Self-Care: Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry is a positivity-focused planning process that allows teams to build on the best of their past to dream of the best future. This strategy can be helpful in organizational problem-solving. You start with a goal (rather than a problem, as in problem-based learning or design thinking), and then you go through five steps: …
Centering Empathy in your Visitor-Practice in Museums
Empathy is one of those things that is hard to verbalize and even harder to feel. If sympathy is when you say “I know how you feel” then empathy is when you connect with someone’s pain to not be able to say anything at all. Empathy is hard to gain, requires time, and involves work. …
Continue reading “Centering Empathy in your Visitor-Practice in Museums”
6 Steps to Combat Implicit Bias in Institutions
Museum staff are in power to combat implicit bias in organizations. This work is imperative to maintain current audiences and grow new ones. But confronting bias can be scary and challenging. Here are some concrete steps to help museums start on the path to combat bias. 1.Don’t ignore bias Bias will not go away just …
Continue reading “6 Steps to Combat Implicit Bias in Institutions”
Systems-Thinking
There is this myth that some of us are details-people and some of us are big-picture folks. Most of us are able to toggle between the two ways of making sense of the world. The more successful of us are able to do this effectively and efficiently. Others struggle, focusing too intently on one or …
Agile Thinking to Manage Change
Agile was a buzzword, drawn from software designers who came up with an effective means of developing, testing, iterating, and launching in the most efficient manner. There are plenty of posts that talk about using Agile (and related iterative processes) for personal development. For me, I find agile particularly useful when thinking about weathering change. …
Make Museums Great Again? Fear of Change in Museums
Anyone who has worked for me has heard my favorite old adage, “Change is the only constant.” I have seen 200 interns (yes, I counted them) and numerous staff through countless institutional changes. The roils of change were so continuous we lived in a constant state of low-grade institutional motion sickness. Why is change so …
Continue reading “Make Museums Great Again? Fear of Change in Museums”
Keep Clean Data
Data seems pretty cut and dried, but don’t be fooled. There are plenty of ways to fold in bias. Here are some concrete steps to help you do your best to counteract the most common pitfalls. Start with a clean tool/ protocol to collect data. 1. Keep data clean There are plenty of ways to …
Its Not the Destination OR Journey Mapping for Museums
Touchpoints Visitor experience is everyone’s job, not just those people who have “visitor” or “experience” in their title. Picture your visitor. What is the first thing that comes to mind? What are they doing? Buying a ticket? Standing in your gallery? Reading your labels. These are the types of touchpoints that are the focus …
Continue reading “Its Not the Destination OR Journey Mapping for Museums”
What Museums can Learn from Libraries
Museums and libraries are like sister institutions, descended of the same parent–the love of knowledge. However, like siblings, there are as many things that connect them as separate them. Both have collections. Both value education. Both serve the same general public. And, yet, there are so many differences. Why Libraries? First, let’s think about scale. …
On Objectivity & What Museums Can Learn from News Organizations
Recently, Koven Smith retweeted an article from the American Alliance of Museums that unpacked the contention that museums are one of the most trusted sources of knowledge. An overwhelming number of respondents (87%) felt that museums were “one of the most trustworthy sources of objective information.” As the AAM article lays out, visitors did not …
Continue reading “On Objectivity & What Museums Can Learn from News Organizations”