Last Updated
April 2, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Nina Simon, Spacemaker & CEO of OF/BY/FOR ALL. [Live show recorded: April 2, 2020.]
Guest: Nina Simon
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
NINA SIMON spend her days working on OF/BY/FOR ALL, a nonprofit she founded to make civic and cultural organizations of, by, and for everyone.
If you like to read, check out her best-selling books "The Participatory Museum" and "The Art of Relevance." Both are available for free online or you can buy them for your very own. You can also read hundreds of posts on the Museum 2.0 blog, which she authored from 2006-2019, and her recent essays on Medium.
If you are more of an audio-visual person, the two TEDx talks she gave on opening up museums and deepening relevance are linked from her website, NinaKSimon.com. as well as a short video from when she was named Santa Cruz County Woman of the Year.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck live, the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Nina Simon. Nina is Spacemaker and CEO at OF/BY/FOR ALL, a nonprofit she founded to make civic and cultural organizations of, by, and for everyone. She has authored two bestselling books, The Participatory Museum and The Art of the Relevance as well as hundreds of posts on the museum 2.0 blog and on medium. She also delivered two popular TEDx talks on opening up museums and deepening relevance. According to her Twitter bio, tree houses are also in her repertoire. Without further ado, Nina, welcome to the show.
Nina Simon:
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Lauren Ruffin:
Fantastic. We definitely need to talk about tree houses at some point. I'm about to embark on my own journey in that realm, but first, how are you? How's your community doing?
Nina Simon:
I'm doing okay. I'm here in Santa Cruz, California. I actually live in community. I live in a community of 20 folks and seven little cabins off the grid in the mountains. Yes, we are stereotypical California hippies. My family is safe. My husband works in homelessness and housing, so both of us have felt called to step up both as parents to our first grader who's now homeschooling and also to our organizations. I feel fortunate to be in this space and also to be working with a team in my work who are safe and healthy and where we've been able to ensure that everybody has their jobs, has their salaries, has additional benefits at this time.
Lauren Ruffin:
More broadly, are there recurring issues and themes that are happening in conversations with your by, for members, colleagues right now?
Nina Simon:
Absolutely. Our organization works with cultural and civic organizations around the world. Just this Wednesday, we did a call with about 75 of our members in 12 different countries. That's librarians. It's museum folks. It's theater folks. It's parks folks, and so around the world, we're hearing and around these sectors we're hearing organizations are closed. People obviously are struggling. A lot of layoffs are happening, a lot of stress and suffering, but also, a lot of creativity and resilience.
Nina Simon:
I love one person who had actually just been laid off said to me, "I'm feeling creative. I'm feeling hungry, and I'm curious about what comes next." I've just been really stunned by the optimism and hope and possibility in this time.
Lauren Ruffin:
Great. How do you typically introduce of, by, for all and the work that you'll do?
Nina Simon:
We really exist to equip organizations to live up to their greatest visions of equitable public value. I feel like a lot of organizations before this crisis, but even more so now, have said, "We want our theater to be a place that is really in communication and in community with everybody around us. We want our library to be a place that's not just a resource for some, but a resource for all." Our name really comes from the recognition that a lot of organizations have been pretty strong at working on new services, programs, marketing to be for communities, but have not necessarily gotten as strong at being representative of those diverse communities and being co-creative by them.
Nina Simon:
So really, what we do is create and share tools around building that sense of representation, that sense of co-creation, that sense of real ownership of these spaces so that they become of highest civic and creative value to their whole communities. Concretely, what we do actually is we run a digital program called The Change Network where organizations join for a minimum of a year to go through a change process moving towards closer relationship with their communities, so really learning about the communities around them, selecting communities to focus on, going out and listening and learning from folks in those communities, and then building authentic relationships to spur policy and programmatic change to make the organization more open, more relevant, more valued.
Tim Cynova:
We have early question already for you that I think probably slides right in here. I'm curious about which type, size, discipline of organizations were early adopters of your work and which are coming around in this moment?
Nina Simon:
The irony is that when we first started up by for all, I had previously been the director of a museum that I was honored to take over really right at a point of crisis when it was just a week away from closing financially. We radically reinvented it with our community. When we started up by for all, there was a conversation about should we actually be working primarily with organizations that are in crisis. Is that a catalytic moment for reinvention, and particularly if you have a crisis of relevance, is it a catalytic moment to get curious about and get to know new communities?
