We inherited our hierarchical form of governance from the corporate world where power is concentrated at the top and flows down through a pyramid structure from presidents to vice-presidents to department heads to general staff. Within this structure, decision-making is goal oriented and tends toward linear thinking, which means that most of the decision-making power is held by a small group of people with similar mindsets. Theatres and theatre boards are patterned after this model. For theatre boards, power flows from a chair to a vice-chair, an executive committee, other committees and subcommittees, and then the general membership of the board. Within this structure, board thinking also tends to be goal oriented and linear.
In addition to mirroring their theatre’s hierarchical structure, boards mirror its administrative structure. Theatre staff are organized around administrative functions, such as finance, marketing, fundraising, and education, and boards organize their committee structure the same way. Most board members are elected for their expertise in these areas, so membership of the board is, in large part, determined by these administrative functions. Additionally, many of the qualities looked for in board members—professional expertise, personal talents, financial resources, previous board experience—are qualities that serve these functions well. Although most theatres also have artistic and production departments, these departments are not represented on the board except by the artistic director.
Finally, one of the most elusive—and difficult—aspects of governing is how power is structured on a board and how it is used. The two most powerful roles on a board are setting the agenda and passing the budget. A board’s agenda determines which issues are considered to be important and which will be discussed and addressed. A theatre’s budget is a blueprint of the theatre’s values; it tells the story of what the theatre is choosing to do and how it plans to do it. The board members who are directly involved in setting the agenda and passing the budget hold much of the power of the board. Underneath most of the challenges facing boards today is the issue of who holds these positions of power.
Challenges to the Model
Today, theatre boards are being challenged to change both their narrow membership and their hierarchical structures of power.
The challenges to their membership are obvious and reflect the historic failure of theatre boards to develop strong relationships with the communities they represent and the artists they champion. Because boards represent only a small slice of their community and have little knowledge of the lives and needs of artists, they are now being asked to fundamentally change this by creating new relationships with both their communities and their artists.
Overshadowing these challenges, however, is the deeper challenge for boards to understand, respond to, and embrace the demands for racial and social justice that are transforming our culture and our communities. Not only do boards not represent the rich diversity of backgrounds, values, and needs of their communities, they have continued to favor the predominately white, well-off, and older members of their communities, perpetuating the inbred racism and other discriminatory practices of the larger society. Boards need to not only diversify their membership, but to become leaders of these seismic changes.
The second big challenge facing boards today is to change the hierarchical structures of decision-making and power that have evolved in our governing model. The hope is that we can transform these governing structures into shared systems of power by decentralizing and democratizing the decision-making process.
The best thing boards can do is create stronger support systems for new artist and community board members.
Toward a More Collaborative Approach to Governance
The early responses to these challenges are exciting and focus on changing the membership, the structure, and the values of governing.
Transforming the membership of our boards has a two-fold response. The first is to change who sits at the board table by bringing artists and community members directly onto our boards, making them full partners in governing and giving their concerns a place on our agendas and status in our budgets. The second is to change the sensibilities and values of board members so that they both understand and commit to practicing racial and social justice. Many theatre boards are already undertaking diversity, equity, and inclusion training and making genuine attempts to follow these practices.
Unfortunately, making these changes in the membership of our boards is proving more difficult than expected. Many boards have ingrown cultures and ways of working that are hard for new members with different backgrounds and experiences to penetrate. Often, there is an entrenched group of board members who dominate leadership positions and perpetuate traditional thinking. New board members tend to be recruited from friends of existing board members, so boards keep replicating their membership. And it is difficult to wean boards from their focus on major donors and fundraising.
In addition, the learning curve for responding to the demands for racial and social justice have been steeper than expected. It is one thing to add new, diverse members to boards, but quite another to understand the compelling history that demands this diversity and be transformed by this understanding. Without this deeper transformation, the tendency is to socialize new members into the old ways of governing rather than creating new ways. Boards, themselves, have to change if we want new members to have stature and be effective in governing.
There is also a steep learning curve for including more artists on our boards. There are so many stories of how surprised board members are when they learn how low most artists’ income is or what it is like to live on the road, going into a strange city at night and trying to find where to stay and how to get food supplies. Or how many simple artistic needs within a theatre are often not being met, such as better tools for the scene shop or better ventilation for the props shop. The needs of the artists don’t get on the agenda and are not represented at the budget table. Becoming artistically literate is a more complex challenge for boards than expected.
To address these problems, I think the best thing boards can do is create stronger support systems for new artist and community board members. There are many ways to do this. One is to create a new buddy system like the ones theatres have used in the past where new board members are paired with existing board members who help them learn about the theatre—its history, goals, and values—as well as the organization and operations of the board. But now it could be a two-way buddy system, where new members also help older members understand the different backgrounds, values, and ways of thinking the new members are bringing to the board. This is an easy way to support new board members.
Boards can also be sensitive to how committee assignments are made, so that these new board members are placed in positions where they can genuinely contribute to governing. For example, serving on the important finance or board development committees immediately places a new board member in the center of board activity. Or, more significantly, boards could establish committees for community and for artistic development. New board members would serve on these committees where they would be in a position to help define what changes are needed and to lead these changes, immediately involving them in important work while giving them status on the board.
Even more broadly, boards could establish outside community and artistic advisory boards that would augment the influence of new artist or community board members. These advisory groups could help educate boards on community and artistic issues. They could provide support for new members while becoming a prime source of recruitment. And they could extend a board’s reach deeper into these communities. Rather than just a few artists or community members being part of the board, there would be a network of people to advise and collaborate with the board.
These are just a few ideas of how we can better support new board members. But if we really want to change our boards, we have to also change the environment in which this happens.
The response to the first challenge is to change the membership of our boards; to change who sits at the board table. The response to the second challenge is to decentralize and democratize decision-making and power structures. Many theatres, such as City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh and Steppenwolf in Chicago, have started to decentralize power by creating shared leadership roles for artistic directors. Boards can follow this example, creating not only shared leadership for board chairs and committee chairs but requiring that these leadership roles rotate among traditional, community, and artist members. This starts to erode entrenched power and expand the creativity of the board. Collaboration starts to replace hierarchy.
