But are you having any fun?
I've worked in arts and entertainment my entire career, and I've experienced firsthand how leadership can mistake personal fulfillment for fair compensation. It is not. Non-profit staff work the same hours, manage the same complexity and use the same tools as their corporate counterparts. The mission is meaningful. The mission is not a paycheck.
That distinction matters more than ever when we start talking about efficiency, because we are all subject to Parkinson's Principle: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Making your team more efficient won't mean everyone goes home at lunchtime. It means Artistic adds another production. Development lands a grant with a whole new set of programs to deliver. Marketing takes on a digital campaign that didn't exist last year. The hours stay full. They just fill up with different things.
So when we talk about the value of new strategies or new technology, efficiency can't be the only metric. If we get faster but the work itself becomes more grinding, we haven't solved a problem. We've just moved it.
A confession
I've been envisioning information and creating visual representations of processes in PowerPoint since the 1900's. I use Canva now. It doesn't save time. It doesn't offer meaningfully more features for what I do. It took me a while to learn. I spend more time on presentations now, not less.
But I enjoy it so much more. The end product is better.
Enjoyment turned out to be a functional requirement.
Why this matters for process work
When organizations move from ad hoc to optimized, the temptation is to measure the journey only in time saved or errors reduced. Those things matter. But there is a stage in every process improvement where the people doing the work decide whether the new way is worth keeping or whether they quietly slide back into the workarounds they built for themselves.
That decision is rarely about efficiency. It's about whether the new system feels like it was built for them or done to them. Whether anyone asked what they actually liked about the old way before replacing it. Whether using the new tool produces some version of that small Canva-shaped satisfaction, or whether it just feels like one more thing to learn.
Working with arts organizations, I take stock of what's actually happening, figure out what genuinely needs improving and build a plan to make it better while preserving fun: the Mary Poppins of Process, without the songs and magic.
If you're planning a digital optimization or a new strategic initiative, please remember that having fun is really important. If you don't know how to make digital optimization both effective and fun, Anne Choe Enterprises is just an umbrella ride away.