As the pandemic struck, like Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy in Oz, museum workers found themselves cast into a completely new reality.

Lengthy closures and stay-at-home orders unmoored us from the buildings and collections that normally anchored our work.

Suddenly, we saw one another in new ways—with the Zoom window as our looking glass. Looking so directly at one another (in some cases for the first time) brought home the powerful realization that museums are made of people.

This strange, unanticipated intimacy generated an intense focus on who we are, not just the work we do. As individual lives blended more visibly with professional capacities, museum workers at all levels developed a keener awareness of how we support and care for one another.

This focused consideration of the people who inhabit museum workplaces, and how they can best relate to one another and to the work at hand, is long overdue.

In her studies of strategic management, Rita McGrath divides the history of organizational management into three eras.

In the first, coming on the heels of the Industrial Revolution, organizations focused on execution—arranging people and resources into a machine-like structure that could produce specific outputs. In the world of museums, this era saw passionate founders creating the earliest formal museum organizations and establishing functional departments within them to produce the outputs we know as collecting, conserving, and exhibiting.

The second era—the era of expertise—defined the management approaches of the mid-to-late twentieth century. As post-World-War-II expansion created more complex organizations, management consulting grew into a booming enterprise, with theorists applying concepts from psychology, sociology, scientific measurement, statistics, and beyond to optimize them as systems.

This style of managerial thinking has had a profound impact on museum management. As museum work moved from vocation to profession over the course of the twentieth century, practitioners delved into the world of corporate enterprise for ideas about how to manage their growing number of activities, services, and constituents.

It became common for cultural management experts to draw parallels like this one by organizational theorist Laurent Lapierre, published in 2001:

In the decades between the pressures leveled by the austerity of the early 1980s and those of the banking crisis of 2008, professionalizing museums absorbed most of the key practices of for-profit management theory: management by strategy and objective-setting, tracking key performance indicators for activities and personnel, long-range planning, ROI measurement, project management, logic models, quantifiable data, and outcomes-based management.

As the twenty-first century unfolds, we may be witnessing the next great change.

McGrath argues that we are moving into a new era of management thinking guided by the principle of empathy.

As customers in the experience economy seek more meaningful connections with the organizations they patronize, those who work in those organizations are asking for more meaning, too. This, McGrath says, “changes the nature of the employment contract.”

Institutions designed for the “business-as-machine era,” she writes, are now often seen by employees as promoting inequality and being so results-driven as to disregard the quality of their experience.

“The challenge to management,” McGrath urges, “is to act with greater empathy...figuring out what management looks like when work is done through networks rather than through lines of command, when ‘work’ itself is tinged with emotions, and when individual managers are responsible for creating communities for those who work with them.”

The crises of the pandemic era have accelerated this shift.

Watch AAM's CEO video interviews featuring:

• Micah Parzen, CEO of The Museum of Us
• Alison Rempel Brown, President and CEO of Science Museum of Minnesota
• Jorge Zamanillo, Founding Director of National Museum of the American Latino
• William Harris, President and CEO of Space Center Houston

...as they share how their leadership practices have changed since navigating the pandemic crisis.

From Henry Ford to Jeff Bezos, CEOs have been given star status in our culture, portrayed as singular visionaries capable of total organizational leadership.

This has extended to museums too, which overwhelmingly depend on a single CEO to define direction and produce results. But pandemic-era crises put these CEOs under a bright, hot spotlight.

Overnight in March 2020, and in the weeks and months to follow, they were asked to pull rabbits out of hats: develop budgetary solutions and scenario plans, make difficult employment decisions, and continue to deliver on their missions—all while surfing the daily changing tide of setbacks and opportunities.

These highly visible CEO decisions were wide open to critique—and it came.

The crises fueled “CEO skepticism,” in which museum workers asked: is loading power, responsibility, and expectation onto a single person really the best way to lead complex organizations like museums that not only have business metrics to meet, but also social value to generate? 

This critique of the classic hierarchical pyramid is not new.

By the 1950s, an increase in “knowledge work” generated alternatives to militaristic, command-and-control traditions and rigid hierarchies. New hub-and-spoke models, matrix structures, or “flat” startup-style organizational charts promised to liberate workers from some of the problems of traditional hierarchy: authoritarianism, distance between managers and work being done, bullying, self-interest, etc. 

Despite this experimentation, though, hierarchy has never fully disappeared.

It’s proven a reliable way to steward energies while organizing human effort to get work done in many domains at once—work that no individual could see through from end to end.

The structures of hierarchy also provide “psychological rewards” meaningful to many workers, such as the authority to use special expertise.

In the words of organizational behaviorist Harold J. Leavitt, given the dearth of viable alternatives, “it seems more sensible to accept the reality that hierarchies are here to stay and work hard to reduce their highly noxious byproducts, while making them more habitable for humans and more productive as well.”

