Exhibition development approvals — how to get higher quality and happier people

How do we get exhibitions right? They’re expensive, complex and risky, and balance competing and overlapping issues to serve our audiences well, deliver our mission and satisfy funder requirements. We all know this. And yet, often development runs from stage to stage with only a cursory review — perhaps an hour with the CEO/Executive, a look at the budget from the CFO.

The CEO sees a few pretty pictures, asks a few questions and then says ‘i love it’ and on we go. Later on, it’s over budget, impossible to maintain, or doesn’t actually work for visitors. CEO’s fault? No. Project manager’s fault? Not really. It’s poor systems.

We often conflate ‘secure approval for…’ with ‘check the quality of…’ There’s a better way to ensure our exhibitions are going to be awesome, which also builds morale and buy-in, provides peer learning and reduces ambiguity. And that’s to decouple quality review from approval.

Couple of principles. First, we must know what we are seeking to achieve. We need a great brief, embedded within a clear organisational purpose, and we need bedrock strategies in place (curatorial, education, audience, brand, collections… etc). Second, we have a clearly identified project team and there’s a project manager or producer pulling it all together. Third, we’ve been consulting and workshopping to develop this already — ie this isn’t some closed-door vanity project held close amongst three or four staff. Finally, we’ve got a clear plan that a stage of work (‘concept design’) is ending and the next stage of work (‘scheme design’) is beginning.

The overall idea is to carry out a managed ‘quality check’ in a defined sequence, that subsequently provides management information to the Executive/CEO to enable approval. This quality check consists of a few stages, run over the course of 8 days. Strap in.

Before — briefing

Present the process. Book the meetings. Stock up on post-it notes. Co-opt some scribes.

Brief the CEO/Exec that they are an equal stakeholder in this process. Expertise is being exercised hierarchically for days 1–6. Make sure they know what this means; and prepare for the tough conversation when their views are treated like everyone else’s . All views raised are heard respectfully and worthy of a response, but they are all certainly getting a response rather than being taken as gospel.

Day 1 — present the project

The team present the project to everyone, and make everything available. Designs, collection lists, procurement plans — everything that collectively describes the project and how it will be delivered from here on. Those with a stake in the project must attend. My team have done this as a ‘speed dating’ format from issue to issue (the design table was more popular than the budget and risk table but hey, there’s someone for everybody), as a series of powerpoints, etc.

The project leader issues a publicly editable spreadsheet, that covers the next stages of work, and describes how Day 2 — Day 6 will work.

Day 2 — followups

A series of meetings that are pre-scheduled with some major major stakeholders: heads of design, curatorial, education, building — you’ll know who they are. These are deep dives into what’s being proposed.

And a ‘surgery’ session for anyone to ask more detailed questions, maybe to bring a colleague for a second opinion.

Day 3 — write down feedback

Every stakeholder writes comments into the spreadsheet, including name, issue and comment. For example:

Sam, Fire egress, showcase 7 partially blocks fire escape and needs to be moved at least 400mm to the left.

Jo, Inclusive design, graphic text looks to small for readability and needs to be larger

Day 4 — the team feedback on the feedback

The team who’ve been involved write comments on the comments. This is critical. It explains how and why the project team have done it this way, or offers solutions to the issues raised. So in my examples above, the team might write

Sam, good point, we’ll shift this over

Jo, we wondered about this too, but when we testing it in the gallery visitors seemed fine. Could you take a look with us in the gallery as we finalise in the next stage?

Day 5 — project leader adjudicates

This is where the project leader exercises judgement and plans how to respond in the next stage. They look at the comments, and the feedback, and makes a professional judgement that to agree with the team, agree with the commenter or escalate the issue.

Sam’s issue — resolved

Jo’s issue — resolved: onsite testing will now occur next month in the gallery

Day 6 — report to Executive/CEO/Steering Group

Project leader reports upwards, with news of who participated, key issues resolved and issues that require higher-level decision. Make all documents available as necessary.

