Museum Questions Consulting is pleased to share new research on organizational culture in museums. The report Changing Museum Culture: Research from the Field includes findings from 14 interviews of museum directors. The goal of these interviews, and the resulting report, was to better understand how museums assess organizational culture issues, what they find, and what solutions they have produced.
Selected findings include:
- Overall, museums do not have a consistent and reliable way to assess organizational culture. We often depend on a "trickle up" or open-door approach.
- The challenges museums are identifying include:
- Transparency: What should be shared with everyone?
- Interdepartmental Communication: How can communication be strengthened between departments?
- Management Training: What do managers need to know and do?
- Management Ability: What does meaningful staff support look like?
- Change Management: How does rapid change impact staff?
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: What does real diversity, equity and inclusion look like, and how do museums get there?
- Workload: How do we "right-size" workload?
- Pay: How can we pay enough?
- Personality: What do you do with a mismatch of individual and museum?
- Many museum directors are developing significant and useful approaches to address these challenges; most of these directors are working independently, meaning that each museum is finding its own solutions, rather than learning from others.
Download the full report here.
PS - If you are a museum director and are interested in finding ways to address organizational culture challenges, consider Culture Shift, which will take you through the process of assessing the area of change that will have the greatest impact, and designing strategies to address that challenge and make meaningful change. Learn more here.
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Rebecca Shulman
Museum Questions Consulting
museumquestions.com | 917-771-1374
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