Leadership Lessons From an Art Studio Visit: Are There Any? (I’m Not Sure)
I escape into the world of the artist’s studio for 2 weeks ever year. For a moment, I become a voyeur, eying cautiously, the artistic journey that leads to discovery and creation.
For half a month I focus on one challenge: find a piece of art that I can afford on my academic salary that I can add to my small collection.
Over the years I’ve honed my tastes and now I prefer a series of contemporary artists who have mostly emerged in the 60s, achieved visibility in the 80s, and, of late, have become senior spokesmen in the art world. This summer I’m especially intrigued by a group of Israeli contemporary art.
With Yaaccov Chefetz, a master of paper work, I spend time in his studio discussing his paper drawings, sculptors, and installations. We talk about what it means to construct art while working under, what he calls, “a volcano.”
With Tisiba Geva, a master painter, we talk about his early career, his middle career, and how, in his current career, he has gone back to some of his early work. We talk about the artistic career and artistic work as a tool for self-discovery.
With David Reeb, a well-known artist whose political voice is easily seen in his work, we talk about the politics of art and the art of politics. We talk about artists and their role as a witness to history.
With Yaacov Dorchin, the major sculptor, we talk about the relevance of the lyrical. We discuss material like steel and it’s ability to ground people into the reality of the moment. We finish by commenting on sculpture’s power to work both locally and universally.
With Ibrhaim Nubani we talk about the use of culturally mixed metaphors in his work. Metaphors taken form the politically divisive work he finds himself him. We talk about his art as a reflection of his ambivalence, alienation, and if you will, his confusion with identity.
There is something captivating about sitting in an artist’s studio talking about their art. The first few minutes in an artist’s studio you realize that you have wandered into a metaphysical cave whose boundaries are abstraction, color, rhythm, and social relevance. I feel as if I’ve been uplifted just a bit and have escaped from the triviality of my own pursuits.
Every time I engage with these friends in dialogue I’m trying to escape from, what I consider, the mundane details of organizational behavior, leadership, and negotiations. But you know what happens? After awhile, I begin to realize that their world, the world in which I’m trying to escape into, is exactly the world I live in. The world where the constant challenge is, how do you become proactive? How do you take your ideas and move them forward? How do you take ideology and passion and build a career?
Artists, in any culture, are visionaries and witnesses, but they are also craft people who need to make a living. They have to be proactive in the world. They have to market their ideas, make adjustments, and move their career forward. They dream, but they have to make their dreams work for them. When their voice is unheard, when there work is dismissed, when, indeed, they don’t sell, they don’t pay their mortgage.
Artists face the problem of execution. The key problem of leadership. The problem of taking good ideas and moving them forward. The challenges of being proactive. I discover that in this world of the studio a disproportionate amount of the discussions are about the practicalities of doing art in a practical world. The practicalities of executing ideas in a world that’s not idealistic. Artists talk about getting people on their side, keeping people on their side.
My notion of escaping into the artist’s studio is a bit idealistic. The artist’s world that I try to peek into is really just as cemented in the mundane as the world I live in. In fact, very little separates our two worlds. I walk away from these artists studios refreshed in my knowledge about art, encouraged about my capacity to have a dialogue. However, I realize while there is much I can learn about art, there is the challenge of intellectual dialogue, the friendship and camaraderie, but subterranean reality for all of us remains pragmatic and a bit mundane.
During my last visit one of my favorite artists, David Reeb, told me he found some leadership principles of relevance to his work. I was disillusioned, but thrilled. Disillusioned because in my romantic way I had hoped that artists never needed to have political skills. Thrilled because I found a new audience.
I recommend that you visit an artists studio once and a while. You get a fresh perspective and you realize that your problems and their problems aren’t that much different.
Samuel Bacharach is the Professor of Labor Management at Cornell University’s ILR School. He is the Director of ILR’s New York City-based Institute for Workplace Studies and the director of the New York City-based Master of Professional Studies. He writes about proactive leadership on his blog. Check out: http://bacharachblog.com
Proactive Leaders In the Kitchen: Cutting Costs and Maintaining Brand
The era of the celebrity chef is currently being overshadowed by the global economic crisis. Restaurant owners, managers, and chefs are realizing that survival hinges on the ability to save money, run an efficient kitchen, and cut excessive spending. They need to be proactive
Business leaders in all industries: take note.
In a Wall Street Journal article, “Reality Check; Please”, we see another victim of the economic downturn: Fine dining and it’s causing celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay to tighten their proverbial waist-bands.
Chef Ramsay, best recognized by his sharply worded TV shows and surprising British cooking prowess, is now hemorrhaging money since he owns over 17 high-end restaurants internationally. Tourism and business expense accounts are dwindling leading to half empty dining rooms and tight-lipped dinners.
So What’s a Chef To Do?
