What is the Museum Improvement Process™?

The Museum Improvement Process is a comprehensive and systematic program of institutional change for reinventing your museum. It consists of ten elements linked in a sequence.

Why so many elements?

Symptoms And Causes
The most powerful motivator for a museum to initiate organizational change is some sort of increasing pain such as a fiscal shortfall. Too often the change effort only removes the symptomatic pain and does not resolve the underlying causes. Change stops when the discomfort stops. The underlying causes survive only to create new problems in the future. The Museum Improvement Process leads you to the underlying causes and enables you to address them.

Individual Distress Is Caused By Organizational Distress.
Many museums are profoundly unhealthy as organizations. New facilities, a new director or a new exhibit can mask poor organizational health. Yet individual board and staff members still experience the disease. They experience it as struggles for resources, lack of recognition, conflict and burnout. Staff work in an environment that sometimes stifles imagination, cooperation and energy. The Museum Improvement Program is designed to show the links between such individual impacts and the poor health of the organization.

Specialized vs. Systemic Change
The problems facing museums are complex. They consist of many interlinked issues where some problems and some links are invisible. Yet problem solving efforts overwhelmingly depend on experts with specialized knowledge who do not see the whole system. A good solution in one area (lay off staff to balance the budget) creates problems in other areas (increased workload, increased stress and constant worry about who will be laid off next). The Museum Improvement Program is designed to help the whole museum see the whole system and thus change the whole system. Too often change efforts in museums are like digging a hole in the ocean: focus and hard work will make a hole, but as soon as you relax the system fills the hole and everything returns to the old ways. The Museum Improvement Program provides a map for effective, organizational change. It consists of ten elements.

Organizations cannot manage change the same way they manage on going operations. Therefore, a Core Team is designed to orchestrate the change process outlined in the following nine elements. Generally, it consists of the director and selected staff. Some board members should be on the Core Team during elements 1-5. The Core Team may expand to address some of the elements more effectively.

Why Change?
Available first step in the change process is to articulate why change is necessary. With an effective process you can achieve 100% agreement from staff and board very quickly. The Situation Analysis in the American Association of Museum's New Vision Process is one way of doing this. Determining the museum's developmental stage through a life cycle analysis provides an additional powerful rationale for change.

Diagnosis
A good diagnosis scans all aspects of the museum to surface areas of potential improvement. It involves a critical mass of stake holders who provide the input and are involved in analyzing it. The diagnostic element frees large amounts of energy and focuses it on an agenda for getting better. The diagnosis sets priorities for improvement in four elements: Purpose and Direction, Culture, Strategic Alignment and Operational Improvements.

Purpose and Direction
Purpose and direction must be clarified before other aspects of the improvement agenda can be addressed. The museum's purpose, values and dreams form the core of a rigorous vision for the future. The mission and strategies respond to the opportunities and threats in the external world.

External Opportunities and Threats
This element checks on the reality of the world outside the museum. What does the public need and value? What do donors value? What external trends and factors (demographics, politics, technology and the changing values of society) will create opportunities or threats for the museum?

Organizational Culture
Every museum operates within widely adopted, internal attitudes and beliefs that guide how people in the museum work with each other, and that guide how they relate to the audience, donors and volunteers. This culture must be aligned with and supportive of the purpose and direction of the museum. Otherwise it becomes THE barrier to implementing strategic change and improvements.

Strategic Alignment
Structure, staffing, systems, budgets and rewards constitute organizational autopilots which support or undermine purpose and direction. When misaligned, these autopilots send confusing messages to the staff and create enormous ineffectiveness and inefficiency. When aligned, the museum works more effectively.

Operational Improvement
The core team selects two or three tasks for improvement based on the diagnosis. It then designs the right team to get the job done. In addition, the core team monitors progress and supports team efforts. As results are achieved, the core team launches new operational improvement teams.

Operational Management
Here the rubber meets the road. All the design and improvement efforts of elements 1-8 get turned into day-to-day actions. Successful operational management includes measuring progress, solving problems, and taking corrective action.

Skills for Change
As participants develop and master skills for institutional management, organizational learning and change the museum becomes less fragmented and more adaptable. The career-building skills of dialogue, teamwork, problem solving, institutional literacy, personal effectiveness and transition management provides the museum's people with the tools to operate with the speed and thinking required of today's leading non-profit and government institutions.