You can check a year or two later and see what those people are actually doing now (How many times have you been reading a post on the WordPress or tech site where someone has finally figured out a cool new widget, only to visit their website two years later and find out they abandoned it or there is no website at all).

So I visit the Dan Zarrella website and notice that, as of today, he is not using any pop-up advertisements at all. In fact, there’s a very classy signup on his sidebar that gently says “Get my 22 page report….” with an email signup. I signed up! I like his website, I like him and I like his product download. Heck, I even like his picture.

In my book, Dan Zarrella is applying best practices to a permission based customer exchange (email for widget). In the classic four stages of marketing (I’m taking Business classes with Berklee Online and feeling pretty smart right now) there is:

• Awareness
• Acquisition
• Engagement
• Monetizations

Acquisition is the step of getting contact info so you can move to the stage of engagement. The Acquisition stage needs to be permissions based. In other words, the contact needs to willingly give you their contact info without any tricks (In screenwriting the beginning of the Hero’s Journey is when the hero makes a sober and willing choice to take the journey, and one of the rules is that the hero cannot be tricked into, because that defeats the purpose of the journey making him into a hero – but I guess that’s a whole different post subject).

Short of a top professional actionable campaign, I don’t see where immediate popup ads are successful if you want genuine interaction. It does make sense to me to use them sparingly on specific pages. Let’s say I have a page with an order form to license one of my projects, so the person on that page has some interest, I might put a pop on that page saying “Do you have questions?” with an easy email link.

Even saying all this, I’m probably not going to be able to resist experimenting with those evil pop up ads at some point. So if you’re on this page and you get a pop up advertisement, I’m probably doing a comparison test.

Let me know your experience and insight into popups and if you’re into analytics and tech check out “The Social Media Scientist” Dan Zarrella at http://danzarrella.com.

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.

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?

I’ve left off the final steps to final product because that will happen naturally after there is no more assessment to be made, in other words, it is finished and successful. Each step is important, but the step of Assessment and making changes to the plan is the one that can stop a project from being finished successfully. It’s the place where people give up, or “fail”. And in this case, “fail” simply means that the assessment phase has stopped. Too many roadblocks with not enough ways found to work around them.

BUT, and this totally changes the game, what if you look at the “failures” during product development as the opportunities to adjust the product toward success. When you begin the execution phase, breathe easy because there is usually NO WAY that could anticipate the changes that need to be made until you are in that phase. I used to think of failures in development as signs leading to failure and now I see them as golden opportunities to ensure that a product is moving toward success.

Here is the full quote from Gerald (Jerry) Slavet in context during an interview with Jonathan Feist:

“There’s no such thing as failure. I don’t know what that word means. Because as you go down the line, you try things, and you change them and you develop them. Most of the time they’ll work when you want to do them and sometimes they don’t work. Well, when they don’t work you say: ‘That was an interesting idea, but it was a stupid idea,’ and you move on. You’ve got to abandon the concept of failure. There is no such thing as failure in the creative world, because if you don’t experiment and try new things and if you’re not willing to take a leap…you’ll just do the same old same old.”

Without identifying those failures, you have no guideposts to improve your final product. Embrace the failure and yell at the top of your lungs: “Thank you for redirecting me to success!”

Let’s read this quote from Gerald Slavet again:

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

I’m going to add my own second half to that quote based on Gerald Slavet’s golden words of wisdom:

“There is no such thing as failure in the creative world, if you properly evaluate, adjust and improve.“

Determining success is another topic of it’s own. In my personal work, sometimes the bar of final success is financial and sometimes it is artistic. I am usually the one to decide that final outcome on my own projects, but sometimes it is given to me. In the last couple years I had a major project where the request was: “We desperately need to make money, please create something for us.” I did that and I’m happy to say it made a great return for that client. Then another project was: “We want high artistic value and we don’t care if it makes money.” I asked the client many times, “I can do this and it will have high artistic value, but I don’t think it will make money, are you sure that’s what you want?” The client was adamant, “yes”; so I created that and I’m happy to say that artistically it was of high calibre and the client was satisfied (although I admit it was a little sad to me to know all along that it would not make a generous profit. But I’m happy to say no money was lost, the product broke even).

