3 Misconceptions About Change at Arts Organizations and 5 Things That Actually Work Instead
What the Experts Say About Fear, Resistance, and Other Barriers to Change
It took me a long time to understand that the biggest part of my work isn’t actually growing audiences or retaining newcomers or creating places of belonging. The biggest part of my job is motivating change. Maybe that sounds odd it took me so long given that the literal name of my business is “Changing the Narrative,” named after and because of this very blog I started almost 10 years ago now (which, as an aside, totally blows my mind it’s been that long).
But over that near decade, I’ve learned that writing about change and creating change at scale are two different things. Because while I can and do write to flesh out ideas, share my thought process, and offer actionable steps for readers, getting people to actually take those steps has proven challenging at times.
Like the large organization that said to me, “we don’t think we have the discipline to do what you recommend.” Or the ones that reach out desperately needing to grow their audience and expand the donor base, only to walk it back when they realize that means some of their regular workflow will need updating. Or, the biggest category of all, the countless people who aren’t the final decision maker at their organization who tell me in comments, emails, DMs, and calls that they are trying everything they can possibly think of to get a strategy greenlit at their organization, only to be stonewalled, blocked, or told “we don’t do it that way here.”
To be fair, there are a growing number of organizations with senior leaders and board members who are none of those things — rather, they are forward-thinking and embracing the new normal we’re in — and they have results to show for it.
Yet I see the challenges of the arts and culture industry not getting better, but actually getting definitively more dire. And for a long time, that had me banging my head against the wall some days, and just downright sad on others. Until a few years ago when I started learning more about change management.
The truth is, change is a necessary and often inevitable part of running any organization. Whether it’s implementing new processes, adopting new technology, reframing our approach, or restructuring the company, change is essential for growth and progress. However, despite its benefits, we all know change can also be met with resistance. And we’ve probably seen that play out in our own lives too if we’re being honest; I know I have.
In this blog post, we will explore three common myths about change, why change can sometimes feel so hard, as well as what can be done to actually move people (whether ourselves or our teams) forward.
3 Misconceptions About Change
Misconception #1: It’s A Matter of Willpower
According to Harvard researcher, lecturer, and author of Immunity to Change Lisa Lahey, who has specialized in identifying personal and organizational impediments to change for more than 30 years, most people basically have one model of change that we rely on: the willpower model, aka the ‘New Year’s resolution’ model. “We go for change based on what we know,” she explained on Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast. “Sometimes that can work, but often it’s more complex, and that willpower model doesn’t give you purview into all that’s going on.”
More often than not, lack of change isn’t about lack of desire, Lahey says. It’s that we were never taught the right framework to begin. We usually have what Lahey and her co-author Robert Kegan call competing commitments, unknown or subconscious thoughts or beliefs that conflict with the new goal. Like when getting the board on board with a new idea feels like a big undertaking, or we fear that having some success will result in even higher expectations for delivering even more which feels like a never-ending slog, or thinking of adding something to an already-full plate feels overwhelming even though it can save time later.
All of those things aren’t wrong. But they do compete with whatever level of desire we have to do something differently in our lives or in our organizations. And challenging those thoughts often means we’re challenging closely held beliefs or longtime assumptions that maybe even served us in the past. Willpower isn’t the right approach, whether we want to lose a few pounds or move a team of people forward. More on how to unearth these competing commitments are in the solutions below.
“More often than not, lack of change isn’t about lack of desire.”
— Lisa Lahey
Misconception #2: People Are Lazy or Just Don’t Want It
This one is a big myth I believed for a long time. I thought some people were just intractable, or worse, lazy. But the longer I’m around in this industry, the more I think that ‘lazy’ isn’t really the word in a sector where people work their asses off on a daily basis. There’s a whole conversation about what is the most effective work or better use of our time, but mostly I find laziness or obstinance isn’t quite the right way to describe why people can be resistant to chance. And the experts back this up.
