Minimum viable process
As a nonprofit arts organization, your business systems need to be as simple as possible…but not simpler.
“…everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler!”
Composer Roger Sessions, paraphrasing Albert Einstein
In the entrepreneurial world, a “minimum viable product” (aka “minimum feature set”) is a version of a product or service stripped down to its essence. It’s a mock-up or demonstration that probes the question: “What is the smallest or least complicated problem that the customer will pay us to solve?” (Blank 2010).
Rather than investing time and money in a full realization of a project, adding bells and whistles all along the way, the minimum viable product approach suggests a lean and nimble experimentation and iteration process. Find the spark that matters to people, then build the fire around it with their help.
While it’s difficult to imagine a version of this approach for professional-grade artistic products or productions – where the experience is often derived from a coherent and fully realized whole – there are important lessons here for the business side of the art.
There is elegance and practicality in keeping your business systems as simple as possible, and adding incremental complexity only as the work demands.
For example, if your performances mostly draw day-of-show attendees through word of mouth, you likely only need wristbands, a cash box, and a Venmo account to manage access to the show. That can work until it doesn’t – until customers prefer (and pay extra for) assigned seats and multi-show purchases, for example. Or, if you’re a start-up gallery, a basic accounting system will work just fine until it doesn’t – until you start offering payment plans or pre-purchase opportunities, as an example.
In a world of service and software platforms that promise all the extras, it can be tempting to start with full complexity no matter the shape or scale of the problem. But the hidden cost of that choice is a more cumbersome infrastructure, more administrative/support demands for your team, and less time and energy to engage with real humans and their real problems.
On the flipside, a “minimum viable process” approach also requires you and your team to be attentive to your changing work and your changing world. As soon as a simple process starts to show signs of strain – unhappy customers, inadequate decision support, more time spent on jerry-rigging the system than using the system – you need to add just enough complexity for the next wave (but no more).
As a nonprofit arts organization, you can’t afford to be captured by overly complex business systems – but you also can’t become entrenched in systems that can’t meet the current moment. The game is to make your business process and practice as simple as possible, but no simpler.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: Spaces & Systems
Spaces & Systems involves selecting, securing, stewarding, and harnessing the built environment and technological infrastructure.
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.
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán
Sources
Blank, Steve. “Perfection by Subtraction - the Minimum Feature Set.” Steve Blank (blog), March 4, 2010.