Gone on holiday Sept 2016

Hey folks,

My two week holiday starts now. I’ll be zipping around the South West for a few days then in New York City for some of my holiday. I last went to NYC in 2000 as an 18 year old. It really will be a special family trip and I can’t wait to check out the museum scene, tourist hot spots and hopefully cycleways with my wife and kid. If you live in NYC and want to meet up just tweet me or drop me an email and i’ll do my best to see you.

Those of you who know me well will know I have a fear of flying and days before my trip it is throwing me for a loop. However I am determined to board that plane, ride it out and have a fantastic time!

 

 

Reading list 2016

Below are a list of books I’ve read in 2016. For the first time ever I have a commute so it will be interesting to know if I get much more reading done as i’m mostly on a looong bus ride. You can see my 2015 Reading list or 2014 reading list2013 reading list and 2012 reading list.

  1. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! finished 4th Jan paperback. A very enjoyable collection of stories and worth a read.
  2. Ecommerce Bootcamp by Kurt Elster and Paul Reda finished 6th Jan ebook. A book about getting started with the Shopify retail platform. A few gems in here but not much for me.
  3. Fatale Books 1-5 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, finished 17 Jan graphic novel. A series about “Jo” who can’t help but  hypnotise men who are all after her and therein lies many deaths and heartbreak.
  4. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott finished 3 Feb paperback. A great read for non-writers/writers
  5. Poke the Box by Seth Godin finished 7 Feb hardback. This is a re-read for me. A short rant on starting and finishing.
  6. War with the Newts by Karel Čapek finished 2 Mar paperback. This book came recommended by a secondhand book seller and it was very well written. This could really happen…
  7. A Room of One’s Own by Virgina woolf finished 28 March paperback. A very different style of writing (or maybe the small typesetting made me read it differently) that kept me gripped. I will now be seeking out more of her work.
  8. When you Dead, You Dead by Guy Martin. A brief insight into the  year of Guy’s life as a truck fitter, TV presenter doing crazy challenges and a motorcycle racer.
  9. What to do when it’s your turn: and it’s always your turn by Seth Godin. Finished april 2016
  10. David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. May 2016 hardback in New Zealand
  11. The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber paperback isbn 0887307280. Finished 27 May 2016. A great read about how to think of a business as a “system” using an example of a pie shop and McDonalds
  12. the dip: The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick) by Seth Godin. Paperback  ISBN 9780749928308. Finished 1 June 2016. A short book about quitting.
  13. Meatspace by Nikesh Shukla. ISBN 978-000756506-1 finished 19 June 2016. A funny story about life with the internets and family.
  14. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Finished 4th August paperback.
  15. Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want – by Nicholas Epley. Finished Oct 2016 paperback ISBN 9781846144332.
  16. The inevitable by Kevin Kelly. Hardback. ISBN 9780525428084. Finished 23rd December. Kevin looks at how technology will evolve over the next 30 years. As with all tech, nothing comes out of the blue so this is a nice introduction on the core services and tools that are quietly building now.

100 days as Head of Transformation

Saturday 11th April 2015 marks 100 days since I started my new role as Head of Transformation for the Bristol Museum Service and therefore, a good time to reflect on the journey to date.

I’ll begin by saying that it is very much the challenge I expected and I’m loving it. I used to say my old job was spinning a 1000 plates and this role is no different, except the stakes are higher and more people are watching. Nobody said it was going to be easy, which is fine by me, as it’s a privilege to be helping a place to thrive (that I grew up visiting) and that was here long before me and will be here long after me.

Although my new position is an internal move and I haven’t left the museum, it immediately felt like a completely new place to be working! Since 2013 when I began working for the service, I’ve had no trouble making myself “responsible”. Ed Catmull, President of Pixar says in Creativity, Inc “you don’t have to ask permission to take responsibility” which is a career tip nugget. Also since I began working for the Bristol service, we are now on our third Director, have been restructured, won Arts Council England MPM funding and expanded our service remit to include the arts and events teams along with the Bristol Film Office, making us now ‘Bristol Culture’ and no longer Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives, so we have witnessed a fair number of changes!

