Faithful readers will recall that last time out, I castigated the Nameless Coffeehouse for booking me for a gig that they never told me about. I’m pleased to report that I did, ultimately, get an apology from someone at the Nameless – not due to my deathless journalism, alas, but thanks to a musical colleague who was kind enough to provide me with an alternate email address for someone in a position to say something. It turns out that the Nameless is facing some organizational challenges – and it got me thinking about the fragile nature of organizations in general.
Many, many years ago, when I first started working, one of my coworkers was an older man I’ll call Baba Blacksheep. Baba was a nice man, well intentioned, but utterly baffled by a couple of skills that they don’t teach in school, but are crucial to success in my line of work. Back when I was in high school, I remember reading the business pages and noticing that some companies succeed and others fail, and I had no idea why – until I met Baba Blacksheep, and watched him fail. Baba left before the organization suffered too much for his shortcomings, but between him and some other folks I watched, I learned some invaluable lessons about what makes organizations tick.
The dirty little secret about organizations is that they’re made up of people. You can have all the stationery and mission statements you want, but at the end of the day, people choose people to do things, and it’s those things that get done that are the measure of the organization. If Sarah is surly and uncooperative, or Dennis is flighty and unreliable, or Pat spends too much time watching videos of kittens on YouTube, it’s going to show. And, heaven help you, if Sarah or Dennis or Pat perpetuate their failings in the people they hire, you can end up with an organization that truly, truly sucks.
The folk world is no different. Club Passim almost failed because its owners loved music but couldn’t make the business work, and would be dead today if it weren’t for a remarkably energetic and forward-thinking group of committed volunteers who changed the tone of the club almost overnight; when I first started playing, there was virtually zero interest at the club in giving gigs to newcomers, and I think a good argument can be made that changing that policy was the single biggest reason the Club is thriving today to the extent that it is. People changed it. I know of one local impresario – and I think a number of you will know who I’m talking about – who was forced out of the organization he himself founded, because there were lessons about dealing with the local community that he had yet to learn; and the lovely thing is, he learned them, and his new organization is the better for it.
Good people inspire good people. They make an organization welcoming, which is crucial if you’re not paying anyone; they make it fun to be around; they convey a sense of purpose and excitement and mission. They build a healthy community (a word that’s horridly overused in the folk world, but it’s exactly what I mean). But being this sort of good person isn’t just a matter of being friendly and supportive. It means being organized, and focused, and sometimes pretty ruthless; some of my favorite folk entrepreneurs have been absolutely clear to me that I shouldn’t ask them for gigs unless I can put “asses in seats”, and I can’t, so I don’t, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am that there are people who take the business side seriously.
So I don’t envy the Nameless their current organizational challenges. They may have some very difficult choices ahead of them, choices which may determine the very existence of the organization. They may have to make some fundamental changes in the way they do business, or they way the organization is governed, or the way they handle organization succession and continuity. And these things all come down to: do you have the right people, and do those people choose the right people?
It’s not glamorous – there’s no applause after a successful fundraiser, no standing ovation when you balance your budget, no flowers on the stage when a new volunteer tells you they had a blast. But without it, we’re all busking on the street.