Museum Metamorphosis : Day 8
This is the eighth 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.
For years, I’ve advocated that many organisational problems can be eliminated through properly documented roles and responsibilities, which are regularly reviewed and discussed with staff. This isn’t about job titles or organisational hierarchies but making it clear which people are responsible for doing what stuff. When these lines are blurred, you inevitably end up with wasteful duplication or things not being done because ‘it’s someone else’s job’.
One of the first decisions the new board made when I joined was to have no roles and responsibilities other than Chair and Treasurer. What a mistake that turned out to be. It really didn’t take long for one or two people to start interfering in things that others were engaged with — mostly without telling them! With a largely ineffective chairperson, chaos ensued as mixed messages abounded as the loudest people in the room took it upon themselves to take charge.
In creating the new environment, I was keen not to repeat past mistakes. While we needed general volunteers more than anything else, we created a few specific roles that volunteers could consider taking on in full or partially. Some roles probably should be added to the list, but I’m currently taking responsibility for them. These are primarily around communications and IT, where the current volunteers have neither the skills nor the inclination to learn them!
The current system works well 99% of the time, and when there are issues, we try and work around them. It’s a fine balance between having a flexible system and over-complicating things. We are still in a learning phase, and we’re developing new tricks to make things work even more smoothly.
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.