How do you articulate the value of your institution to the communities you support (or hope to support)?
In last week’s VRC Foundations gathering we discussed articulation — the focus of Chapter 5 in @John H Falk’s Leaning Into Value. Falk challenges museums to move beyond traditional metrics like visitor numbers or program counts to communicate value in terms of genuine user outcomes and community impact.
Another way to think about articulation is through the lens of positioning. By "positioning", I'm referring to intentionally creating context for specific participants and communities. This isn't only about messaging or marketing, though they are also an important part of articulating value. Everything everyone does in the museum sends signals that create context for participants. Humans are categorizing creatures, always seeking meaning from potential patterns. Positioning is about developing awareness of the signals we're sending and, to the extent that it is possible and useful, taking deliberate control of those signals.
Our research has revealed unexpected insights about these signals. Through listening sessions with members at one institution, we discovered that a guard tower at one entrance evoked a sense of safety for some. Even without anyone stationed at the guard tower, its presence was enough to signal safety and welcome. Now, it's not unreasonable to imagine that same tower might signal "keep out" to others. Here on Long Island, I notice that beaches and public parks often have barbecue grills out in the open for anyone to use. I'm not sure how often these are actually used for family gatherings or children's birthday parties, but usually when I see them, no one is using them. Still, they send a strong signal — "this is a public space. You are welcome here."
Imagine that institution with the guard tower added barbecue grills somewhere on its grounds. First, I would imagine they would have to have a lot of internal conversations with some people challenging the idea that a renowned, cultural institution would add such an affordance to their repertoire. "We are a museum and a garden, not a public park". In comments like those we see the power of default positioning. The default is "museum" or "botanic garden". There is an assumption that we have a little to no control over positioning, but that's not true. If museum staff and leadership do not control the context of the museum, then who does?
For-profit organizations may be quicker to accept that they have power in creating contexts for intended users. Perhaps this is because they naturally think in terms of competition or alternatives — "If customers don't use us to achieve their goal, what do they do instead?" Museums, on the other hand, may tend to think that their job is to be a museum.
Positioning can happen at a variety of scales — you can frame an educational program in terms of gaining new knowledge or as a way to connect with others who share a particular interest. Doing so does not mean that the program doesn't provide both forms of value, it just means that you've emphasized one over the other. There are a number of reasons you would choose one over the other — ideally, your institution has a strategy that is focused on a particular type of outcome. As strategist Roger Martin explains, real strategy isn't just about allocating resources you control (that’s just planning) — it's about placing a "strategic bet" on how you'll influence community behavior. You examine your options and commit to a specific direction, knowing you can't control all variables but believing this path will create the most value.
Perhaps your museum has defaulted to emphasizing intellectual well-being — we're a place where people learn stuff about stuff — and you've decided that in the near term you are going to test articulating the value of what you do in terms of social well-being. The entire museum has committed to trying out this new positioning, and you realize that you can, in fact, reframe the educational program you lead in terms of social well-being. People are still learning, we just now get to find out whether an emphasis on social connection impacts results.
Or perhaps your institution has listened (this is the calibration phase, in Falk’s Value Realization Process) and found that the institution has more or less accidentally positioned itself as a resource for physical well-being to some users — the guard tower, for example, is a longstanding signal of physical well-being to some users. But the institution's current strategy (bet) is that by providing more opportunities for personal well-being, it can address its own financial challenges. The default positioning isn’t enough, you decide, so let’s invest in another class of outcomes to see if we can improve performance. In that case, you might not want to knock down the guard tower, but — since a strategy is a coordinated, integrated effort across all units of the institution — the folks in operations and facilities feel they can contribute to that strategy by installing those barbecues a few yards away from the playground that's already on the grounds. The facilities staff have contributed to your new positioning and perhaps reconnected with the purpose of their work (i.e., support people not just maintain facilities) in the process.
Articulating the value of your museum is not only about describing the wonderful things you do or even only about who your museum is for. It's can also be about creating context and providing clues as to what's possible for people to achieve using the resources at your disposal.
Questions to Consider:
What unintentional signals might your institution be sending today? (Hint: You’ll likely need to do some listening to answer this question — Museum professionals are not a representative sample of the mental models of the people you support)
Where could intentional positioning create meaningful impact?
How might your role contribute to clearer articulation of value? If your museum decided to focus on a particular outcome or goal — say, physical or personal well-being — how might you contribute the resources of your department or your personal skills in service of that outcome?
What what happen if your institution traded strategic planning for strategic betting? In other words, what if you embraced the reality that value is defined by your communities and, since you can influence but not control your communities, you must invest in outcomes and measure results rather than merely allocate resources?