Finders, minders, and grinders
Consulting firms typically balance three groups of workers. Some arts organizations do the same.
Every consulting project (and hence every consulting firm) has its own appropriate mix of three kinds of people. By tradition, these are called “finders, minders, and grinders.”
—David H. Maister, from “The Anatomy of a Consulting Firm” (2003)
An arts organization is not (usually) a consulting firm, but there are still useful comparisons to be made between the two. Consulting firms, after all, gather teams with deep expertise to interrogate the complexities of human behavior. Consulting firms navigate a wide spectrum of work product – from high-level concepts to nitty-gritty operational details. And consulting firms thrive when they make sense of the world in ways that their communities value (fair, it’s a private/profit value most of the time, but work with me here).
This isn’t to valorize consulting firms, many of which have a difficult history of bad behavior. But successful arts managers need to borrow useful ideas from wherever they can to organize and align their teams.
As one example, consulting firms aggregate and animate three primary types of workers: finders, minders, and grinders (Maister 2003):
Finders “are responsible for bringing in the business, scoping and designing the projects, and engaging in the high-level client relations necessary during the work.”
Minders “manage the projects and the team of people working on [them].”
Grinders “perform the analytical tasks.”
Maister labels the relative mix of junior, middle, and senior team members as the “leverage structure” of the firm. That structure informs not only the organization’s outward value, but also its internal capacity to attract and retain talented team members. Getting the mix right can be the difference between thriving and barely surviving.
In theory, grinders show up and work hard because they see a path for a career rather than a job. “They have strong expectations of progressing through the organization, from grinder to minder to finder, at some pace agreed to (explicitly or implicitly) in advance.” Says Maister:
“While the pace of progress may not be a rigid one (‘up or out in x years’), both the individual and the organization usually share strong expectations about what constitutes a reasonable period of time for each stage of the career path.”
Minders are similarly motivated, although usually better compensated. And finders can only sustain the credentials and compensation (in theory) by continually developing their team toward higher levels of responsibility and pay (McKenna and Maister 2010).
Of course, this tiered structure isn’t new. Maister flags it as “the modern embodiment of the medieval craftsman's shop, with its apprentices, journeymen, and master craftsmen.” You’ll find similar structures in many professional service firms – including accounting, law, and the like. In higher education, tenure-line faculty positions have a similar “up or out in x years” expectation.
So, how might this framework inform people operations in arts organizations? For one, it’s worth noting the similarities (at least in tiers) to the artistic and administrative structures of arts nonprofits. However, it’s also worth noting that the timing and expectation of rising in an arts organization are rarely explicit or even discernable. To move up, you often have to move out.
It’s also worth considering whether and how your “leverage structure” – the mix of high-level, middle-level, and entry-level staff – aligns with the intended outputs of the organization as well as its required inputs of talented and motivated team members. While it’s likely you’re lean in your staffing, you still might benefit from a different mix.
Or, it’s also an option to refute the premise altogether, and decide that you don’t want a class or tier system as the engine or the outcome of your team. In which case, you can fight the tidal forces toward that structure by reimagining responsibility, agency, autonomy, and compensation to be more evenly distributed. How can you consider, construct, and sustain a healthy arts organization where the finding, minding, and grinding are shared across the team?
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: People Operations
People Operations involves designing and driving systems and practices that attract, engage, retain, and develop people within the enterprise (also called human resources).
Framework of the Week: Behavior Dashboard
The Behavior Dashboard is a tool developed at Fractured Atlas to identify and discuss the skills, abilities, and growth areas of team members. It helps differentiate the necessary behaviors for various roles within an organization, from senior directors to administrative associates. And it offers a model for other organizations that seek to clarify and codify the outcomes expected from each staff role.
Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash
Sources
Maister, David H. 2003. “The Anatomy of a Consulting Firm.” In The Advice Business: Essential Tools and Models for Management Consulting, edited by Charles Fombrun and Mark Nevins, 1st edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
McKenna, Patrick J., and David H. Maister. 2010. First Among Equals: How to Manage a Group of Professionals. Free Press.