Home » exart.dk » Interviews » Managing Specialists - interview med Robert Austin
Beatles og CEPOSPer Wium til møde i tænketanken, CEPOSIdeen var ikke at jeg skulle sige noget om politik i forhold til Beatles. Det ville jeg heller ikke kunne, jeg mener i det store hele at gruppen var ganske upolitisk og hvis de havde et grundlæggende budskab var det ”love”. Min rolle skulle være at sige noget om Beatles og deres musikalske frihedstrang, deres innovation. Jeg er ikke sart – jeg kan og vil gerne optræde indenfor mange kontekst'er – så jeg svarede ja tak til invitationen. En vis nysgerrighed drev mig selvsagt også. Read more |
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Henrik OxvigForud for seminaret satte exart.dk Henrik Oxvig i stævne til en snak om hvilke potentialer for læring og dannelse kunsten indeholder. Kvaliteter som synes at blive mere og mere efterspurgt i erhvervslivet og i erhvervsuddannelserne. Read more |
Artists in Residence på Danmarks Blindebibliotek – et år efterOrganisationen tog imod madrigalgruppen fra Voces Copenhagen i et gennemarbejdet projekt AiR, hvor musikudøvelse in-house og filosofiske øvelser blev dagligdag for størstedelen af ledere og medarbejdere i en intens periode på tre uger i foråret 2005.Read more |
Samtale mellem Ole Fogh Kirkeby og Lars LiebstLars Liebst er administrerende direktør for Tivoli. Desuden formand for Kunstrådet. Lars Liebst reflekterer her over en række temaer i Ole Fogh Kirkebys bog "Begivenhedsledelse og handlekraft". Teksten er et uddrag af en samtale ved Center for Kunst og Lederskabs seminar i marts anledning af bogudgivelsen. Read more |
Managing Specialists - interview med Robert AustinAf Mads Olsen ”How can management supervise people who are highly specialized?” Robert Austin (RA): “The question points out one of the ways work is becoming different from the way it was in the past. I once did an interview with a CEO of a software company in which she suggested that this is one of her most serious problems. She said it this way: “They sit there with 43 screens open on their 17 inch monitors and I have no idea of what they are doing.” So the academic way of putting it is that the nature of supervising is changing. There was a time when anyone who was supervising had done the work that he or she now was supervising. The work had not changed very much and therefore the supervisor was as good or better than the person on the front line. That is no longer true for a whole variety of work that can be called knowledge work. So the 21st century management question is “how do we manage people who a smarter than we are”? This is where the art-anaology comes into play. Because this problem has long been familiar to the theatre director and the orchestra conductor. Those people are leading an ensemble that is composed of individuals that excel in particular areas to a far greater extent than the director or conductor does. This is one of the areas where business needs to learn from the arts. My most interesting research at the moment comes out of theatre where it appears that the director allows a certain kind of interaction to happen. Abigail Adams, Artistic Director of The People´s Light Theatre Company, is a fabulous manager and director of plays. She claims that she does both things the same way. She knows that her version of the play or her version of how the organisation operates is not as good as the version that can emerge from the collective processs. So her object is to create the space and environment in which people more specialized than herself can interact and produce a better thing than she can conceive of in the beginning of the processs. She does play a role in that process in directing focus of the work in this or that direction”. “Directors do not have to be actors themselves to tell if an actor is giving his best. How can management know if these specialists are doing their best?” RA: “There is a difference. The actor’s work is of course very observable whereas, say, a biotechnology researcher’s work is less observable. The theatre director has more visibility into the work as it evolves. Therefore in a business setting it is very important to create an environment where communication is open enough. A supervisor who can´t rely or direct observations may be able to rely on the information he or she can extract from the working communications and opinions of workers. The supervisor must be able to resist the urge to try to impose traditional controls. Because often the effect of traditional controls is to shut down lines of