Transcript

[00:00:00] Aubrey Bergauer: Hey everyone. Welcome to the final episode of Season five of the Offstage Mic. I don't know about you, but this season flew by for me. There is a lot going on in our world right now. A lot of issues, and this last episode is really fitting. I think when we are in a world trying to separate the signal from the noise and keep our heads.

Our hearts even lifted above this topic today, or this issue really is something that runs rampant in arts management and arts administration. It is something I see a lot. It is something that I used to struggle with myself, and if I'm being honest, the issue is something that I'm constantly working on as it's the kind of thing that will creep back up if we're not always working on it.

That thing is when arts [00:01:00] administrators think you have to put out the immediate fires before you can do strategic work. In other words, putting the urgent ahead of the important. You know, people say if I just finish fill in the blank thing, then I can be free to do the higher level strategic thinking that I know I need to be doing.

Or if I can just work a little longer, harder, faster, whatever, then I can come up for air to do some of that big picture work. And that is actually incorrect thinking. I now know this. I see this all the time in chief executives. I definitely see it in department heads too, and I think this phenomenon. Is probably more true the more senior you are, but I also see it in other levels of seniority as well.

Other places along the career journey, it often manifests as time management. A lot of people early in mid-career ask me about time management. Just the other day, in fact, [00:02:00] somebody in programming at a major symphony orchestra was asking me this exact question, how do I get out of the Meyer and the day-to-day that is taking up all my time.

And I hear that all the time from chief executives too, who are trying to manage, motivate, and lead their teams. So another way to say this is you are spending too much time on management functions and not enough time on executive functions or high level functions, no matter your title, no matter your role.

And I totally get it because like I said, I've been there too. The last 10 years now, I've held chief executive roles at three different organizations and I was a vice president before that and a department head before that. In every single one of those roles, I had to work on a version of this issue. So like I said, it's the kind of thing that will just creep back up if we're not seemingly always working on it.

So here's why, thinking if I do the urgent things, then I can do the strategic important things I. [00:03:00] Doesn't actually work because doing the urgent things, the on fire things, the issue du jour things does not in fact free your time. It is really just the opposite. Making sure you do some of the important strategic things is what in turn frees you up.

When have you ever gotten to the bottom of their full to-do list and suddenly thought, wow, now I have bandwidth to do the strategic important work. Right? If it's the end of the season, maybe, you know, but how much bandwidth do you actually have then? Or are you so spent that you aren't even truly able to do your best strategic work at that point?

So that is what we are talking about today. To close out this season of the Offstage mic, if I can leave you with some tools that help you. Lift your head above the fray, detached from the noise, and do the strategic high level work your arts organization desperately needs from you. [00:04:00] Then hopefully it's an episode and season that lasts on and on for you.

This might even be one of those episodes you come back to from time to time. This battle of the urgent versus the important is actually a skill to be mastered. And we are gonna talk about how to do that. It's the final episode of season five. You are in the right place. Let's go.

I am Aubrey Auer and welcome to my podcast. I'm known in the arts world for being customer centric, data obsessed, and for growing revenue. The arts are my vehicle to make the change I wanna see in this world, like creating places of belonging, pursuing gender and racial equality, developing high performing teams and leaders, and leveraging technology to elevate our work.

I've been called the Steve Jobs of classical music and the Sheryl Sandberg of the Symphony. I've held offstage roles managing millions of dollars in revenue at major institutions. Been chief executive of an orchestra where we doubled the size [00:05:00] of the audience and nearly quadrupled the donor base. And now I'm here to help you achieve that same kind of success.

In this podcast, we are sorting through data and research inside and outside the arts a. Applying those findings to our work in arts management and bringing in some extra voices along the way. All to build the vibrant future we know is possible for our institutions and for ourselves as off stage administrators and leaders.

You are listening to the off stage, Mike.

Hi everyone. Aubrey here. I wanna share a quick case study with you. About a year ago, Austin Chamber Music Center knew they needed to work on identifying prospective donors and building relationships with the donors they already had. Plus they went through a leadership transition and knew they needed to fundraise more and fast.