But accepting the need for some hierarchy does not have to mean falling back on the classic narrowing pyramid.

One alternative is in experimenting with distributed or shared leadership models. In some ways, these models are not a radical change from normal ways of working, but an acknowledgement of how things already are, which can lead to healthier outcomes.

In the 1940s, Cecil Gibb noted that an organization’s “head,” though imbued with structural power, was not always its true “leader.”

Leaders, in fact, are found throughout an organization; all workers, no matter their position, have influence on the organization’s culture, outputs, and values. Intentionally creating a culture of distributed leadership can help bring “hidden leaders” to the table for productive action.

Shared leadership questions the conception of leadership as an individual phenomenon, envisioning it instead as the property of a group. A leadership team can take on responsibilities formerly united in a single CEO.

This model brings distinct advantages. It can add capacity, removing the one-person bottleneck at the top who needs to review and respond to every activity.

It can increase the diversity of identities, perspectives, and voices that are equally empowered to steer the organization.

It can mitigate the over-influence of a single personality—balancing that person’s flaws and complementing their strengths.

It can ensure that a higher level of expertise is brought to each functional area of senior management by a true specialist in that domain.

And it can vet decisions from many possible angles.

Recognizing these advantages, an increasing number of museums are experimenting with the practices of shared and distributed leadership.

CASE STUDY

The roots of the Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture extend back more than two hundred years.

But its current incarnation dates to 2012, when a friends group restored the original Peale Museum as a center for culture, art, and history, with a focus on marginalized and untold stories from the community.

Today, the Peale’s mission is “to create a place where physical and digital exhibition spaces are accessible to everyone, where community members and students can take creative risks, connect with fellow collaborators, and share their stories about Baltimore and beyond.”

Initially, Nancy Proctor was recruited to be the Peale’s first director.

But as the mission developed, Proctor recognized that this new museum would need to “rethink systems and structures that perpetuate inequity and injustice in society and our organization.”

One of those structures was the traditional single-CEO model.

While working with the Baltimore Roundtable on Economic Development to help establish the museum, Proctor and the team began asking themselves what a different leadership path might look like. Together, they developed and proposed a shared leadership model to the board, and secured its support.

Proctor’s title transitioned to Chief Strategy Officer, responsible for strategic planning, partnerships, and developing new revenue opportunities.

Her work is now complemented by three partners in parallel positions: Kim Domanski, who oversees operational areas as Chief Operations Officer; Jeffrey Kent, who focuses on artist relationships and curatorial work as Chief Curator; and Krista Green, who manages the museum’s artist-led collaborative program as Grit Fund Program Manager.

As the pandemic unfolded, the leadership team found this structure a helpful counterbalance in the ambiguous decisions they faced. It helped them broaden their range of ideas and check their thinking against one another.

Agreements were reinforced, and disagreements generated productive analysis of critical questions. “I’ve found it really without exception better than being a sole leader. I infinitely prefer it,” Proctor said. “We are able to be more responsive and imaginative. We make better decisions. My colleagues think of things that would have never occurred to me.”

Domanski echoes the idea that sharing leadership multiplies strengths: “Not only does it expand our knowledge and expertise but also helps us focus in when we have that common ground.”

It's important that teams are composed of complementary talents and styles, Green said. “You can’t be looking for a supplement to follow you.…Trust is really important—a willingness to let go and hear different perspectives and voices.”

One challenge for a newer organization adopting shared leadership is the need for agreed and documented policy.

Disagreements can be minimized by ensuring that decisions are recorded and can be referenced again, Domanski said. At the same time, the group agrees that it’s important for the process to be fluid and allow for ongoing learning.

The leadership team meets regularly, but each member is empowered to make decisions that affect their area of accountability most—a particular benefit during the pandemic, when other organizations were sometimes stuck on securing levels of approval that slowed responsiveness down.

This clear differentiation of responsibilities is what makes this practice possible. “I wouldn’t want to be a co-director sharing half of everything, but who knows which half,” Proctor said with a laugh.

The Peale’s structure ensures that each leader has their own area of oversight, but is recognized as a strategic leader in their own right.

TAKEAWAYS

Be ready to do the hard work

Sharing leadership is possible, but it takes more, not less, rigorous planning.

Green emphasized that “being part of a worker-led-organization isn’t loosey-goosey. It means you need to have thought about all aspects of managing and administering the program and be equally responsible—what process documents do we create to help support people in doing that?”

It also demands presence, emotional resilience, and mutual respect.

Do the research

Far from pie in the sky, these methods work, and their efficacy is supported by a robust body of research. The Peale drew on literature, learning cohorts, and professional development programs to learn about and define their own shared leadership approaches and gain support in making the transition.  

Define decision-making practices

Collaborating on leadership doesn’t necessarily mean that every staff member always gets a vote on every decision.

