As I’m walking in to set up for a board retreat session, one of the board members approaches me. I enthusiastically shake his hand and say that I’ve been looking forward to our work together.
“I hope you’re not planning to do any of this personal growth, imagination, BS stuff. Waste of time!. We need to figure out how to get butts in seats!”
I put down the newsprint and markers and box of post-its, my frequent tools of the trade. Uh-oh, I’m thinking. I take a deep breath, smile at him, and say “Personal growth is completely optional.” And then I get a little scared – what a thing to say! Where did that come from?
“Good,” he said. “We need to get down to real work. None of this airy-fairy stuff. I don’t want to ‘imagine’ what it will be like when we sell lots of tickets. I want to see those butts in those seats as soon as possible!” He said “imagine” with the inflection of a sarcastic teenager.
Ok, I think. How am I going to deal with this? I’m here to do an organizational assessment, not specifically to get butts in seats (though maybe that’s part of what we’ll look at, I don’t know yet).
I decide to chat him up. The post-its can wait. “What made you decide to join the board of the So-and-So Arts Organization?”
“I always wanted to dance. Ballet,” he says, a little sheepishly. “I wanted to play the trumpet, too. My dad wouldn’t let me.”
I have heard this kind of thing ten thousand times. “So what happened?”
“I became a banker.” Then he makes a joke about being a patron of the arts because he couldn’t actually DO anything artistic. He wants to make sure that the So-and-So Arts Organization stays financially healthy. And butts in seats is the way to do it, according to him. The Only Way.
Other board members are drifting in and saying hello. Mr. Banker goes off to find a seat. The board secretary wanders over and says, “Don’t mind him. Mr. Banker always imagines the worst, that we’re going to fold any minute now. But he means well.”
According to their financials, the So-and-So Arts Organization is in no danger of folding for the foreseeable future. I’m here in part to help them stay sustainable. Mr. Banker has given me some blatant clues about how he operates and what he thinks is best. He dismisses airy-fairy imagination stuff but he spends considerable time serving on the board of an organization that thrives on imagination and creativity. I wonder if his own imagination confines him to a place offstage, and that’s why there’s only one way to solve a problem (that doesn’t really even exist).
I scrap my plans for the opening exercise and I ask the board members to imagine themselves as artists. Any kind of artists – painters, sculptors, violinists, writers, actors, ballet dancers, trumpet players. We’re going to approach our work AS artists, and see what comes of this experiment. It’s a risk. Mr. Banker gives me a long look that I decide not to interpret. Other board members shift in their seats, make a few jokes about not being able to carry tunes in buckets. And then something happens, something that I can’t quite pinpoint, but the energy in the room seems to flare (in a good way), and – without recounting the entire story – we get a ton of “work” done.
After the session, Mr. Banker thanks me.
“No, thank YOU,” I say.