Museum Leaders: A Renewable

Resource?

by
Russell Willis Taylor

This article was published in Museum News, July/August issue.

There is a bright future for complexity, what with one thing always leading to another.

—E. B. White

Renewable resource is a theme for our time. It has as much resonance in the museum field as it does in the environmental area: renewing the resource of our existing leadership and preparing the ground for the next generation of leaders should be a priority for us all.

Today’s nonprofit institutions present a challenge to their leaders, sharing many problems with for-profit businesses and having a few of their own that are particular to museums. Nonprofits are assuming an increasing set of responsibilities that were handled in the past by either federal or state government, and this has a profound impact on the cultural sector. In the cultural field, for example, we find ourselves developing the skills to establish arts education programs in partnership with schools, rather than simply benefiting from this work as the students mature and become our patrons.

The range of skills required of the museum director grows at a rapid pace and shows no sign of slowing. As Philippe de Montebello noted in Whose Muse: Art Museums and the Public Trust, like all directors, he finds himself turning “all sorts of wheels I never had to turn before.” And the number of wheels keeps growing. Charles Schroeder, who leads the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, reflects that:

The demands for talent and expertise from museum professionals are changing as the roles and expectations for our institutions are transformed by the market environment. Museum leaders who thrive in this environment must answer: How do I personally connect my institution to its community, as well as to broader audience markets? How do we attract top talent, ranging from scholarship to institutional advancement, away from successful enterprises in other fields in order to compete in the market for audience attention? What sources can provide me with properly educated and motivated new entrants into the museum field, ready to produce now? What risks am I willing to take in changing our institutional programming and personnel to address the changes outlined above?

If we are not vigilant about learning new ways of approaching these business issues, it could lead to a gradual state of underskilled leadership in our sector. Multiple stakeholders bring organizational strength and diversity but also pull in a variety of directions, and the challenges involved in volunteer management are changing as fast as the rate of insuring the works in permanent collections. The result is that the institution as a whole, and indeed the field, suffers if boards and museum directors don’t work together to renew the resource of leadership and management ability. A 2006 Museum Association of New York (MANY) research paper, “Who’s Next: Questioning the Future of Museum Leadership in New York State,” highlighted the problem of this lack of renewal: “Too few organizations place value on leadership training, failing to recognize that these experiences have a ripple effect that ultimately benefits the organization.” (Author’s note: My bias in believing in the value of lifelong management learning is transparent—I lead an organization devoted to this activity.)

Measuring Success

Clearly articulated, broadly shared measures of success are at the same time difficult to establish and essential for retaining strong leaders. Adrian Ellis, who has worked with a number of the world’s leading museums, notes, “The great directors I know simultaneously champion mission and money—programmatic goals and long-term institutional goals. Just mission, and the museum slides into crisis; just money and it loses its soul. It is essentially a balancing act—and if you can’t ride both horses, you should not be in this circus.”

Renewing today’s museum leadership also means celebrating successes, once they are measured—not always easy in a world where the measures are a moving target. In his excellent paper “Metrics of Success in Art Museums,” commissioned by the Getty Leadership Institute, Maxwell Anderson reviews the traditional “trinity of success” factors: the number and quality of exhibitions, the number of visitors and the number of members. Anderson then goes on to describe the ways in which these measures fall short and outlines better metrics more directly connected both to the core values and long-term health of the institution.

Tomorrow’s Leaders

Identifying the next generation of leaders to replace the baby boomers is an issue for every field, every industry and even for national governments. In October 2006, U.S. News & World Report highlighted a survey by David Gergen, who co-chairs the “America’s Best Leaders” project. It found that two-thirds of the public believes that the nation is in a leadership crisis, both in terms of the quality and quantity of leaders. AAM reported in the same year that within its accredited membership, 45 percent had executive turnover in the preceding three years, and up to 65 percent of today’s leaders will retire within five to seven years, per estimates in separate studies by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (2004) and the Meyer Foundation (2006). Leadership churn is an issue everywhere, as manifested in any number of foundation reports over the past few years, including the most recent from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (2007).

To stay ahead of the problematic curve, museums need to offer jobs that are more rewarding, more meaningful and more publicly supported than ever before. In the MANY report cited above, one 1998 Winterthur graduate noted that “issues of salary and lifestyle” led to half her class leaving the field. In plain language, this means that for many talented young people this game is not worth it. This is compounded by a lack of fluidity in the nonprofit labor market generally, as compared to the commercial sector, which has far more sophisticated information networks and sources of intelligence about opportunities. We are not moving younger people into positions of responsibility and levels of salary at a rate that encourages their commitment to the field.

Widely acknowledged tools such as mentoring and mid-career training, as well as the recognition that there are generational differences in leadership styles and expectations, should be in evidence in more museums, regardless of size or institutional age. Without these tools, we will not create the next generation of outstanding leaders to reinvent and sustain our institutions. One of the most telling conclusions in the MANY report was the observation that “A mediocre leader can harm an institution just like a bad one. It just takes more time.”

An additional significant issue is that museums, like many businesses, tend to think that the leader needs to come from outside the organization, and therefore don’t focus on delegation, succession planning and talent spotting—renewing the resource of leadership from within. Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum, notes, “We need to give more responsibility, and give up the ownership of minutiae. We must also disabuse ourselves of the notion that outsiders are the answer to all our leadership needs, and the commitment to bringing along the next generation from within the institution needs to be co-owned by board and staff alike as they recognize the value of continuity. This won’t happen overnight, but it must happen.”

Renewing the resource of leadership in the museum field means riding the two horses that Ellis describes while helping the next generation learn how to do the same. In addition to training and mentoring, we need to make space for the next generation. One of the legacies a great institutional leader bestows is the seamless transition to those who come after, and knowing when it is time to make that transition is part of institutional renewal at the highest level. Phil Nowlen, head of the Getty Leadership Institute, sums this up as follows: “When it pleases a leader more to be from the   institution than at the institution, a crucial warning light has begun to flash.”

An important part of identifying tomorrow’s leaders is recognizing that they won’t look like today’s. As Schroeder points out, “The next generation of museum leadership will certainly not conform to the stereotype of its predecessor. The demands of a new, constantly changing, very competitive marketplace will see to that. However, the fundamental profile of integrity, intellectual capacity and agility, political sense, energy, vision and patience that has described successful museum leaders in the past will continue to apply.”