“People aren’t lazy, they’re exhausted,” write Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the bestselling book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. In many ways, the Heath brothers came to similar conclusions as Lahey and Kegan above in terms of competing thoughts or beliefs we hold. They write about the internal tension between our rational brain and emotional brain. I want to look great in a swimsuit (rational), but I can’t stop eating pumpkin bread this fall (emotional…which may or may not be based on personal experience). I want to do things X and Y at my organization because I think it could make a difference, but I think we need more resources/money/people before I can begin (that one I have definitely thought many times before in my own roles I’ve held).
This mental seesaw, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, is taxing and tiring for our brains. “When you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that’s just flat wrong,” the Heaths write. “The opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out.” Now whenever I see behavior that looks like laziness in myself or others, I reconsider that there’s likely an underlying mental exhaustion. How to crack that nut and get un-exhausted is in the solutions below.
Misconception #3: Discipline and Creativity Can’t Coexist
For whatever reason, humans tend to think creativity and discipline are enemies, or that the two are somehow a version of the competing commitments mentioned above, i.e. they can’t go together. Maybe there’s some truth to feeling like the two compete, but OG business author and former Stanford professor Jim Collins says there’s not a binary choice of one or the other. Both creativity and discipline are needed in a successful and sustainable organization, and in its employees.
Our artists offer an excellent example of this complementary duo. No successful musician I’ve ever met got there without having discipline in their own work. Discipline in the practice room, playing scales how many times, how many ways, practicing it fast when it’s a slow passage, slow when it’s a technical passage, slurred, staccato…and on and on. Playing the excerpt and iterating on the success, making it better and better, analyzing what didn’t work along the way and then addressing it. Self-recording and listening back to really assess what went well (do it that way again) and what still could use some improvement (try it this other way next time). The most successful artists are the definition of disciplined iteration. And yet, our artists are also the bedrock of creativity, showing us that these two things are not a dichotomy, but rather both are essential for change or improvement.
The thing is, this both-and success doesn’t come easy. Too much rigid discipline and the line sounds almost robotic — it’s technically accurate, but the delivery doesn’t allow for musicality to come through. Too little discipline, and keeping time becomes fuzzy, which isn’t going to work when you’re playing with the rest of the ensemble. But we know it when we hear that exceptional sweet spot when a musician or section plays a line that really sings expressively, and the band is together and balanced. These things are difficult to achieve simultaneously, and precisely why our professional artists represent this pairing of discipline and creativity so well.
And so it is offstage too: very difficult to pursue both creativity and discipline simultaneously. As Collins writes, “Entrepreneurial success is fueled by creativity, imagination…” but as a company grows, “Lack of planning, lack of accounting, lack of systems…create friction. Problems surface — with customers, with cash flow, with schedules.” Too creative and planning and updating workflow systems are undervalued (anyone who feels like they’re always a hamster in a wheel at their org is a victim of this). Too rigid and disciplined, and the organization becomes a bureaucratic hierarchy that snuffs out creativity and deflates talent (plenty of people in arts management roles have also fell victim to this one).
But, as Collins concludes, “When you put these two complementary forces together — a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship — you get a magical alchemy of superior performance and sustained results.” Some ways to find the balance are explored below.
“When you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that’s just flat wrong. The opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out.”
— Chip and Dan Heath, Switch
5 Tools That Actually Move Change Forward
1. Take Inventory
Lisa Lahey says the first step in overcoming the hidden competing commitments are to name them. “What are the things you do and don’t do that work against the goal you named?” she said, quickly adding it’s not about analyzing them or problem solving yet, just unearthing them. You want thing A to happen (grow audiences, expand the donor base, reflect the community, improve company culture, etc.), but what else is true (if I make the program notes more accessible, I feel like it devalues all the knowledge of the art form I’ve worked hard to learn over the years). “Be kind to yourself,” she says, “Don’t judge the behaviors or feelings, state them.”
Oftentimes, Lahey and Kegan reflect, people feel relief when they identify their competing commitments. They’re usually hidden because they can reflect a vulnerability or fear we have, and again, they’ve probably protected us at some point. But to identify them and give voice to them usually begins to unlock next steps. Suddenly it all makes sense, or at least more sense than it used to. And that’s the beginning of a path forward. More on Lahey and Kegan’s process (as well as what to do next if you want to keep going) can be found here.
