Psychologist Kurt Lewin said, “There is nothing as practical as a good theory”.1
It’s a good quote on the surface and below the surface, where you get a taste of the frustration an abstract thinker can feel when they’re met with the objection that their ideas are somehow impractical. Lewin and others like him might ask the objector, “What do you mean it’s just a theory? What isn’t a theory?”
Every choice we make is rooted in a hypothesis or set of ideas. Once those get formalized in a particular way, we call them ‘theories’, but the fact is that every decision you, your team, and your museum make is based on assumptions and beliefs. Most of them aren’t really named or intentionally surfaced or tested, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist or that your practical, day-to-day work isn’t driven by them.
You can imagine Lewin turning the question around and asking, “Name a ‘practical’ aspect of your work that isn’t based on a theory.”
The real objection to investing in theories boils down to busyness. Investing time in theory feels like an indulgence or a waste of time to anyone who hasn’t taken a moment to consider the wastefulness of not considering the theories that drive the work they do for their organization and the people that their organization supports.
But you’re reading this. And the fact that you’re here — despite everything else competing for your attention — suggests you already sense that the assumptions driving your work deserve more examination than they’re getting.
And your institution may embrace theory to a degree. That grant application you submitted required a theory of change, so you provided one2. And it was probably a substantive one. Perhaps you described how a particular program produces an educational outcome — you described the mechanism behind the initiative, which is important. But the problem with mechanisms alone is that other institutions in your region can probably make the same claim. Multiple institutions can and do articulate the same theory of change — exposure to X produces growth in Y — because theories of change describe general causal pathways, not distinctive ones. A few things are missing that would help your museum even if the funder isn’t insisting on them:
The participant’s desired outcomes or goals (people aren’t really looking to ‘be educated’ or engaged by a museum — that’s what the museum wants to do and what the funder wants to see)
Why your museum, which is located in a specific ecosystem of supports, has chosen to support the participant’s goal
Those two pieces are what inform a theory of advantage. And that’s what we’re inviting folks to consider in our upcoming event3 on April 9th: What outcomes might your institution be uniquely suited to support? It’s hard to answer without considering others, like what are the alternatives to our museum? And what capabilities would we need to invest in to support this outcome?
These are the questions that don’t get as much attention as they deserve in strategic planning processes and implementation. At a glance, you might think the capabilities question gets attention, but it’s usually more like “how should we distribute resources over the next x years?” That’s not the same thing — it doesn’t require much explicit alignment around purpose or any theory of advantage.
Ultimately, a good theory helps us understand what to say no to. A theory of change can’t do that well — the mechanism you described in that grant application could belong to any museum in your region. A theory of advantage forces you to account for the alternatives and explain why your institution is the right vehicle.
Join me on April 9th for conversations on your institution’s distinct advantages.
Notes
- The debate as to whether Lewin actually said it is one that rages on in academic circles and will no doubt continue until the heat death of the universe. I’ve decided to sit this one out. ↩
- Ebrahim and Rangan (2010), scholars of nonprofit performance measurement at Harvard Business School, built a contingency framework showing that an organization’s theory of change varies along a complexity axis and that organizations with complex, non-linear causal logic can’t credibly demonstrate impact through linear logic models. Their framework was scoped to poverty alleviation, but the insight applies to museums as well. A theory of change describes a general causal mechanism, not a distinctive institutional position. That’s the gap a theory of advantage fills. ↩
- If you’ve been following how we’re changing our approach to gatherings based on what we’re learning from our community, you might notice that this event is identified as a ‘peer exchange’ gathering. The variables that inform this particular type of gathering include small group size (breakouts of 3–4), a constrained response mode (your job in the peer rounds is to name the pattern you hear, not to advise), a data stimulus completed live during the session (the Outcomes Assessment — so you’re interpreting real information about your own institution, not reacting to a presentation), open participation with no prerequisite or ongoing commitment, and Chatham House Rule confidentiality. Each element is tuned to help strangers do meaningful diagnostic work together in 80 minutes. Those of you who completed our survey on professional gatherings last month and those who have participated in private calls to share your experiences with gatherings have contributed to our decision to invest in this peer exchange format as one of three gathering types we’ll offer going forward. Thank you for sharing your perspective and helping us define how we’ll bring community members together going forward. ↩