Nina Simon:
We decided at the time, this is two years ago, it's too hard for us to find organizations that are in crisis. What's the Google ad for like, "Are you thinking of being an organization that is about to or might have just closed?" So we didn't go that path. It's funny that now, I've been really curious about who are the organizations that are newly open to reinvention. I think there actually are some surprises of who that might be. Indirect answer to Andrew's question, from the beginning, we saw organizations that were not typical by sector, size, or type or geography.
Nina Simon:
We really saw it attitudinal in terms of who felt eager to either lead change or who felt like they were already on a journey towards equity, but wanted to double down on it. De silo it, take it across their whole institution. Now, we're getting curious about, "Are we going to see more organizations that are in that reinvention place?" Even potentially, I think it's possible that some of the most historically conservative organizations, ones that we would have seen as very far from ready or eager to do the kind of work that we do, how many of them might quickly start to change their urgency and appetite for change.
Nina Simon:
I think there's a hugely optimistic part of me about that and also a hugely cynical part of me about it. So I'm really unsure what's going to happen.
Tim Cynova:
What's your thing about leadership and crisis, the roles of leaders wherever they find themselves in organizations? What's occupying your thoughts nowadays?
Nina Simon:
Our work is so oriented towards communities, so one of the things that I've been hearing from leaders is a real curiosity and uncertainty about which communities are most important to engage with at this time. Actually, my colleague Raquel Thompson, our head of program, she offered this framework that has been really useful for me in saying there are three different kinds of communities we think about. There are the existing communities who we were engaging before the crisis. There are newly vulnerable communities because of the crisis.
Nina Simon:
Then there also are the communities that we had been moving towards before the crisis, new communities of interest, maybe communities who had been disenfranchised or marginalized in our space previously who we had started making efforts towards. One thing I'm hearing from a lot of leaders is a lot of pressure to focus almost exclusively on their existing audiences. Make sure that people know they still exist, pump out digital content. I also hear from organizational leaders who are very community minded a real desire to do more around vulnerable communities but maybe not have the relationships yet, not sure what they can do.
Nina Simon:
The group I've been most curious about is this third group because I feel like the efforts we started to make before the crisis, whether they were around equity or around connecting with a particular community, I wonder if those are going to get lost. I was just talking to a colleague in Europe who was saying there, "It's basically the law that people on staff who are most recently hired are going to be the first ones to be laid off," and so if you had just started an equity or a community engagement initiative, those are the people who you're losing even as you need to do this work more.
Nina Simon:
I think that as leaders, I guess, I think about on the community side, how can you get clear with your board about how much resource allocation you're putting to these three different communities? What choices are you making based on it? Of course, I also feel, and I feel deeply as a leader myself, you've got to take care of your team and your own crew, both in terms of ensuring people to feel safe and secure, but also that that safety and security in salary and benefits and things like that allows them permission to be part of that creative thinking about what you might do for others.
Nina Simon:
Then the last thing I'd say about leadership, and I don't think we're quite there yet, but is as we start to imagine, how do we want to reopen? I think that there's an incredible leadership challenge and opportunity for leaders to say to themselves, "Gosh, we laid off 85% of our people. Are we going to bring those exact roles back online when we can, or are we going to recharge ourselves in a new direction? Are we going to hire people with the same competencies, or are we trying to exactly bring back those individuals, or are we trying to build in the new direction?"
Nina Simon:
Frankly, I think it's very painful right now to even imagine saying that we're going to permanently let go of those people we've just hopefully temporarily let go. On the other hand, I think there is a leadership challenge and question about where we want our organizations to go with our communities in the future and who are the people who can help us go there.
Tim Cynova:
I want to ask you about OF/BY/FOR ALL. You've set it up as a 100% remote organization. This is in the DNA of the structure, and so you've already set up systems and structures to connect as a distributed team. We often talk about how the tools are the easy thing. It was a relatively easy thing, Zoom and Slack and Google docs, but the really challenging thing is what I think a lot of people are finding out now. How do you connect as team members? How do you supervise teams when you can't see people?
Tim Cynova:
The classic, "If I can't see someone, how do I know they're working?" What have you found useful in your own work to connect as team members, as community when you're distributed around the country, around the world?