Chef Ramsay, long extolling the virtues of task-master-leadership on his reality TV shows, is now listening to his own advice. According to the article, he cut 15% of his staff, designed prix-fixe menus, abolished expensive products, and encouraged his chefs to use economical ingredients. Chef Ramsey reports that his new strategy is working, but barely.
A top of the line restaurant, the article mentions, costs nearly $2 million dollars to outfit, design, and stock and that’s not including staff. The fine dining industry isn’t known for it’s frugality. However, when a high-end restaurant begins to spend less on high end ingredients (like asparagus, caviar, and rib-eye steak) the quality of the food becomes harder to control and the reputation and the brand of the restaurant is held over a dangerous cliff.
…And What’s A Business Leader Going To Do?
The same principle applies to any organization. Cutting your marketing departments costs will mean your team won’t be able to reliably produce great material. Limiting your budget will make it harder to get certain things done. You can likely think of more examples from personal experience.
However, like in a restaurant, the ability to make a smaller budget and low quality supplies work requires talent and know-how. As Chef Ramsay points out his restaurants success requires a great chef that can still turn lesser ingredients into 3 Michelin Star food. A good manager will be able to stretch a small budget over a long period of time, keep people happy, and save money.
Looking to the food & beverage industry for lessons in leadership is worthwhile. Chefs, in every kitchen, need to not only have the business ability to know what to buy and where to buy it, but they also require a specific skill which allows them to turn boring products into attractive dishes. Leaders sometimes needs to be passionate chefs concerned about quality, reputation, and fresh ingredients.
Samuel Bacharach is the Professor of Labor Management at Cornell University’s ILR School. He is the Director of ILR’s New York City-based Institute for Workplace Studies and the director of the New York City-based Master of Professional Studies. He writes about proactive leadership on his blog. Check out: http://bacharachblog.com
Branding in the Art World & Branding Businesses
The other day I was casually looking at some works in my favorite gallery in Tel Aviv and the owner came over to me and handed me what he called a “must read.” He handed me, “The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art” as a gift.
After the first page I was hooked. It was a thriller. It took me into the world where the business of art and the art of business are so intertwined they can’t be separated. Quickly you understand that successful artists are talented actors, street wise politicians, and keen business people who understand the essence of the sale and branding.
Art’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Don Thompson makes you soon realize that there’s a lot more involved when people they are considering investing millions of dollars for, say,…a stuffed shark. Don Thompson understands that in order to sell a porcelain pink panther or a platinum diamond skull with human teeth you better get the branding just right. Don Thompson’s understands 21st century marketing.
Don Thompson takes us into a world of Tracy Emin, Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons Damien Hirst, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Gagosian, Saatchi, White Cube and Frieze–a world in which so many strive to achieve that even making an effort to join it’s population is highly irrational. A world of auction psychology, the auctioneer’s hammer, and processes often dictated by hearsay, fluff, and gossip. If you ever thought that the primary guide to business success laid in psychology or social psychology–this book is a must read.
WI Thomas, a famous sociologist, once said, “If men define a situation as real than it’s real,..they are real in their consequences.” Don Thompson, in his volume, empirically proves the substance of this statement in the world of art. He’s written a gem.
Indeed, when I get back to NYC and visit the local galleries–I’ll think of this book constantly. For me it unified my cynicism about the marketing of art with my passion for the collection of contemporary art.
Since the book is concerned with the principles of economies, social psychology, and is well-researched I am going to make to required reading in my Fall Cornell class on Organizational behavior and Uncertainty. For the last few years I’ve been taking my NYC interns to the MOMA and trying to impress on them that the art world is sometimes an interesting venue for business lessons. Don Thompson makes these efforts more interesting, more coherent, and more to the point. I think my fall semester will be enriched by his book. Academia, set aside this book is a superb two night thriller.
The book is for anyone who’s interested in rationally, irrationally, and the world’s of fads, trends, brands, and idiosyncrasies.
Samuel Bacharach is the Professor of Labor Management at Cornell University’s ILR School. He is the Director of ILR’s New York City-based Institute for Workplace Studies and the director of the New York City-based Master of Professional Studies. He writes about proactive leadership on his blog. Check out: http://bacharachblog.com
Culture & Negotiations: 6 Rules To Follow and 5 Hazards to Avoid
I’ve spent the past few weeks in Israel where I’ve been training a group of leaders and working with people from different cultural backgrounds. I was struck by two things:
1. Culture is important.
2. People have a misunderstanding about how culture comes into play in negotiations.
Negotiations occur in a context, be it situational, personal, or cultural. When you are negotiating with a party from a different background, you need to understand their culture and how it may affect their view of the world and their behavior. You’ve got to understand where they are coming from, literally.
While personality, interests, and issues are important to anticipate, you also need to consider the culture of the individual you are negotiating with.