If I dive for a moment into a few things I’ve done since my start in January it’s clear that my value often isn’t a tangible production line output:

  • Introduced Trello to the wider service AND management team so that no task is left behind
  • Given staff across BCC a discount in our retail shops to encourage buying from within
  • Passed all sorts of decision making to more people to help flatten our structure (to varying success)
  • Put into motion audiences and data front and centre for all
  • Been more visible than ever in the city’s wider culture community
  • Helped Laura ensure management are as transparent as possible by sharing plans and that data and decisions are made available
  • Kept up my weekly blogging
  • Introduced a framework for my team managers to use which includes using Trello, monthly budget kpi reviews, staff meetings and 1:1s
  • Began to identify patterns in our internal behaviour to contribute to our 10 year mission

In addition to my new gig I also got a new boss, scratch that we got a new “leader” – most people don’t need a manager/boss they need leadership. Before Laura had even started she came to our end of year/era wider management team session and laid a lovely straight line that stopped at her feet pointing to the new leader. Since this first meeting Laura has really been a fantastic leader for me personally and stepped up to steering the new Bristol Culture service.  In return, I offer loyality on top the stuff I’ve been mentioning here! What’s been great about working with Laura? Here’s a few of my observations so far:

  • Having clear leadership means I can have the confidence that Laura will fully support me and give me the direction I need
  • Laura hasn’t always agreed with my point of view. I’m not always right so this gives me the safety net of Laura catching mistakes and I recognize Laura is ultimately responsible so I dig that I feel safe in saying my piece then getting a decision I’ll happily stick to – I worry if I only ever get YES as I’m not that good but I feel listened to.
  • We work in similar fashion which is paperless where possible, inbox zero, clarity over waffle, with the same ethos – audience needs which leads to business needs not the other way around etc
  • I recognize I can learn more about running teams and working with wider stakeholders from Laura and I’ve been paying attention.

I genuinely look forward to helping Laura drive our service into the next chapter and transformation is at the heart of a lot of this.

Great leadership? Yes. Support? Yes. Phew! So what of the new role and remit? My task is to ensure we are both enterprising and able to be flexible in how we work to deliver what our audiences need. Since I’ve started I have said ‘yes’ to many things to help empower staff get things done and probably said ‘no’ to as many things that I don’t feel should continue unchecked.

What does he actually do?

The higher up the chain of command you climb the harder it can be to describe what you actually do as it’s often your team who “deliver”. I would hazard a guess that after 100 days even members of the transformation wing may be thinking this as I’ve had much less contact with them than my direct reports. Thus a large part of my job is hidden. So let me bring to the fore some of the detail that is actually pretty instrumental to service delivery even if you can’t see my tool marks. I help us craft vision and then action it.

Being valuable

As Liam Neeson’s character Simon says in TAKEN “I have a particular set of skills” which revolve around the rough edges of responsibility that others can’t or won’t do. Who wants to dig through kpi or visitor surveys seeking patterns and nuggets? I will! Then I’ll know the who, why, what, when and where which is very valuable when making choices on uniforms, programmes, partnerships etc. People buy into trust based on evidence not gut feelings. I like to ask Laura on a regular basis “is there anything I can do for you?”.

Setting standards

I expect and demand a relentless cycle of planning, doing and reviewing of processes. Feel the heat of pressure from your manager? That’s probably due to my input on something I saw that I feel should be changed. If I can see excellence,I want that process frozen for now so we can do it again. I want to know the detail and ask “why” constantly.

Finding constraints

The average member of the team won’t be keeping an eye on the budget, kpi or stakeholder needs but I am. I’ll shape the scope of the work to be done and pass this to your manager. I’ve banged on for years that constraints are everything and you need to know where the edges are.

Having a process

I’ve been told that the average length of service is 14 years which is plenty of time to develop your own ways of doing things! Yet things now aren’t what they were even a few years ago and we need to be constantly refining. This does not mean stopping what works well but ensuring there is a clear rationale aligned to our mission, values and service plan. You may only be one cog but we need the whole machine to work. So I find the grit that’s hampering us. Key to this is a unified process so that self forming team are talking along the same lines and we can identify the bits that work from the bits that don’t. Fading away is the idea you work for one manager in your area. I may need you to help out over in Engagement. These sutle changes in process have my mark on them. The 18 items of what I expect each manager to do with their teams has been designed purposefully to be uniform for all 30 or so staff. These items include having an annual business plan, fortnight reviews, an annual profit/loss sheet, staff development plans and such.

Picking our focus

We “can do anything” is unlikely to be a mission statement that anybody wants to get behind. I often hear folks saying the creativity is an essential ingredient in their role. Yet when I joined there wasn’t a clear focus, this made it very hard to start on any particular problem, giving me that all important creativity. So I chose to focus on helping people to use technology. Now we’re applying the same idea to give the service a focus by clearly developing our mission and values. This will naturally provide us with our overarching focus. Sign up or step off.