In the Arts we have this luxury to sometimes pick artistic calibre vs financial gain. Maybe this applies to entrepreneurs in the case of non-profits or in works of compassion and global improvement. But in all these cases, the reassessment of failures during product development is essential toward success; whether that success is monitored by creative or financial markers.

For myself, I have a process now that works well for me with developing creative content. I work in many different creative positions and often as a “hired gun” on other people’s projects, and in that case I listen carefully to the requirements and requests, and then execute accordingly. But in my personal creative projects (“product development”) where I am the project manager overseeing a new creation, here is how I operate currently (and hopefully it’s helpful to you):

• Keep a list of future projects – I always keep a deep list of future project ideas to work on. Often these projects are already partially developed so they are ready to go. In my case I often have people say “create something” without giving me a specific, so this gives me a jump on things to pull from my idea bag)
• Get outside input on the property to develop – I will solicit input from friends I trust or from experts in the particular genre that I am thinking of working in. This is a wide net. For example, in the past six months I have paid one hundred dollars an hour to an expert in a certain genre to consult with them on a particularly large project concept, but I have also asked my mother for input on a particular set of projects. I am aggressive in soliciting input. Most people love it when you ask for their thoughts. *Important Note: I am careful to not discuss particulars of a potential project outside a very small core of about 3 people. For instance, if I am discussing new concepts for a musical I don’t tell the actual plot until I am pitching to a performance organization. Instead I will elude to the elements of what the product is. Until you are going public, don’t tip the details of your particulars!
• Create, do your thing and do not listen to anybody – Notice in the last step I was soliciting input from everyone (sometimes I even pretend to “pitch ideas” to my dog, I know, that’s a sad sign). But now I listen to absolutely no one. That’s because now I’m in the creative process and this is my own unique creative path. If it’s someone else’s path, then it’s not my creative project. If I’m the creator, then I need to create on my own terms with my own vision. If it’s my project, then I’m the one who’s going to take the hit (financial or creative) if it fails. The project execution may be out of my hands in the case of a large group performance, but the creation is totally under my control and responsibility. Listen to your own voice, the still small voice within, go into your creative cave, be a hermit, live in your new world. It’s normal during this phase that I keep my schedule open; or if I’m performing in one show while doing creation on a new one, then people don’t see me much. You are all alone, it’s you and your work. The talk part is over. You are wrestling with artistic dragons that only you can fight. You are creating a world that only you can see. No one else can comment on this world until it’s finished. In simple terms for writers, the end of this phase would be your “first draft.” If you are working in a group, say a group of software programmers, this is the stage where your group isolates itself and works on it’s first implementation, also a “first draft” of product development.
• Find failure points, assess weaknesses, improve them from outside input – This step is what this blog post is really about. You emerge from your creative cave and present the first draft, or your team comes out of isolation and presents it’s first pro type (or detailed explanation of the prototype). Here is your golden opportunity to get feedback on the weak or missing elements of your product. If you are writing a play, this would be feedback from your first reading. If you are a software development team, this might be the first time you present your user interface for feedback. If you are responsible to a board or project manager, this might be the first time you present the current state of your alpha prototype. If there is no such thing as failure in the creative arts, and entrepreneurs listen up because as a visionary you are also part of the creative arts, then you do not emerge from this stage until you are assured of success. In the case of a playwright, you had better re-write and re-write and be on deadline for production so your script is as strong as it can be. For software developers, you need to have time for your end user research and user interface tests so you can make your adjustments also on deadline. Failure can come if you don’t make all the necessary adjustments within your timeline. Making ALL the necessary adjustments means being aggressive with finding those failure points. Script writers, did someone tell you a character’s arc did not make sense and you’ve ignored looking in detail at that. Software developers, did a user have problems navigating the software and you discounted that user as “not tech savvy” without looking into detail whether other users have the same experience. In managing a large and long term project, are you carefully evaluating the sign posts to see where the project needs a nudge in a new direction. In the development of creative works, I often think of a spaceship on earth aimed at a star. In the early stages of creative development, if that spaceship is just a little bit off, over time it could miss that star by millions of miles. Deeper into production or development you can make small little adjustments; think of little spaceship booster nudges. But early in on a project, you need to keep aimed directly at that star. If you are the creator, then you need to know exactly which star you are aiming at and all elements need to support that. Wrong star? You need to identify that early on and redirect. How long does this process take? That’s up to you. For me, I always have a timeline deadline and try to exhaust all failure points within that timeline. The amount of weaknesses you can identify and correct will directly affect the chances of success for your project.
• Product release and evaluate – Was it a success? Did it match your barometer of success? Did you set out for a financial success marker, but end up reverse engineering that and saying, “Well, it was an artistic success.” That’s a cop out. Don’t settle. If you set out for financial success and ended up accepting an artistic success, you should carefully evaluate that to make sure you’re not fooling yourself just because you are afraid of being “unsuccessful.” Your next project’s trajectory to success might be directly dependent on what you learn from your last project. If you accept the moniker of success no matter what the outcome (and I know many people that do this, actually most people seem to do this), then all you’ve done is reset your finishing line after the race is over. Your choice, but how can you expect to excel and truly succeed in the next venture if that’s your mode of operation. Do not reverse engineer the barometer of your success after completion. Learn, evaluate and move on.

