Leading by Design

The October 2008 briefing at www.trendwatching.com focuses on how businesses can think about providing their customers with   “genuinely interesting and unexpected benefits and privileges that will delight some or all” of them.   Trendwatching calls this PERKONOMICS, and for a growing number of businesses, it goes well beyond access to a fancy airport lounge. PERKONOMICS: A new breed of perks and privileges, added to brands' regular offerings, is satisfying consumers’ ever-growing desire for novel forms of status and/or convenience, across all industries. The benefits for brands are equally promising: from escaping commoditization, to showing empathy in turbulent times. One to have firmly on your radar in 2009.   The museum industry has the ability to offer some pretty great perks, and some of the tried-and-true ones include behind-the-scenes tours, access to exhibitions before they open to the public, shop discounts and passport programs.   And then there’s fast-lane admitt...

I spent yesterday with an enthusiastic yet mired board and director of a small heritage organization. After doing a quick round of strengths/weaknesses about the organization, it became clear that many (most) of the weaknesses stem from one, big absent strength -- a clear vision and mission. Equally telling, no one noted that anything even approaching a long-range or strategic plan was a strength (they have one, too!). Here's a short list of this organization's symptoms (aka weaknesses):  can't seem to focus; can't seem to follow through on what plans there are; poor internal communication; committees don't function well or at all; uneven or weak leadership, etc.  You get the picture.  A  list like that can undo the good intentions of any board member or director. So, what to do?  Well, you can certainly start to address the symptoms.  But they are symptoms after all -- the underlying problem is still there.  So, I encouraged the group to take a two-pronged attack:...

I’ve been carrying around a letter to the editor that I ripped out of the May 26 th issue of Crain’s New York Business.   The letter by Chief Executive Gordon J. Campbell of the United Way of New York City is topped by this headline:   Nonprofit Boards Aren’t Piggy Banks:   Trustees Have Broader Duties .   It was written in response to an article about how nonprofit boards in NYC are scrambling for deep-pocketed trustees to help organizations weather this climate of financial distress. Much of the grousing I routinely hear from executive directors is about how their boards aren’t raising enough money no matter the financial environment.   This is a long-standing complaint.   There are a lot of board members out there who don’t give much – or at all – in the way of personal financial gifts nor do they actively work on behalf of the organization to seek financial gifts from others.   One prevalent response to this state of affairs is, “I give of my time.”   And yes, that, too, is i...

" The difficulty in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, but to respond with yesterday's logic ." -- Peter Drucker The American Association of Museums’ Center for the Future of Museums is asking the field to help it “build a picture of museums in 2019 and explore how the field can help society respond to the challenges we face” using Superstruct, the world’s first Massively Multiplayer Forecasting Game.  To receive e-mail alerts from the Center for the Future of Museums about the museum-specific storyline in Superstruct and to keep it up to date on your game activities, contact AAM at futureofmuseums@aam-us.org To read more about the game visit www.iftf.org/node/2098 . To receive e-mail alerts from IFTF when Superstruct launches on September 22, e-mail superstruct@iftf.org . Futuring underpins anticipatory leadership and management – skills that are increasingly critical to organizational survival and success.   Futuring needn’t been far, far in the futur...

For the last month, I’ve had a poll running on this blog asking folks to note the size of their nonprofit boards.   The overwhelming number of voters (80%) chose the 11-20 member category.   Ten percent have a board with ten or fewer members and 10% have a board with 21-35 members. This mirrors the results for the 2006 annual reports submitted to the NYS Education Department by chartered museums and historical societies. Of 801 institutions reporting boards of trustees, the average board size was 12 .    Forty-one institutions reported board with more than 25 people, ranging from 26 members to a high of 63. In prior years, the number is almost the same.  In 1998, the average size was 11. Paul Stewart, who serves on the board of the Albany, NY-based Capital District Underground Railroad Workshop , wrote, “Some organizations seem to like small boards and some large boards. What is the difference in what they accomplish? What other dynamics are there?   …it is clear that having ...

I first read Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith's book, The Wisdom of Teams , years ago when I was preparing to lead a team of museum educators through a five-institution collaboration. Ever since then, I've asked myself whether or not boards of directors can meet the standards the authors identified as critical to the high-performing team. The Wisdom of Teams looks primarily at the for-profit workplace and how groups of workers combine in teams to get work done.  Teams function at a variety of levels -- or not at all -- from the innocuous working group , whose purpose is to share information, to the high-performing team , which can reach astounding feats of accomplishment. Okay.  We know boards are groups that come together to get work done.  And some boards are highly effective and productive.  But since boards members are serving voluntarily, would they ever have enough skin in the game to be one of Katzenbach and Smith's high-performing teams? And do they need to be anywa...

If you search the Internet for the term "Shiny Object Syndrome" you'll learn that it refers to the penchant many people have for latching onto the latest tech toys and social networking media no matter the cost in dollars, time or productivity. Email and websites?  Old school.  How about Facebook, Flickr and Twitter?  What's next and how fast will it get here?  Applied to the world of cultural organizations, how well will shiny objects facilitate relationship-building among and between audiences? When used in the broader context of attention diversion, Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS, for short) has been alive and well in the organizational environment for a very long time .  SOS can just as easily be about introducing costumed interpreters to increase visitation as it is about inaugurating a wild and whacky fundraising event to bolster the bottom line.  Funders, too, are all potential shiny objects.  In other words, shiny objects can take an organization to the next level...