Part 4 in my Nashville Symphony series:
One thing I hear people say about opera, symphonies, or other art forms is “If they just heard it, they’d love it. We need to get more people in the room.”
This is unquestioned.
It is obviously true.
Right?
No.
The most important lesson anyone in business can learn is “You are not the customer.”
You are too close to the product. You are too invested in the business. You know too much.
So you can’t see the situation without your bias.
This is happening in Nashville.
Just look at the language:
“…we just need to get them to understand classical music is cool.”
“…we show that curiosity when it comes to things that are old but still valuable.”
Once the crisis hit a real challenge was stated: post-pandemic decline was labeled “a major driving factor.”
All three of these are rooted in the language of “educating” the audience instead of attracting them by focusing on what drives audience behavior.
The assumption is that the audience is the problem. Not the organization.
This can feel right from the inside when you love the product and the organization.
But you have to get the voice of the market into the building before they ever buy a ticket.
Marketing teaches you about competing internal business focuses.
Sales orientation says that any sale is a good sale.
Advertising orientation tells you that you can promote your way out of things.
Product orientation wants you to believe that all you need to do is get your product in front of the customer.
This one is especially dangerous because you feel so close to the product.
But the best organizations are market oriented.
This means they bring the customer’s voice into the organization.
When you start with the customer’s voice, they tell you what they value, what will make them buy, and why you aren’t on their radar.
All you need to do is ask.
Too often, the challenge starts with too much certainty.
An executive says, “I know what people want…”
A board member says, “My gut tells me…”
A marketing member says, “Look alike audience…”
No strategy. No true curiosity.
Just assumptions and a playbook.
The lack of direction creates the environment where an organization can jump from crisis to crisis.
It goes something like this. Your organization doesn’t have a clear strategy, so every new idea is a “good idea.”
You try things…probably lots of things.
When nothing sticks for long…crisis.
The playbook comes out: restructuring, program cuts, job losses.
The crisis moment resolves…because some miracle arrives.
But nothing truly changes.
The cycle repeats.
And the only way out is by asking the questions that your systems don’t reward.
If you aren’t careful, the crisis becomes the reason not to be curious.
“We don’t have time to be curious now” becomes your marching orders.
But the crisis happens because you stopped being curious about your audience, the people you exist to reach and serve.
In Nashville, a post-pandemic decline in audiences became the explanation for the crisis.
When you’ve had three existential challenges in just more than a decade…maybe there is something else at work.
For many organizations, it comes down to a lack of curiosity.
The value is assumed. The challenge is “education.”
The issue is that value was never tested. The audience left.
Why? Because no one asked.
The crisis followed.
Many people are going to flinch at the ideas above because they feel like they have “the data.”
You may have “data.”
But data is reactive. Data is perfect because it happened in the past. Data tells you what happened because it looks backward.
It is a scorecard.
Research is proactive.
Research helps you understand why something happened. Research allows you the opportunity to begin a conversation with the people you serve. Research helps you look to the future.
The post-pandemic audience decline as a “major driving factor” is a declaration without context.
COVID protocol surveys are great but have a short shelf life. And don’t reflect people’s behaviors after the crisis passed.
“Adjusting” to the “post-pandemic reality” is great, but you can’t do it in a vacuum.
Roger L. Martin uses Aristotle to make a point on research vs. data.
Roger says that data analysis is useful if we are certain the future will look like the past.
In physics, sure. Hard sciences, sure. Analyze all the data you want. It works.
In the arts, theatre, it doesn’t, because the world changes.
The audience of 2030 isn’t just an extension of the audience from 2026. The future audience will be different than the 2026 audience.
Solving this challenge requires imagination. Choices. Asking questions that the data may not be able to answer.
Data tells you the audience left.
Research tells you why the audience picked Netflix instead.
…and strategy can tell you how to change your actions to create the future you desire.
I get it.
This series started because the symphony had to cancel its season and was rescued by a $10M gift.
So a lot of folks are going to default to thinking this is all about a revenue problem.
The symphony’s problem isn’t revenue. The symphony doesn’t have a data problem. It has a curiosity problem.
That doesn’t signal malice. It doesn’t signal incompetence.
Being curious comes down to one thing: realizing you aren’t the customer.
Recognize that, and you can’t help but do research.
Because you’ll know you don’t have the answers.
But…I get it.
Recognizing that can feel difficult because people come to you for answers, ideas, solutions.
It feels like if we don’t have “genius” on demand, we are failures.
So we guess instead of asking.
Curiosity doesn’t die when the audience leaves.
It dies earlier.
Someone asks a question. A real question like:
“Why are we doing this?”
“Who is this really for?”
“Why did the audience leave?”
And the answer comes back: “They just don’t understand.”
You may not say it directly…but there it is.
It is a flinch.
It stops curiosity in its tracks. It ends the conversation right there. It is a shield for the assumption.
Because the person asking doesn’t know what you know.
Everyone in the organization says it at some point.
To an executive. To a colleague. To a customer.
To the staff person who raised the question to begin with.
…to a consultant.
The sentence isn’t about the audience. It is about something else entirely.
No matter where it is directed, this sentence shuts down curiosity.
Not with a decision, but a dismissal.
Once the question is dismissed, the playbook takes over. The assumptions go untested.
The crisis arrives.
And the person who said, “they just don’t understand,” looks around and says it once again.
My challenge to you. Before you dismiss the next question, ask yourself a different one.
Who is this symphony for?
What is this performance for?
Not “everyone.” Never.
Not “community.” No.
Name one specific person.
Why does this person pick you?
It won’t be because the art is old and valuable. It won’t be because they needed to understand your art.
No. It will be because something you offer is something they can’t get anywhere else.
If you fail to answer that question, you aren’t running an organization.
No.
You are running a playbook.
The playbook is a flinch. Busy, not effective.
The question now: are you curious enough to find the answer?