They came to annual fund toolkit who did a comprehensive analysis of their donor base. Then developed a system for the organization [00:06:00] to connect with those donors based on their needs and giving styles. They did all of this using a multi-channel combination of in-person asks, email, social media, and direct mail.

By the end of the fiscal year, their year to date, fundraising had doubled compared to the year prior, and that's just the numbers. They now also have a streamlined process for tracking and maintaining donor relationships going forward. How did they do all this? They did it with annual fund toolkit.

Annual fund toolkit is not. Just another consulting firm. What sets them apart is their laser focus on two critical challenges, improving donor retention and growing the major gifts pipeline. This can be your organization too, because this is what annual fund toolkit does every day. Their founder, Luis Diaz, is one of the most brilliant minds and fundraising I've ever met.

The organizations that utilize annual fund toolkit's, advice and assistance are coming out ahead. To read the full case study, head over to get dot annual fund [00:07:00] toolkit.com/acmc. That's GET dot annual fund toolkit.com/acmc for Austin Chamber Music Center. Trust me, your donors and your mission will. Thank you.

I wanna start this topic today with why we get so bogged down in the first place. Even executive leaders who have been in the workforce for years who actually have very good time management skills because you don't get to these more senior roles without having at least some good time management skills.

Right? Even those people still struggle with this issue of putting the urgent ahead of the important why. Sometimes it's that the to-do list really is long, but I actually think. That is a very surface deep answer, especially if you are a chief executive, A CEO, or executive director in arts management. I know there is a lot to do.

There [00:08:00] always is. In arts management, we are always very lean institutions, that's for sure. No matter the size of your budget, it always feels lean, like we don't have enough people, not enough resources, and on and on. So I get it, but okay. Hear me out on this. That is real. And it also can be used as a bit of an excuse.

So, like I said, it's real. I am not denying long to-do lists and long hours and not enough people to get it all done. And also the reason I say it can be a bit of an excuse is because it can be a bit of a cop out. Like we don't have to accept that. Now, I'm not saying the solution is go hire a bunch of people with money you don't have.

So hence the point of the whole episode here to dig a little deeper, there is a bias called the fundamental attribution error. And it's where we as humans emphasize or attribute another's actions to their character or personality while attributing their behavior to external situational factors [00:09:00] outside of their control.

We tend to over index on outside factors instead of internal factors. Often. What does that mean? How does that play out? For example, when you say, tell me if you've ever heard or said this at your arts organization. We didn't make our sales goals for that event performance concert. The weather was really bad that weekend, so people didn't come like that is often fundamental attribution error.

The weather was bad, meaning that's an external factor, not maybe we need to examine our marketing strategy. That's an internal factor. So do you ever say when you do make your sales goals, wow, I'm so glad the weather was great. No, you're usually like, we crushed it. Go us. So I'm not saying don't celebrate your success, I'm just saying it's a bias or error to do it both ways, right?

Like you can't have it both ways. You have to look at internal factors, not just, or only external factors when things aren't going your way. So on this topic today, another [00:10:00] example of this error is the long to-do list. There's just too much to do, too much on my plate. I don't have time to be strategic. I don't have time to do the big picture thinking.

Those are external factors. The work that is being put on you instead of what can I do as a leader? To rejigger my time in order to make the time for this strategic high level work. I know I need to do. As that leader, you guys, this stuff is deep. Leadership is not for the faint of heart. So I'm gonna share an exercise that can help.

This one helped me a lot, I have to say. Then I'm gonna go even deeper. Okay? But first, the exercise. So this exercise is about defining or distinguishing your 20% activities. So you've probably heard of the 80 20 rule, like 80% of the results come from 20% of the work or. Some [00:11:00] version of that. There's a lot of variations on that theme, and we say it sometimes in fundraising too.

For example, 80% of the gifts come from 20% of the people. This exercise is that it is identifying the 20% of your activities as a leader that make the biggest impact on your organization. So how do you define your 80% versus 20% activities?

A couple ways to do this, but the first and foremost for me is literally look at the calendar, also your to-do list. So those are your, pretty much your main two sources of to-do and document which activities. Are the biggest payoff for your time? I've done this now a few times over the years, and every time you know, our roles evolve and change, and every once in a while when I get back to this exercise, it tends to look different.

