Organisational change

Comment by Des Griffin on March 27, 2008 at 9:20am

Achieving organisational change is a matter of leadership which in turn is affected by governance practice and the way change is initiated.

In turn leadership is effective when it focuses on people and their development, when it is cohesive. Leadership is not about fiscal responsibility or writing the corporate plan or administering the organisation strictly in accordance with the directives of the board or the government. It is about appointing the best people and developing them, getting the “right people on the bus” as Jim Collins would say.

Most importantly, we need to remember that success depends on the way decisions get made, how people work together and how leadership is practiced. This is true of board practice and the daily life of organisations.

So questions about why web 2.0 is not being taken up so enthusiastically in some museums but is in others come down first of all to these issues of organisational practice.

These issues are dealt with extensively on my website and blog (www.desgriffin.com) and are developed in a just published article in Museum Management and Curatorship (Vol. 23, No. 1, March 2008, 43-61) entitled “Advancing Museums”.

Amongst the major features of successful organisations, including museums, as I have said, is working together. And this often means teamwork. So here are three references on that topic which I strongly commend.

A Peter Day program on the BBC (which incidentally includes stuff about the Cambridge Boat Race team) featured amongst other people Professor Lynda Gratton of the London Business School. On her website http://www.lyndagratton.com/ there is a link to a podcast (http://podcast.timesonline.co.uk/serve.php/823/mba5lyndagratton.mp3) by her dealing with teams. The BBC piece is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness/inbusiness_20080207.shtml

Gratton is a co-author of an article in Harvard Business Review (“8 Ways to Build Collaborative Teams” by, Lynda Gratton and Tamara Erickson, Harvard Business Review, 00178012, Nov2007, Vol. 85, Issue 11).

Finally, one of the papers published as part of the study of museums that I did with Morrie Abraham of the University of Technology dealt with achieving successful change (http://desgriffin.com/effective/manage-concl/ and also “Organisation change and management decision in museums” in Management Decision 37/10, 736-751).

If all this sounds a bit too business oriented you might remember that the number of comprehensive research studies on change in museums is rather limited and that the mantra proclaimed in the last 30 years by governments and others advocating that museums be more business-like actually have no relationship to best practice anywhere. Studies by people like Collins and Gratton do represent best practice and have lessons for museums.

Comment by Lynda Kelly on April 23, 2008 at 1:04pm

Check this out - Web 2.0 is set for spending boom - seems that businesses are taking Web 2.0 seriously...

Comment by Lynda Kelly on May 2, 2008 at 5:22pm

Here's a link (via Janet) to an interesting slide show about public sector management and change: Beyond the buzzwords: coping with change in the public sector commu... by Professor Paul G. Thomas, Duff Roblin Professor of Government, University of Manitoba, Canada (scroll down the page).

Comment by Susan Ashley on March 12, 2009 at 9:29pm

I am a new member from Canada, interested in how open governance can affect museums. I recommend the following TV discussion on open policy construction (I think the link is only goo for a short time).
http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?video?TAWSP_Dbt_20090306_779448_0

Cheers,
Susan Ashley
PhD student
Communication and Culture
York University, Toronto

Comment by Deborah Dunham on April 27, 2009 at 8:27pm

Organisation Structures Today?

We are collecting benchmarking data to help our clients. I am interested in hearing from anyone who has looked at what makes museum organisation structures effective? In particular how have the best institutions changed over the last few years to meet current realities (increased technology, decreased funding, more community involvement, etc.). In short, are people aligned to your strategy?

Comment by claire antrobus on December 24, 2009 at 1:11am

I'm interested in leadership issues relating to web 2.0 and museums (esp art museums and galleries) - just setting out to research this in the New Year so any pointers would be extremely useful!

Info about my project on www.claireantrobus.com/blog/

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