Institute of Contemporary Arts

Tricks of the Trade

Date: 3 April 2007

One of the more useful skills you learn when you work in the corporate world for any period of time is how to make a little go a long way. I'm not talking about stretching physical or material resources, but intellectual ones. Indeed, some have made built very successful careers on relatively modest intellectual capital - and I say good for them. In a highly competitive and testosterone-fuelled jungle such as the City, the laws of survival dictate that you must pretend to know more and better than everyone else, and you cannot admit to any chinks in your professional armour - that's for weaklings. Talk the talk, walk the walk, and all that nonsense. Just don't let anyone think you don't know what you're talking about.

After working in the City for 20 years, I am ready to confess that I often felt I never really knew as much as I should, or never possessed the level of expertise that people seemed to expect of me. I lived in the fear that one day I would receive a call from the internal military police telling me that they had finally latched on to this, and that I was about to be exposed in front of my colleagues as a fraud. But the dreaded call never came, and I managed to carve out a decent career in the City without being exposed to such ridicule. Perhaps you just develop the skills without ever becoming aware of it. Ludicrously, the job often required me to become an expert on a wide range of subjects in the space of only a few weeks - today I have to know all about the food retailing business in Turkey, tomorrow I have to become an expert on the pharmaceutical market in Chile. Of course, no one can actually develop such expertise in so short a time frame, so all you can do is learn how to equip yourself with a reliable arsenal of mental weapons you can deploy in a variety of contexts.

Armed with these mental tools-of-the-trade and a lot of chutzpah, you make your way. But that fear of being exposed is always there. Maybe it's healthy. But when I decided to apply for the role of Managing Director of the ICA, I felt decidedly vulnerable. What did I know about "the Arts"? Could someone who did not have a background in "the Arts" seriously pretend to manage one of the country's most famous cultural institutions? Was I out of my mind? As excited as I was about the opportunity, these worries brought me close to rescinding my application to the ICA and crawling back to my steel and glass office and to my Excel spreadsheets. But, emboldened by my family's support, I decided to press ahead with my application. The interview duly came, and so did the feared question - ever so politely put, but the gist was clear: "do you really think you can handle this job?"

I can't even remember what I answered at the time - I hope it wasn't too awful. I remember that, in true investment banker style, I tried to turn a possible weakness into a strength: I might not have an Arts background, but I'm keen to learn and I can bring that hunger to the job. Now, after nearly 18 months in the role, I hope I can answer it a little more confidently and completely. I think there are three main reasons why, even if I am an "Arts virgin", I think I can handle the job.

Firstly, my new employers took an important and bold decision in splitting the previously single role of ICA Director in two: an Artistic Director and a Managing Director. This decision reflected the ambitions for growth the ICA Council has for the institution, and the recognition that managing that growth would require a wide range of skills, possibly more easily found in two people. There was some element of risk in such a decision: the success of the strategy requires the two individuals to work together towards a common purpose. If that doesn't happen, if issues of professional territoriality arise, or if "turf wars" occur, the strategy is doomed. Luckily, this has not been an issue for me and my colleague Ekow Eshun - I hope Ekow would agree with me. I would like to think that we have developed an excellent working relationship, one in which we both understand and respect each other's areas of expertise. While we are keen to be aware of, and involved in, what the other is doing, we know where the final decision-making authority lies. Finding that kind of meeting of minds is rare in any line of work.

Secondly, I have bright, depressingly young people around me. Despite their youth, they understand the work, and they understand the ICA, and that has been very helpful for a new boy like me. But more than that, I have people around me who are committed to what they do, and to the ICA. It's hard not be energised by this. Coming from a world where most people do the job only because of the money, it is incredibly refreshing to find myself in an environment where people do it despite the money. It also means that, in a far greater way than I have ever experienced, the staff are clearly stakeholders in the institution, stakeholders whose views and concerns need to be taken into account. They believe in the values of the ICA, and are keen to see those values are upheld. They can be highly critical of any attempt which may, in their view, compromise those values. I believe this attitude is a beneficial and healthy one for management - it certainly keeps us on our toes, and it provides us with an important sounding board for our ideas. It also means that we must work hard in ensuring there is efficient internal communication (a challenge for many organisations), so that our ideas and plans are being fully and properly understood by all. If we cannot explain these to our own staff, how can we explain them to the outside world?

Thirdly, there is a job to be done here, and that job does involve understanding the commercial realities an institution such as the ICA faces in the 21st century. In my conversations both inside and outside the ICA, I can sense people's concern that we may dumb down/sell out for the sake of bums on seats (or in the gallery), or that there is a hidden agenda to turn the ICA into a sponsorship department store, with famous brand names swallowing up our own identity. For the ICA, this is an especially emotive topic: one of the institution's strongest assets, developed over several decades, is its highly independent and free-spirited nature. Some might argue that, had it been willing to compromise just a tiny bit in this area, our balance sheet would have benefited enormously. But this short-termism would, I believe, ultimately ruin the ICA. This independence, the ability to look to the future without bias, to seek out the next big thing without preconceptions, to take risks - this is what the ICA is about: take this away and it risks becoming another gallery/art space on the crowded London scene. This may mean we have to work a little harder to make a commercial living, but so be it. We need to introduce a financial backbone to the institution, but we have to do so without damaging the integrity which has been built up over 60 years. That is the real challenge that I and my management colleagues face.

This may all sound rather serious - and it is. We've set ourselves some challenging targets. Achieving these will require a lot of effort and, as ever, some good fortune. But there is a fantastic opportunity for us to grow the ICA, to extend its ambition and its reach. And, best of all, working here is fun - and it's been a very long time since I've been able to say that.