Module 3: where I am at

In regards to Paula's recent blog Module 3 Blogging I thought it very useful to post where I am currently at in my inquiry.

Title: (Need some feedback on this as I fear it may be too long?)

How/why/can theatres survive the current downfall in the economy?
What skills must an arts manager posess to manage a successful company?
How can artists successfully transition from stage to management?

Inquiry Questions and Topic
My Inquiry is looking into what led to the downfall of the theatre I worked at. What went wrong, or happened in management and how could this have been prevented. I hope to look at the current national and international scene in theatres and compare what happened to other theatres. To look at business failure and compare some of these issues with the issues the theatre faced. I plan to find out what skills an arts manager needs to run a successful theatre company. What skills do Dance managers need? To look into career transition from performer to manager and how you can make a smooth transition.

Ethical Issues
Due to some law suits I have decided to make all participants from the theatre anonymous in the interviews and surveys they complete. I had gained permission for my inquiry back in May, however now the theatre is closed I have no way of gaining permission for any further inquiry. May need to discuss this matter with Paula.

Literature Review
Should this be just one piece of literature when it comes to writing the inquiry? So far I have reviewed 2 articles that related to my inquiry. I have also order a book, which I think will be of interest. It is called 'Hermanisms: Axioms for Business and Life' by John L. Herman Jr. I found this through reading his blog Hermanisms. He has owned more than 20 companies and his book is about what you can learn from a business failure and how it may be of much value to you.

Gathering Data
So far I have done a survery using Survey Monkey for ex-employees of the theatre entitled Why small businesses fail and so far have 9 responses. I have conducted 2 interviews with ex-employees, that were videotaped for my own record to analyse. One was the accountant which was conducted at his house and one was with one of the lead performers at my house. It was interesting as already I have two very different perspectives from someone who worked in the office to someone who was onstage. I have some more interviews set up this coming week. I also have started a new Facebook page to discuss issues with ex-employees and my inquiry called Arts Management CMT.

Analysing Data
To analyse my interviews I will need to review the videotapes and make notes. I will present any comments in my inquiry with quotation makes and use the Harvard citation for the source of the quote. In order to ensure anonymity, I plan to identify each participant using a letter and number, E1 (employee 1) or P1 (participant 1) for those people not affiliated with the theatre.
Survey Monkey allows me to easily analyse my results. It shows me a summary of the results from my survey giving a number of respondants, percents and response counts for each questions. It presents the data using bar graphs or table formats depending on the question. As many of my questions are on a rating scale I am currently researching the best way to convert the results into statistics.

New SIG Discussion

Hi guys,

I would like to start using the Facebook SIG to discuss various topics and thoughts with you that regard my inquiry. I found this a useful tool last term and think it will help me to develop my thoughts with a wide range of professionals.

I have just started a new discussion on the Arts Management thread on our BAPP Facebook page regarding budgeting in theatre companies. Please join and let me know your thoughts even if this may not be specific to your inquiry. I would like to hear your opinion.

Thanks!

Collecting Data

As the theatre I am doing my inquiry on has closed I have been thinking about what is the best way to get a survey done on all the ex-employees. As many of them have now left town or are hard to get a hold of I decided to rely on the very useful tool of Facebook. I have set up a page on 'Arts Management' and send invites to all old employees to "like" my page. As so many ex-employees from the company have a Facebook page, I thought this would be the best way to encourage people to discuss ideas and problems we faced and also take a quick survey.  Last semester I found Survey Monkey extremely easy to use and good way of capturing data. I only have a basic account which only allows 10 questions at a time so there will be more surveys to come.

The pros to this are that many people from the company are on my Facebook therefore it was simple to request them. I can also conduct multiple surveys and post the link to my wall, which allows people to easily access them.

You can view my Facebook page at:  Arts Management- CMT 

My survey on Survey Monkey at:  Why small businesses fail.

Both these are aimed at the theatre and its employees. Depending on the success I have on this page with getting people to participate in my survey, I may set up a page to for my wider community of dance and theatre professionals to discuss arts management topics and conduct surveys.

