Two Agendas for Every Museum

Every museum, every organization, needs two agendas to survive and flourish: one for getting by; one for getting better.

The getting by agenda is filled with buses delivering excited children to the group entrance, board members asking for the curatorial view of a recent purchase, city officials calling for yet another budget justification, moisture discovered inside a supposedly controlled storage area—emergencies large and small coupled to the normal business of keeping the doors open and the lights on.

The getting by agenda imposes itself on every dedicated museum employee and volunteer, usually in overwhelming abundance. It overflows past today, beyond tomorrow, and into next week. The bulging leather DayTimers registrars haul to acquisition meetings, the plastic monthly planners prominently hung in exhibition shops, the exquisite examples of "pile" management displayed on all flat surfaces of the curator's office are all physical manifestations of the getting by agenda.

The getting by agenda keeps us busy, challenged, and, in fact, feels good Sunday afternoon when we finally catch up with the in basket. A large part of our success in the museum world, and in life itself, depends on successful management of the getting by agenda.

Ironically, success in managing the getting by agenda prevents us from discovering and attending to a getting better agenda. The getting better agenda focuses on learning how to get better instead of just getting by.

Specifically, getting better means:

1. Resolving problems at the root cause, rather than continually fixing symptoms.

2. Designing the organization so it works for the staff instead of working against them.

3. Harnessing and nurturing energy to improve systems and methods.

4. Surfacing and challenging assumptions blocking problem resolution.

When a museum consistently works with a getting better agenda, it will produce results that are demonstrably better, as determined by the museum. These results might include:

• Growth in audience, collections, donations, and income.
• Improvements in facilities and resources.
• Better pay and opportunities for the staff.
• Better quality in programs, publications, and exhibitions.
• More impact on audience and community.
• Dollar savings.
• Reduced stress, improved morale.

Principle 1:
The getting by agenda always blocks the getting better agenda.

Principle 2:
The getting better agenda must be armored and protected, if it is to thrive.

Barriers to Getting Better

In addition to the getting by agenda stealing time for getting better, there are numerous other barriers to getting better in your museum. Four primary ones need conscious attention:

• Complexity
• Hierarchy
• Culture
• Strategy

The remainder of this article will look at these four barriers to getting better and present guidelines for addressing each.

Complexity

Complexity refers to the number and intricacy of activities and decisions embodied in the processes through which museums operate. For example, exhibition production requires hundreds of activities and decisions. Museums mount extraordinary exhibitions, many of which achieve the goals of increasing audience and scholarship, dollars and reputation. Yet, even seasoned exhibition managers have trouble listing, let alone explaining or understanding, all the decisions and activities necessary to produce an exhibition in their museum. Add to exhibitions the processes for acquiring objects, maintaining automated information systems, creating education programs, raising money, hiring talented employees, training volunteers: museums are complex.

People at the beginning of a process rarely understand how their work affects the work of others. What seems sensible at one point in the process may, in fact, cause delay, rework, or waste farther into the system. Farther, people receiving work from others usually accept it without complaint, and adapt to its constraints. Every adaptation can slow the outcome, add cost and reduce quality.

For example, even with today automated information systems, financial information frequently requires reformatting, or even re-keying, to meet the various requirements of tax reporting, budget production, or audit reviews. The same is true for information required to lend or borrow art, and for personnel information. When museum employees receive requests for this information, rarely do they challenge the requester. Like good solders, they add the request to the getting by agenda.

We do not have hard data, yet, about the real cost of this complexity in museums. Recent research by The Boston Consulting Group suggests that as much as 90% of activity in large businesses add no value for the customer. Businesses involved in Total Quality Management demonstrated that reducing complexity can save 20% to 40% of the operating budget while simultaneously improving quality.

Overcoming the barrier of complexity means:

1. Learning to understand complexity through flow charts.
2. Measuring the costs of complexity, which can motivate a getting better approach.
3. Encouraging efforts to remove complexity, rather than adapting to the problem.
4. Consciously redesigning systems with early and complete participation from the users.

Hierarchy

Most museums operate with a hierarchical structure. This divides the museum into departments, disciplines, and levels. Hierarchies foster control, orderliness, and specialization. Hierarchies promote loyalty to the boss, discipline, and departmental specialty.