Consider the following the 6 points when anticipating culture’s impact on your next negotiation:
1. Cultural pride determines whether and how negotiations occur.
2. Culture determines not only what is negotiated, but also what is not negotiable.
3. Cultural pride and status might form a wall that’s impossible to climb.
4. Culture determines the importance of personal relationships in some cultures it’s critical to test personal relationships before you get into the details of negotiations.
5. Culture influences the type of response you get.
6. Culture governs whether power games are important.
What’s Culture?
Culture results from psycho-social factors that shape values, establish a sense of collective and a sense of ideology. Understanding culture requires the ability to interpret ethnicity, region, and nationalism. It’s knowing what factors influence certain groups.
But there’s a difference between understanding culture and using culture in order to achieve your goals.
So you think you understand me because you know something about me? Do you think you have the upper hand in negotiations because you know think you know something about my culture?
Not so fast…
Culture Only Goes So Far…
1. Culture is only a frame. Sensitivity to culture may eliminate obstacles to communication, but not necessarily give you the upper hand.
2. Negotiations may be smoother if you understand the culture, but understanding does not ensure a more favorable outcome. Knowing culture lifts the fog between you–not the differences.
3. You’re dealing with individuals. Be careful not to generalize.
4. Understand your own cultural context and how others from different cultural backgrounds may regard you.
5. Don’t bet your farm on your ability know it all. Don’t bet your farm because you know what all Russians think like or what all Japanese enjoy. Don’t bet your farm on being a cultural expert.
Remember, it’s one thing to appreciate culture so you can be sensitive to the context in which relationships emerge and continue; it’s quite another to use it to gain the upper hand.
Samuel Bacharach is the Professor of Labor Management at Cornell University’s ILR School. He is the Director of ILR’s New York City-based Institute for Workplace Studies and the director of the New York City-based Master of Professional Studies. He writes about proactive leadership on his blog. Check out: http://bacharachblog.com
A Niche Finds You: The Proactive Ceramicists
Being proactive demands a capacity of finding your niche. The ability to understand what you want to create, develop, sell, or change. Often we sit around and hope that intense rational thought, calculation, strategic discussion, or even therapeutic analysis will help us somehow discover what it is that we always wanted to do what we always needed to produce.
For a long time I’ve been walking past an interesting ceramic store in downtown Tel Aviv, in the Neve Tzedek area, called Samy D. I’d rarely entered the store, but this past spring I was having coffee in NYC and I saw a piece of Samy D.’s work in a neighboring shop. I resolved to visit Samy D.’s shop over this summer and see exactly what I was passing by.
Looking at Samy D.’s work it was clear that he had established himself a particular niche. Gold-plated bowls, deep greens, tonalities of reds and blues, and designs recalling Erta. This was in sharp contrast to the brown concrete tones one usually sees in contemporary Israel.
When next in Tel Aviv I sat down with Samy D. to discuss with him his work and, more importantly, from our point of view, his discovery of his niche. Now, being an academic, working with organizations, and believing in strategic analysis, I figured there was a complex answer. Samy D., when I asked him about how he found his niche, gave me one of those answers that academics don’t really want to hear. He replied, “By accident.”
His story, boiled down, is simple: “I studied design, worked in multimedia, then one day I designed some cups, somebody liked them, so I sold them. So, I made a few more and I sold those too. I made a few dishes and I sold those too. Next thing I know I develop a shop. Not only that, but I thought it would be a good idea to have a studio in the back so I could interface directly with my shop. It seems my niche discovered me, rather then me finding my niche.”
Samy D. had the capacity to recognize his niche and follow it though. He possessed a certain degree of proactive focus that demands follow through. It required that he develop his niche, not go beyond it.
His is a flamboyant statement in a market where understatements are valued, where the natural is the mode, where panache is always ignored, the subtle always accepted. What Samy D. recognized was people’s desire for color and vibrancy. The potential of the decorative in a culture where the decorative is dismissed as too European. As he says, “My work is different.”
From our perspective what’s unique here is Samy D.’s capacity of not being scared by the fact that his work is different. Now, his niche has grown and he’s moving from simply designing his products to helping restructure and redefine elements of the ceramic market and, lately, impacting the art market.
I write this piece knowing, as Samy D. does, that colorful ceramics aren’t a huge niche. But, ask yourself, how much of a niche do you actually need to be successful?
What’s to be learned here? Proactive leaders are those that have the capacity of recognizing their niche when it comes by. They don’t sit around waiting for Godot. The bus comes, it’s the right niche, they get on, they worry about it later, they follow through.
Samuel Bacharach is the Professor of Labor Management at Cornell University’s ILR School. He is the Director of ILR’s New York City-based Institute for Workplace Studies and the director of the New York City-based Master of Professional Studies. He writes about proactive leadership on his blog. Check out: http://bacharachblog.com