Confusing the pitch with the plan
Your strategic thinking needs to pick a lane.
“The trouble with plans, she thought, was that they tended to be expressions of hope…. So plans were useful only in revealing what people wished for.”
—Alexander McCall Smith, from The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
A thriving nonprofit arts organization needs to hold (at least) two competing perspectives at the same time: A purpose-fueled, confident, compelling narrative that it is achieving meaningful things; and a critical, clear-eyed assessment of its limited resources and reach. The first perspective fuels the engine (drawing audiences, donors, and grants). The second steers the ship at a safe and steady pace.
The trouble is, many organizations conflate these competing interests into a single narrative. They get confused between a pitch and a plan.
A pitch is a persuasive narrative to win someone over – a donor, a ticket buyer, a foundation, an investor, a government granting agency. A plan is a robust and grounded set of decisions about how to do something in the future. Of course, the two entangle with each other a lot. A good pitch will include credible evidence that you know what you’re doing and can actually get it done. A good plan will align and animate your team and constituents in productive and positive ways.
But if you and your team confuse which mode you’re in, the pitch will pull your focus. It’s more exciting, inspiring, and confident than a thoughtful plan. And it will tend to draw the energy and investment you’re reaching for – at least in the short term. But falling for your own pitch can lead you to search for confirming, rather than disconfirming, evidence of its assumptions. And over time, you can forget that the pitch was not actually a plan in the first place.
At the same time, it’s a mistake to banish the power and potential of hope from your strategy, since hope can be an engine toward improbable things. As Rebecca Solnit frames it (2016):
Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.
In short, there are many modes of imagining, describing, or forging the future. Most of them have merit. And most of them have moments when they are most appropriate. The key is to use the whole toolbox with keen attention to the tendencies of each tool.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: Governance
Governance involves structuring, sustaining, and overseeing the organization's purposes, resources, and goals (often through boards or trustees).
Framework of the Week: Requisite Variety
Law of Requisite Variety: Any regulating system must have internal variety that is equal to or greater than the system being regulated.
Sources
Ellis, Adrian. “Reflections on Strategic Planning in Arts Organizations.” Arts Professional, November 2003.
Solnit, Rebecca. “Hope Is an Embrace of the Unknown.” The Guardian, July 15, 2016.
Pitch = best case; plan = most likely case.