Revised Aims and Objectives

In my previous blog on Inquiry Aims and Objectives it seems I may have confused the difference between an Aim and an Objective. Cerys Dixie pointed out sometimes the line between what is an aim and what is an objective can be blurred. After further research I learnt the difference:

AIM: The overall goal or outcome of your inquiry

OBJECTIVE: The steps to take in order to achieve this goal

With that in mind, here are my revised Aims and Objectives in reference to my professional inquiry. I plan to make a copy of this for my interview participants.



AIMS:

* To discover what key factors help to set-up, run and manage a successful theatre/entertainment company. What organisational structure works best in a professional theatre?

* To understand what skills a dance professional needs in order to undergo career transition into dance/arts management.

* To look into the breakdown of the theatre I worked at, discovering what happened in management and what led to the downfall of the company. 

* Find out what problems local entertainment venues may be facing and how that compares to the national and international theatre scene.

* Find out how dancers cope with unemployment periods, how you can prepare yourself for future contracts and/or career transition.


OBJECTIVES:

* Conduct research into the following areas; the life and death of companies, dance management, skills for production managers, theatre organisation structure, entertainment in the Myrtle Beach area an information on first year of a new business

.

* Carry out literature reviews to base inquiry around and develop theories.

* Hold interviews with ex-employees of the theatre, other entertainment managers in the surrounding area not related to the theatre and investors and/or the theatre owner.

* Analyse results from surveys and interviews to form theories and compare with what has been said/written already. Compare results to my professional background so far and theories written about running theatres/arts organisations.

* Create a new show-reel for future employers to view that showcases my skills as a dancer as well as my new skills learnt from the theatre in choreography.

Developing Inquiry Title and Interview Questions

I am currently trying to come up with my inquiry title. I was not sure whether it has to be just one question or a few. So far I have come up with three questions that cover my line of inquiry but are not specific to the company I am looking at. So, any thoughts or suggestions on this would be appreciated.

How/ why/ can theatres survive the current downfall in the economy?

What skills must arts managers possess to manage a successful company?

How can artists successfully transition from stage to management?

Doing a couple of literature reviews has raised many questions I would like to get an answer to regarding the theatre. Taking Paula's advice, I am now trying to anonymize the theatre to protect management and the people that work there. I am still developing these list of questions and I am sure as the week goes on I will add to this. But here is my first draft of questions for the employees of the theatre.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
When did you join theatre?

When did you leave?

Why did your job at theatre end?

What was your job title?

Was this always your title or did your title change?

Briefly describe your job and duties?

Were you given or offered any training with the company?

Were you given or offered any housing/benefits/reimbursements etc?

Was your salary higher or lower than your previous job?

Do you know whether the company had a business plan in place for the theatre?

When did you start to realise things were not looking very good for the theatre?

What problems did the theatre encounter?

How did management tackle these problems?

Why do you think they tackled them this way? What would you have done differently?

What did you like about working at theatre?

What did you not like about working at theatre?

What do you feel management did right?

What do you feel management could have improved on?

What kept you working at the theatre?

In your opinion, what led to the downfall of the theatre?

What do you think was the biggest problem the company faced?

How did you feel when the company closed?

How did this affect you, your family, and your career?

What are you doing now?

If the theatre was to re-open and you were managing, what would you do to make it a success?

For Dancers/Artists:

How long have you been performing onstage?

Have you experienced bad management before? If so, why was it bad?

What skills could your immediate manager (Dance Captain/Production Manager/Stage Manager) have improved on?

                                          

How do you prepare as an artist for the next contract?

Have you thought about career transition after your performing career?

If yes, what do you think would be the hardest part about making this transition?

For Office/Management:

How long have you worked in the arts?

Have you ever performed onstage?

If yes, describe the transition you made from an artist to a manager? How you went about this, what was hard about making this transition etc

What key skills are important for an arts manager to possess?

