Finding Time
2023/24 Clore Fellow Kate Mackonochie thinks about time and its impact on her leadership.
If I could choose a super power, I would request super speed.
There is never enough time. When I started this provocation paper, I was in a different world. I was in a different job, there was a different Government, the season was cooler. This is testament to how long it has taken me to find the time to put metaphorical pen to paper.
There is never enough time. I race from hauling everyone up and out of the house to the school drop (accompanied by anxious sobbing at the gates from one child). I race to the car, ticking off the things I need to remember – I haven’t paid for after school club, I need to do the online food shop, I must to call that parent about a play date on Sunday… I get in the car and drive to work. I start to think about the things I need to do, the reading I didn’t manage ahead of the meeting today, the problem I have in this team, the recruitment I need to push forward. My phone lights up with messages. I haven’t gotten back to that friend. My parents want to know what time the boys will be arriving.
There is never enough time. If I could just speed to work, I would gain a valuable 20 minutes where I could reply to those messages. If I could speed the boys to school, I might find the time to pay for the afterschool club that I need to book in order to accommodate a commute home. If I could speed through the commute, I might not need the club. If I could speed through bedtime, I would go to the doctors to sort my back out so I could exercise. I would exercise, if I could just find the time.
Eve Rodsky, in her book Fair Play, says: “We expect women to work like they don’t have children and raise children as if they don’t work.” Yet, sometimes I feel very alone in this problem. I am pretty sure I am the last person to hand in my provocation paper from the Clore fellowship, despite others also being working parents, juggling careers and family. I have a partner who carries a chunk of the load, too. I am objectively privileged – able bodied, able to pay for afterschool club, with parents who are willing to help and work that is relatively flexible. And if, with all this privilege, I am still finding it hard, then how the hell are those with fewer resources keeping afloat? What super hero powers are being deployed in order to keep the work going?
In Caitlin Moran’s 2020 book More Than A Woman, she splits the book into hours, as this is how she suggests women’s lives in mid life are split. I think of this often – as I have my head in the dishwasher refilling the salt, whilst cooking my children dinner, and trying to read an email before I shut the computer to start bedtime. All the time worrying about ultra processed foods and whether I will ever have time to see my friends. And God knows if I will ever make it to the theatre again.
As a leader, I want to solve this riddle. I want to make it better for those I lead and make real change in the sector. If only I had the time.
A few weeks ago I found myself in an uncomfortable position: I joined a call put together by Clore and Arts Council England, to “share, explore, navigate and co-curate solutions for contemporary leadership challenges in the cultural sector”. As someone with first-hand experience of the challenges we are facing, I carved out some time to meet other people who were facing similar problems to see if there might be any possible solutions out there.
During a breakout group, I made a comment to the group about free labour. The comment was meant without judgement – a simple statement of fact. While I was a junior member of staff, growing my career through the arts sector, I had been asked (and had given) my time for free – be that in voluntary roles outside my paid work or hours worked outside the 37 I was contracted for, in order to complete tasks, build up my experience and develop relationships. This had been a common experience of my peers. Someone told me recently that they thought the largest contributor to the cultural sector, has historically been its people – those who worked above their hours or for lower salaries than they would have accepted elsewhere (or in some cases, for free).
Now I am in a position of leading teams, it was (and is) very obvious to me that this free labour is not being given as willingly or as freely. While some on the call nodded their heads, the virtual microphone was handed over to someone who immediately told me that it was my responsibility to not work above my hours and that I had a great responsibility to show this strict approach to balancing my work to younger colleagues. I don’t disagree. The breakout room closed before I could reply and I was left wishing that I had been able to join one of the in-person sessions, where the conversation could have continued.
I thought no more of it until a bit later when someone reached out to me on Linkedin to let me know that they were sorry about the remarks made about me in the chat function. I hadn’t followed the chat function so asked for clarity from Clore, who shared it with me. I was accused of being snide. It gave me pause for thought. Had I been asked for my deeper thoughts and opinion on the matter, it would have said this:
I need more time. The ability to give your labour freely comes with huge privilege. It is about having the resources to spare – be they financial, physical, mental or emotional. Expecting our workforce to be able to work for free reduces access to the arts. It risks a homogenisation of our workforce, and a reduction in diversity of lived experience and ideas. It is absolutely right that business models should not be predicated on free labour. And I believe we have a huge amount to learn from those who are finally taking a stand. To be quite honest, as someone who needs time, I am both envious and impressed by the boundary setting of the next generation.
So where does this leave us? The more interesting question for me as a leader in the sector is: when business models have been built on this free labour for decades, how do we break the model and find new ways forward? There is no more money. How do we balance the books? Who has some ideas they want to kick around together? How do we find the time to solve this whilst continuing with productivity? How do we find the time?
Because it has taken me so long to write this provocation, the new Government has started sharing some of its policy changes, including discussions abound about flexible working and four-day weeks. A recent six-month trial of the four-day working week found that it provided a 71% reduction in burnout, productivity increased and the number of sick days reduced by two-thirds.i Can we do more in less time? Plotting this out through the sector, how does this work if your outputs are time based? You cannot reduce the hours an actor is performing if the play is 3 hours. You cannot offer the four-day week to a security guard who is required to be in the building while the audience is present every evening for the 3 hours of the show. So is the flexibility of time only for the privileged office worker?
The Big Freelancer Report 2024 found that almost a fifth of respondents reported working 50 or more hours a week.ii Half of our workforce is freelance. By any stretch of the imagination and all the creativity the sector can muster, this is not a sustainable model.
Is it over productivity? We are increasingly expected to do more with less. The budgets are the same but the costs are higher. Only the truly creative are able to make the figures stack up and if that is where all the creativity is going, where is there the time to make the art? So perhaps it isn’t over productivity but our own created scarcity model. We must do more with less.
At a recent UK theatre conference, the keynote speak Lewis Iwu suggested that theatre is well placed to define the country’s narrative as we enter a new era. We are the creative thinkers, the story tellers, the innovators and the problem solvers. We are brilliantly positioned to be at the vanguard of the world of work – finding solutions to flexibility and the much lauded idea of a work life balance, a true challenge in an industry that creates work for people to enjoy at leisure.
The provocation isn’t coming from me – it is being brought to us by the workforce, by the Government, by the next generation, by the leaders who are racing from place to place, wishing they had super hero speed to find some more time.
So here is the thing: if I had the time, I would love a chat about all of this. If anyone else had the time. There is such opportunity for us to find innovative ways forward for the sector. We are the creative industries and this is an opportunity to find creative solutions to the challenge of the world of work. For the first time in history, there are five generations in the workplace. A plurality of views can pitch together to find answers – to use the friction of generational divides rubbing up against each other to solve the challenges we are facing. So I no longer need to look on with admiration and a smattering of jealousy at the boundary setting, but I can ask the “how?” How do we do this? How do we solve the knotty problem of balancing all we need to do in the time we have without needing super hero powers? How do we continue to deliver with less? How can we plot a future that allows our workforce across every contract type to stop the super heroism required as we chase time? I know that together we can find the solutions. Does anyone have the time for a conversation?
