Museum Metamorphosis : Day 7
This is the seventh instalment of my thirty-day challenge to write a daily 300-word article about the business of reopening our local museum after being closed for over five years. This is not so much a story as a set of bite-sized takeaways that you may find useful.
I feel like I’m managing to clear out some of the worst toxic behaviours from the organisation, bit by bit. Is this what it means to be a disruptor?
The biggest challenge was about to start. Previously, trustees made every decision, no matter how large or trivial. Analysis paralysis didn’t even begin to describe it. This bottleneck prevented any genuine change or progress because every little thing went through the committee and would be argued to death. So, you can imagine how difficult it was to resolve big issues. Not everyone on the board was too enamoured with this idea.
Early on, I resolved that the volunteers should be involved in the organisation's day-to-day activities. But I didn’t want to simply shift the bottleneck by having ten volunteers get bogged down in the weeds instead of three trustees. Additionally, from a legal perspective, trustees must have control over certain activities, which can’t simply be delegated to volunteers.
We designed a ‘management committee’ (MC) formed from three ‘defined’ volunteer roles. The MC could make operational decisions without referring back for trustee approval. Since these people were doing the ‘shop floor’ work, they were best placed to take action. Trustees would take ownership of the governance while the MC would oversee operations. MC decisions had to be reversible within reason. We built some purchasing guidelines so they could buy essentials without authorisation. We set up communication channels, formal and informal, which allowed all volunteers to have a say in what was being discussed.
At long last, we were shifting from a dysfunctional talking shop into a hive of activity where everyone had a voice.
I am a semi-retired independent management consultant specialising in organisational change management and better Ways of Working and the chairman of the board of trustees at my local Heritage Centre. I’m from the UK but based in Prague in the Czech Republic. I mainly write about developing better ways of working, working in the Apple ecosystem, and my adopted home in Prague. If you’ve enjoyed this, please check out some of my other articles or even follow me if you’d like to be notified when I publish new material.