eCentral Business Show^©

The business of running a festival with Bill Hauritz

Wed 3:52pm 20 Dec 2017
Podcast Audio


After 32 festivals, the Woodford Folk Festival has proven itself despite the challenges of funding, low budgets and having to build infrastructure on a genuine "greenfield" site. Despite compliance, safety, and natural disasters the festival continues to be a leading Australian event and in ways unique around the world.

Bill Hauritz as the Festival Director of Woodford Folk Festivals talks about the business of running festivals and the key point of success.


Video transcript: the business of running festivals what we're talking about today on the east central business Sean John Nayler and I'm here with Bill Hertz the executive director of wood for Dia and the festival director of Woodford Folk Festival got that right I think bill yeah I think you did yeah now I thanks for giving us your time today and what the really valuable question that I'm here to talk to you about today is is the business of running festivals you know festivals come and go in Australia if not around the world but Woodford's become something that's hung around quite a while now 32 years of this year or 32 festivals in 31 years we've we did - one year that's right when we changed the dates and we're still here but you know you can't take it for granted you just don't know what's gonna happen big cyclone off the coast or major floods could be an earthquake it might snow but but seriously the business of running festivals like as a as a six years volunteer myself I've seen the flat structure you run this vessel 180 or departments I mean is that one of the keys to get another job done I believe it serves a lot of purposes that we try and build since the beginning of an empowering structure whereas the you know if I'm making a decision at the top by the time it filters down to the bottom in a conventional sense it's it's become meaningless I think you see that in lots of organizations and corporations and we try they should be the bosses at the bottom of the tree not the top of the tree yeah yeah and empower people to make decisions because everyone but all decisions are made by individuals not Committees of boards or so the people who have to make decisions are the ones who they're at the coalface yeah sure liking lots of little decisions and if they're empowered if they feel empowered to make that decision and they're armed with with good intentions so mostly make the right decisions and I think a good festival or a good business is arming your people who are making those little decisions but in our case to look after the people who are going to make the festival work that is in in our case our patrons yeah yeah and if they feel looked after they'll respond yeah well I'm glad you said that because that sort of closes aleut for me because I remember my very first woodford folks this will be been there the after event and you got up and spoke about the little decisions you know that that we as volunteers made you know and that resonates and closes the loop for me because that means you truly do believe in delegation all the way down to the individual yeah yeah a delegation I think is a word often misused I liken it when I've visited other events or see businesses where people are they've been given a list of tasks and it's there on a bit of paper and if it's like cleaning a toilet if the task bit says get you your mops out of the broom cupboard I see yeah okay yeah and then you fill the back and full of water and then you put the detergent on shelf three and put it in the water three capfuls please and then you do this and you do that that's all the steps to clean the toilets perfectly yeah but if you said to the person this is you're in charge of turning those toilets into something sparkling it's something beautiful for our patrons yes and how you do it that's your business yeah sure empowers them to have ownership of of the end product of feeling good about the tasks they do yeah because they've got responsibility okay and I think that delegation is about delegating responsibility not tasks because that's the best way I could describe yeah okay okay and it's always difficult when there's a lot of jobs that has to be done and so we try and break it down into areas of responsibility rather than this subtasks yeah okay so and that's the way you sort of see they'll at the departmental organizational structure then is that those individual units they can just go forward and do that look out for take responsibility for the festival and the the people infrastructure around them should there to support that so it you know people infrastructure plan it's my job as you officer in charge is to support the senior staff members and their job is to support the department heads and their job is to support the volunteers and the volunteers are the people that actually talk and serve our patrons yeah sure and it's the patrons that decide whether we live or die it's the number of people that come through those gates buy their tickets and have an experience and what we're selling when people buy a ticket there's an experience sure that's largely determined by those little decisions that all those volunteers make so why wouldn't you empower those volunteers to to be making well-intended decisions to look after people yeah no that's really great well and I think that's really good if you're happy to all cut now and I'll ask you a couple more questions on that sort of topic for you don't mind bill sure okay thank you very much to speak me today so that's all we'll do it for today on the central business show and if you are interested in the Woodford Folk Festival and the easiest way for you to find out more is go to the website so that's Woodford Folk Festival com that are you fantastic given Clarion oh it's your Geffen com.com thank you stand corrected and I'm supposed to know about this stuff alright so calm and that's gonna inform you fully about the face-off between Christmas and New Year at at Woodford


Related Links:
   Woodford Folk Festival