So the last time I did this was last year, late, last summer and into the fall, and I made a [00:12:00] spreadsheet. So if you're gonna do this, my column headers were I put the week or the date. So usually like week of August 5th and multiple lines are gonna be that week, right? 'cause you have many things you're doing in a week.

So, okay, next column was the task and I just wrote like exactly what it was. I picked it up straight from the calendar event. Looking back over the last month, two months could be picked up from your to-do list as well, that sort of thing. But I just dropped in and it kind of exactly as I had it written in those places.

Next column. The category of the task. So examples for me were, I had a category that I labeled external relations, external contacts that I held the relationship for, for my business, financial or budget. That was a separate category. Tasks that fall up into that setting and communicating vision. That was another category of task for me.

Meetings, I made its own category. Content. That's a big one for me. Was I writing podcast scripts, for example? All [00:13:00] of that con is content. Another category for me was program delivery. I'm teaching, I'm leading courses or programs. Those are examples of categories of tasks you can kind of figure out for yourself, what categories make sense.

You make the rules here, whatever makes sense for you is fine. And then next column, how long? So literally how many hours? Half hour for each task. Some tasks took one hour. So just a sign for each task. How long did it take you? And just try to be as honest as you can if you're having to make some guesses.

The more honest and realistic you are, the better this exercise will serve you. After you do all of that, go back through all your tasks over the last, again, month, two months, and then just mark, is it a 20% activity? Yes or no? Is it among the top activities needed of you to help your organization grow?

That's another way to say it. Yes or no? If you really aren't sure, you can put a maybe, but try to force yourself to say yes or no 'cause it's gonna [00:14:00] help you with clarity. Later, and then I had a final column for notes. So sometimes for me at least, it was helpful to further define what that task was or just I found myself as I was doing this exercise, having sort of a lot of thoughts in the moment.

So I wanted to jot those down. For example, take program delivery. I realized that if the barometer is what's growing the business, some of the things I was doing for program delivery actually were not a 20% activity. So, like I said, many of the things I do for program delivery are I do personally most of the heavy lifting for the programs I create and deliver.

But there were some things I identified related to program delivery, course delivery, where my note to myself in that column was along the lines of, I. Not a 20% activity. So I will need to make clients feel okay with me not delivering this particular part of the content, right? Like I already knew wasn't a 20% activity, but I knew something needed to change specifically.

So it was [00:15:00] articulating that in that field. Another example is I realized through this exercise that I was spending a lot of time reviewing things, meaning. Reviewing other people's work on the team, whether that's social content, social media captions, or website pages or email blasts before they go out the door.

Podcast show notes like you name it. I realized that is not a 20% activity. That's me being a perfectionist, that's me wanting public facing materials to be excellent. So for me, I had to identify that of how else can we make public facing materials be excellent, but somehow I'm not the one doing all the reviewing because it's not a 20% activity, it's not growing the business.

When I do that, it's not growing the organization when I do that. So yet I am very bullish. I have very high standards on what public facing communications look like. This is true for any arts organization I've served ever pretty much, [00:16:00] and I very much want them to be as perfect as possible. Anyone who has ever worked for me will tell you this.

I have very high expectations. So that brought up those questions of, well, how do we build a process? For review or how do we get the right people on the team so that I don't feel like I have to review every single thing, right? Like there are ways to start solving it, and that was sort of what I was putting in the notes column at the time, trying to make some sense of these things that really were coming to light as I was doing this exercise.

The point is to get clear on what are those top activities that you know affect your bottom line, your growth as an institution. Another question to ask yourself after you identify your top 20%, or at least have a pretty good list of what's in your bottom activities. So now we're kind of flipping the script a little bit.

Ask yourself, if you cut the activities in the bottom 80%, how long would it take to recoup that revenue? Like maybe there is [00:17:00] some revenue attached, right? How long would it take you to recoup that revenue? Or is there even revenue attached to those bottom activities? So I wanna share a quote on this exercise from the book.