For most of my entrepreneur friends, this is not the stuff that keeps them awake at night, it’s the stuff that makes them leap out of bed in the morning and excited to start working. It’s the journey of the refinement process. It’s feeling that there is an entire open vista just waiting for you to navigate through it on your path to success. It’s invigorating and exciting. There is absolutely nothing passive about it. It is life and it is full and beautiful and productive.

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…

First of all, this is a holiday themed release for a one-time purchase. Most adults probably would not buy Captain Crunch because of it’s sugar content. But here’s a one-time fun purchase (and hey, if you like this box who says you might not buy another a few months down the road?)

In addition to the one-time purchase holiday theme is the “Limited Edition” banner in the top left corner. The subtext to this is that this is not only a short term release, but only available to the limited number of special people that are savvy enough to make the purchase. Heck, “Limited Edition” almost feels like you are making an investment.

But the purchase point is “Ghosts Turn Milk Green!” – How fun is that? And it’s not even St. Patrick’s Day. My friend could not resist and opened the box late at night and grabbed a handful of this cereal – then opened their mouth wide “Is my mouth green?”. No, it wasn’t. Further tests were needed and I would have to wait until morning with proper milk in the bowl to complete my investigations.

Yes! The milk turns green! I texted my friend that it actually worked. Now, this product has become an experience, and in marketing we know that what makes us buy is not always the product itself but the EXPERIENCE of buying the product. My friend had fun buying the product for me (a great experience with the Halloween packaging) and we both had fun testing the product to see if it delivered. And it did deliver – but whoever the Captain Crunch marketing genius is, they didn’t stop there…

The front box cover was a call to action with several reasons to buy the product. Now the side panel is a call to action for future sales and marketing. On the top is “Try These Other Scare-Rific Flavors!” – the flavors mentioned are not holiday flavors, they are the normal flavors you can get all year long. But they present them in the same context as the product you already bought – the Halloween themed Captain Crunch. And on the bottom is four pitches to connect on social media or visit their website. Nothing mind-blowing here, although I think presenting the normal flavors in the context of this particular product with a holiday theme is very well thought out. Now, on to what makes this cereal box marketing genius…

Most cereal boxes have something to do on the back cover and it’s usually fairly mundane like a maze you can complete in 4 seconds or mind-numbing trivia. So this box includes some trivia on the sides but the genius is this: Instructions to carve Captain Crunch onto a pumpkin. Whereas a maze or trivia is a fully time filler while you’re eating, this pumping carving template can put advertisements for Captain Crunch on doorsteps all across the country. Nothing that’s corporately sinister about this, it’s just great marketing. GENIUS! This product contains all the elements for an impulse buy to sectors that would not normally buy the product, it contains calls to action for future sales and contains an element to encourage individual households to proudly promote the company mascot.

And again, the product delivers on it’s claim to turn the mild green. Yes, it was very fun to see that and I don’t mind admitting that.

So in marketing your own product consider these elements:

• Can you make claims that will close impulse sales, and then follow through on those claims?
• Does your product include elements that encourage future sales of related products?
• Does your product include an element to encourage clients to promote your product on their own?

Note to my music friends: Why is Captain Crunch on a music related website? Because you can use these same principles in marketing your music.

Disclaimer: I am not connected with Captain Crunch or it’s parent companies in any way, shape or form.