Transformation: making a ruckus
Featuring yours truly:
At a time when the creative industries are being revolutionised by digital transformation, shifting audience dynamics, and evolving funding landscapes, we’ve captured a powerful snapshot of leadership thinking that cuts through the noise.
One of the key things for improving over the long term is ensuring people are heard. In https://www.sociocracyforall.org/ there are a number of ways this is done. You can read those yourself. Being heard isn’t the same though as having to do whatever you are told in that feedback. It is too simplistic to assume having every voice heard means everyone gets a say. It is ok to say “I hear you but on this occasion I’m going in a different direction but thanks for your feedback it did help me make a decision.”
This week I attended a walk and talk facilitated group in the Yorkshire Dales. Time to unpick challenges and work through the next 12 months.
My word of the trip in relation to work was “frustrated”. Time to take action.
We want to be successful. One of the aims to achieve success is to know our individual fans/users/customers better. Knowing their needs allows us to design and run better services. A good service is an effective service. From the many anonymous interactions we have every day, we want to shine light on those touchpoints to know as many of them as we can.
Instead of just using generic terms like “total visitors to site (online and in-person), website visits per quarter, google review score, Spend per head etc there is an opportunity to be better informed. With better insights we can make data-informed decisions that don’t treat everyone identically the same. Kevin Kelly wrote about the benefits of having 1000 true fans which in summary says within any large group of people are die hard fans who give you momentum (MVP adjacent).
Find them by building services that allow you to identify who they are across your services (opt-in of course). Use their data test assumptions about how our worldviews collide. Spot something that doesn’t work and fix it. Fix it for the fans and you’ll probably be fixing it for everyone.
I’ve used Basecamp since at least 2013. Basecamp is an online tool for managing projects. I’ve personally used it for both enterprise organisation wide usage and freelance/consultancy. New for 2025 is the return of a free tier for managing one project at a time. This is good because it helps you try it without any cost.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/charles-handy-obituary-corporate-philosopher-and-author-mczk5gm06
Maverick management guru whose strategy was to spend 100 days a year earning, 100 days writing and 100 days on fun, with the rest spent on volunteering
A principle to live by.
Museums have been run successfully for over 100 years. However even museums need to move with the times. Being more useful to more people is a phase I say a lot here at BMT. One of my core principles is placing “user needs” at the heart of what we do.
In addition to the typical methods of asking existing visitors what they need from us we are experimenting with a Citizen Jury throughout the second half of 2024.
We have written about how The Citizens’ Jury works on our website.
In short the Citizens’ Jury are 25-30 representive people chosen from a lottery of 5000 people across the City. They will will deliberate our initial question:
“What does Birmingham need and want from its museums, now and in the future; and what should Birmingham Museums Trust do to make these things happen?”
Special thanks to NLHF for funding this activity.
You may well be correct in your thinking. History may repeat itself. Better to test your assumptions though than discover things have changed and you didn’t get the memo. The weather app may say it’s dry but popping outside to confirm is easy.
I used to be a:
Student.
Unemployed.
Artist.
Freelancer.
The IT guy.
The manager.
The fixer.
All previous working lives that built today’s current T-shaped skills. Whenever I’m asked how did I choose my path I say I try something and do more of it or less of it depending if I like it. I don’t know what’s next but it’s definitely more of what I like. Oh and being good at something helps me like it. So I practice. If it’s a skill it can be learned.