This is the first post in Generator’s ‘Charting Waters - Transitions in Arts Organizations’ blog series, which highlights our ongoing process of organizational growth and leadership transition. You can find all ‘Transition’ posts here, and everything we’ve published related to hiring here. In this post, Generator’s Communications and Operations Producer Annie Clarke introduces the series.
At an organization of Generator’s size (which is probably even smaller than you think), a leadership transition is a major undertaking. Even though we knew this going in, I still think the amount of attention, care, and sheer organizational capacity it absorbed knocked us off our feet a little.
When you’re trying to do things in a different way, you can pretty much count on them taking longer than you think they will. This has been true for us many, many times over in the past year.
A Zoom photo from our Strategic Advisors welcome event in April 2021, with Generator staff, board, and the incoming Strategic Advisors.
The journey that started with Kristina communicating her intention to step down as Lead Producer in Spring 2020 has had many steps along the way—from the work with our Strategic Advisors, to putting out a leadership call we were incredibly proud of, to hiring the brilliant Michael Caldwell in Summer 2021, to onboarding Michael over the course of the Fall, to the moment we’re in now, as Michael prepares to build a new staff team that will help steward Generator in its newest iteration.
This was a journey full of lessons and learnings; things worth celebrating, and things we would do differently next time. We want to share them with you. This blog is going to be home to writing about this leadership transition over the next few months.
There’s more coming soon, but to get things started we want to highlight a podcast episode that talks through much of the thinking and approach that went into our leadership call. In the episode, ‘Inclusive Hiring Practices,’ Tim Cynova of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. interviews board chair ted witzel, Sedina Fiati, and Kristina Lemieux. (Until recently, Tim and his co-host Lauren Ruffin were two of the brains behind Fractured Atlas in the US, an organization no amount of fangirling will do justice.) The podcast was recorded in September, right before we made the public announcement about Michael, so you won’t hear his name mentioned, but you will hear a really wonderful reflection about this process and the many people who helped shape it, including consultants Zainab Amadahy and Angela Sun.
“A few months ago, my colleague Kate Stadel and I were chatting about alternative hiring practices. I forwarded her information about Greyston Bakery’s Open Hiring Institute. And in return, she emailed me a link to a job posting that blew me away. The posting was like none I’d ever seen before. It included a multitude of options for people to learn more about the position and the organization, including an audio version of the application packet and various treatments of the text for different learning modalities and screen readers. It included office hours for interested candidates to speak with members of the hiring committee, a timeline that detailed each stage of the search, and even a section at the close that credited those on the team who created the post. I found that post to be truly inspiring and such a breath of fresh air.””
You can see our posting here:
More excerpts from the podcast:
“The job posting grew out of the overall culture of Generator, which is a space where we’re really questioning and trying to re-imagine the live performance sector….Looking at trying to attract people from equity seeking groups, it’s really important that when we put stuff out there that we’re trying to model the kind of culture that we’re trying to create. So I would love it if this just came out of nowhere, but clearly it did not—it really does reflect how we work and the ways that we’re trying to think.”
“The next circle of our teaching is by trying to develop wise practices that are public domain are able to be borrowed, emulated, plagiarized outright by the community to know that this posting has been forwarded and forwarded by those who received those four words is exactly what we want. We want anything we do, if it is useful or relevant or applicable to another corner of the sector, steal it, please.”
“We are actively not working on other things because the amount of time that it has taken the staff and I to do this process is the equivalent of running a giant public program. And everyone’s inspired, we’re working with some other companies to do it, and I’m like, “Do you have time to run another program right now? And if you don’t, then I don’t know that I want to encourage you to do this process because it’s that labor intensive.” Especially the call creation portion of it—as Ted alluded [to, it’s] an incredible amount of work.”
Interested in the transition blog posts to come? Make sure you’re signed up for Generator’s newsletter here. You also may enjoy ‘A Values-Based Approach to Hiring,’ our December 2020 blog post based on an interview with Shakespeare in the Ruff and the Toronto Dance Community Love-in.
Find all details about the podcast, including bios for all speakers on the Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. website (and while you’re there, I recommend signing up for their newsletter)! The Inclusive Hiring Practices episode, and all of the Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. catalogue, are available wherever you listen to podcasts.
