Ms. Aileen Alon

WAASTST

Posted by Ms. Aileen Alon, Jun 03, 2016 0 comments


Ms. Aileen Alon

Michael Spring is an Americans for the Arts member and recipient of the 2016 Selina Roberts Ottum Award. Find out more about the Americans for the Arts Annual Leadership Arts Awards.

This occasion instigates a rumination about some of the keys to longevity (almost 33 years!), if not to success, in the local arts agency field. Thank you for asking.

  1. Try not to say “no.” There are just so many “no’s” allocated to each of us professionally and it is prudent not to use them indiscriminately. For example, you can say, “Instead of starting a new global festival in celebration of left shoes, how about partnering with the annual 5K run and distributing one multi-colored shoelace to each runner designed exclusively for left shoes?”
  2. Realize that the person with the most energy prevails. In meetings, put on your performance face and emote your point of view as powerfully and persuasively as you can muster. If all else fails, make sure that you and your staff outnumber the “opposition.”
  3. Find the things that can create a moment of solace and occasional peace and “in emergency, break glass.” I suggest good champagne and pizza for Friday night late dinners, Bill Evans music, personal creative pursuits (blogging accepted) and the wonder and mystery of therapy cats (the names Trudie, Tyler and Cookie are taken). I digress; find your own sanity.
  4. In mediating disputes between intractable parties, it works (more often than not) to say as convincingly as possible (see #2), at the moment of the most heightened disagreement, “you know we are all saying the same thing (WAASTST).” People are usually so surprised to hear this, they are stunned into trying to figure out how that can be. Move quickly into the gap with a workable compromise!
  5. Make sure that you have a great volunteer board and an influential chair of the board who will support you no matter how remote the chances of success are. See #7 for worst-case, positive reinforcement strategy. 
  6. Read good modern fiction at least once a day. This is really the readers’ choice but if you are asking, anything by Saul Bellow, Jasper Fforde, Richard Ford (or any Ford of your choice) and throw in a good mystery for ballast, like those by Donna Leon, if only to be transported magically to Venice.
  7. Declare victory even when people generally are convinced that you are defeated. “Hey, so we did not get that pesky dedicated revenue source approved, but now everyone knows what our needs are and how important we are to the future of people-kind.”
  8. Hire amazing people who have the audacity to tell you that you are wrong (especially, when you are wrong) and try to summon the sense to listen to them (especially, on the rare occasion when you are wrong). For example, this blog replaces the one that they told me not to send (see entry in eventual, post-retirement memoir, “Unsent Musings Revealed, Free At Last from the Absurd Constraints of Job Security”).
  9. Find someone to spend your life with who is generous enough not to blame you for being who you have to be. Thank you, Regina.
  10. Make you own emojis.
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