10 x is easier than two x. I said we were gonna go deeper. So here is the beginning of us going the next step deeper. In that book, Ben Hardy, he's the author, he says, quote, when you go 10 x or even focus on the 20% and shed the 80%. Others won't always like it. You'll shed the two X people. He says, your revolution threatens their security to avoid the discomfort from that many people.

Choose not to go 10 x

you guys. I have seen this play out at my last three or four full-time roles, including in my business now. When you start making change of any kind as an arts leader, as a chief executive, as a team [00:18:00] leader, not everyone likes it. Some people on my past teams were quite comfortable with the way things were and my involvement the way it was, and as I started shedding some of that.

And in my own involvement and expectations and process changed. Some people don't like that and that doesn't fit the needs of the business anymore. And gosh, wow, that can be hard to face as a leader, quote, to avoid discomfort from that many choose not to go 10 x, which goes right into this next level of going deeper on this topic.

So I have some more tips for you, but we have to go even deeper into this issue of why we get so bogged down. Because if you don't understand the core issue, the heart of the matter here, what's going on beneath the surface, you will never ever be able to fully overcome the challenge. So I already said [00:19:00] this stuff is hard.

It is not for the faint of heart. Like who knew? To talk about time management, we would have to keep peeling back the layers of the onion, right? If you are listening to this and feeling defensive, let's call it, you know, how could I possibly find the time to prioritize the important, or Aubrey, you don't know how much I'm drowning right now.

Making a list of my 80 20 activities is just not gonna happen, or there's just no way to be able to prioritize big strategy for my organization. If that's you, then I have to tell you, you might wanna stop listening right now because this episode is not for you. If, like I said, we're getting ready to push even harder on this, poke even harder on this.

So if that's, you just hit stop. This topic's not for you. But if you are serious about doing the meaningful strategic high level work your organization needs in order to build your future, get to a financially sustainable model, grow your audience to create that vibrancy, all of those things. Aren't going to happen on their own.[00:20:00] 

So if you are serious about that, then here we go, pushing ourselves a little deeper on this because saying next year will be better or next season will be better in fill in the blank, and sales donations, revenue impact without doing the strategic work to get there and therefore without changing your day-to-day activities.

Right? It's like saying you're making a New Year's resolution to lose a hundred pounds. But you're not changing anything about your diet or lifestyle. Change in growth doesn't work like that, you know? So we're gonna get into this kind of next level of all of this in just a moment. When we come back, we are gonna talk more about why we get stuck in the busyness.

There is actually a quote unquote good reason for it, or at least a little bit of an explanation that I will share, and then I'll give you some more tips, time management, and otherwise to lift yourself out of it.

Here's a fun fact. A returning audience member is [00:21:00] worth seven times more than a first timer. Yes, I am talking about audience retention. One of my. Favorite topics, but the problem I hear all the time from arts organizations is how to best track your own patron retention data across marketing and development.

That's why I wanna tell you about artize. Artize has brilliantly solved this challenge. Their audience retention dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. First time buyers, multi-buyers, subscribers, and donors. I've worked with a lot of tools in data management.

Programs over the years. The artize Audience Retention Dashboard works with any CRM and it supports arts organizations of all sizes all over the globe. If you can upload a spreadsheet within minutes, you can access all your data, your key patron segments and top retention metrics. Beautifully laid out and easy to read.

It's just that easy, no joke. And their tool even makes real-time recommendations [00:22:00] based on your patron data to boost conversion at each stage of the customer journey so you can see what's working, refine your. Approach and keep doubling down on what drives the best results. The Artis team brought me into their process and we had clients test the product with their own real data.

So let me tell you, I have seen firsthand the immense time, money, and effort this dashboard can. Save arts organizations allowing you to finally harness your data in one place. Think easier. Collaboration between marketing and development efforts, easier for presenting at board meetings. Easier to see everything in one place without running multiple reports.

