Drew McManus on the Orchestra business | est. 2003

#TBT Work Loves Me…Work Loves Me Not

Thu, Jul 7, 2018
by Drew McManus
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In 2016, 523 nonprofit professional orchestra employees took part in a survey design to learn more about how and why they decided to change jobs. The end result produced one of the more enlightening series of articles over Adaptistration’s history.

All things being equal, I’d love to revisit the topic with an updated survey in 2019, until then here are the articles from 2016:

How And Why Orchestra Managers Change Jobs Part 1

How And Why Orchestra Managers Change Jobs Part 2

Due to the success of the orchestra focused research, I launched the same project at ArtsHacker but opened it up to the entire field of nonprofit arts management. That produced equally fascinating results and even a few different results from the orchestra version.

How And Why Arts Managers Change Jobs

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

View all posts by Drew McManus | Website

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Adaptistration by Drew McManus LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://adaptistration.com/about/terms-of-use-and-permissions/.

PROFESSIONAL DISCLOSURE

Given the author’s position as an arts consultant and technology provider, he does not publish articles examining or focusing on current clients without first obtaining the client’s written permission.

EDITORIAL COMMITMENT

In order to ensure accuracy and provide a comprehensive perspective on any topic, I allow any individual or person officially representing an organization that appears in any Adaptistration article to submit a response which will be published, unedited. Responses are limited to 200 words and must address the issues at hand and the individuals and/or organizations must also be willing to maintain an open dialog for continued discussion.