Name 5 key decisions the company made that led to the theatre closing?

Looking back in your position in the company, what would you have done differently?

Literature Review 2

Literature Review: ‘The Seven Pitfalls of Business Failure And How to Avoid Them’

by Patricia Schaefer (2011, Attard Communications, businessknowhow.com)

 http://www.businessknowhow.com/StartUp/business-failure.htm

I found this article on businessknowhow.com. Owned by Attard Communications the site is aimed for starting, small and growing home-based businesses. You can find many free articles on here about sales, marketing, finance and starting up a small home business. It sets out to offer practical advice, tools and information reaching about 4 million people a year.

Patricia Schaefer is one of six writers for the company who has worked previously as a news reporter writing news, profiles and celebrity features. She has written articles such as ‘Stamp out the 10 Most Common Postcard Marketing Mistakes’ and ‘Get the best price for Heating Oil this Winter’. This article is dated 2011 so is still very much relevant.

Although it is not aimed for the Arts or Entertainment venues, the article sets out to offer tips on how to avoid some of the major mistakes start-up companies often make.  Unlike the last article I reviewed ‘How Six Companies Failed to Survive 2010’ that contained actual case studies and example of businesses that failed, this article is giving key factors to avoid in setting up a new business.

Points that relate to my professional inquiry:

-          “business owners frequently lack relevant business and management expertise in areas such as finance, purchasing, selling , production, and hiring managing employees.”

I feel this is especially true of the arts. Arts Managers are unique in the way that they must have a broad spectrum of knowledge- business and the art.  Our Managing Artistic Director’s background was performing in Broadway shows and teaching theatre studies at a University. He lacked the business knowledge and had no experience in the running of a theatre. His passion was producing Broadway shows and produced one , which cost the theatre money they didn’t have.

-          “he or she has a skill at hiring competent people, training them and is able to delegate”

One of the biggest mistakes that the Managing Artistic Director made very early on was hiring an incompetent accountant.  She was unable to keep track on the finances in an organized and structured way, which eventually led to her being fired. For a short time after the Managing Artistic Director managed the books trying to fix them, this took him away from delegating tasks to the other employees. When a new accountant was finally hired, he said he had never seen books like it. They were a mess. Plus, delegating roles led to a lot of confusion. Many managers started with one job title but ended up becoming something else.  There was no training given in the company to employees either.

-          “…insufficient operating funds. Business owners underestimate how much money is needed...”  “many businesses take a year or two to get going. This means you will need enough funds to cover all costs until sales can eventually pay for these costs”

This is all too true in our theatres case.  Not only was there little start-up capital but managers were told large figures that were never there. When things were bad and we were not getting pay cheques, one of the top investors/managers told the company he believed we should be able to break even in 6-8 weeks of opening in his experience. He had a very unrealistic idea of how sales would go.

-           “ A focus on slow and steady growth is optimum”

One major issue our company ran into was trying to expand too soon. We launched the new theatre with the in-house show ‘Superstarz! Live’. Rather than focus on this show , improving it each day, promoting it to the community we also had a Broadway Series introduced.  About a month after opening ‘Greater Tuna’ a comedy play with two actors playing several characters was performed over a couple of weekends. The problem here was the actors were the Managing Artistic Director and the PR lady in the office. Juggling the running of the theatre with performing did little to help the theatre run smoothly and stress levels were high. As if that was not enough just 2 months after opening and with little planning ‘A Broadway Celebration’ swung into production in just over 2 weeks. The show ran for 2 weeks but with little promoting was not much of a success. During this time employees were overworked and struggled to keep up with the demand of running one show whilst trying to produce another. It was a stressful time and resulted in a loss of money rather than gain.  But that did not stop them and so casting followed by rehearsals began for ‘Hairspray’, ‘All Shook Up’ and ‘Rocktastics’. Some performers were being cast in all three doing 12 hr days rehearsing whilst still performing in ‘Superstarz Live’. Halfway though these rehearsals and with stress levels though the roof and people being overworked these shows were cancelled and the Managing Artistic Director was fired.

