Collaboration & Creating Value

Some of the most effective and interesting ideas I have worked with museums to implement have been strategies and ideas borrowed from outside the museum field, helping educators & others to widen their horizons and spark creative juices.   Building on last month's post on teamwork and collaboration within the museum, let's look outside the museum walls to a recent publication focused on how that internal collaborative spirit can actually work to create value.

In author Evan Rosen's book, "The Culture of Collaboration:  Maximizing Time, Talent & Tools to Create Value in the Global Economy,"  he explains how and why collaborative tools can motivate us.   What follows are what he considers the ten cultural elements present when collaboration is working.   In his words...

Trust - To exchange ideas and create something with others, we must develop trust.   This is a challenge, especially in competitive organizational cultures.   Nevertheless, we must get over our fears and develop trust if we are to collaborate freely.

Sharing - Hoarding information prevents the free flow of ideas and therefore sabotages collaboration.   Sharing what we know improves collective creation by an order of magnitude and therefore makes everybody more valuable.

Goals - Taking the time to agree on goals at the beginning of a collaborative project pays off exponentially by providing the impetus for shared creation.

Innovation - The desire to innovate fuels collaboration.   In turn, collaboration enhances innovation.   After all, why collaborate just to maintain the status quo?

Environment - The design of both physical space and virtual environments impacts innovation and collaboration.

Collaborative Chaos - While all people and organizations require some order, effective collaboration requires some degree of chaos.   This chaos allows the unexpected to happen and generates rich returns.

Communication - Collaboration is inextricably linked with communication, both interpersonal and organizational.

Community - Without a sense of community, we often lack comfort and trust.   Therefore, community must be present for effective collaboration to occur.

Value - The primary reason we collaborate is to create value -- reducing cycle or product time, creating a new market, solving problems faster, designing more a marketable product or service, or increasing sales.

For museums to meet competitive challenges, they must change the internal culture from competitive to collaborative....The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA even included this descriptive sentence in their job description for a Chief of Education & Interpretation during a recent search..."The Peabody Essex approach to its mission moves beyond silo thinking and instead favors crisp execution in partnership among its various leaders and departments..."

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Welcome to the museumed.net blog...a forum for sharing ideas & information in the museum world.

Working with museums around the New England region and beyond, clients constantly ask me what the 'buzz' is in the museum world.   What is happening that they need to be aware of or know about to stay current?   Most of the requests for knowledge come in the form of what I call the 3 T's...Trends, Technology, and Transitions.    Transitions seem to be everyone's favorite topic - transitions involving colleagues, former colleagues, friends, and long-time museum professionals who are interesting to follow because let's face it, it masks itself as what it is - professional gossip!

Working with one museum recently, I stumbled on a transition of another kind, one that we should all be gossiping about.  The transition involved a change of title from Curator to 'Director of Collections & Learning.'   Wow - for a museum, that is a big shift.    This staff person has been with their museum over a decade.  Their title has changed before as they assumed additional responsibilities at various junctures in the museum's lifecycle.  This time the responsibilities have shifted significantly, including one key element - they work as part of a team in every museum initiative.  The museum is focused on blending the curatorial versus education 'department' theory, having them work synergistically to focus on teaching and learning in every initiative - programs and exhibits and the blending of the two.   Both the collections and the visitors are 'top of mind,' in a truly unique balance.

Clearly this is not a museum that is afraid to explore new paths.  So what does this transition really mean and why did it happen?  As our world widens and the pace of life quickens, museums of all disciplines and sizes are combining and reallocating resources to achieve their goals.  The messages we are communicating, the communities and audiences we wish to reach, and the resources we have to work with to achieve these goals are in a constant state of flux, and, as we all know, sometimes the current models just don't cut it any more.

A fresh perspective and a new lens to peer through allow us to stay current and to stay aware - of the present and of the future.  Sometimes a small modification or transition can represent much, much more.

What does this mean for your museum and the museum world as a whole?    We welcome your feedback and contributions to this blog.