Nina Simon:
We're a staff of six in four different States, in three different time zones. I guess there are two things I'd say. One is that we chose this, which is very different than if it was foisted upon you. I used to run a museum with an open office, and there was nothing I love more than walking in, there being people everywhere, there being just hub of activity. I remember being super nervous when I moved to starting OF/BY/FOR ALL of like, "Oh, am I going to miss this?" I had time to prepare myself and to think about what that might look like.
Nina Simon:
So I just want to honor that there are so many people switching to this who did not choose it, and that usually as y'all probably do as well, when you're hiring somebody for an all remote organization, one of the questions you usually ask is, "How do you feel about working remote? Do you really want to do this?" It's considered a mode of work. It's not just going home to work, so honor that this is different when you choose it. One of the things that's different in that way, I've been interested hearing some of your other guests talk about how they're doing things like virtual happy hours with staffs during this time trying to stay connected, water-cooler time.
Nina Simon:
We've actually gone the opposite direction because for us as all remote team, one of the things we've always valued so much individually is maximal flexibility and having a trust-based. One of the things that makes remote work for us is having a very trust-based approach to an expectation about it's not at all based on when are you working, but it's based on what's on your docket. How are we accountable to each other? How do we know we're getting things done? How quickly are we responsive to each other? We've never had a sense of we're all in the office together at the same time.
Nina Simon:
Actually when this crisis started, as we were each talking about what we needed, one of the things we realized is we all needed actually a lot more flexibility and permission about when we work so that people could take care of kids, take care of community, do service, other kinds of things. So the irony as I've been hearing about water cooler talks and things like that is we're actually trying to do fewer all group meetings, still being very in touch with each other, but having a lot more permission around flexibility.
Nina Simon:
I guess to me, as you said, the tools are one thing, but to me, the fundamental thing is, "Can you shift to a more permissive, flexible approach? What does over communication and accountability look like when it's not about, "I see that you're working on that thing?" I think that there is a fundamentally different way to work if you want to do it with power. Now, if you want to say, "Hey, this is a patch for now," just like, "Look, I'm homeschooling my kid. I mean, my kid is technically going to first grade," but everybody knows there's a lot of people tweeting about like, "This is not homeschooling. This is emergency remote schooling."
Nina Simon:
I think that you also have to honor, "Are we switching to remote, or are we just trying to make this work and find some accommodations for ourselves at this time?"
Tim Cynova:
We have a busy chat today. I've been trying to listen. I've been trying to read. We have a theme with questions around community. That seems like a good way to go here, so I want to highlight a couple of things. Apologies if I missed someone or it's out of queue. How do we know if we're really connecting to our communities during this time when they aren't able to come in? Any suggestions for visitor surveys, studies, feedback during this time? There's another one. How does a OF/BY/FOR ALL define community?
Tim Cynova:
There's a conversation that continues to continue on what Keith said. How can we connect with our communities existing or new when the digital world is not always the solution to access and other reasons? Thanks all for the vibrant chat and [crosstalk 00:14:22].
Nina Simon:
The community is awesome. I love it. Let me start with the definition and then we'll shift. We define community as a group of people with something shared, and that could be something demographic. It could be something that is an affinity-based community. It could be something that is a deeply felt belief that shared. I think that one of the actually challenging but also beautiful things about a time when people aren't coming in the building is especially if you run a space, it's very easy to almost exclusively attend to the people who are walking in the door and to have a belief that they are the community.
Nina Simon:
Well, they are some communities. There are probably other communities who are never walking in your door. I think, actually now's a really great time if you have the mental capacity and bandwidth to do some community mapping of who really is in our community. Do we define that as our city, our county, our neighborhood, our world? Which of these sub-communities matter most to us? Is it that we really are focused on teens in our community? Are we really focused on single moms who are starting an entrepreneurial activity?
Nina Simon:
Are we interested in creative immigrants with a cultural and creative practice? I think that getting clear and specific about which communities matter to your organization and to the work that you do, a, is always a good thing to do, and then, b, it can allow you to get focus on who you want to spend time with and what that showing up might look like at this point. You're not going to invite them into your space. They're probably not going to invite them into theirs, but there are a lot of things you can still do to connect with community at this time.
Nina Simon:
First of all, I always say the most important step is to just call people,. Just as you all in the beginning asked how I'm doing, we've been suggesting to our partners like, "Hey, are you reaching out to that refugee welcome center that you've been working with?" Just to see how they're doing. Not to necessarily say, "Here's a long list of virtual resources we have for you," but just to say, "Hey, how's it going? How are things going for you," and to connect. I think that continuing to build relationships with humans is something we can all do right now.