Establishing your company for a year or so first is key. We were trying to expand when we had not yet gained a solid audience base or even had the finances to back these shows.


To conclude, this article highlights many problems new businesses face, which has helped me to think of the issues our theatre had and how decisions that were being made put us on a slippery slope down. Although aimed at small home businesses many of the issues raised can be used in any business including arts venues.

Managing time effectively

After reading Paula's Blog on Key Features of Project Management I realised that a key element of the inquiry is PLANNING. You can steam through the tasks but without and effective plan in place it is easy to get lost. Part of being an effective manager is having good organisational skills and often meeting deadlines.

Although I have made a start to my inquiry I started to feel that the days are rolling by and I am not getting many tasks completed. So far I have:

- Read through the module handbook and Reader 7 making notes

- Reviewed my initial plan and made the necessary changes due to my current circumstances

- Researched literature relevant to my inquiry and carried out a couple of reviews

- Written the aims and objectives of my inquiry

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by what I still have left to do I have created this ‘plan of action’ to the best I can for now in order to see week by week what tasks need to be completed. Currently living in the US cuts a week from my schedule in order to mail the coursework to England so I have had to take that into consideration. I also need to consider a new contract may come up forcing me to leave the area; therefore it is important I try to gather all the data using the inquiry tools as soon as I can. So with that in mind here is my action plan, which may change but allows me to see clearly what I need to complete.

PROFESSIONAL INQUIRY ACTION PLAN

WEEK                                    TASKS TO COMPLETE

10^th-16^th Oct               - Complete Literature Reviews

- Gain permission from Patrick Henry to carry out inquiry to theatre

- Ask selected participants to take part in an interview and send information on inquiry- summary, aims and objectives

- Arrange interview times

- Prepare interview questions

17^th-23^rd Oct              - Prepare for interviews: List of questions, video camera

                                     - Conduct interviews

- Complete survey on Survey Monkey. Post link on blog for BAPP network and email to professional community

24^th-30^th Oct                 - Start editing showreel for Professional Artefact

(New York 26^th-27^th)     - Start on pamphlet information for Artefact

31^st Oct-6^th Nov              - Carry out last interviews

                                         - Continue working on Artefacts

                                         - Catch up on any remaining tasks above

7^th-13^th Nov                       - Write first draft of introduction

                                           - Continue on Artefacts

14^th-20^th Nov                      - Analysis and Development of findings: discussion with SIGS and blogs

                                            - Start writing Evaluation of the Inquiry Process

                                            - Continue working on Artefacts

21^st-27^th Nov                       - Start writing Analysis of the Findings

(Thanksgiving Week)           - Continue Artefacts

28^th Nov-4^th Dec                 - Complete Professional Artefacts and send to Paula for feedback

                                             - Start writing Critical Reflection

5^th-11^th Dec                         - Catch up on above tasks

12^th-18^th Dec                       - Send first draft of Critical Review to Paula for Feedback

19^th-25^th Dec                       - Work on completing tasks

(University Holiday/Christmas)

26^th-31^st Dec                       - Make any necessary changes to coursework using feedback from Paula

(University Holiday/New Year)

2^nd-8^th Jan                            - Mail coursework to Middlesex University

9^th Jan                                   DEADLINE for submission of coursework 4pm Trent Park

Professional Artefact

When discussing my inquiry with Paula, something that was brought up was the Professional Artefact part of this module. She suggested getting a start on it and making sure it was not left till the last minute. In order to understand this further I looked at Rosemary McGuiness' slideshow, 'What is a Professional Artefact'. One thing stood out here and that was it should "Impress employers with your professional knowledge" (Rosemary McGuiness, 2011). This then led me to think about where I stand in my current professional practice.

