In a time when many arts organizations are operating through structural changes and in evolving environments, meaningful team collaboration is crucial. Fortunately, there are many helpful tools and practices from across business and technology that tap into fundamental principles of effective teamwork. 

We have gathered four of those lessons here, with helpful tips on how to incorporate adaptable structures into teams in any industry.

Create a Culture of Feedback

It is crucial that all team members feel empowered to give and receive feedback at any organization. Make sure that the constructive critiques so necessary to perfecting your art form are being carried over into operational and administrative work by developing a team culture where feedback is a deeply ingrained part of everyday life. 

Harvard Business Review outlines four elements that make for a “feedback rich culture”:

1. Safety & Trust: building a foundation of trust will allow colleagues to feel that feedback is coming from a place of support -- and to be honest if now is not the best moment for them to receive feedback. The social contract previously mentioned is a helpful starting point to create understanding between team members.

2. Balance: positive feedback should not be limited to times when it is needed to “cushion” constructive criticism. It is important to strike a balance between consistent positive and negative feedback, as well as feedback for both larger and smaller issues.

3. Normalcy: rather than saving feedback for dedicated performance conversations, work it into the everyday life of your team -- including in moments when groups are together. Having frequent, open constructive critiques will normalize giving & receiving feedback.

Transparency: the full team must understand that feedback as a daily norm and expectation is the goal. All team members should feel comfortable not only receiving feedback, but asking for it as well.

Set Shared Goals

As the arts landscape rapidly evolves, it is important to have full team alignment and understanding of the top priorities at your organization. The Objectives & Key Results (OKR) structure, used widely in the technology sector, is a way to ensure that each team member is working towards goals that advance your mission.

Google’s OKR guidebook recommends setting 3-5 objectives, which should be “tangible, objective, and unambiguous terms” that set ambitious goals for your organization. Make sure these are clearly communicated to all staff members, so that everyone understands the higher order priorities you are collaborating to achieve.

From your objectives, you can create your key results -- the indicators that you are succeeding towards your goals. Reflektive offers a recommendation of adhering to SMART guidelines when crafting a key result:

• Specific: is the result easy to define?

• Measurable: can we track metrics for this result?

• Actionable: is this result realistic for us to achieve?

• Relevant: does this result clearly contribute to our objective?

• Timebound: can we establish a deadline for this result?

OKRs can also be a useful structure on an individual level for setting your own growth and development goals in your work.

Build Structure That Allows For Flexibility

During this time of constant change, it is important for arts organizations to structure responsibilities in a way that maintains accountability and progress while allowing for adaptability. McKinsey provides a helpful outline of the main areas of operations where Agile work can help balance the “tension between stability and flexibility”:

Structure: Agile gives employees two “homes” for different elements of their work, which allows for flexibility and collaboration. Their primary function is their main department (e.g., marketing, development), where they receive most of their coaching and training. Then, they belong to cross-functional teams on a project basis, which determines day-to-day tasks.

Governance: segmenting decision-making allows for higher speed and clear accountability when making strategic choices by avoiding sign-off bottlenecks. There are three types of decisions in Agile:

• Type I: big decisions where the stakes are high

• Type II: frequent decisions that require cross-unit dialogue and collaboration

• Type III: decisions that should be parsed into smaller ones and delegated as far down as possible, often to people with clear accountability

Process: having a common language across departments ensures that all team members involved in a project are operating with a clear, codified set of operational norms and knowledge of what organizational success looks like.

Check In Frequently & Intentionally

Part of making an Agile work methodology successful is having clear touchpoints for measuring progress -- and resetting when needed. The Scrum process is typically associated with the technology sector, but it is actually a framework that can apply across all types of organizations, including those in the arts. At its core, it creates a system of frequent check-ins and transparent assignment of responsibilities that can help teams to keep moving forward on important projects.

Three elements of Scrum can be particularly useful in an arts context:

1. Daily Standups: dedicating time at the start and end of each day to review priorities and progress keeps the full team aligned and avoids siloes that can lead to duplication of efforts or missed opportunities for collaboration between departments. These meetings can be held live, or even over a collaborative chat or document.

2. Retrospectives: taking time at the end of each week to conduct a mini “post-mortem” of the week’s activities allows for frequent opportunities for feedback and acknowledgment of the accomplishments the team has achieved. Your organization can adjust the frequency as needed across seasons.

3. Kanban Board: this is simply a place to keep track of what everyone has on their plate. It can be physical or digital, but should be visible to all team members. Key takeaway for arts organizations: make all team-member responsibilities clear and public.