Value Reverses the Order of Things [MaP Outcomes Lab]

Value reverses the order of things in an organization. The default view is that leadership steers and sets the pace for an institution; staff are the consumers of leaders’ decisions. But your CEO is often the person least in contact with your institution’s users, and it is your users — visitors, members, and the public — who define the value of the museum and its offerings.¹

Staff are the ones closest to where value is generated because, generally speaking, they’re in more frequent contact with users. So, they’re better positioned to translate observations into data. Leaders are — or should be — the downstream consumers of that data. Without that local proof, leaders are left to make generic claims about why museums matter, which is a weaker position than one that says why this museum matters, when, and for whom.

If you’re a manager or department leader, you sit in the middle of the current. You’re trying to create the conditions that generate evidence to help others communicate the institution’s value. That’s not easy. Many of the people closest to your users will tell you that contributing to a picture of why the museum matters is not in their job description. (This is why HR and hiring practices are, in fact, important contributors to a user-centered organization.)

Meanwhile your CEO may not be eager to provide a full-throated endorsement of your efforts. When value inverts the order of things, it means the most powerful people in the organization actually need help from those they’re supposed to be leading. For a leader to be vocal about that dependency exposes a degree of uncertainty that many leaders believe it’s their job to eliminate, or at least disguise. Some leaders are comfortable with this, but many are not. If you can remember the last time your executive director rounded up the visitor services team and told them how much they rely on them to actually do the challenging work of demonstrating why the institution matters to funders, you’re working at a special place. Maybe don’t quit yet.

What if you don’t know what your director’s objectives are? Beyond the strategic plan, how do you get visibility into what would actually be useful to them on a Tuesday afternoon? We’ll discuss this on September 14.