There’s a conventional view of arts boards that focuses on recruiting members with professional skills, preferably with experience on other boards, often ‘intelligent all-rounders’, with a passion for the institution.
It all seems very sensible, and it ticks a lot of governance boxes. But it’s not a recipe for high performance.
The problem is that there is little emphasis on ensuring that arts boards include members who know first-hand how to run the organisation’s core business.
Few people would be surprised to hear that three out of eight of the non-executive directors of Telstra have extensive experience as senior managers of telecommunications services companies.
That’s pretty typical for corporate Australia. Among Australia’s top 30 listed companies, around three in 10 non-executive directors have managerial experience in the same industry group.
That’s a far cry from the arts. We analysed the boards of Australia’s highest profile public performing arts companies – the 37 National Performing Arts Framework Organisations, and Australia’s 12 major state and contemporary art museums. Less than one in 10 of the non-executive board members of Australia’s leading arts institutions have senior management experience in the arts, and less than one in 20 have senior management experience in the relevant art form.
Arts boards do typically include artists. Two in 10 of the members of the arts boards we analysed are professional artists, and another one in 10 have other professional experience in the arts, such as working as educators or academics. They bring invaluable skills to arts boards, not least a professional assessment of what’s on stage or hanging on the walls. Anecdotally, that’s many more artists on boards than there were 20 years ago.
But artists, academics and, even more so, people who lack experience in arts management don’t necessarily know much about how an arts business works. Ultimately all arts institutions are businesses, with lots of employees, plenty of stakeholders and a bottom line that matters. Like any business, arts businesses have their peculiarities. People who have only worked in other industries are unlikely to have an insider’s knowledge of the dynamics of ticket sales, the peculiar terms of many artist contracts or the specialities of art freight. These things can make a big difference to both artistic outcomes and the bottom line. Few directors walk into the boardrooms of Australia’s arts institutions knowing much about them.
Arts organisations are particularly prone to controversy. Their currency is culture, so it’s hardly surprising that they are often the focal point for cultural debates. Experience at the front line navigating an arts organisation through these kinds of controversies can be invaluable when the next controversy arrives. Boards inevitably get involved when issues hit the front page of a newspaper. But relatively few of Australia’s arts institutions have many people around the table with scars from similar battles in the past, with the instincts and resilience that are most often acquired through practical experience.
Instead, Australia’s arts boards have a plethora of professionals – three in 10 are by trade accountants, lawyers, merchant bankers and management consultants who may have run their firm, but do not have broader senior management experience. By contrast, big corporates have far fewer board members – only one in 10 – with a background in professional services but not executive management.
Obviously people with professional services backgrounds can bring useful expertise in finance, law or management to an arts board. But they also tend to be accustomed to giving advice while not managing the show. They may be less likely than former managers to understand the difficulties of prioritising and executing change. There is a danger that they may make life miserable for the organisation’s senior personnel by inadvertently imposing unrealistic expectations. And that is a high risk for resource-poor arts organisations.
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So perhaps next time your arts board is thinking about an appointment, the first place to look should be among the ranks of former CEOs, general managers and artistic directors of Australia’s arts institutions. In contrast to former chief executives of big corporates, few of them are on multiple arts boards. Australia’s arts sector should value and use their experience more.
