Museum leaders sometimes evaluate potential changes through a peculiar lens: Will this make our work easier? Will this fit neatly alongside what we're already doing?
These questions reveal a disconnect between how we think about institutional progress and what it actually requires.* I notice this particularly in conversations about our upcoming collaboration with John Falk, which combines Progress-Space Research with his Value Realization Process to help museums prioritize the goals of the people their institution wants to support.
During our recent conversation about his forthcoming book, Leaning into Value: Becoming a User-Focused Museum, John addressed the challenges ahead:
Most people would agree with me that the next decade could be quite a turbulent one for the museum community. We're facing significant headwinds. Almost to a person, everybody in the museum community I talked to appreciates that museums need to make changes. Changes are not simple. Changes are not easy.
The time to assess new approaches in terms of ease and efficiency is when things are going well — when the risks of change outweigh the risks of maintaining course. For many museums today, the reverse is true: The status quo presents the greater threat.
It would be absurd for a museum professional to ask, "Does this make museums' decline into irrelevance easier?" Yet, if we agree that the future of museums is uncertain at best, that question is at the heart of assessments predicated on ease, simplicity, and efficiency.
The Time Paradox
When museum leaders say they don't have time to develop new capabilities for understanding and supporting community goals, they may be using time as a proxy for something else. They want their institution to become more user- or community-centered, but they evaluate potential approaches based on their similarities to current practices.
This mindset has all the makings of a Yogi Berra quote: "Museums don't have time to listen to their communities. They're too busy trying to become community-centered."
This reality becomes clear in the questions we're receiving about the Value Realization Collaborative. For instance:
“How do you think this methodology can help remove barriers to making changes within an organization?”
It's an understandable question, but the honest answer is: No methodology alone can remove barriers if the organization isn't prepared to make space for new capabilities. Since most museums are already at capacity, there is rarely a moment when there will magically be more time. Unless you're opening a new museum, the real question is: What are we prepared to stop doing so that we can realize our strategic priorities?
To make this more concrete, take a moment to consider what you might stop doing if you integrated the Value Realization process into your museum's work and began listening deeply to your community regularly:
Annual visitor surveys that generate data no one uses
Regular committee meetings that don't lead to decisions
Programs that don't meaningfully support prioritized community goals
Routine reporting that doesn't inform strategy
Staff brainstorming sessions disconnected from community perspectives
"Engagement" initiatives without clear ties to community progress
Each of these common practices consumes time that could be redirected toward understanding and supporting community goals. The issue isn't finding more time — it's choosing to spend time differently.
A Different Kind of Progress
"The processes that I lay out," John emphasized in our conversation, "represent the hard work that we all need to do to actually move forward and have a chance of being sustainable and successful over the decades ahead."
The Value Realization Collaborative may not be easy. That’s because it is not more of what you’re already doing. It’s not additive. It's meant to help museums develop real capabilities for supporting community progress. Through structured engagement with proven methodologies and sustained attention to community goals, participants learn to:
Define value from the community's perspective
Listen deeply to understand mental models and motivations
Map opportunities based on community goals
Measure progress in ways that matter to users
Create artifacts, like opportunity maps, that can serve to both assess the organization’s capabilities and communicate value and need to stakeholders
Yes, this requires a significant time commitment because that's what meaningful progress requires.
What might you give up or stop doing to make time to articulate your museum’s value?
*I’m quick to make room for nuance and stamp out sweeping generalizations. An individual museum may genuinely need more time to make time for change. However, when many museums resist adopting new practices, I think it’s fair to suggest a diagnosis is in order. Both can be true.