If you are ready to grow, retain and engage your audience with data-driven tools that are easy and fast to use. Visit aubrey auer.com/dashboard. Listeners of this podcast, save 20% and member. As of my run it like a business academy, save even more. That's www.aubreyauer.com/dashboard To learn more about artize today.[00:23:00] 

I don't know how else to say this next part except to say it directly and with love. Sometimes people, you, me, in the past, any of us. Choose to keep ourselves busy. It's not necessarily a conscious choice. I mean, it can be, I suppose, if that's your identity, like if you pride yourself on being a workaholic or something like that.

I've been down that road in years past too, but whether being busy is your identity or not, the point is that we often choose busyness, whether consciously or subconsciously. Why? Because keeping your day full with putting out fire. And handling the day-to-day stuff that's urgent means you don't have to face the bigger, harder questions.

Sometimes it is, quote unquote, easier to do all the tasks that fill [00:24:00] your day instead of facing the fact that there are some big issues that need your leadership. Sometimes it is easier to be busy to do a million little things than to have hard conversations with others in your organization or on your team.

Sometimes it is easier to wanna put out fires and be a hero when you save the day. Instead of making an audience development and donor plan for your organization, sometimes it is easier to fill your day up than spend time thinking about how you will move and motivate a group of people, board staff, artists forward toward your vision.

This one is so deep, guys. It hurts so bad. When I realized this one for myself, that me being busy to an extent. Was actually me being avoidant, like I was actually afraid of what could or would happen if I did free myself to do the big picture work. [00:25:00] Like I wanted the growth and success. I believed it was possible and I even saw the way forward for my team, for my organization, but I also knew it would be so hard as an institution to get there.

Then I'd have to have some hard conversations that some people would probably have to go and that I was gonna have to face the board or whoever and work like crazy to build consensus. I. When you put it like that, gosh, it is way easier to stay up late replying to emails than to do any of those things.

But you know the upside, having a plan, having an organization all moving in the same direction, feeling clarity on every step you are taking, and having clarity also on when to say no to things that aren't serving you as an institution anymore. And in turn. Seeing more revenue, seeing your audience grow, your donor base, expand because you did the hard work to make and execute the [00:26:00] strategy.

All of that is incredibly hard and also incredibly brave in fact and leadership done well. Is that it is often incredibly hard work. I said it's not for the faint of heart and it certainly requires bravery, but wow, the other side is so good for those who are willing to get there.

So here are several more tips I have for you. This is all under the category of time management. I'm gonna sort of, kind of rapid fire these. So first thing is stack similar activities and meetings. When I moved as many meetings as I could to Tuesdays and Thursdays, for an example, it was a game changer for me.

It was a game changer because it freed up big blocks of time I needed to do deep work. And I've seen this happen for me in two different chief executive roles [00:27:00] now. So time block your work, stack similar activities, and then use that other time that it frees up for. A deep work, strategic work you need to do next, have focus days, have several days each week, at least one day where nothing is scheduled.

These are your high performance flow days. Also a game changer for me in the organizations I've served. Next, anything repeatable needs to be an SOP standard operating procedure, like have some sort of documentation. This is true no matter your level of seniority. No one is above or below SOPs in my opinion.

So slow down to make it, write it, film it, whatever you need to do to create that tool, and then it speeds you up later when you have essentially a checklist or how to doc or whatever for the exact steps, and you follow those exact steps every time. It is remarkable to me how many times I speak to people at organizations.

They do not have an SOP or any kind of documentation for [00:28:00] it. So do yourself a favor. I'm not throwing shade, I'm just saying if you wanna free up your time, if you want better time management, do it. Follow the list. Don't think you gotta keep all that stuff in your brain. And what's great about arts organizations is we have a lot of things that are repeatable, even if it's annual in the case of a season or monthly or weekly in the case of performances or events, right?

Like there's actually a lot we can have a documented process for so that it can speed us up every time. Okay, next. Everything that is repeatable needs to explore automation. Zapier is your friend, 2025 folks. There's so much that can be automated that was not able to be automated. Gosh, three years, four years ago, five years ago for sure.

So really, so much, uh, good in that category of things we can explore with automation buffer days. Okay. Buffer days are another way to say recovery. We call that weekends sometimes, but it doesn't have to be a traditional Saturday or Sunday. Especially in the arts. Some people are working on the [00:29:00] weekends, especially if you're a performer or if you're a staff and you have to be on for certain events or performances.

