Leading by Design

As a presenter at the recent  Conversations In the Disciplines:  The Present and Future of Public History in New York State , a convening of public historians and students sponsored by the History Department at SUNY Albany, I had the opportunity to consider some of the broad issues facing history museums and historical societies in our state.  Some of my comments seemed to hit a nerve with the audience, so I thought I'd share them here with the hope that you'll want to weigh in. I'm just back from a very brief visit and presentation at the Seminar for Historical Administration, a 3-week immersion for history museum leaders co-sponsored by the American Association for State and Local History, Colonial Williamsburg, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and others.  Institutions as large as The Henry Ford and as small as the local history museum in Wasilla, Alaska, participated in the seminar this year.  It was clear that by the time I was schedule

FOR MORE THAN A YEAR I'VE BEEN COLLABORATING WITH FOUR COLLEAGUES, each of us an independent consultant in the cultural/NGO sector, all of us looking to hone the business end of our work.  We've SWOT'd and career planned together, mapped and graphed our work, and brainstormed solutions to each other's challenges.  We're branching out now with a workshop program encouraging others to take a similar career evaluation journey.  (Our next one is coming up in Burlington, VT next week!) We've also produced a pithy little newsletter together, called "Take 5".  It's our intent is to bring readers bite-sized ideas to get your creative professional juices flowing.  Our inaugural issue suggested readers think about planning execution before launching into planning, explore a trend called ' flawsomeness ', try an activity to think differently about your audience, and most presciently, get your organization's (or your own) disaster planning in o