Note: This post is one of a series examining organizational culture in museums. If leadership at your museum, or other museum leaders you know, are interested in finding innovative ways to make museums better places to work, please see this page to learn more about three new initiatives from Museum Questions consulting. Please note, early bird registration for Culture Shift ends on August 31!
In June 2024, I had the opportunity to talk to Laura Huerta Migus about organizational culture and organizational change. Laura is one of my favorite people to talk to – she is both wise and knowledgeable. You can see a past Museum Questions interview with Laura here.
Laura Huerta Migus has been working to improve museums’ effectiveness and organizational capacities – especially in the areas of equity and inclusion – for more than twenty years. She has held appointments at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Association of Children’s Museums, and the Association of Science-Technology Centers, Inc.
The opinions expressed in this piece are her own and not do not necessarily reflect those of IMLS or the U.S. Government.
Laura, I know you have worked with a number of museums on organizational change. Can you share a little about this work?
I worked for a few years outside of the museum field doing consulting around strategy and change management at the National Multicultural Institute. Later, this led to co-developing the Cultural Competence Learning Institute (CCLI), which was a partnership between Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, the Association of Children’s Museums, and the Association of Science and Technology Centers. CCLI gave museums a year of dedicated support, and a cohort to start to walk the talk of their DEI mission. Everyone came with a notion of a desired endpoint, and the recognition that they weren’t there yet. What was most interesting from that experience was the realization for most participants that meaningful change around equity needed to happen at the most fundamental levels of organizational behavior – not through “big vision” initiatives.
One example is of well-known museum with a global reputation, on financially solid ground, that took on the big question of “What does being inclusive mean?” Through the year-long process, I saw the willingness of the CEO and others leading this effort to do their own work and be “book club leaders” for their staff. They didn’t dictate the direction; instead they curated interesting ideas to engage their staff in discussion about. That institution came out with a strong plan that reflected a changed culture, which focused on effective internal decision-making, hiring, and board practices.
Organizational change requires people to look at the super-mundane ways they function, that get in the way of the big ideas such as knowing how to put a good staff meeting together – an area of most-needed intervention in almost every museum.
One organization spent time asking questions like: Why do we have staff meetings? What are they about? Who are they for? Who is allowed to come to these meetings – part-time staff? volunteers? consultants? Are these information-giving spaces? Feedback spaces? This museum understood that they didn’t have a consistent culture around internal communication, and then they built it, which impacted everything from volunteer recruitment and management to board governance.
What were barriers to doing this work well?
Museums with a strong story about themselves as a museum had a hard time changing. Some of the larger organizations made the least amount of progress in that time. The more an organization is tied into a reputational story, the harder it is to change.
This work failed when the CEO delegated this work to others, using a sponsorship model of organizational change. Almost universally if the CEO is not visible in terms of ownership or activity, it doesn’t go anywhere.
Museums struggled when they were unwilling to focus on building internal infrastructure such as policies, procedures, and communications. They wanted to focus on public-facing (including staff-facing) areas of change. But its critical to focus on the HOW, not just the WHAT. For example, before developing a position description, you need standards for hiring.
We started talking about organizational change when I shared a post on LinkedIn asking if shaming is useful for creating change. This was in response to a foundation-focused shaming initiative, but Change the Museum may be a better known example for museum professionals. What are your thoughts on efforts like this?
Public accountability can be really powerful. For example, Pro Publica recently did a series on organizations that have known since 1994 that they have artifacts and remains which they need to reconsider in order to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This series is scathing and is a kind of productive shaming. It’s very well-researched and evidence-based. But the goal was to put pressure on institutions to move forward, when the procedural system has not compelled them to do what was right, and what they were legally bound to do. What makes this series different from “shaming” is that the tone and call to action is very fact-based, and it lays out an actionable role for organizations.
Too often, groups are sharing personal attacks on museum management. In general, human nature’s response to shame is to hide. It’s self-preservation. In addition, personal attacks will never be a way forward, because changing people is not a systemic intervention. That same system will then hire the same type of people back. Public shaming can give visibility to an individual’s experience and can create space for individual justice – which is powerful – but doesn’t often end up in the kind of sustainable change folks are looking for.
Systemic change is ecosystem change. Big, new ideas for how to do museum work can only spark organizational change when they are easy to take on, or when enough people are willing to do the work and nurture them within the system. In order for a big idea to take root and be a catalyst for change, enough people, or the right people, have to accept that seed in a way that allows them to build enough energy to shift that ecosystem. An invasive plant only becomes invasive when it can propagate itself in the system to become a change-maker.
Traditional, mid-to-late 20th century corporate leadership used a military-inspired, “command and control” approach: command your troops and control outcomes. Vision comes from on high, and staff receive and implement.
Though it may not seem so, shaming is a part of the command and control approach, with the influence coming from a group or a place that feels without power. Unionization is an example of an intervention that is only most useful or needed in response to a command and control culture . It happens when a group of people do not feel that there is authentic two-way communication and accountability within a workplace and have exhausted possibilities for internal negotiation, and the only remaining option for being heard is to call in a third party. Unions certainly can change the balance of power within an organization, but they can also serve to inadvertently harden hierarchies.
I don’t want to invalidate the experience that leads people to feel that public shaming is the best or only route available to them to call for change. Shaming comes out of a place of emotion, and from lived experience with lack of process or policies. People only launch attacks on things that they think matter. It’s very hard to repair a relationship when it has gotten to the point where someone feels like they need to publicly shame. And it’s hard for the other party to find a path back to a good relationship after being shamed. Once a relationship has gotten to that point, very few of the parties involved will have the talent, skills, or willpower to figure out how to repair it.
What would you recommend doing instead of shaming?
There are powerful legal and professional tools that are effective and are compulsory to require change. For example, if you have a labor problem, you can file complaints with your state’s Labor Department – this is a right and it protects people and institutions. You don’t have to rely on an organization’s internal HR processes if they are ineffective. If an organization is that toxic, it is a public good to open it up, and make sure you are triggering the accountability mechanisms that exist to protect workers at all levels – even contractors. Labor Departments have people with the right skill sets for investigations and mediations. In museums, we see very few labor lawsuits or complaints being filed in situations in which they might be appropriate. And while public organizing is a very powerful tool – I would like to see more efforts that actively engage the legal and regulatory bodies that are here to protect workers and ensure employers are nurturing healthy workplaces, rather than action that mostly takes place on social platforms. These public forums can create the sense that folks are not alone, but they don’t necessarily accelerate action. I’d recommend visiting the U.S. Department of Labor’s website, which has very good resources on how to file complaints and give powerful overviews of laws that protect workers: WHD | U.S. Department of Labor (dol.gov). They also have a directory of state and local labor departments to facilitate access for workers and employers: Services By Location | U.S. Department of Labor (dol.gov). I firmly believe that sustainable change can happen, but it requires all parties to be willing to inform, be informed, and create a shared vision of success.
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