The Rusinga Cultural Festival is an annual two-day celebration of the culture of the Abasuba people of Kenya. The festival is held on the last Thursday and Friday before Christmas and takes place on the beautiful Rusinga Island in Homa Bay County. The festival, founded by Anne Eboso is administered through the Chula Cultural Foundation
What is your opinion on the role of organizational culture in an art based enterprise?
Culture is basically what makes a people who they are, what sets them apart in a unique way. When people say, this is how we do things around here, then you have to adapt to such a culture and decide whether it is the way you want to live your life and work with the organization.
An art based organization like the one I run has to create a culture where people enjoy life while doing what they love doing. The arts enterprises accommodate engineers, architects, researchers, lawyers, and even scientists. If you are rigid in an arts-based enterprise, you are bound to fail, because it is as dynamic as life itself.
The arts industry is broad too. Both employees or contractors and clients have to be happy for you to succeed. It is an experience. People single out Rusinga Festival because of our organizational cultural. They volunteer with us because of this experience, how you treat them, how they interact with other team members and the promise they see for the future.
In your experience as a CEO, have you ever encountered a negative organizational culture?
Probably from my experience as a consultant, I have experienced negative experiences such as salary delays, lack of transparency and mistrust, and interference in implementation. I have been in situations where employee morale hit rock bottom and others resigned because of this, and I couldn’t blame them. Such an occurrence throws your whole project into jeopardy and is mentally exhausting. Remaining team members struggle to keep their morale high and the drive disappears. But then you are there as the team leader and you have to find ways to call in small favors to not only save the project but your reputation too. By the time you are done you question whether you will ever take on another project but you still do when it comes around. As a CEO, I have learned how adverse negative organizational culture can be and will therefore be very particular about my team experiences.
In the organizations that you run, how have you gone about creating a positive organizational culture?
The Rusinga Festival relies a lot on volunteers and contract workers. It is a huge festival with massive production costs. One trick of making it a success is the culture of incorporating these
The arts enterprises accommodate engineers, architects, researchers, lawyers, and even scientists. If you are rigid in an arts-based enterprise, you are bound to fail, because it is as dynamic as life itself.
Anne Eboso
stakeholders from the conception stage. They have to feel like they own the idea for them to give their best. It is not a top-down decision-making process, in fact you may be surprised when you find us discussing and brainstorming, you may not tell who the boss of a particular project is. You as the leader may have some ideas, but they may be too lofty for your team or there may be a better way of implementing or modifying them when you discuss with your people. Not just coming and telling them this is what I think we will do this year, so and so will be in charge.
As a business leader, where I head a women-led car parts selling enterprise, I have to trust my employees with my business too. They know this, and I don’t have to be there to make all the difficult decisions especially when I’m working on different projects at the same time. My clients have to trust them the same way they trust me. That is the culture we have created.
The main drawback of the bottom-up decision-making process is that it takes a lot of time to make a decision and there are more people involved, but that is made up by the fact that once a decision is made you don’t start on a blank slate on how to go about it and who to assign it to for implementation.
As a founder and leader, how have you gone about ensuring that the corporate culture outlasts you?
It is often said that founders often have a problem ‘letting go’ of their ‘babies’ and may thus inadvertently stifle new ideas. One way to guard against this is to ensure that we have structures in place that will ensure this festival outlasts.
The Rusinga Cultural Festival was smaller when it
began, but in its infancy, stakeholders saw the promise it had after getting to understand the reason behind its establishment. The openness to new ideas is an enterprise culture we have embraced so that we give every noble idea the chance to become part of the festival.
We give our collaborators the room to be creative in driving their ideas. We support each other to achieve the common objective of the festival while at the same time not deviating from our focus of resuscitating the Suba culture. Such structures will make sure that our way of doing things is retained, where new blood and dynamism is checked by experienced leaders. This is a culture I have always incorporated even as a third party events curator.
Anne Eboso is the CEO & Founder of the annual Rusinga Cultural Festival.