When reacting to a museum crisis, the first imperative is the same as Hippocrates' advice for medical emergencies: Primum non nocere. "First of all, do no damage." The second imperative is to keep the situation from worsening. Arresting the crisis usually requires actions different from treating the symptoms or removing the cause.

Biological systems respond systemically and often with sublime solutions to crisis, sometimes sustaining a species for another million years. Institutions lack this capacity for automatic, systemic change. But they can surely learn from physiology. Before launching a crisis response that can prematurely age or kill the museum, or worse yet—not launching a response—consider this analogy.

When mountain climbing in Alaska, I always awake warm and snugly in a down sleeping bag. Beginning the day means dressing, leaving the tent, and eating breakfast. Outside, standing in cold boots in the snow, my feet cool rapidly. Cold feet cool the blood circulating though the feet which returns and cools the heart. The cooled heart starts to slow. Is this the beginning of a spiraling decline toward death?

The human body's sophisticated biological system won't let that happen. As cold blood begins up the leg, the arteries supplying blood to the feet constrict and shunts open that divert blood to the heart before it reaches the feet and gets cooled. Thus the heart stays warm but the feet cool faster. You might say the body decides to keep the vital organs alive by sacrificing the feet.

The mountaineer's task on a cold morning is to start climbing so the body's muscles work and produce heat. Of course, it takes a while to warm up. The mountaineer feels his feet cooling even as he climbs. He may wonder if they will ever get warm. On a cold day, it may take several hours more to convince the physiological monitors that the body really is generating enough heat to let some warm blood flow to the feet. His feet may numb before this decision is made.

The feet are saying, "Come on! Send us some heat! We're freezing!" But in its wisdom the body replies, "Not until I'm sure we have heat enough for the core to survive." The mountaineer curses and climbs harder. Four hours later, he realizes his feet are warm. He survived. His core survived. Even his feet survived. All survived because of the discipline of the Frostbite Response.

But, if the body is too tired and weak to climb fast enough to generate enough heat, the feet actually freeze. They become solid, like two hunks of meat direct from the freezer. This makes sense to the core, which keeps on walking on frozen feet—hopefully, to a place of safety where rewarming can occur.

Mountaineering literature is replete with epic tales of walks on frozen feet, followed by rewarming, unfreezing, and a return to normal. If frozen for a long time, the toes may be lost but the feet survive; the feet may be lost, but the body—and soul—survive. From a systems point of view, the crisis (cold feet) simply refocused the resources (heat).

Museums and Frostbite
But museum responses are not automatic. When you find your museum in a harsh environment, one in which you are cooling you—the leader—must deliberately initiate change. It won't happen automatically as it does in the human body. You must make the preliminary decisions on how to protect the core, you must find the resources—personal energy, time, and money—to move the museum to a safer environment.

If you acknowledge the need for change and don't refocus the resources, you have not learned the Frostbite Response. You have elected to keep heating the feet, and that will eventually cool the core. But if you recognize the need to change early and redirect energy, time, and money, you will be able to bring the museum to safety in time to revitalize the feet. You are replicating in your museum the Frostbite Response that, in the human body, is a lifesaving, involuntary reaction.

Barriers to Change
Unfortunately, most museums do not accept the need to change soon enough. Human psychology does not have the blind triggers of human physiology. Instead, when the museum's temperature starts to drop, the human response invokes the protection of denial: "It's just temporary. It's not serious or the inspiration of wishful thinking. All we need is that one big grant, or donor, or blockbuster."

Refusing to recognize the need for help is one barrier. Another is pride: we want to look good as long as possible. The director and board chair, in particular, have to overcome the psychological barriers of denial and wishful thinking, and the spiritual barrier of pride before environmental change is acknowledged and the fact accepted that the museum must change or freeze.

Coming Through Crisis
Change in crisis means taking something off the table. It means deciding what not to do. One museum used the Frostbite Response when it decided, following a decrease in local government support, that it could no longer mount thirty-six exhibitions each year. Reducing the number of exhibitions to twenty freed up resources that allowed the museum to stay alive in the face of a financial crises.

If a museum faces a budget cut or shortfall, the sooner the Frostbite Response is invoked, the better. A long period of denial only makes the freezing more severe and the potential for amputation that more serious.

When redirecting resources, it is critical to reduce productive activities and not generative ones. If generative or creative activities are reduced or halted, the museum loses its ability to respond to changes creatively.

It is also critical not to believe that the staff cut or budget reduction is the solution to the problem. This is false. Something else caused the lack of financial support that made the cuts imperative. Usually, for a museum, this is a decline in relative perceived value of the museum's programs and activities by the donors, public, or government officials.

The solution in this case is to increase the relative perceived value of the museums' programs and activities—to climb energetically or to head for shelter and get the rewarming underway. The cut does not do this! In fact, after the cut, there is a strong tendency to say, Whew! That's over. Now let's get back to business as usual. Yet the cut makes it even harder to do business as usual, so the museum produces even less relative perceived value. If that is the case, the downward spiral has begun.

The purpose of the cut, the purpose of the Frostbite Response, is not to solve the problem but to buy time to solve the problem. The cut has allowed the core to survive. Now it's time to look—and work—hard at that core. Focusing on the core means answering two questions: What do potential supporters want and need from us? How can we meet those needs and stay true to our heart? If you stay true to your heart, there is a very good chance that the feet will rewarm and survive as well.