Commentary

So Much Baltimore

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Of all the organizations that appear at Adaptistration, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has the fourth highest number of articles (others being Detroit, Minnesota, and Philadelphia respectively). More often than not, they appear thanks to some sort of questionable governance practice, labor strife, or musician behavior. Here are the most popular articles as determined from when the blog started tracking visitors. That’s right, Baltimore’s article archive is so long, it predates Google …

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Well This Was Unexpected (Again)

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In July 2021, we took a quick look at the sudden and unexpected departure of then San Francisco Symphony CEO Mark C. Hanson. At the time, I indicated this type of abrupt departure raises eyebrows. Fast forward several months and Hanson turns up as the new CEO at…wait for it…Baltimore. According to the orchestra’s press statement announcing the appointment, he assumes the role on April 21, 2022. If you don’t follow …

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An Ounce Of HR Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure, Part 2

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In Part 1, we started examining several points from  Emma Quackenbush’s article in the 3/16/2022 edition of Van-Magainze.com about how the lack of adequate Human Resources (HR) practices has hobbled the internal culture inside professional orchestras. Today’s installment will continue where we left off as well as considering options for making things better. I was especially glad to see Quackenbush highlight how the large donor-driven revenue model impacts workplace culture and satisfaction. While I …

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An Ounce Of HR Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure, Part 1

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For the past two decades, I’ve written about how the lack of adequate Human Resources (HR) practices has hobbled the internal culture inside professional orchestras. As a result, workplace satisfaction, the one thing nonprofit organizations supposedly offer to offset competitive pay, is so bad it continues to be one of the few third-rail topic neither employers nor musicians’ unions want to touch. So you can imagine how gratifying it was to …

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Employers Behaving Badly

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Just a short, but poignant, rant to round out the week. Recently, I hired a new contract worker and after their first onboard meeting with one of the software engineers they reached out in Slack with the following query: “I wanted to ask if meetings should also be recorded on my timesheet.” I get it. And at the same time just hearing the question is heartbreaking. What’s worse is contract workers …

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