by Tim Cynova, Chief Operating Officer at Fractured Atlas Over the years at Fractured Atlas, we’ve invested a great deal of time, effort, and research into improving and honing our hiring process. In this episode of How We Work — created primarily for those staff members involved in our hiring process — we delve into the history, our philosophy, and the stages of the interview process.

The quality of our team, our organization’s very ability to deliver on its mission and remain agile and relevant, relies on the skills our staff bring to the office and use every day. In this episode of How We Work:TV, we explore ways to develop our most valuable of organizational assets, our people. We’ll cover eight strategies — all that don’t cost a dime! They include: (1) Career Conversations (2) Musical Chairs (3) Bring in Outsiders (4) Never Eat Lunch Alone (5) Co-Learning (6) SMART Task Forces (7) Job Crafting (8) Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) Want more ideas, tips, and assistance? Check out my previous posts about creating innovative workplaces and investing in our people, the job crafting workbook available from the University of Michigan, the Inspiring and Motivating Teams course by National Arts Strategies, or try Radical Focus to learn more about OKRs.

A little over a month ago, I announced that I was stepping aside from day-to-day Fractured Atlas responsibilities for 6 months to explore the idea of launching a new impact investing fund. Now that I’ve been doing this for a few weeks, I thought I’d share a brief update for anyone who’s interested in stalking me.

Throughout our lives, we’re constantly fighting the Battle of The Urgent versus The Important. If left unchecked, the urgent will fill our days, seducing us with its sweet, false sense of accomplishment and distracting us from the *important* work that changes the world.

Individually never as successful as the sum of their parts I have number of friends who are teachers, and I’ve noticed a theme over the years. Each spring, school principals start sketching out their faculty line up for the following year. They look at who’s leaving and what positions they’ll need to fill. They look at test scores and evaluations to see how they can curate the best teams. And here’s where it gets interesting.

Facebook has become one of the most dominant marketing tools of our time. It’s impossible to interact with the platform without encountering creative projects promoting themselves. While using Facebook socially is fairly simple, using it to market your project — particularly for fundraising — is much harder. One of the consistent questions we receive from our fiscally-sponsored projects is “how can I solicit donations via Facebook?” Luckily, Facebook’s “call-to-action” feature has made it much easier. Here’s how it could work for you.

What is #SavetheNEA Video: A Little Help From My Friends? A Who’s Who of Broadway, Hollywood, Theatre, Dance, and Music came together at the legendary Avatar Studios in New York City to record and film a single of the iconic Beatles’ song “ A Little Help From My Friends” to inspire support for the arts in America and help save the NEA.

How We Work:TV Remember that time you tried to teach yourself how to use a green screen, and well, one thing lead to another and you launched a web series instead? No? Uh, maybe I’m doing it wrong. I’ve published a number of pieces about how to create innovative workplaces — with a sense of shared purpose — where people can do their best work and thrive. The aim in doing this is to share our philosophy and experience at Fractured Atlas in hopes that it might be helpful to other organizations tackling similar challenges.

In final Deutsch fellowship project, Courtney Duffy spearheads 3D/DC For the second straight year, Fractured Atlas sponsored 3D/DC, a 3D printing policy event on Capitol Hill, which was produced by our friends at Public Knowledge. While 3D/DC has grown and changed over its six years, its mission remains the same: to connect makers with federal policymakers to promote policy that will encourage, rather than hinder, innovation in the industry. This was my second year at the helm of 3D/DC — you can read up on last year’s event here — and it was sadly the last major project of my two-year fellowship.

Five arts groups that are as creative in the rehearsal room as the board room 2017 Arts Entrepreneurship Awards Honorees: The Black List, Hire Notes, Gigsy, Southern Theater, Opera Vireo This past year saw new paradigms for defining entrepreneurship in the arts and culture sector, and we had an amazing group of nominees. We are excited to honor these five organizations whose experimentation and innovation in the field truly stood out. Whether its elevating Hollywood’s unproduced hidden gems, helping musicians get booked and get paid, solving New Orleans’s digital media needs by training the next generation of media artists, bringing the content bundling model to the performing arts, or creating an new genre of opera by embracing online television… these organizations are each in their own way using cutting edge solutions to deliver their messages.