Authors: Reynold Levy
As much as anything else, it is the magnetic power of the Lincoln Center brand that generates these visits and inquiries. They led us to create a now-established institutional consulting practice, Lincoln Center Global (LCG), which is one answer to the question: How can
Lincoln Center convert the extraordinary level of interest in its operations into a new, recurring source of earned income?
Lincoln Center’s reputation is outstanding. Insiders highly value it. Audiences and donors are drawn to it. Maintaining a top-flight reputation requires investment. It demands that employees do nothing to diminish or undermine the strength of Lincoln Center’s brand.
The Imperative of Productivity
One of the reasons Lincoln Center could generate so many more programs and accommodate many more audience members, students, and visitors while maintaining balanced and surplus budgets is that administrative expenses grew at about the rate of inflation. The proliferation of technology, the consolidation and streamlining of workload, not automatically replacing workers who have left through the process of attrition, and constant employee training all helped foster increased productivity.
When I left Lincoln Center after an almost thirteen-year stint, serving from 2002 to 2014, its nonunion full-time workforce had dropped from 380 to 296, or by 22 percent. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of administrative expenses stood at only 3.1 percent per year. The overall budget had grown from $77.6 million in 2002 to $113.5 million in 2014, for a CAGR of 3.5 percent. In many ways, Lincoln Center was a lighter institution when I departed. The place had lost weight. It was fit and lithe.
The use of technology by our employees not only contributed to improved productivity, but also dramatically altered the manner in which many patrons learned about our coming attractions, purchased tickets, compared notes with one another about their experiences, and took advantage of Lincoln Center’s many other offerings: reserved parking spaces, restaurant reservations, and purchasing merchandise, to cite but three examples.
Tight supplier oversight and careful expense control were also indispensable to successful budget management. The right kind of software, properly utilized, has assisted managers in containing and constraining costs. Such management information systems are simply indispensable to catalyzing productivity—doing more with fewer resources.
Of course, consolidating positions, reconfiguring what workers were assigned to accomplish, and using every vacancy as an opportunity to rethink how we approached work helped as well. So did careful control of salary increases and health-care benefits.
A great deal of the fun and much of the learning associated with the performing arts come from interacting with others who experience the same event or anticipate doing so. Modern technology links them to one another in natural communities of interest. Friendships form. Time spent at and about Lincoln Center grows. Information blossoms into knowledge. Frequency of attendance rises. So does earned revenue.
By these measures, Lincoln Center has improved its productivity markedly. But it has done so in other ways as well. It has learned how to generate more sales from fewer and better-targeted brochures, more positive responses from fewer but better-placed print and radio advertisements, more contributions from higher-end and more generous but less numerous donors. It does not take double the staff to conceive and execute ten gala events rather than five, and it takes less effort to retain and motivate high-quality, high-performing staff members than to constantly recruit and train newcomers.
When I bid Lincoln Center good-bye, it was accomplishing more with less than ever before. It was nimble. It was stronger. It moved faster.
The Persuasive Power of the Written Word
If reading helps to create the intellectual map that can guide you, writing and public speaking can contribute importantly to your success as a leader. They can embody the decisiveness and informed resolve that attract followers. As the CEO, what you are ultimately paid for is sound judgment and your capacity to persuade others. To rally them to your side, the written and spoken word are potent weapons. Use them early and often.
No matter the institutional setting and no matter the role I played, one constant I observed was the utter necessity for clear and compelling communication. Frequent. Offered in multiple forms. Carefully crafted.
When I first arrived at the 92nd Street Y, the International Rescue Committee, and Lincoln Center as the CEO and at AT&T as a junior
officer of the company, I was occasionally asked what each place needed most in order to improve performance.
Curiously, my diagnosis and remedy were the same everywhere, although the organizations and their contexts varied widely. What these institutions, and no doubt many others, needed most was consensus: staff and board alignment on means and ends.
Institutional assets hiding in plain sight can be identified and put to work through timely and effective communication. To adjust the parts of an organization so that they cohere and synchronize requires constant communication about its purposes, methods, culture, and desired results. In high-performing places of business that dialogue occurs throughout the organization, from the top down, from the bottom up, and horizontally. It is expressed most powerfully through face-to-face communication among those closest to a working unit where employees spend most of their time.
But the themes struck, the language used, and the energy unleashed often begin best with written communication from the CEO.
In my professional experience, one of the most underutilized tools available to leaders is the written word. Its persuasive power, its capacity to convey meaning, and its ability to move readers to favorable action is impressive. I am mystified by how many leaders fail to deploy this tool of influence.
Professors often acknowledge that they are unsure of what they really know about a subject until they prepare to teach it and engage in dialogue with able, highly motivated students.
Lawyers observe that an oral agreement is not worth the paper it is written on.
Similarly, I am often unsure precisely of what I wish to impart and to whom until I write it down.
It is not just the subject of communication that is important, but its object.
Powerful communication is personal; its recipients must sense that what is written keeps them first and foremost in mind. The formulaic and the cliché-ridden are easily detected and readily dismissed. But the letter or memorandum crafted with the reader in mind, either as an individual or as part of a group, hits home with dramatic impact. It is memorable. It can move the recipient to think differently and to act
accordingly. Its language is often repeated throughout an organization or among friends, family, and close associates.
Employees need to know directly from the CEO what are the key institutional priorities, how they can realize them, and what role each may play on that journey. Repetition to reinforce such important messages should not be avoided.
