ArtsManaged Field Notes

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governance

Is your workplace a pyramid or a wheel?
Johan Galtung defined two structures for collective action: thin-and-big (the pyramid) or thick-and-small (the wheel). Which describes your workplace?
4
The one and the many of board service
How do nonprofit boards balance individual impulse with collective resolve?
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
The strategy screen
A strong strategy demands a clear job description
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Mission calisthenics
It's time to strengthen your nonprofit's readiness as well as your resolve.
Why boards get bored
How can the work of a nonprofit board be complex, consequential, and tedious all at the same time?
What holds a nonprofit together?
Sometimes we learn the answer by watching them fall apart.
1
Ownership and control
There are essentially three ways to structure organizational ownership and control. Choose wisely.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Do less, better
Does your mission statement inspire or exhaust you?
Doing the wrong thing righter
"The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become." – Russell Ackoff
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
1
The strategy screen
To pick a good strategy, you need a job description
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Spheres of influence
When your larger world is spinning out of control, remember the worlds you DO control.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Minimizing the board
A nonprofit board needs at least three people. What if that were enough?
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Means, ends, and OpenAI
OpenAI's likely transition from nonprofit to private control reveals what (we believe) nonprofits are for.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Measuring what matters
How to evaluate your efforts without crushing your soul.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
1
Confusing the pitch with the plan
Your strategic thinking needs to pick a lane.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
1
Arts Management and the ampersand
Your most impactful purpose and process in managing the arts is to connect.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
3
What difference do you make?
Two roads to discover how your arts organization changes the world.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
The beautiful budget, revisited
It may look buttoned-up and boring, but a budget is a complex work of human expression worthy of creative attention.
Ambition, capacity, and context
Arts organizations don't act in or on their environment, they act WITH it.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Reshaping your business model
The world is always changing. The assumptions behind your business model need to change with it.
2
Two paths to better places
You don't always need to know where you're going to get somewhere good.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
1
Sunsetting a nonprofit
The nonprofit arts organization was designed to be durable, not indelible.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Where board and staff collide
Clear division of labor is one way to hold the middle ground between rubber-stamping and micromanaging boards.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
Contracts and covenants
Nonprofit arts managers are bound not only by practical/tactical agreements, but also by durable, often unspoken commitments.
 • 
E. Andrew Taylor
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