Emergent Value in Museums
Museums are under steady pressure to prove their value. In response, we often reach for familiar metrics like attendance numbers or evidence that people are learning from their participation. But Martin Brandt…
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Fortunately, outcomes are nothing new
“We already do this” is something I sometimes hear from museums. As I talk with a group about the value of various outcomes and what the museum might want to prioritize, someone wi…
Value Reverses the Order of Things
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’ decision…
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 Heifet…
Measuring the Value of Museum Experiences
My colleagues and I recently surveyed nearly 7,000 visitors across sixteen U.S. history museums to find out what well-being benefits visitor…
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…
By topic
Outcomes3
- EVENT
From Evaluation to Research
I came across this article, Evaluation, Research, and Communities of Practice: Program Evaluation in Museums, and thought it was really interesting. The author, Lynda Kelly, asks…
- EVENT
If It Matters, It’s Observable
Every measurement is a reduction — a simplified picture of something more complex. That’s what makes it useful. But having the richness of our work compressed into something…
- EVENT
Measuring Belonging
During The Outcomes Conversation, a few of us started talking about what it would look like to go deeper — to pull in research and literature that connects to the outcomes…
Strategy3
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…
Four factors for prioritizing outcomes
How does an institution decide on an experiential posture? This question came up this week with two museums we’re working with. Identity questions are the hardest to answer.…
Other3
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…
Don’t bring a data knife to a pet-idea gunfight
If an organization hasn’t determined what value it’s trying to provide to the communities it supports, it’s operating in a vacuum. Organizations struggle in a vacuum — there’s an…
By contributor
Kyle Bowen5
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…
Don’t bring a data knife to a pet-idea gunfight
If an organization hasn’t determined what value it’s trying to provide to the communities it supports, it’s operating in a vacuum. Organizations struggle in a vacuum — there’s an…
Four factors for prioritizing outcomes
How does an institution decide on an experiential posture? This question came up this week with two museums we’re working with. Identity questions are the hardest to answer.…