real life case scenario, and the application of class’ material

Hi all,

I want to share something that is related to what we are seeing in class this semester. I recently got admitted into a program called Lincoln Center Student Advisory Council. The program is composed of about 15 graduate students—although we have 2 undergrads amongst us—most of us are in our twenties and are pursuing advanced degrees.

As you may imagine, Lincoln Center is a well-known cultural institution. It has thousands of performing art events throughout the year, events in all forms such as dance, theater, opera, music concerts etc. Unfortunately, for the past decade or so, Lincoln Center has been losing its appeal towards younger generations—college students and young professionals etc. Unlike people of my generation, older generations have been able to develop a better appreciation for these arts. For this reason, Lincoln Center has brought this group of students together to brainstorm ideas and design strategies on how to attract younger people.

Please keep reading, there is a purpose of why I am sharing this.

Recently, we received a survey in regards to the structure of our council. This question really made me think of our class indeed! We have been learning about organizations’ structure, team dynamics, leadership etc. The options were:

Collective (1 vote per person on every major issue)

Committees (Everyone signs up and advances their mini-group’s work)

Hierarchical (Select chair and tell me what to do)

Other

Now let me describe the scenario in which this council will operate. As far as we know, the environment will be unpredictable and fast as students in NYC, like everybody else, are usually rushed, busy; they usually have some sort of responsibilities and so on. For this reason, I picked Committees because in an unpredictable and fast changing environment, different committees will focus on different responsibilities of the marketing process–in this case Adhocracy comes to mind. I argue, these committees have to be autonomous enough. This autonomy will create creativity and allow the flexibility necessary to deal with unpredictable cases while ensuring communication among us. Committees should not be too autonomous because too much decentralization may trigger extreme division among committees. A proper decentralization should avoid some sort of machine bureaucracy and centralization in the vertical sense. Hierarchical will create a fixed, top-down approach and will lead to the same questions and answers in a changing scenario–not suitable.  I did not advocate for collective because we are a team of 15 folks. According to the article by the title of “Why teams fail,” Prof. Hackman from Harvard University said that “as team gets bigger, the number of links that need to be managed among members goes up… It’s managing the links between members that gets teams into trouble.” I understand that as the team gets bigger, there is more opinions on the table and can create confusion. But honestly, I do not understand what “link” mean in this context, somebody?

Do you agree or disagree with me? Please share your opinions.

This case reminds me a lot of the Preventing Pollution in Massachusetts: The Blackstone Project and the type of structures explained by Mintzberg, by the way!

In essence, the mission is to reach out students who don’t know what Lincoln Center offers or have a misconception of it. In other words, educate them and attract them. Our next challenge is how we will design our group structure. I’ve shared this with you because I was told I should as it is actually very relevant to class. I would like to know what you have to say based on what we have read in class. Any suggestions or disagreements are welcomed! I look forward for some candid and insightful discussions. 🙂

Thanks everybody,

Andres