What Happens After a Visitor Surprises You?
Share a time you learned something about your visitors that should have changed how your museum works, and hasn’t yet.
Read →Ideas & Events
Topics, contributors & sort
Leaders are the result of inefficient investments
There are lots of background processes running on your computer at any given time. You don’t think about them unless something goes wrong and you have to force quit something or ru…
Jersey Mike’s Strategy Plan
Jersey Mike’s is a sandwich chain that claims it has a special sauce. You can get your sandwich made “Mike’s way”, which means you get “Mike’s sauce” on your sandwich. Walk into Je…
Outcomes Soup and the Trouble With Belonging
Occasionally, a client or community member will say that the outcomes that museums deliver can blend together into a kind of experiential so…
Fortunately, outcomes are nothing new
Whether that’s an opportunity depends on your perspective.
Emergent Value in Museums
Martin Brandt Djupdræt and John Falk lead a working session on what visitors value about museums, and why the most meaningful outcomes can b…
By topic
Outcomes1
Strategy2
Museums as Societal Elder
Shared Experience, Human Well-Being, and the Future of Museums I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about the future of museums. In addition to my own writing and talks,…
What a Visitor Survey Can’t Decide for Your Museum
Every museum makes choices about how it wants to treat the people who walk through the door. In dozens of small moments, it leans one way or another: toward provoking a visitor…
Other6
How technical problems mask adaptive challenges
Try this: Never proceed with a solution to a technical problem without first naming the adaptive challenge behind the problem. Ronald Heifetz, founder of the Center for Public…
Mission is sacred, so close the gap between mission and outcomes
You won’t get everyone to think about their work in terms of outcomes . Any time you try to reframe how people work, some people will resist. Outcomes aren’t special in that way.…
Outcomes Assessment results are print-friendly
Outcomes Assessment* results can now be printed without funkiness. Members who have taken the assessment can print from their dashboard on the MaP website ( log in , then go to…
Small teams need fewer responses to see their Outcomes Assessment results
Previously, a museum with fewer than ten staff needed every person to take our Outcomes Assessment to get an alignment map for their institution. Now, a team of up to nine needs…
Making room for double-loop learning
We don’t often make time to confront our own uncertainty. With everything a person has to do, or could be doing, there’s little reason or incentive to go looking for the limits…
There is no average driver
There’s a tendency to think of averages as being “fair”. If we describe people in terms of averages, then we are somehow more likely to do them justice (or less likely to be…
By contributor
Kyle Bowen7
How technical problems mask adaptive challenges
Try this: Never proceed with a solution to a technical problem without first naming the adaptive challenge behind the problem. Ronald Heifetz, founder of the Center for Public…
Mission is sacred, so close the gap between mission and outcomes
You won’t get everyone to think about their work in terms of outcomes . Any time you try to reframe how people work, some people will resist. Outcomes aren’t special in that way.…
Outcomes Assessment results are print-friendly
Outcomes Assessment* results can now be printed without funkiness. Members who have taken the assessment can print from their dashboard on the MaP website ( log in , then go to…
Small teams need fewer responses to see their Outcomes Assessment results
Previously, a museum with fewer than ten staff needed every person to take our Outcomes Assessment to get an alignment map for their institution. Now, a team of up to nine needs…
Making room for double-loop learning
We don’t often make time to confront our own uncertainty. With everything a person has to do, or could be doing, there’s little reason or incentive to go looking for the limits…
There is no average driver
There’s a tendency to think of averages as being “fair”. If we describe people in terms of averages, then we are somehow more likely to do them justice (or less likely to be…
What a Visitor Survey Can’t Decide for Your Museum
Every museum makes choices about how it wants to treat the people who walk through the door. In dozens of small moments, it leans one way or another: toward provoking a visitor…