The art of the written word is worth careful development. Well-articulated prose moves, delights, surprises, flatters, amuses, and motivates. Much to my pleasure, I have found over the years that those to whom I write often keep my letters and memoranda and fondly recall them at important intervals in their lives.
The proper use of the spoken word is also a powerful and often-neglected tool. Thoughtful toasts and introductions to speakers, honorees, and employees impress the gatherings you assemble. They burnish institutional reputation and promote your organization. Audiences that Lincoln Center convenes deserve to hear remarks that are engrossing, humorous, even memorable. There is a temptation to treat such occasions as routine and mandatory. Resist it. Take the time and summon the energy to prepare for them diligently. Exploit the opportunity to thank, compliment, and communicate key messages to receptive listeners.
The Art of the Sale
As the president of Lincoln Center, it was my responsibility to persuade those with the wherewithal—talent, time, and treasure—to spend more of it on our sixteen-acre campus. And before then, on refugees and displaced people. And before then, at 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue.
Trustees, ticket buyers, volunteers, employees, public officials, donors, journalists, and foreign governments all had to spend more time at, thinking about, and offering support to institutions and causes I was privileged to lead.
Achieving this end required constant acts of persuasion. Marshaling facts. Shaping arguments. Inviting participation. Listening carefully. Responding accordingly.
It demanded a sense of purpose and an obsessive pursuit of goals. Relentlessness and persistence were invaluable allies.
Some combination of energy, discipline, optimism, and resilience will sell those tickets, recruit those trustees, impress journalists, motivate employees, attract donors, and move government officials off your back and to your side. Sustained attention to what will convert a “target of opportunity” into a partner in the enterprise is built into the makeup of a driven CEO, one possessed of a cannot-be-denied moxie.
“Most people buy, not because they believe, but because the salesman believes.”
In virtually all of the high-performing organizations I am familiar with, the CEO is the salesman in chief. And that Pied Piper is usually surrounded by employees and volunteers who comprise a committed, driven sales force.
It is a source of immense satisfaction that when I bid good-bye to the Y, to the IRC, and to Lincoln Center, each enjoyed many more friends, supporters, and generous trustees. They are the leading indicators of a bright future, as are those who converted them to the status of true believer.
Supple and Resourceful Governance
One of the major distinguishing features of nonprofit institutions is their capacity to engage the intellectual energy, sweat equity, and financial support of volunteers. In this connection, I have happened upon many nonprofits that focus almost exclusively on the board of directors as their only outlet for the utilization of volunteers. The board is very important. But to concentrate on it exclusively is to think small.
Too many nonprofits keep their principal governance body pocket-sized. Their leadership is heard to claim that a board larger than, say, thirty is unmanageable, unwieldy, and unnecessary.
In the narrowest sense, this point of view has some validity. If all that is envisioned for the board is hiring, compensating, and if necessary discharging the CEO, protecting the mission and guarding against risk, then few institutions need more than that number, and perhaps even fewer than thirty will do.
But I am convinced that trustees should not be just fiduciaries. They embody a cause. As such, they are advocates, sources of expertise, and campaigners, reaching into pools of influence and affluence.
It is not by chance that the boards of the 92nd Street Y and the IRC numbered around seventy. My first recommendation to Bruce Crawford as the chair of Lincoln Center was to allow for the expansion of the board. It then numbered forty-three and has since grown to eighty.
The financial benefits of a larger board in the form of increased donations are readily apparent, as long as expectations for giving and getting are agreed to in advance as a condition of membership. Importantly, a sizable board allowed me to reach into communities of consequence—the media, advertising, high-tech, consumer goods, private equity, hedge funds, fashion, money-centered banks, entertainment—all across America and the world, to Lincoln Center’s advantage.
Hardly a single important aspect of Lincoln Center’s physical redevelopment or its transformed operating economic model did not benefit from the excellent advice of trustees and those they called upon in their far-flung network of colleagues and friends. A hefty board allowed me to enlarge Lincoln Center’s circles of influence and to increase the impact of our place. It helped me to tap resources, not least financial, otherwise out of reach.
Those nonprofit CEOs who believe that the board of directors is the only place to properly engage volunteers should reconsider. I do not refer to the useful recruitment of volunteer ushers, tour guides, retail assistants, and candy stripers. Rather, I am raising the sights, pointing to ways in which to enhance the power of an organization by thinking imaginatively and flexibly. I am aiming to answer this question: How can we attract people of influence and means to our institution other than by membership on its board of directors?
As the board leadership at Lincoln Center joined me in energetic proselytizing for support of our cause, an opportunity repeatedly presented itself. We encountered smart, accomplished, wealthy Americans who yearned for, or could be persuaded to accept, a meaningful association with Lincoln Center that fell short of trustee financial and service commitments.
How to engage some measure of the time, treasure, and talent of such standout citizens was the challenge.
One model, already at work, is the Lincoln Center emeriti group. These volunteers, twenty-one in all, consist of former members of the board who by virtue of a change in geographic location, financial
circumstance, or retirement from a full-time business life want an active association with Lincoln Center that obligates them to less than full-fledged trusteeship. Its members meet regularly. Their agendas are chock full of Lincoln Center developments and issues. When the board chair and president are wise, they consult with the emeriti group about future decisions. All members can attend any board meeting and most committee meetings, where they enjoy a voice but not a vote. All remain donors to Lincoln Center. Some are major contributors.