Being an “innovative workplace” isn’t just about having a great idea. Great ideas are a dime a dozen. The halls of history are littered with great, unrealized innovative ideas. Innovative workplaces instead are about the people and systems that allow and support ideas to be explored, nurtured, and often, nixed.

Attracting and retaining great people who move organizations forward Several years ago, I set out to interview a collection of senior-level executives about what they felt it took to attract and retain really great people who could move organizations forward.

We’ve entered a New Year — the future is upon us! It’s that time when people take stock of their life goals and think, time to change things up. As an employer, you can ignore this reflection point and pretend people aren’t thinking about it, but chances are at least a handful of those who work for your organization are dusting off their resumes and using this mile marker to take the next step in their careers. Happens every year. As an employer, it’s a good time to think about what you need to do to find that next stellar staff member when a position opens up.

But very much look forward to cracking open in 2017 It’s that time of year again. That time when I feel surrounded by “Best Books” lists and realize that I purchased more than a handful of them during the past year that I’ve yet to crack open. It’s not because I’m no longer interested in reading them, it’s more because a few other things jumped the queue. (Thanks a lot, Netflix, for dropping The Crown and making me unexpectedly binge watch it.)

2016 Unsung Heroes of Arts Administration On September 4, 2016, I placed a call for the Unsung Heroes of Arts Administration, a sort of Bat signal in blog post form. In placing that call, I hoped it would be a simple and fun way to recognize some of those culture warriors in our field who seldom receive public recognition for their efforts, and without whom “the show” would decidedly not go on.

Over the past ten years or so I’ve heard countless times, and in countless venues, about an impending leadership gap crisis facing the cultural sector. The theory goes, scores of Baby Boomers are getting ready to retire from leadership roles in arts organizations, and we’ve done a poor job building the pipeline to replace them. If we don’t address this crisis, countless organizations will be left adrift without a capable captain, or worse, they’ll disappear entirely. If only we were a for-profit company with the means to create a formal training system we would be in better shape to withstand this sea change. If only we could pay young people better they wouldn’t leave us for those higher paying for-profit jobs.

Nominate Your Culture Warrior Today! Image by Flickr This morning, I awoke to read about those deserving individuals short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and thought, for all the Bookers, MacArthurs, National Medals of the Arts, Pulitzers, Barry’s Blogs, Oscars, Emmys, and Dance/USA Ernies, you know what list I never wake up to read about in The New York Times? The Unsung Heroes of Arts Administration.

A Guide to Working at Fractured Atlas This week Fractured Atlas published How We Work: A Guide to Working at Fractured Atlas. It’s a document that’s been in the making ever since we opened our doors in 1998, and it’s the result of years of conversations, research, experimenting, and iterating. Within minutes of publishing, we were already tinkering with it, a nod to the ever-changing nature of life at Fractured Atlas. work.fracturedatlas.org Why publish this document publicly? Why not? What’s so special and sacred about workplace policies, values, and culture that we often keep them under lock and key? Every company has core values whether they articulate them or not. Every organization has a set of guard rails that guide its work. (Those guard rails might be close together or miles apart, but they still exist.) Our organizations, and the cultural sector, benefit from articulating these things and sharing the information so we can all borrow and iterate on the ideas like any talented artist (I’m looking at you Benjamin Britten and your Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra). Maybe you’re interested in a job at Fractured Atlas and curious about what it’s like to work here. Maybe you’ve heard whispers of Fractured Atlas’s unlimited day off policy. Maybe you’ve heard about our R&D pipeline for the exploration and development of new products and services. We thought the time had come to put pencil to paper, and then, uh, publish that content as a website. It seems we’re constantly talking about workplace culture at Fractured Atlas. What do people need to do their best work? How can we find meaning and purpose in our work? If this isn’t the job you love anymore, can you craft the one you want out of the one you have? If not, where do you want to go and how can your time at Fractured Atlas help you get there? How can teams operate with trust and respect while also embracing healthy conflict? We talk about shared purpose — change the world — and shared identity — Waffle Wednesdays (usually on Thursdays) — and about what it means to have a workplace environment where you’re more frequently than not building the plane while flying it. Our office library includes dog-eared copies of Good to Great, Nuts!, Maverick, The Hard Things About Hard Things, Delivering Happiness, Zingerman’s Staff Guide, How to Measure Anything, Multipliers, The Purpose Economy, The Advantage, Give & Take, Who: The A Guide to Hiring, Remote: Office Not Required, and countless others related titles. We talk about what it means for our company culture and the office environment when 75% of staff work remotely at least one day a week, with 25% of staff fully remote in ten different states. Is it possible to equalize the experience so rather than onsite versus offsite, people feel they all work for the same organization and are committed to the same purpose? How We Work isn’t a template, not even for Fractured Atlas. If we were to relaunch the company today it would be a mistake to take this document as gospel and adopt it without question. Just like trying to be Google doesn’t work for Fractured Atlas, trying to be Fractured Atlas circa 2002 doesn’t work for Fractured Atlas circa 2016. Would we borrow and iterate on some of the policies, probably. Some of them have withstood the test of time. Others? Still in the experimental phase and might not make the cut. Lastly, does each person at Fractured Atlas wholeheartedly agree that — from their personal perspective — How We Work accurately reflects their work experience? No. Like most things we do at Fractured Atlas, smart, opinionated, talented people disagree. People disagree about how to go about accomplishing something. People disagree about the speed at which things should be attempted. Show me 35 smart, talented, insightful people who all totally agree about everything. Does that mean we wait for perfect alignment and consensus? No. We head down a path that is directionally correct and make adjustments as we go. Please take a gander, and then, if they don’t already, encourage your organization to publish what it’s like to work there. Openness and transparency help us all. It helps fuel the conversation so we can become stronger organizations and a stronger sector. Ultimately, it helps us create better, more fulfilling and supportive places to work that make bigger dents in the universe. Share away!

Pre-gaming your arrival to the executive director’s chair It was like receiving an electronic time capsule from my younger self when the text message pinged its arrival. Last week a friend texted me the photo below of a handout I created to accompany a talk I gave about ten years ago. I don’t recall the session name, but the handout was titled, “…like drinking from a fire hose,” and contained a list of the things I suggested a new non-profit executive director review before sitting down in that fancy, new chair on their first day.

A pathway for confronting the cultural sector’s challenges The health of the cultural sector, and its ability to be creative, innovative, and resilient depends on the quality and skills of the people working for our organizations. In order for our sector to remain vibrant and relevant, we need to continually develop and leverage the skills our people possess.