Unfortunately, most significant museum work must cross and connect these functional areas. Projects and programs that cross functions — exhibits, new buildings, membership development, fund raising — require communication, cooperation, coordination, and connection. Hierarchical structures inhibit the qualities necessary for connecting people to work in creative ways on a getting better agenda. At its worst, hierarchies create boundaries and staff become turf defenders.

Not only do hierarchies make it harder to link cross-functionally, it also degrades communication up and down the hierarchy. When communicating upward through a hierarch, priorities are diluted to a point of insignificance at the top. When communicating decisions down through a hierarchy, commands and loyalty transform into "group think," where agreement is more highly valued than honesty. Many, maybe most, issues never get communicated well enough to get pro-actively solved. Eventually, these issues become problems, the problems become crises, and the crises move onto the getting by agenda and finally get attention. Lay hierarchy on top of complexity, and the barriers to getting better increase.

Overcoming the hierarchy barrier means consistently including people in decision making. Inclusion ensures implementation. People experience exclusion from decisions that impact their work lives as a lack of respect. When respect for decisions is weak, implementation is also weak. The sooner people are included in the decision making process, the less the need to "sell" the decision or to get "buy in."

Additional guidelines to combat the problems of hierarchy:

1. Shift the focus from the hierarchy to the task.
2. Shift from pleasing the boss to pleasing the audience.
3. Shift from centralized to decentralized decision making.

Culture

The culture of a museum refers to the attitudes reflected in staff interactions with one another, with the community, visitors, and volunteers. Consciously designed and implemented cultural changes result in the most significant improvements to museum operations. Without change in cultural conditions, the getting better agenda is destined to remain static or deteriorate.

Typical cultural barriers include:

• Fear of speaking up.
• Lack of open communications.
• Lack of mutual respect.
• Blaming people when things go wrong.
• Dis-empowerment.
• Poor teamwork.
• A we/them climate.

When cultural barriers exist, they prevent people in the museum from connecting with one another. The hierarchy puts people apart, and the culture keeps them apart. Yet complex museum projects require that people work together.

Complexity, hierarchy, and culture combine to produce frustration and inefficiency. This means museums fail to reap the full benefit of their hard won dollars. In extreme cases, 70% of every dollar spent goes to overcome complexity, hierarchy, and culture.

Overcoming the cultural barriers means clearly identifying the culture of the museum. Then the museum must decide what parts of the present culture do and do not support institutional mission and strategies. The next step is consciously changing the culture. In general, the desired culture fosters learning, team work and quality results. In an effective learning environment, all organizational problems can be solved. In a weak learning environment, few organizational problems can be addressed. Critical elements of a learning environment include:

1. Honest communication between people at all levels.
2. Mutual Respect: seeking and accepting the views of others.
3. Responsibility: taking responsibility, not blaming others.

Assigning blame never solves problems. A museum culture that regularly assigns blame typifies the worst aspects of hierarchical, authoritarian management. Blaming provides a way to shift responsibility for problems to subordinates. Blaming impedes problem solving. Managers who make others feel wrong, and undermine the culture needed for getting better. Responsibility and problem solving can increase by eliminating questions such as: Who is to blame for this? Who caused this problem? Who is responsible for this problem? As blame goes, trust grows. Truth emerges. Problems can be identified, solved, and the museum can get better.

Strategy

The first three barriers—complexity, hierarchy, and culture—impact a museum by interfering with staff ability to conduct business. The last barrier—strategy—may negatively impact the museum through lack of focus.

Leadership, mission, strategies, and plans provide institutional direction. Many museums have mission statements; others also have strategic plans. Most museums that create these tools, do not use them. Often, plans are written to satisfy a passing need such as a funding proposal or development campaign.

Effective museum leadership and direction comes most commonly from the director. Developmentally young museums often thrive through the energy, enthusiasm, and wisdom of the director. As a museum matures, however, the director's role must change. First, the organization becomes too big for one brain to sufficiently direct the programs. Second, the mission of a mature museum should not be open to the whims of every new director. Institutions acquire a life and dimensions beyond that of a single individual. Invariably tension between the museum's established mission and a new director's vision will occur, as well it should, especially at major transition points. These transition periods occur when the mission loses effectiveness, usually because the museum's external changes.