Nina Simon:
Then also, getting clarity, sometimes when the doors are closed is the easiest time to get clarity on, "Wait, who does come here and participate, and who doesn't?" When we reopen these doors, who do we hope will be part of that, and how might we start to build relationships so that that could be possible? If you imagine being in a situation right now... I was talking to a guy yesterday who's in the midst of building an organization in Poland. It has never opened. It doesn't exist, and so he's still at that point of asking, "Who is this going to be for? Who am I building it with, and who will feel themselves reflected in this space?"
Nina Simon:
I mean, I think that if any of us took this moment to say, "If we were going to not just reopen but reinvent, who does this organization exist to serve, and who should we be in relationship with now to figure out how we might do that together?" To this question that came up about how can we connect when the digital world is not always a solution, absolutely. I've been talking to a lot of librarians who have been working for a long time with home bound folks around delivery and things like that. I think there are some beautiful things happening that are in real space.
Nina Simon:
I've seen institutions that are partnering with artists who they were already planning to commission, keeping that commission, but having it be something that is external to their buildings, so people who are on walks see it as opposed to something internal. There's a museum we work with in the Netherlands that is commissioning artists to create and to work with people on these massively participatory comfort art projects, where people are making things and sharing them. I think even these scavenger hunting things that are happening where people are putting objects in their windows and things like that, I think that there are many different forms of what touch looks.
Nina Simon:
Even the question of if you're going for long walks right now, where are you walking, and is this an opportunity for you to walk literally into a neighborhood or a space in a safe way that may introduce you to new ways of expression, new forms of culture? How do you start to break out of some of those previous patterns and use this as a opening and an opportunity to do that?
Lauren Ruffin:
Awesome. Tim, do you want to take any more questions from the chatter?
Tim Cynova:
There are a number of comments. It's all great. Sorry everyone, I've been trying to listen to Nina and read. That's why I'm having a co-host.
Lauren Ruffin:
I spent a lot of time in virtual space, and I'm a VR aficionado, and touching on two points you made, one about staff capabilities moving forward because I think that's a real one in particular because I've been a doomsday prophet around climate change. In the United States, everything's concentrated on the coast, and so I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how do we redefine spaces? How do you [inaudible 00:19:14] digital artists into the art sector at this time in particular since it looks like this is going to be the new normal for quite a while? Even if we do come out, poke our heads out, again, I think we should probably get accustomed to a while of us going back indoors.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's a long winded way of saying, "For those organizations that are considering a more permanent digital existence, are you seeing any organizations that are really thinking long term about having to live online and having to do deep work online?
Nina Simon:
Certainly do deep work online. I think that maybe since I'm such an in-person person or rather somebody who used to run a physical space, a museum and a plaza that was built to be a gathering place, I think one thing I've been thinking about related to what you're saying is, "How are we designing to meet the moment of where people are at at any given time?" So both emotionally in terms of if we're feeling fear, where is comfort, but also if we are alone, how does engagement look different than, for example, when they relax it to a point where we can be in small groups?
Nina Simon:
I think about I'm Jewish. In Judaism, you can go to a temple with maybe dozens, hundreds, thousands of people. You can have a chavurah group, which is a small group of people getting together to share community and share Judaism. You can also pray alone and work with books or digital resources to do that. I guess that I think about, "Oh, probably if I were running a temple right now, I'd be going hard on digital, but I'd also be going hard on the chavurah there, so I assume that before people will want to come sit in the temple with everybody, as soon as social distancing lessens a little bit and people can get together in small groups, they're going to want to do that."
Nina Simon:
So what is the way that we support? I think about all the evidence in the arts around over the last decades increased creative expression outside of institutions, digital and otherwise. So how do we think about, "Yes, I'm curious how the orchestras will come back, but I'm also curious how many garage bands are going to be open? How many knitting groups, who right now are making mat, are going to be sharing material and then they're going to be getting together?" I think that this question of which spaces do we occupy with how many people at what time is going to be really interesting.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, and which spaces become legitimate spaces now that haven't been in the past? What garage bands came [inaudible 00:21:41] legitimacy? I mean, I think that's really an interesting thought. Speaking of small groups, we were in our green room earlier. We were talking about shared leadership and peacetime wartime leaders. One of them get us back into that conversation, so I thought it was pretty juicy.
