Spheres of influence
When your larger world is spinning out of control, remember the worlds you DO control.
“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.”
Squire Bill Widener, quoted by Theodore Roosevelt in his 1913 autobiography
There are many reasons to despair about our next chapter as a nation – even if you’re celebrating any particular political victory. There is substantial evidence, including from the candidates themselves, that our immediate future will be more closed, less civically minded, less curious, and more cruel to vulnerable or historically excluded groups.
There are and will be important ways to show up to temper the severity of that turning. But even as you take a beat and find your feet, there are opportunities to make your world more just – right now, “with what you’ve got, where you are.” Each of us has multiple spheres of infuence – of different scales, scopes, and varieties – where our actions make an immediate and discernable difference.
We can decide, today, to run a meeting in a more open and inclusive way. We can bring curiosity and kindness to a routine interaction with family, friends, and coworkers. We can commit to more equitable practice in the contracts we offer and the budget commitments we make. We can open our decision-making to more voices and more visions. We can invite our boards and our teams to notice and name the positive adjacent possibilities in how we produce, present, preserve, manage, market, finance, steward, sell, or support the arts experiences we offer.
Even if you feel that you have no spheres of social, business, or political influence, you can treat yourself with more kindness and care. In fact, make that a daily practice.
In a shifting and uncertain world, it’s difficult to describe a final destination and the milestones to get there. But it’s possible to name a trajectory – toward justice, toward kindness, toward equity, toward plurality – and move each day to meet that trajectory. There are certainly oceanic tidal forces to navigate in the years ahead. But there are also small but significant eddies and countercurrents where we can manifest the world we want.
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: The Pyramid and the Wheel
The Pyramid and Wheel framework describes two types of human interaction structures: "thin-and-big" (the pyramid) and "thick-and-small" (the wheel). Pyramid structures are large and impersonal, while wheel structures are small and based on close, personal relationships. These two modes are both essential but also in constant tension.
Photo by Joey Genovese on Unsplash