How organizations are like art projects

First published on LinkedIn, August 26, 2024

As a professional in building organizational structure, operations, and effective mission-driven workplaces who also happens to be an artist, I think a lot about why I am drawn to these two seemingly disparate fields. How are nonprofits, philanthropy, and workplaces similar to art pieces? Why does analyzing, streamlining, organizing, and optimizing an organization feel so much like drawing, sculpting, or painting to me?

Organization-building is like building anything else: you start with a "container," a vision, and an end goal.

The concept of a container, for an artist, is simply the set of constraints that you choose (or that have chosen you) to work within. This could be a canvas of a particular size and shape; a space in which you plan to erect a sculpture; the average length of a song or a play.

An organization is a container, in the sense that it has a reasonably pre-defined structure: a group of people working together to achieve or create something.

This can be further defined by the type of organization (nonprofit? business? government office?), which is determined by the general goal or mission such as producing a product, solving a problem, or providing a service. This then starts to give shape to the prospective size of the organization in number of staff members, constituents or clients, buildings and equipment needed... which in turn starts to paint a financial picture of the necessary (and ideal) budget, leading to fundraising and financing options, financial planning, and managing financial risk and potential.

At this point, as an artist, your drawing is starting to take shape (or your installation, sculpture, book, etc.). You have determined the container you are working with - the medium, size, scope. You have an idea of the general timeframe it might take to complete this project. You know what resources you already have, and what you will need. You have a sense of a budget, know how you will go about the work, and if you will need or want assistance.

These are all logistics, which my organizational brain happily nerds out on. Just as important, if not more so, is the vision - whether you are an artist or business person, philanthropist or nonprofit leader, at this point you certainly have big dreams about what is possible. What will this become? What will it look like? How will you know you've achieved your goal(s)?

As an artist, we often hold the end goal completely invisible to the rest of the world, or make sketches and models of what we dream the end result will be. Organizations draft their mission, mission, vision, and brand or identity.

Then, we get down to work.

In organizational development, the real fun begins: we get to develop programs, departments, staffing plans, job descriptions. We recruit boards, and build websites. Internally, there are organizational charts, workflow charts, spreadsheets and checklists, calendars and project management tools; feedback, analysis, research, and iterative process improvements that the public will never see, but are just as important as the armature (internal skeleton or frame) below the layers of materials that get built up into a sculpture.

The art pieces is building up, layer upon layer. Lines get added, sometimes swiftly and boldly, sometimes lightly and dreamily, then erased, moved, changed. We need to take breaks, step back, consider the big picture - yet each minute detail also matters. There is always forward momentum, however stagnant it feels, because each new mark, layer, or draft builds upon what came before.

A work of art is often thought of as a static object, but is in fact alive, grown out of a process as organic yet organized as any group of people working together to achieve anything. This is why I love art, and organizations: they can be shaped, sculpted, created, and changed, but they are never truly in our control. They are like living things: we hold them lightly, and tend to them with attention and care, and wish for them to have an effect on the world that we may not even live to see. Yet we keep showing up and creating/re-creating them, because we are human. ■