This seminar will take place from July 31 - August 5, 2008 at the Eagleton Resort outside of Chicago, Illinois. It will be under the leadership of Thomas Morris (bio), former Executive Director of The Cleveland Orchestra, and Artistic Director of the Ojai Festival. Additional faculty will include:
The seminar will focus on how great leaders combine passion, dreams, and skill to assure a compelling vision for an institution, addressing how to be not just excellent leaders within one’s own area of responsibility, but effective institutional leaders as well. Governance and artistic leadership will be explored in the context of vision, with the goal of ensuring that all are in alignment.
Each team will be asked to prepare in advance a short case, identifying one key institutional challenge facing their orchestra. Attention to these cases will be a centerpiece of the seminar’s applied work, as will a focus for developing each orchestra’s implementation plan for applying and extending the learning back home.
Meals and lodging for project participants will be fully covered for this seminar. Project participants are responsible for their own travel.
Development of Implementation Plans
Growing out of the seminar experience, each of the teams will develop an “action
plan”. This plan will lay out a key question or issue to be explored in the orchestra setting starting with the 2008-2009 season. This issue or question builds on the institutional challenge identified by the team, and impacted by the seminar experience. It will outline a series of actions to be taken in the orchestra setting in the three-year period following the seminar.
Development of tangible and measurable benchmarks of success will be a required element of these implementation plans.
Faculty Support
Each orchestra will be assigned a faculty mentor for the implementation plans and will receive [fully-funded] site visits by a member of the faculty.
The first visit will take place in August/September, 2008 – just following the seminar. This visit is designed to support and reinforce the transition from learning in the seminar to implementation back home; in keeping the momentum moving forward; in supporting the team in their strategic thinking around the implementation phase; and/or in assisting to bring the larger organization into a better understanding of the institutional challenges identified by the participating team.
The second faculty visit will take place between December 2008-June 2009. (See below for remaining visits.)
In addition, faculty will be available by phone throughout the process. Phone meetings with the orchestra team and the faculty mentor will be scheduled.
Reporting In
Each of the participating orchestras will be required to submit short mid-year and year-end reports tracking the experience of the action plan implementation. In addition, they will be in touch with the project evaluation consultant over the course of the project. The faculty mentor will also provide feedback on the [required] written reports submitted by each orchestra team.
Reconvening at National Conferences 2009, 2010, 2011
The orchestra teams will reconvene at the National Conferences in 2009, 2010, 2011. These reconvening will offer project participants the opportunity to report to the group on the progress of the individual action plans, and to work together with one another and with faculty on adjustments to these plans and learning from each other’s experiences. Project participants are responsible for their own travel and lodging, (though some additional support from the League may be possible).
While all of the orchestras will be invited to continue their work throughout the three years of the project, five of the seven orchestras will be selected for more intensive work during 2009-2010. These orchestras will receive an additional site visit and will be asked to continue their research and reporting relationship with the Institutional Vision Program.
Three of the orchestras will then be asked to continue this more intense relationship into the 2010-2011 season, and each of these orchestras will receive a further site visit.
The Institutional Vision Program is ultimately about concrete and tangible growth and change, supported and stimulated by the experience of participation in the program. The outside evaluator will track those changes over time. A willingness to respond to written questionnaires, and to participate in phone interviews and a potential site visit are expected for those orchestras chosen to participate.
(more... Applying to Institutional Vision)
Institutional Vision is made possible by a gift from Daniel R. Lewis and grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Hearst Foundation, Inc., and the Argosy Foundation.