In shared and distributed leadership, there are still individuals who hold responsibility and have final authority. 

But it does mean establishing authentic methods of hearing and incorporating wider voices in major decisions, such as establishing feedback channels available to all staff, and cultivating the group skills to collaborate at a high level of trust and safety. 

Embrace collaboration

Recognizing leadership throughout the organization, and sharing power, are likely to become more standard in the future.

As Green put it, “The reality of how we work and who is doing the work is shifting. If we are going to continue to attract and retain talent, we need to look at different structures. Everyone wants to see that their voice is heard. We need to stop thinking in triangles.”

CASE STUDY

When Kara Newport arrived at Filoli as CEO, the board was positioning itself for change.

Aiming to increase diversity and raise the institution’s profile, Newport and the board developed a Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion (DEAI) plan that soon led them to look critically at their staffing assumptions. 

In California’s San Mateo County, where the cost of living is the fourth highest in the nation, Newport said: “I couldn’t in good faith go to the community and say, ‘Come work for us and I’ll guarantee we’ll underpay you.’ I couldn’t bear the impact of that.”

Filoli began a comprehensive review of compensation and established a Living Wage Initiative, tying the lowest salary in the organization to the minimum living wage for the county (in 2022, defined at $30.81 an hour). It established an incrementally increasing range of salaries from there, with the goal to reach the seventy-fifth percentile of annual wages for the region.

The museum also regularized titles across departments and established a salary range for each position, with a defined low, mid, and high level within that range, transparently linked to demonstrable skills and qualifications achievable within that position. 

Compensation agreements also include an enhanced 401(k), increased vacation time, and sabbaticals at seven, fifteen, and twenty years.

Raising all salaries to that level required an initial investment of 750 thousand dollars, with additional growth each year as costs rise.

To make this increase work, the museum restructured its earned revenue programming and created new positions with revenue potential.

Though her board was strongly in support of the changes, Newport emphasizes that in advocating for the plan, she also needed to make clear she understood the risks of being unable to balance the budget if the plan didn’t work, and would assume the consequences of failure rather than expecting them to close the gap. In the beginning, it meant running lean.

“I worked with fewer staff for a long time with dramatic radical growth, but they were paid better,” she said. “It mattered that I had higher quality staff who were committed to the organization. The board saw we could parlay this investment into growth.”

Filoli today unapologetically embraces a “staff-centric” culture.

Newport understands that rubs against the grain of much museum rhetoric, in which the mission is at the center, but she believes this is for the best.

“The staff exists for the mission. If we’re not taking care of the staff, we’re not achieving the mission. We’re failing at that one thing you’ve committed to by not compensating your staff adequately,” Newport said.

According to Newport, Filoli’s metrics are showing the value of the investment.

“Our workforce is now more diverse, more inclusive, more professionalized,“ she says. “People feel valued for their work; turnover is down to 12 percent—normal attrition. I don’t have people commenting any more that they don’t feel valued. We’ve elevated the ability and skill set we compete for in the hiring market.”

In addition to reimagining its compensation, Filoli also retired a longstanding volunteer program.

Surveys showed that the system was a stressor for the staff and an inefficient way to produce the needed outcomes.

Rather than maintaining a volunteer corps to do routine garden work, for instance, Filoli contracted with a local landscaping firm to take it over—a move that brought new partners into the museum community and supported local jobs.

In the place of its old volunteer program, the museum developed a more accessible “service learning” program, inviting individuals, families, or organized groups to join the museum for a few hours of volunteer service work, along with an informative talk or demonstration. As a result, the number and diversity of volunteers has multiplied.

As museums like Filoli pledge to dismantle systemic inequities of race, wealth, and privilege, salaries must be part of the conversation.

“Low wages are a vestige of white supremacy in museums. They are a systemic issue that has to change,” says Newport. “We’re only at the beginning. We’re going to need a lot of experimenting.”

 TAKEAWAYS

Reframe thinking about museum salaries

There is no reason museum salaries must be low in comparison to similar work in other sectors. Though it may be a long project to raise wages, it is a worthy goal for a museum not to transfer its economic burdens to its staff.

Recognize wage improvement as DEAI work

Human resources practices are directly connected to goals for equity, diversity, job satisfaction, and employee care.

Conduct a pay equity audit

Salary reviews can reveal legacies of inequity and variability. Knowing where your institution is starting out gives you the information needed to develop corrective plans that eliminate gender and racial pay gaps.  

Rethink voluntarism

In recognition of increasing standards of practice and more equitable access to museum resources, consider whether a volunteer program is replicating systems of privilege and access or monopolizing a disproportionate share of resources. 

Benchmark your local living wage

How does your museum measure up against it? Benchmarking statistics for regional salaries vs. cost of living may lead to a new understanding of how competitive an institution is.