2. Start with Emotion Over Analysis
As someone who is very analytical and historically pretty bad at acknowledging my emotions, this one is hard, but necessary. Over the last few years, I’ve been constantly working on feeling my feelings, which feels so weird to type, but in the spirit of vulnerability here we are.
Chip and Dan Heath write that “in almost all successful change efforts, the sequence of change is not ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE, but rather SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.” The truth is, we need to activate both the emotional side of our brain and the rational side, but the order in which we do this matters. See above as to why willpower alone doesn’t work. The rational side of our brain might help us identify the goal in the first place, but the emotional side is what actually motivates us to take the first step towards it.
Lisa Lahey’s version of this is to connect to why the goal is important to you. For example, in doing this exercise you might say, “I know if I do this/if this happens, the outcome is…we make our budget goals, the board is happy, we serve more people, etc.”
In their book on change, the Heaths share a story about a major study of corporate change efforts in the 1980s. The study across all kinds of corporations found that “financial goals inspired successful change less well than did more emotional goals, such as the goal to provide better service to customers [emphasis mine] or to make more useful products.” This idea of leading with emotionally connected (or shall we say, mission-driven, even) goals is so important when we are doing our budgeting work. “Sell more tickets” or “raise more money” is just not going to motivate better financial performance in our teams than centering the people we are serving.
“Sell more tickets” or “raise more money” is just not going to motivate better financial performance in our teams than centering the people we are serving.
3. Don’t Try for a Silver Bullet, But Small Change That Adds Up
As humans, we often want to solve big problems with equally big, sweeping solutions (cut costs, program blockbusters, launch a grand new initiative) but that’s not what the research says works. The opposite approach is what more effectively drives transformation, say Chip and Dan Heath. It’s best to “shrink the change,” they write, executing multiple steps and strategies over time. Big results are made of many smaller steps.
Jim Collins found the same thing in his research. When he sought out to measure what defines great companies that outperformed their peers consistently, he found that it precisely was not a lone, big move, ever. “No matter how dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no wrenching revolution.” Instead, he found that a lot of little changes, being iterated over time, is what really made the difference in a flywheel-like effect: “a cumulative process — step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel — that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.”
This is great news for anyone wanting to initiate some kind of change at your organization. No matter your role or level of seniority, start small. Think of the smallest baby step — whatever your scope and purview allows — and do that. Share the results widely like a cheerleader (emotion, right?), and then think of the next small step. With every organization I work with, we talk about this: the small, easy steps we can do first, and which steps are going to come later.
4. Get in the Weeds and Give Crystal Clear Direction
How do people know which tiny steps to take? The answer is to give specific direction. This is another reason why leading with analysis alone isn’t effective. If you’ve ever heard or experienced “analysis paralysis,” that’s basically what happens in absence of a very clear path forward, e.g. a very clear next step. “In tough times, [you] see problems everywhere,” the Heaths write in Switch. Sound like something you’ve seen at your organization: Identifying tons of problems/challenges and then banging your head against the wall when there is seemingly resistance to do anything about it?
“If you want people to change, you must provide crystal-clear direction… What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity,” they conclude.
What happens is that these small, easy-enough, clear steps start to build new habits. We are literally guiding ourselves and others on our team to rewire our brains. And when we have new habits, our brains aren’t tired anymore. Not tired = not lazy and not resistant. So make an internal step-by-step how-to, or a handy checklist or template to help make it easier next time around. Whatever it takes to get in the weeds with crystal clear direction you can lean on again and again. Learning this helped me change how I work with organizations. I used to give a two-day workshop when organizations brought me in. Then I decided to design the Run It Like A Business Academy with these ideas of breaking down goals into small, achievable steps, and providing clear direction. Now, each lesson is comprised of a short video (5–10 minutes) focusing on a single concept, each accompanied by a worksheet, data template, or checklist to implement the strategy covered. Small, clear, and doable.
“Big-picture, hands-off leadership isn’t likely to work in a change situation, because the hardest part of change — the paralyzing part — is precisely in the details.”
