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Reflections on the Prep, and a Hopeful Timeline
In the second post in Generator’s ‘Charting Waters - Transitions in Arts Organizations’ blog series, board member Brendan McMurtry-Howlett reflects on the launching of a leadership hiring process and discusses the timeline that was created by the committee responsible for creating a smooth transition for Generator.
This is the second 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 shares the early work that went into organizing the leadership transition for the organization. Board member Brendan McMurtry-Howlett reflects on the launching of this process and discusses the timeline that was created by the committee responsible for creating a smooth transition for Generator.
As Annie mentioned in the first post of this series, the process of undergoing a leadership transition is a LOT of work. In this post, we’re going to set the stage for the leadership search that Generator launched in 2021, and share the timeline that was created to keep our project on track.
Through the upheaval of 2020 and into 2021, there was much planning happening at Generator. Kristina Lemieux, who had been the Lead Producer for Generator over the last 5 years, had announced her intention to move on from her role. In addition to Kristina’s departure, the remaining part-time staff had also announced their intention to move on to other career opportunities. This was going to be a full staff turnover in addition to the hiring of new leadership.
But with great foresight and sensitivity for the times we were living, Kristina, along with the rest of the staff and the board, put in place several tools, resources, and processes to ensure a smooth and healthy transition for the organization. Among those tools and resources was the establishment of the Strategic Advisors (SA), a group of professional artists connected to different communities who would help guide the transitional and transformational work of the organization through this period. We will talk more about this group on individuals in a later blog post. While the Strategic Advisors covered several areas of organizational change, they played a key role in the leadership search and transition. Another resource was engaging Angela Sun as an accessibility consultant to advise on issues of access for the organization, the hiring process, and leadership candidates. We will also be featuring a blog post on her work in the future.
With the advisory committee and accessibility consultant in place, Generator laid out the framework and timeline for the process in a shared document for all involved. A crucial aspect of the work was the execution of a robust and accessible outreach plan with participation from current staff, leadership, board and the SAs. The following are excerpts from that original timeline document. Please note that this was drafted early in the process and that the document continued to grow and change with the circumstances.
Key assumptions for the proposed timeline:
All departing staff had said that they were flexible about how they exit and wanted their exits to support knowledge transfer with a deep desire to see the next leader(s) do well and be well supported.
Outreach activities were intended to offer prospective candidates diverse perspectives on the work and impact of the organization, and therefore featured changing combinations of staff, board, and strategic advisors with emphasis on offering one-on-one conversations and information sessions that featured the experiences of equity-seeking artists connected with Generator.
The next leader(s) would likely need 6-8 weeks (at least) between job offer and start date. This is the generally accepted timeline for someone(s) with leadership experience coming into the role, assuming they would have another position they are leaving.
At the time, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) three-year operating grant and Toronto Arts Council (TAC) annual grant were due in March 2022. We wanted to give the next leader(s) as much time as possible to consider future programming before having to write these grants. Canada Council for the Arts was a mid-cycle report.
The plan included Kristina, supporting with a month of training.
How much did this plan change over the course of the hiring process?
Stay tuned to this blog series!
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.
It's Time to Talk Transition
An introduction to Generator’s ‘Charting Waters - Transitions in Arts Organizations’ blog series, which highlights our ongoing process of organizational growth and leadership transition—featuring a podcast interview with Work.Shouldn’t.Suck.
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.
