A dawning realisation?

[third in a recent series of observations and unfinished semi-coherent thoughts I just need to get out of the way]

Nowadays everyone I talk to questions the metrics they use. More than that, people seem keener to dig into what they may mean in terms of value. Seb Chan is amongst those in our sector that's exploring how to make better, and better use of, measurements, and closer to home, Dylan Edgar's work with the London Hub dug into similar issues.


Last week in a catch-up with the director of my division we touched on his own objective of "improving the website". In itself it's encouraging that the objective is there, as part of the reorganisation we are currently experiencing, but "improving the website" is a pretty broad ambition. I think it's a subject that we'll revisit in more depth soon, but it was clear that our director was as aware as we web types were that when you lift up that rock you'll find a tangled mess of questions. Before you talk about "improving" you need to identify what you consider to be valuable, and to disentangle theoretical "improvements" from impact, preparedness, experimentation etc. Obviously a set of measurements that to some degree reflect these valued qualities are a sine qua non for managing their realisation, and so here's a reference to provoke a little more thought on the subject that I won't dig into here, but has had me rethinking my own attitudes web stats and the whole evaluation problem: Douglas W Hubbard, 2007, How to measure anything : finding the value of "intangibles" in business. *

In any case I find it encouraging that in this discussion and others with senior colleagues there seems to be a dawning awareness that we have a complex, multidimensional environment to deal with, wherein the varieties of "success" may be as varied as between all the departments within a museum. I'm not sure that it would always have been the case that the higher echelons were aware of the perils of trying to evaluate our digital programmes, although perhaps any senior manager worth their salt will have long ago twigged that a website is not "improved" merely by adding pages, Flash splashes and video - evaluating the more familiar physical museum is no easier, after all, and nor is improving it. We do need to have that conversation about what we mean by "website" with senior management, though. Is it only geeks that see this as only a part of our digital presence?


When it comes to the use of web stats of various sorts, there have always been lots of complaints about them, but I suspect that in this discussion too we are seeing greater recognition that it's not about visitors versus hits. Maybe it's not even enough to focus on "impact" since the heart of the matter arguably lies a level deeper than that: the first step is figuring out what impact itself means in the context of the museum's mission, and in this networked environment in the mission of the meta-museum that we must realise we are a part of.

Rhetorical question for the day, then: Is there a mission for the meta-museum, and do we measure up to it?


*I hope to post about this book properly, eventually, but don't wait for that, try to check out the book which, for all its flaws of repetition, is full of useful ideas and tools.

Securing endowment

No, not endowments. Decision-making literature* addresses the "endowment effect". In a nutshell, I mean that phenomenon whereby people value what they have more than what they might have, although they be the same. This is tied to the observation that loss of utility is felt more keenly than a gain of the same utility. If I am given a mug (to follow Beach and Connolly's example) I may well require a larger payment to give it up that I would be prepared to pay for it.

This is probably a useful tool to wield when trying to get support for some resourcing decisions in an organisation, particularly those that can be expressed as relating to assets the organisation already possesses, rather than new ones it might acquire. In a scenario where I am seeking funds to support old digital resources, careful preparation of the ground to develop an endowment effect amongst the executive before taking the proposal to the board may be fruitful (this is obvious to the point of being banal, right?) If I just tell then what we have, what it could do in the future, and how we plan to maintain it, it's like saying "here's a mug that will hold your coffee and make you happy, it will cost you a fiver, gimme!" If instead I encourage a sense of pre-existing ownership - an emotional committment - a feeling that this thing is already part of the museum and its loss reduces us, then the costs I propose that we bear are more like the purchase offer for the mug that is turned down: in other words the board may be more likely to turn down the opportunity to avoid those costs. It's like saying "you've got a mug, you love it, if you want to keep the cash then I'm afraid you'll lose the mug. Bummer, but that's life. So cough up!"

How you actually cultivate within the executive that sense of ownership is another question. You could also argue that this is little different to just identifying and drawing out the value of an asset to the decision-makers, but it's a more emotional proposition than simply making them aware of an assets existence and potential future utility, and it may be worth exploring how one can play the psychological game and encourage emotional engagement and attachment to pre-existing digital resources when fighting for the funds to suppport them. It may actually be as important as the rational explication of value, however much we might like to believe decisions would be rational.

Nina Simon amongst others has talked extensively and profoundly on Museum 2.0 about developing engagement amongst our audiences, and I'm starting to realise how this could be equally important within the organisation: if we want to persuade people of the rightness of what we're arguing for, there can be more to it than pure reason, Kant there? (apologies for the shameless mis-referencing here of something I clearly don't understand. I only understand puns.) It's internal marketing, I suppose, and nothing new.





* OK, let's be honest, all I know about is the book I'm reading right now and blogged about previously

What makes a good CEO/director?

The National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, Australia, got a new CEO on Monday: Darryl McIntyre, formerly Group Director of Public Programmes at MoL. Rumour has it that he will make a splash by announcing a pay rise for its staff, which is certainly a good way to make friends, and if staff morale figures into what makes a successful museum/archive then actions like this may be more profound than simple ingratiation (which I'm all for, preferably at the start of the financial year).

But aside from having the chutzpah to buy the love of your staff, what makes a good CEO/director? I've never been one, and nor would I want to be, and I've never been a manager, but through my reading and my life at the bottom of the food-chain I've inevitably formed some opinions - biased though they must be by my specific experiences. Below are some things that I think a good director would and wouldn't do, and it turns out I put quite an emphasis on good communications and building trust, lord knows why.

• Remain in direct contact with staff.
  The layers of management provide essential filtering, sorting and translating functions in funnelling information about the museum to the director, for that person to use in planning and evaluation (together with their executive team). Yet it's also essential for that top person to make contact directly with people at all levels, in part to test the validity of what they're told by other executives. They need to take focussed and relevant questions to people on the ground, and receive questions and complaints directly; not so that they can fix them themselves, but so that they understand where the organisation's mentality is at. More structured consultation exercises are very useful too, if they are followed up with action, but if not then they are empty and counter-productive exercises that simply increase resentment.



• Provide vision at the highest level, as well as at the next level of strategic aims and objectives, with links from one to the other clearly explained. It's self-evident that this vision thing is perhaps the most vital part of the director's job, and it's a question of marketing this internally and externally, which means communication above all else (as well as iteration in response to feedback). A persuasive argument is needed to bring as many staff as possible along with you.



• Be seen as a champion of the museum's mission, not of its functional necessities (financial stability etc.) Essential though these are, it must always be clear that the director sees them as servants of the mission, not the other way around. It's part of selling your plan to the people that work for you, which is all the more vital in a context where the driving motivation of employees is professionalism and belief in the worth of the organisation rather than simply earning a wage.



• Avoid back-biting.
  It must be tough at the top, and there are surely plenty of nasty and unpopular jobs that just have to be done in order to get the organisation on the right track. Still, there is no point in picking fights that don't need to be fought, in leading where no-one will follow, in throwing your weight around for its own sake. Fear is not respect, it's often more related to contempt. In short, top dog needn't mean queen bitch*.
  

Obviously there's so much more to being a great director that these factors, I've learnt at least that much from Robert Janes. In any case, I wish NFSA good luck with their new CEO. I hope they get more than a pay rise from him.

* Sam is not actually a bitch but let's not be pedantic.