As the theatre I was working at has now closed something that would be of great value for me to do is an updated resume and showreel. In doing this I plan to display my new found choreographic skills. It will have significant value to me when applying for jobs and takes what I have learnt from my previous job and puts into an artefact I can show to potential new employers. It relates to the career transition part of my professional inquiry as I have expanded my resume being the dance captain and choreographer. I have also learnt new management skills from my last job- managing the dancers, casting, producing and staging new shows which I wish to display in this artefact too. I plan to present this in a video format that will be clear and concise for my audience to view.

My second professional artefact I wish to present will be a book or pamphlet on Arts Management that will display what I have learnt from my inquiry by writing about the key management principles that underline the business of running an arts organisation or theatre. I aim to discuss the key skills an arts manager needs such as business, marketing, finance, organisation structure.  I also wish to discuss the key tips I have found to running a successful company and the common mistakes that are made in setting up a new business.

Literature Review 1

Literature Review: ‘How Six Companies Failed to Survive 2010’

by Eilene Zimmerman. New York Times (5^th Jan, 2011)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/business/smallbusiness/06sbiz.html

This article sets out to inform people about the difficulties faced in setting up a new business.  It makes its readers aware of the problems small companies can encounter in their first year of opening, what went wrong and how its owners reflect back on the issues they faced. 

I came across this article on the New York Times website ( above) which gets more than 30 million hits a month. It was published in the business section of the ‘New York Times’ therefore its target audience would be business professionals, however being a national newspaper it is also geared towards general readers. It was written at the start of this year and I feel is still every relevant in the current economic situation regarding struggling businesses. The photograph used to illustrate the failure of businesses is of Elizabeth Kavanaugh and Jeff Rank standing outside their former business, Large Format Digital, in Edgerton, Wis. The photograph taken by a photographer for the New York Times represents the article well in the sense that it is bleak and snowing in the photograph. It reflects how the article sis concerned about how the people are affected in this type of situation, something I will look into in my inquiry.

The article starts with some statistics taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that show it was a better year for small businesses in 2010 than it was in 2009- in 2009 the net loss was 400,000 companies compared to 96,000 companies in 2010. Much of an improvement I’d say. However the article claims that “numbers do not tell the whole story” and sets out to look closely to how it has affected six small companies.

Eilene Zimmerman is a journalist based in San Diego, California that writes about a variety of topics including business, social and political issues and family life. Her article covers the topic of why companies failed to survive with a brief paragraph on the six companies with the headings; At its peak, What went wrong and Looking back. I was very interested in analyzing the ‘What went wrong’ section.

Findings that relate to and support the arguments in my inquiry:

-          “she spent thousands of dollars on advertising that didn’t work” -Ms. Kero of Gotham Concierge in Manhattan. This statement supports one of the issues I will be examining with Celebration Music Theatre.  Within the first few months of opening the company had signed a contract with an advertising agency for thousands of dollars of adverts. They charged for everything- each new graphic design or logo, the running of the theatres website to even their Facebook, which is free! The marketing guy at the theatre had a friend who was a graphic designer. He eventually got hired to start doing new graphics for the theatre.

-          “too much time and money were spent on enhanced functionality”- Mr. Milley of iParents.com . Our theatre got off the beaten track when the decision was made to do three Broadway Shows and a Kids Show for the summer that was then to be taken on tour. They were too ambitious. Simple is better. We got carried away with trying to produce so many shows we lost what we were really about and that was ‘Superstarz Live’.

-          “potential investors skittish about the economy, pulled out” -Lisa Beels and Christine Naylor of Petite Palate. One of the major struggles the theatre went through was finding an investor to keep the theatre operating as well as pay the employees back. The main problem was by this time we had accumulated a big debt already that no investor wanted to take that on.

Although brief, this article touched on some reasons companies failed to survive that support some of the points I will be looking at in my inquiry. It has helped me to discover further questions I plan to use in my interviews:

-          Why was the Colin’s Company chosen to be the main marketing and advertising agency for the theatre?

-          What was this agreement like and was it over budget?

-          Who made the decision on bringing in the Broadway revue shows and using the same employees to help make this happen?

-          How were these shows budgeted for?

-          When did you realise there was no money to produce these show?