— Chip and Dan Heath, Switch
5. Follow the Bright Spots
Last, when you do see victories, whether at your own organization or somewhere else, celebrate them (like a cheerleader, remember), and follow them. This worked, so let’s do it again. Thing A moved us closer to the goal or closer to where we want to be. Maybe refine or notice how you might improve if you’d like, but just make sure to do that small thing again. If the bright spot is something you observed somewhere else, think through how you could replicate it at your own organization (starting with emotion not analysis and small steps and all the other tips above of course).
The point is, when leading change, “Don’t obsess about the failures,” the Heaths offer. “Instead, investigate and clone the successes.” This is critical because it does a few things: 1) helps us acknowledge the progress we’re making and feel those successes (more emotion), and 2) it keeps our eyes on the prize — that future vision we’re working to achieve — and that is how we marry long-term goals with short-term gains.
My last post follows some bright spots on what’s working at other organizations. My upcoming book has case studies in every chapter of arts organizations seeing successes. It’s easy in an industry facing a lot of challenges to get bogged down. It’s when people see a brighter future is possible that it motivates emotions not of fear, but of hope. And hope drives action, whether at your organization or on your own.
You’re Already On the Way
You are probably closer to the goal than you realize, or at least farther from the start line than you may have thought. The arts and culture industry — and all of us and our organizations in it — has evolved so much in recent years. There are so many topics at the forefront that just weren’t part of the conversation five, six (even two or three) years ago. It’s progress not perfection, but it is happening. It’s the subject of the entire last season of my podcast, all about how the narrative is, in fact, changing.
And that’s the final lesson I’ve learned on change. People find it more motivating to be partly finished with a longer journey than to be at the starting gate of a shorter one, according to the research. That’s why the conventional wisdom in development circles is that you don’t publicly announce a fundraising campaign for a charity until you’ve already got 50 percent of the money in the bag.
The same is true for all of us working in the arts. There really is so much positive movement that is budding before our eyes, even if slowly. We’re out of the start gate.
Whatever your thoughts on change or where your organization is at, I hope this post helps you understand the misconceptions and feel a little more empowered to take inventory, start with emotion over analysis, break big change down into small steps, give crystal clear direction, and follow the bright spots.
After all, it’s on us to be the change we want to see. No willpower, laziness, or lack of discipline about it.
Interested in more case studies and data-backed strategies to grow revenue at your arts organization? Order my book, Run It like a Business: Strategies to Increase Audiences, Remain Relevant, and Multiply Money — Without Losing the Art.
You’ll learn how to:
- Grow audiences and keep them coming back again
- Make our organizations more inclusive
- Get younger attendees in the seats and on the donor rolls
- Generate millions more dollars in revenue
- Continue to create the art we love — without the stress of figuring out how to afford it
Just because your arts organization is a non-profit, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t make money; it means the money the organization makes goes back to fund the mission — whether that’s music, visual arts, theatre, dance, or one of many other mediums that enrich our lives.
About the Author
Hailed as “the Steve Jobs of classical music” (Observer) and “Sheryl Sandberg of the symphony” (LA Review of Books), Aubrey Bergauer is known for her results-driven, customer-centric, data-obsessed pursuit of changing the narrative for the performing arts. A “dynamic administrator” with an “unquenchable drive for canny innovation” (San Francisco Chronicle), she’s held offstage roles managing millions in revenue at major institutions including the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. As chief executive of the California Symphony, Bergauer propelled the organization to double the size of its audience and nearly quadruple the donor base.
Bergauer helps organizations and individuals transform from scarcity to opportunity, make money, and grow their base of fans and supporters. Her ability to cast and communicate vision moves large teams forward and brings stakeholders together, earning “a reputation for coming up with great ideas and then realizing them” (San Francisco Classical Voice). With a track record for strategically increasing revenue and relevance, leveraging digital content and technology, and prioritizing diversity and inclusion on stage and off, Bergauer sees a better way forward for classical music and knows how to achieve it.
Aubrey’s first book, Run It Like A Business, published in February 2024.
A graduate of Rice University, her work and leadership have been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, and Southwest Airlines magazines, and she is a frequent speaker spanning TEDx, Adobe’s Magento, universities, and industry conferences in the U.S. and abroad.
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