Nina Simon:
Well, so there are two things with leadership I really been thinking about right now. One is I became a museum director when I was a 29-year-old exhibit designer because it was a museum that was about to close, and I think the board was like... They were at a point where they were willing to take a risk. We always used to say, "What's the worst that could happen? We can close. It almost happened." There is that part of me that's like, "Wow, how many new EDs are going to come out of this who are going to be handed keys to crippled or closed organizations with a lot of leeway in what they might do?"
Nina Simon:
I'm super curious about that, but then also to what you were saying, one of the things I think is weird during this time and maybe not, I'm very curious about your perspective on it, is to mention my title is Spacemaker and CEO. I use the word Spacemaker really to remind myself that when I'm doing my job best, I'm making space for others to do their great work. It's not about the creative output I can do, but I do notice, and we sharing power is a big value in our organization. I noticed that at times of crisis, people actually who used to really want to share power maybe just want somebody to tell them, "Hey, here's what's going on, or here's what's happening next."
Nina Simon:
So I'm so curious since you're in a team of four co-leaders, whether you've also felt that impulse in this crisis of just like, "Could somebody just take charge," or if it's felt like that is not something you want to do?
Lauren Ruffin:
No.
Nina Simon:
No, [crosstalk 00:23:24].
Tim Cynova:
We've talked about this. I can't imagine... Well, I can actually imagine because I've run organizations as the single executive director. The burden that is often placed on a leader, the isolation that often exists in the best of times, and now everyone's looking to you in this uncertain environment with the world, with humanity, with the organization and the incredible and benefit to share this with three other people who fully get what's happening, it can be there for each other and share this burden, is invaluable.
Tim Cynova:
We have different conversations but the fact that we come together as a group of four people has been incredibly comforting and a great resource that... Again, I'm glad we did this before we got to this point because we had some time to figure it out, and it was not at all what we intended we're going to use this model for, but it's been hugely beneficial.
Lauren Ruffin:
I also think that we're fortunate that at least two of us are probably better wartime CEOs anyway. [inaudible 00:24:17] and I are definitely just decisive. Tim, I would probably put you as sort of you have a foot in either camp, but I think that helps that we can flip the personality and the makeup of our leadership team internally when we need to. I think that really, really helps.
Nina Simon:
That makes sense because there are very few who are great both peace time and wartime. I've been slowly working on a new book in process about inclusive leadership. I realized when this crisis started, wow, a lot of what I was writing about feels very challenged right now, and it just made me get more curious with my own team and myself about, "Okay, what does it mean to hold equity and inclusion really at all levels including in a leadership level during a crisis, and how do we make sure that whatever core values are, they're fully expressed in what we're doing?"
Lauren Ruffin:
Well, unfortunately, we are approaching the sadness of the 30 minute mark. Nina, before we close out, do you have anything that's top of mind or anything you'd like to leave our listeners with?
Nina Simon:
We're all experiencing this differently, and there's going to be a lot of suffering. I think that if you are in a place, whether for a day or a moment, where you can find hope, where you can find joy, where you can find a little bit of space to be creative and to dream about where you want to go and what you see being possible on the other side of this, I've just found that to be a very generative healing and energizing process. So I just really offer to encourage people to journal from the future. People are talking about documenting what's going on now.
Nina Simon:
Yes, that's important, but I've been writing stories really inspired by the emergent strategy. Adrian Marie Brown [inaudible 00:26:01] about science fiction. How can you write stories about the futures you want to build out of this, because a lot of people are talking about how the normal wasn't working? We don't want to go back to that. If we want to envision that we're going to go to something different, I think we have to start dreaming about what that is, and I've found when I have the time that doing that dreaming is a gift.
Tim Cynova:
Perfect. Nina, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Nina Simon:
Thank you. It's been my total pleasure.
Tim Cynova:
Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck live adventure with us on our next episodes when we're joined by Aaron Dworkin, Javier Torres, Deborah Cullinan, Christy Bolingbroke, and Mara Walker. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work Shouldn't Suck episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice, and re-watch Work Shouldn't Suck live episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too.
Tim Cynova:
Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.
The podcast is available for free on your favorite podcasting platforms:
Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS Feed
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes to help others discover the podcast.