communication. You can´t measure specialists on a simple scale and still encompass the value of their work. They will figure out ways to look very good on that measure without actually improving their work. Traditional control will just make the supervisor look stupid because he dosn´t know what to control. The enlightened supervisor has to understand his or her vulnerability and try to keep lines of communication open”. “What role does art play in the attempt to keep lines of communication open?” RA: “One thing has a lot to do with the structure or ‘shape’ of work processes. A word that I use a lot is “iterative”. The iterative structure of rehearsal means you try something, see how it works, talk about it and then try it again. So you have this circle of rapid exploration and experimentation in hopes of producing a lot of variations and then selectively retaining the things that you think are working well. So one role that art practice can have is to act as a process model. If we think about the way innovative work ought to occur, it should produce variation not avoid it. That is something that the arts are very good at. Business often think of cheap and rapid variation as a more efficient exploitation strategy but I think it is more than that. And artists understand that it is more than that. It is not just a way of more rapidly exploring a space that you know about, it is a way of stumbling upon spaces that you are not looking at. The stumbling part makes business quite nervous. Stumbling is not something you are supposed to do in business. Stumbling in a more favourable direction is a part of arts processes. Artist often introduce variations into their practice to see what happens, to produce outcomes that cannot be foreseen. In innovative work there is a degree of randomness that has to enter and that is not an easy thing for business. It is almost the definition of what we mean by “new”: That if you find something where you expected it, it probably means that it is not very new. So there is a lot for the artists to teach the business about these kinds of processes”. “Is it then art itself or the processes surrounding art that business can learn from?” RA: “I´m never sure how one separates art from the process of art. Is art the product or the process? One of the conclusions I often reach, whether it is software development or theatre making, is that it is a mistake to focus too much on the static version of the final product. Many art forms don´t produce final products. The rehearsal continues after the play opens. They don´t call it rehearsal but as the violinist Paul Robertson says: “You are always rehearsing even when you are performing.” When we look at a Matisse on the wall we think of it as a final product. I wonder if Matisse thought of it as a final product or a snapshot of an ongoing process”? |
Dacapo Teatret 10 år - interview med Lone ThellesenEtablerede i 1995 Dacapo Teatret sammen med dramatiker, skuespiller og instruktør Lena Bjørn. Teatret består i dag dels af konsulenter med erfaring i organisationsudvikling, dels af skuespillere. Kunderne er både offentlige og private virksomheder og organisationer. Lone Thellesen fortæller her om forumteatrets styrker, samarbejdet med erhvervslivet, innovation, læring og forandring. Read more |
Danmarks kreative potentiale - samtale med Mikael LindholmMikael Lindholm er redaktør i Huset Mandag Morgen, foredragsholder og forfatter til en række bøger om innovation og globalisering. Ifølge flere af MandagMorgens rapporter og artikler er skandinavisk ledelse en ressource vi bør udvikle og satse på i fremtidens konkurrence. exart.dk satte Mikael Lindholm og Peter Hanke i stævne til en snak om Danmarks kreative potentiale. En snak som også kom omkring uddannelse, renæssance og byplanlægning. Read more |
Æstetik og fusion - interview med Niels HøjbergNiels Højberg er øverste administrative tovholder for processen frem mod skabelsen af Region Syddanmark, der består af Ribe, Sønderjyllands og Fyns amter - samt den sydlige del af Vejle Amt. Regionen har knap 1,2 mio. indbyggere. Niels Højberg er desuden medlem af tænketanken Public Governance. Her fortæller Niels Højberg om ledelse, æstik og fusion i forbindelse med strukturreformen. Read more |
Kunstneriske læringsprocesserArtiklen belyser det problematiske aspekt i organisationers sidestilling af overlevelsesture med kunstnerisk læring. Der tages udgangspunkt i et tidligere interview med Alejandra Mørk, direktør i Nycomed, der er kendt for at anvende kunstnere i udviklingsprocesser gennem flere år.Read more |