Day 7 — follow up and contingency

Any outstanding issues that need resolution raised by the higher-ups.

Day 8 — well earned cake

Thank everyone for participation with cake, then project team decamp to local pub.

Why is this good?

The core point is that nothing on an exhibition project is really a single issue. The floor finish affects the budget affects the interactive media affects curriculum goals affects political support affects board buy-in affects whether we proceed at all…. This method ensures that the project team, already balancing multiple overlapping issues, are able to continue that balance through a review process, while being accountable to an array of critical friends.

From a commenter’s point of view… I have had every possible moment to be heard, to deploy my expertise. I have been respected. My niche issue, so often dismissed (how do we clean behind those showcases?), has been heard and responded too. I’ve been heard for my skills and responsiblities, not by seniority, department or clique. I planned my time for this, and it only took about half a day all up to hear presentations, read relevant docs and then type my feedback. I heard so many other experts around the building — i know more about the project, my colleagues and how this business works.

From a project team’s point of view… I got to respond to feeback with our thinking. We didn’t get canned by a single-issue reviewer and had to compromise elsewhere. Our work was revealed and celebrated. We have clear feedback on which to continue

From a PM’s point of view… This took a bit of time but everyone has spoken. During the next stage I know we are proceeding with confidence. I’m more confident that the project is going to be great. I was able to balance stakeholders, team members and project goals. I haven’t been caught between impossible opposing stakeholders (build it out of diamonds! but cut the budget by 20%!). I haven’t been sideswiped by a corridor conversation out of context.

From the Exec/CEO’s point of view… I know this project has been tested with the best expertise in the organisation. I know everyone has had a chance to speak on equal footing. I can see the transparency and honesty of raising issues. I am more confident that issues have been tackled. I have had the real biggies raised with me in a structured way so i have been able to focus my time on the issues i really care about and have responsibility for.

From the HR Manager’s point of view… This org has real buy-in to projects and respect for individual expertise. We are a great place to work and this aids retention and recruitment.

For most people, the investment of time is about the same as with traditional ‘present the design’ approaches

For advanced players

• Build and use prototypes in this process
• Invite internal advocacy groups into the process and ask and support them to apply their lens (got a queer staff group? here’s how to get great input)
• Use mini-processes for small-issue reviews, do it over the course of an hour
• Invite externals into the process (eg a design academic, a teacher)

For advanced, brave and awesome players

• Invite community members into the process —invite Indigenous elders into the process

Beware

You’ll be criticised that this seems like a lot of work. But it really isn’t when you factor in that you’ll be producing these documents anyway, and the rework from crappy review systems is a cost and a massive timesuck, never mind the morale issues of someone coming in with a ‘new’ problem halfway through a design stage.

Some people are really comfortable with the old systems, particularly well-ensconced middle and senior managers. Those with privilege within existing systems — who are used to their single issues having the most weight, and never mind the other stakeholders—will resist. In my experience these are rare but they have usually been old-fashioned i’m-the-expert curators or designers, for whom the purity of their single vision is what matters.

And those scarred by the old systems (the housekeeping staff who have never been listened to) often won’t speak up without a really open and safe environment. You’ll also have to manage the people who are never happy with the realities of creative exhibition projects; for example, those who find it hard that you don’t have 100% cost certainty prior to starting on site.

For the project management geeks

I’ve adapted this model over a number of years from Prince2 quality management principles. Prince2 is generally an absolutely appalling system for managing creative projects but this works really well. I rarely mention it is derived from Prince2 because it makes creatives run for the hills.

This is ideally part of a quality management approach that includes peer review, prototyping and so on. But it’s rare to get all that in line as it’s super expensive and only a really big org/project can sustain it.

Credits

To the originators of the Prince2 methodology and to the colleagues have improved this over the past fifteen years; from the NHM London’s Darwin Centre Programme Office in 2005–8, The National Railway Museum York’s project management team 2009–12 and Museums Victoria’s Producers, Leadership Team and Executive 2013–16.