Strategies for directing and leading a large museum include:

1. Authority: the director decides. As the museum grows, the director cannot keep up with all the activities. If decision making is closely held, many decisions will not be made, some will be made late; others made poorly. Pressure will always be on the director. The staff will learn not to think and to lobby the director.

2. Anarchy: everyone makes his or her own decisions. Everyone thinks, but priorities are unclear. Decision making goes underground and depends on political alliances. In museums, these Byzantine machinations are often elegantly presented and intellectually cloaked.

   Many museums combine authoritarian and anarchistic strategies, resulting in the worst of both styles.

3. Professional Management: The director and staff work together to create guidelines for decision making. This takes time and requires the creation of a learning climate. At first, an outside facilitator may be required to help the museum identify and clarify appropriate guidelines and to gain wide acceptance.

Authority, then, becomes incorporated in the guidelines, not vested in a person. With this achievement, the museum reaches the important developmental stage of being organized professionally instead of by personality. When the guidelines are generally accepted, even the most powerful personalities (which are plentiful in museums) accede to the group's wisdom. Changes in the guidelines do occur, but not arbitrarily.

Well written and agreed guidelines allow each person and department to move forward on their plans. Staff don't need to wait for definitive authority to move ahead, since the guidelines support most action. Staff can look to the guidelines for direction, rather than lobby the director for every decision. Each person can work with more power. Of course, the guidelines will not cover everything, so key people need to convene to handle exceptions and fine tune the guidelines.

The standard strategic guidelines are:

1. Mission: What the museum intends to accomplish in the long term. Why do we exist? What do we do? Who do we serve? What philosophy and values guide us? At least a five to ten year time frame. Usually a page or two in length.

2. Strategy: How the museum will achieve its mission. This is the next level of detail derived from the mission. Usually ten to twenty strategies with time frames from six months to several years.

3. Annual Plans: The next level of detail. Derived from the strategies. Twelve month schedules, broken into functional areas or departments.

4. Structure: How the work is divided; who reports to whom. Structure signifies what is important. Most museum structures are archaic and not aligned to accomplish the museum's mission and strategies. A strategic structure can pull the museum toward its mission. The typical structure protects turf and usually includes adaptations created to solve past personality problems.

5. Communication, Coordination, and Control: Measured results that reveal museum accomplishments. Measuring systems should reflect the museum's mission and strategic priorities. Key indicators provide feedback that supports the learning environment.

6. Resource Allocations: The allocation of resources to activities. Money, facilities, and people are the prime resources. The budget is the best known resource guideline. It should be derived from the mission, strategies and annual plans; not vice versa. If the budget precedes the plan, then the budget is driving museum programs and the accountant is directing the museum!

7. Rewards and Recognition: These include extrinsic rewards (money and benefits) and intrinsic rewards (challenge and opportunities) and recognition. Like other guidelines, rewards and recognitions should be derived from the mission and strategies.

Each of the seven tools above provide guidelines that direct museum activities. Ideally, they should be designed in sequence, structure following from strategy following from mission. For a museum to change, or get better, these are the tools for steering the change. Getting all seven in synch is the challenge. Misalignments lead staff to revert to anarchy or authoritarian behavior. The director and key management staff must constantly access, evaluate, and critique these seven strategic guidelines to ensure alignment for the best, most efficient, museum product.

Diagnosis

A diagnosis forms the first step in a formal program for getting better. This scans the health quotient in the seven guideline areas and the impact of the other barriers that may exist in the museum. A getting better plan can be designed for the museum that sequences improvement to ensure continuous growth and excellence. Diagnosing a museum means being specific about the strategy and alignment of each strategic factor, the impact of complexity, hierarchy, and culture, and the unresolved problems. These specifics are often uncomfortable to examine. Some museums do not have the courage to identify them. However, once identified, it is possible to change them.

Why Bother?

For a long time neither museums nor business had to pay much attention to getting better. The environment was sufficiently nurturing to support many poorly managed organizations. Nurturing conditions no longer hold. Museums get better or they grow old and calcify.