So just make sure whenever you schedule your time off, that it actually is time off. I am all for seasons of go hard activity. Like, I think there are times of the year, different seasons, different periods where you know, you are launching a new season, for example, or in my business now when we're launching a product offering, those are busy times and require real pedal to the metal, right?

But be diligent in carving out the time for rest and recovery on the other side. The better I get at doing this, the less frazzled I am, the more I'm able to show up as my best self when I'm not on the clock. I feel like this is advice that's given but not often followed. But truly, the more I actually do it, really the better it makes me when I'm on Next one's.

Last one really is relinquishing control. I you any executive leader. [00:30:00] Has to do only the things that you can do as the executive leader, as the chief executive, as the department head, as the leader, period. There are certain things that only you can do, and you have to make sure those are the things you're prioritizing.

It kind of matches what we were saying with the 20% time a little bit. And this one can be really hard because being dogmatic about that 20% time takes discipline. It takes kind of rewiring how we're crafting our days and, and how we're drawing our own boundaries, to be honest. So related tip. When you are delegating responsibilities to others, 'cause that's what it means if you're gonna relinquish control, if you're gonna back off of some of the 80% things that you don't need to be doing because they're not your highest impact, highest growth, highest result activities.

You have to be a little careful. I'm gonna tell a story. This is very early in my career. I wasn't the chief executive. In fact, it was my first job. I was 22 years old working at a major symphony orchestra, and I felt [00:31:00] at the time that my boss over delegated. Like I remember thinking, why can't she do that?

Three things on this one. She didn't do it in the best way. I would come into the office in the morning. And there would literally be sticky notes all over my computer and desk of like things that like she wanted me to do or things she was delegating. So she didn't delegate in the best way, but two, now that I'm a little older, a little wiser, I understand this now in concept, but understanding that only I can do the things I need to do as a leader doesn't help current employees who are the ones being delegated to.

That brings me to tip number three on this relinquishing control delegating point. Research shows. We combat that. Like why are they delegating to me? By saying the why behind the work like that actually significantly helps. I always now try to say why that little seemingly little task actually matters a lot, and I am not perfect for sure at this, but I do try because [00:32:00] those tasks usually are hugely important, not just for the chief executive.

But because I have other tasks that are also hugely important that only I can do, that only you can do anyways, explaining the why when you're delegating the research shows can help with the person being delegated to seeing how they fit into the bigger picture. That's really what that's accomplishing.

Those are some of my rapid fire tips on all of this. As we bring this final episode and season two a close. The question isn't how will I ever find the time to lift my eyes and think bigger picture or think strategically. The question is, how can my organization afford not to have me doing that? Right?

It's not a question of what won't get done, it's a question of how long is doing all those other things and not leading strategy going to work for your organization? So now that you know all this, you have a choice. Continue to fill your day with a to-do list that will never end an inbox, that will never get to zero.

[00:33:00] Spinning your wheels and just trying to keep your head above water while your audience growth suffers while your fundraising stalls and you don't generate the revenue you need to fund your mission and your art. Or you can choose right now to set aside some time. To do the big strategic work that needs to happen to do the exercises here in this episode, to do the things that only you can do as a leader, because that in turn is what will free you up and is actually the only thing that will give you the path ahead to build the vibrant future for your organization.

That is absolutely possible. Thanks for listening this season. Bye for now. That's all for today, folks. Thanks so much for listening. If you like what you heard here, hit that button to follow and subscribe to this podcast. And if you've learned something or gotten value from this, please [00:34:00] take two seconds to leave a quick one tap rating or review and return to all of you one more time.

Thanks again. See you next time on the Offstage Mic. The Offstage Mic is produced by me, Aubrey Bergauer and Erin Allen. The show is edited by Novo Music, an audio production company of all women, audio engineers and musicians. Our theme music is by Alex Grohl. Additional podcast support this season comes from Kelle Stedman, other members of the changing the narrative team and social media brand management like classical content.

This is a production of changing the narrative.