Digital Strategy for Museums 2016

Digital Strategy for MuseumsWorkshop @ Museum Ideas 2016

Alex Morrison, Managing Director ([email protected])Gavin Mallory, Head of Production ([email protected])

4th October 2016

Agenda

What is strategy?

Museums and digital

Why do you need a digital strategy?

Museum digital strategy case studies

A model for digital strategy

How to develop a digital strategy

Summary

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What is strategy?

Exercise: What is Strategy?

What is strategy?

What is the best example you know of strategy in action?

Five minutes

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What is Strategy?

“The term ‘strategy’ should mean

a cohesive response

to

an important challenge.”

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt page 6

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What is Strategy?

“The kernel of a strategy contains three elements:

a diagnosis,

a guiding policy,

and coherent action.”

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt page 7

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What is Strategy?

There are many definitions of strategy.

What all definitions have in common is that strategy is the responsibility of leadership.

‘Strategos’ is the Greek word for ‘general’.

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Museums and digital

A Director’s View

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoEXeNnusFE© cogapp.com, 2016

What do we mean by ‘digital’?

The exact scope of ‘digital’ may vary from one organization to another.

There may be installed kiosks, digital signage, internal digital services, apps and other kinds of digital publication.

For most purposes and most organisations, a good starting point for a definition of ‘digital’ might be:

All public-facing digital services, including websites, apps and social media, and all the operations that directly support them.

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Museums and digital

“Museums are being redefined for a digital age. The transformation, museum officials say, promises to touch every aspect of what museums do, from how art and objects are presented and experienced to what is defined as art.”

New York Times article, October 26, 2014

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Exercise: Museums and digital

Someone asked me the other day: ‘what is distinctive about museums and digital’?

What would your answer be?

Five minutes

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What is distinctive about museums and digital?

Content-rich

Content that can only be made available digitally

On-site and online possibilities

Large public audiences

Non-standard business models

Non-commercial pay scales and limited resources

High ethical standards

Very good at core business - not so good at innovation

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Why do you need a digital strategy?

Why do you need a Digital Strategy?

Digital activity in the economy is growing at an unprecedented rate (>20% p.a.).

The digital environment is disruptive of critical business processes including marketing and fundraising.

The digital environment is itself frequently disrupted.

Because the digital environment is uniquely dynamic, the organization’s digital operation is always (necessarily) a work-in-progress.

Digital’s position in the organization chart is likely to be anomalous and shifting upwards as it grows more rapidly than other areas and becomes increasingly important.

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Why do you need a Digital Strategy?

Senior leaders are likely to be less familiar and less comfortable with digital:

hence not able to assess the strategic context* for themselves;

hence reluctant to engage.

*strategic context is a key concept

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Exercise: Challenges and Opportunities

You are the director of your organisation.

What are your top three challenges and opportunities?

Five minutes

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Museum digital strategy case studies

Case Studies

We have done strategy work in one form or another for many clients usually as part of a larger implementation project.

The three following extracts come from published projects that we have NOT worked on. What do you think?

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Smithsonian

Creating a Digital Smithsonian is an ambitious five-year plan that lays out how we will accomplish digitization — the activity that will help us realize these benefits. It outlines strategies to digitize our collections and research holdings along with the descriptive, interpretative information that accompanies them. It recognizes that the Smithsonian is poised on the edge of a new era, one where the power of technology can combine with Smithsonian resources to create unprecedented access. Digitization is one of the best investments we can make in our future.

2010

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Tate

Through the development of a holistic digital proposition there is an opportunity to use the digital to deliver Tate’s mission to promote public understanding and enjoyment of British, modern and contemporary art. To achieve this, digital will need to become a dimension of everything that Tate does.

2013

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Exercise: Strategy review

Working collaboratively, [museum group] will create meaningful, enjoyable and participatory digital experiences to engage audiences with our collection, increasing reach, reputation and revenues through artistic excellence.

You are the director of [museum group]. Would this be likely to uncross your arms?

If yes, why?

If not, how could it be more persuasive?

Five minutes

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A model for digital strategy

Strategy in the Organization

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Overview

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Leadership

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Overview

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Management

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How to develop a digital strategy

How to develop a Digital Strategy

Need to engage leadership (with the rest of the team).

Need to engage adjacent departments e.g. Marketing and IT.

Need to provide a way for leadership to review and understand the strategic context...

... and then formulate a vision and objectives.

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Facilitated process undertaken by a strategy team reporting to the Head of Digital.

Strategy team begins with a review of context:

Environment, organization, target audiences and digital programmes

Business plans, stakeholder interviews, customer research, analytics review, peer review, industry trends, technology trends, review target audiences, etc...

Turn the findings (and generous quantities of the data, lots of graphs, tables, case studies and diagrams) into a giant slide deck.

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Organize a two-day workshop

Day One:

An Introduction to Digital Strategy

A review of the contextual research with exercises

e.g. What is our proposition for each target audience segment?

Day Two:

Revisit Day One - what did we learn?

More exercises including sources of value

This workshop should involve: as many key members of the senior leadership team as possible; managers of the digital programme and lower-level team members; leaders from adjacent departments including marketing and IT.

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Write up the results of the workshop and fill in any remaining gaps with additional research and analysis.

Submit to senior leadership for review

Send a revised draft to the workshop team for their comments

Submit a final draft to senior leadership for their sign-off

Initiate the next phase of work, set up monitoring and management review functions.

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How to write up a Digital Strategy

Four main sections:

Target audiences

Leadership

Management

Operations

Each section details: context, vision and objectives.

Add an introduction, executive summary and other front matter.

Add appendices with key exhibits from the research.

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Digital Strategy: Summary

Digital Strategy: Summary

For the organization to be effective Leadership, Management and Operations all have to play nicely together.

Strategy is the enabling contribution of Leadership.

Digital strategy is necessary and distinct from other kinds of strategy.

The goal of digital strategy is a statement of vision with detailed objectives, based on evidence and ‘owned’ by senior leadership.

Our functional model provides an effective foundation for digital strategy.

Our method, based on systematic contextual research and facilitated workshops, allows leadership to engage and feel comfortable formulating a digital strategy.

Armed with a signed-off strategy, Management can manage, Operations can operate, and Leadership can be sure that things are going as they should. ;-)

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Further reading

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt

The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank

Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz

Who do you want your customers to become? by Michael Schrage

Understanding Museum Visitors’ Motivations and Learning by John Falk

Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwell

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Thank you!

Digital Strategy for Museums 2016

Leadership & Management

Transcript of Digital Strategy for Museums 2016