Northrop, University of Minnesota

The Client

Northrop is a performing arts center based in the heart of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. It opened in 1929 and presents an annual season of music, dance, and film; copresents lectures, panel discussions, exhibits, and other events; and is a campus and community gathering place. Additionally, , it provides ticketing services to a wide array of organizations on all five UMN campuses state-wide, and hosts numerous academic and entertainment rental events. Northrop’s mission states: “Rooted in the belief that the arts are essential to the human experience, Northrop is committed to cultivating intersections between performing arts and education for the benefit of all participants now and for generations to come.”

The Need

In early 2022, Northrop was made aware that its long-time Director of Ticketing would be retiring that Summer. Having recently completed a strategic plan, Northrop’s leadership team, including the outgoing Director of Ticketing, saw an opportunity to restructure the organization to unify patron experience, improve communication, deepen collaboration across teams, and create workflow efficiencies. The Northrop team of Directors engaged TOCG as thought partners to help them solidify their change management plan, including structural changes and staff communications, and work through the various stages of this plan with the internal team. The project was led by Tom O’Connor, LMSW and Dr. Edie Demas.

The Process

Tom and Edie held a series of work sessions with the Northrop leadership team aimed at articulating their change story (the “why”), planning out various project phases, and crafting a multi-segment communications plan for the staff and ticketing clients. TOCG also facilitated focus group-style listening sessions with members of the Northrop staff to understand the team’s questions and concerns as they approached a restructure, so that the communications and roll-out plans could be responsive to staff needs. Once the structural change was implemented, TOCG facilitated a staff values workshop to help foster successful collaboration across the new departments and introduced a new way of incorporating values into individual performance evaluations.

The Outcome

At the conclusion of this work, the following structural changes were in place:

• The Education function previously housed within the Marketing and Communications team was moved into Programming, which was retitled Artistic and Community Programs.

• The Box Office/Ticketing and Event Configuration teams previously housed in Ticketing were merged with the Marketing and Communications team to create one team retitled Business Development and Customer Support.

• The Accounting team previously housed in Ticketing was moved into the Administration team, overseen by Northrop’s Executive Director.

Structural changes bring a number of challenges, as they are by definition disrupting team members’ current workflows and daily working and reporting relationships, particularly with long-tenured employees. Through this deliberate, iterative, and staff-centered process, Northrop was able to streamline communication, increase staff input, and ensure that any resulting challenges or needed clarifications could be addressed swiftly. Northrop is now operating in this new structure, and well on their way to unifying operations to best serve its customers and community.

Kari Schloner, Executive Director of Northrop, had this to say about the process:

“Northrop had the great pleasure of working with Tom O’Connor Consulting Group as we undertook a significant organizational restructuring. Their breadth of knowledge related to effective systems and structures and how to go about making realignments, specifically in the arts field, made them invaluable thought partners. I was especially grateful for the ways they helped us center people in the process and remain in step with our values. Tom and Edie gave us the tools we needed to implement change and build our capacity to make it successful and sustainable.”

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