The Artful Manager


Book Description

What if we fundamentally misunderstood what it meant to run arts organizations "like a business"? What if our management metaphors actually contribute to the problems we hope they will solve? In these 50 "field notes" from his first quarter century of teaching, research, and consulting in arts and cultural management, E. Andrew Taylor reframes and reimagines the ways we think and work in the arts. "Andrew Taylor has an uncanny ability to find the small things that make a big difference and provokes his large readership to think outside their own areas of expertise. Doubtful there is anyone blogging on the arts who is more respected and beloved." Barry Hessenius




Artful Making


Book Description

The authors show how to "manage" ingenuity--and "manufacture" the next great idea, in other words they tell what managers need to know about how artists and highly creative people work.




The Project Manager


Book Description

Processes don't drive projects; people do. Successful project management is ultimately about effective communication, and more broadly, effective people management. Most books, however, deal largely with process - the mechanical, methodological side, and play down the human side. The Project Manageris a fresh approach to project management: it moves beyond the formal methodologies and techniques to shed light on the core skills that will make you a great project manager. It puts the project manager centre stage and provides you with an invaluable set of experience-based lessons, tips, and advice to help you consistently deliver the results you want. Whether you are a project manager yourself, or someone who works with or recruits project managers, this book will be essential reading. DISCOVER WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW AND DO TO BE A GREAT PROJECT MANAGER




The Art of Quiet Influence


Book Description

Anyone can be a quiet influencer. But not everyone knows how. "A tremendous and relevant read!" -Stephen M. R. Covey, New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Speed of Trust Drawing on the enduring wisdom of the Buddha, Confucius, Rumi, Gandhi and others, The Art of Quiet Influence shows anyone, not just bosses, how to use influence without authority, a key mindfulness principle, to get things done at work and in life. Through the classic wisdom of 12 Eastern sages, relevant insights from influence research, and anecdotes and advice from 25 contemporary experts, Davis lays out a path for becoming a "mainspring," the unobtrusive yet powerful influencer first introduced in her book The Greats on Leadership. Organized around three core influence practices - Invite Participation, Share Power, and Aid Progress - readers will learn how to take mindfulness practice "out of the gym and onto the field," while gaining the confidence and practical know-how to be influential in whatever role they occupy.




The Art of Community


Book Description

Online communities offer a wide range of opportunities today, whether you're supporting a cause, marketing a product or service, or developing open source software. The Art of Community will help you develop the broad range of talents you need to recruit members to your community, motivate and manage them, and help them become active participants. Author Jono Bacon offers a collection of experiences and observations from his decade-long involvement in building and managing communities, including his current position as manager for Ubuntu, arguably the largest community in open source software. You'll discover how a vibrant community can provide you with a reliable support network, a valuable source of new ideas, and a powerful marketing force. The Art of Community will help you: Develop a strategy, with specific objectives and goals, for building your community Build simple, non-bureaucratic processes to help your community perform tasks, work together, and share successes Provide tools and infrastructure that let contributors work quickly Create buzz around your community to get more people involved Track the community's work so it can be optimized and simplified Explore a capable, representative governance strategy for your community Identify and manage conflict, including dealing with divisive personalities




The Art Firm


Book Description

The Art Firm explores the seemingly unorthodox alliance of the arts, management, and marketing. Art firms—as avant-garde enterprises and arts corporations—have existed for at least two hundred years, using texts, images, and other types of art to create corporate wealth. This book investigates how to apply the methods artists use in creating value to the methods more traditional managers use in running their businesses. Guillet de Monthoux offers a crash course in aesthetics from Kant to Gadamer, showing how aesthetic management and metaphysical marketing can create value. Using case studies of successful art managers from Richard Wagner to Robert Wilson, the author illustrates the creative role—so central to value-making in contemporary economies—performed by aesthetic play in art firms. Along the way, Guillet de Monthoux points out how responsible aesthetic management and marketing can eradicate the problems of banality and totality, the two capital sins of an art-based economy.




Managing Arts Organizations


Book Description

Things have changed, to say the least. The arts field is resizing, recombining, rethinking. Gone are the days of long term subscribers and reliable audiences. Arts organizations must become more flexible, adaptive, and nimble to survive and thrive in today’s world. Arts managers must engage, adapt, and innovate. Great management invites creativity. Vibrant artistry welcomes strong management. Managing Arts Organizations can help. In Managing Arts Organizations, David Andrew Snider provides a playbook for navigating arts management in this new era and seeks to inspire a new generation of arts managers. Each chapter is focused on a specific topic, with principles, stories, exercises, advice, and best practices related to that topic. The appendix includes eight case studies, each illuminating issues in arts management via a real world scenario or organization. These narratives will enhance the reader’s understanding of topics including financial management, marketing, programming, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts, and accessibility across multiple disciplines. An instructor’s manual is available for professors who adopt the book as a required textbook.




The Art of Agile Development


Book Description

For those considering Extreme Programming, this book provides no-nonsense advice on agile planning, development, delivery, and management taken from the authors' many years of experience. While plenty of books address the what and why of agile development, very few offer the information users can apply directly.




The Art of Game Design


Book Description

Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.




The Art of Opportunity


Book Description

Innovate your way toward growth using practical, research-backed frameworks The Art of Opportunity offers a path toward new growth, providing the perspective and methods you need to make innovation happen. Written by a team of experts with both academic and industry experience—and a client roster composed of some of the world’s leading companies—this book provides you with the necessary tools to help you capture growth instead of chasing it. The visual frameworks and research-based methodology presented in The Art of Opportunity merge business design thinking and strategic innovation to help you change your growth paradigm. You’ll learn creative and practical methods for exploring growth opportunities and employ a new approach for identifying what “opportunity” looks like in the first place. Put aside the old school way of focusing on new products and new markets, to instead applying value creation to find your new opportunity, craft your offering, design your strategy and build new growth ventures. The changing business ecosystem is increasingly pushing traditional thinking out to pasture. New consumers and the new marketplace are demanding a profound adjustment to the way companies plan and execute growth strategies. This book gives you the tools to create your roadmap toward the new state of growth, and gain invaluable insight into a new way of thinking. The Art of Opportunity will help you to: Start looking at business growth from a new perspective Create value for the customers, company and ecosystem Innovate strategically and design new business models Develop a new active business design thinking approach to innovation Your company’s goal is to grow, and to turn non-customers into customers. The old ways are becoming less tenable and less cost-effective. The Art of Opportunity outlines the new growth paradigm and gives you a solid framework for putting new ideas into practice.