Solve hard problems

The easy problems have been solved. We’re now left with the hard stuff. I need to join our loosely connected dots. How should we price an exhibition? How can we measure success? Provide safe scaleable storage for physical and digital items? Work in real partnership with our local, national and international stakeholders? How can we further reduce our dependence on public funding? What are the patterns from all the raw data? One step forward at a time of course.

For example, staff development is a core strand of work we need to transform and I’ve actioned staff across the service to attend events that will keep our capabilities sharp. This needs to move into a more structured and formal programme of work but at least we’re moving forwards – I want to finally implement Open Badges for recognition of skills.
A number of projects are coming into fruition, coinciding with my first 100 days in post, these include wifi, new tablet devices for staff and digital TVs screens for the public and I’ve had lots of positive feedback from the staff about these changes.

What’s been difficult?

I have less time for individuals as my remit has increased which has been tricky. However I’ve been delegating more than ever and I want staff to see this is a positive oppotunity not me passing off work!

The job title is a gift and a curse. It’s good because it can mean many things so I can swap hats quickly to whomever I’m dealing with but it is far less obvious than the old “deputy director”. Apparently in the wider local authority the new title is typically associated with change management and shutting down of work, not a great vein to be aligned with.

I need to find more time to think. I can’t solve a really hard problem if I only have 10 minute windows in my day. From May I’m going back to my hiding places and getting stricter on email traffic. I also plan to choose a problem and commit one hour chunks to only think about that one area e.g. Pricing and patterns are two areas that need attention.

In no small part I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my old leader Vivienne Bennett for allowing me to ask so many questions last year and poke at decisions to help me gain the experience and sharpen my focus needed for this role. Onwards to the next 1000 days.

UPDATE: Laura Pye has written about her first 100 days

The art of transformation

“What do you DO mister Head of Transformation?”.

As head of digital my ‘art’ was to “help people to use technology”. Seth Godin says our art is about what you DO that helps other people through your own generosity. In my new role I have a number of teams (scary) that at first glance seem quite different – digital, retail, venue hire and cafe, modern records, fundraising, Archaeological services plus marketing and design, yet the connection to me is very clear; lead those teams (with the wider Bristol Culture service) to make connections with their tribes, be flexible, ship stuff and RUN with it.

Digital team help staff, volunteers and the public to enjoy our services onsite and online, hopefully occasionally saying “that’s cool”. Modern records keep their stuff safe. Shops, make people remember that family day out when they look at that fridge magnet. Get inspired at a conference overlooking the harbour. Gossip over a coffee. Land that dream plot of land. Allow you to be generous and help fund a gallery refurbishment. Build a gallery. Let others discover an event for a first date. Take responsibility.

Reading list 2015

Books i’ve finished during 2015.

If it was easy I wouldn’t be doing it

Something happened today at work that didn’t go as I had expected. On my ride home I had time to blow off some steam. This evening I have been reminding myself that if this job was easy I wouldn’t accepted the ‘challenge’. Onwards.

Why I share when I donate

I just donated $35 to Charity Water after reading Cutting through Singer’s Paradox by Seth Godin. I had been thinking about going to the pub. I’m pretty sure this was a better use of money today. Anyway the reason I shared this donation with my twitter followers  is not to rub anybody’s face in my deed but it’s sharing out loud that helps spread the awareness of such charities. Without the people who shout about a charity it remains invisible. A charity can only use its marketing effort to plant seeds in a few of us. It’s then up to people who donate to be a marketer, if even only for a few seconds. I’ve seen lots of good folk mention Charity Water but this time i actually put my hand in my wallet. So next time you donate let us all know about it, maybe I can help too.

 

Head of Transformation

On Wednesday 17th December 2014 I was put through my paces in a multiple task interview ultimately being offered and accepting the role as Head of Transformation (sorry no robots). What does that even mean i hear you cry?!? well it means that i’ll be responsible for helping our service to run projects and programmes that are based on “user needs” whilst helping to ensure we have the resources including money to not only survive but thrive. I won’t be doing this alone of course, we have a great staff line up and some of the best volunteers and partners. We also have Laura Pye joining us as Service manager (boss/director/leader)  so 2015 and beyond is looking pretty good!

The original job ad is below so i can look back in 2016 and see how the role held up to its promise:

The Head of Transformation is an exciting new post in one of Britain’s leading regional museum services, giving you an opportunity to realise a step-change in the performance of the museum and its future resilience.

You will assume responsibility for increasing all aspects of the museum service’s financial performance – through working with our catering contractors to improve our catering offer to managing our retail outlets, managing the fundraising team to meet increasingly ambitious targets, managing the Digital team to realise our museum digital leadership role, managing Modern Records and their financial performance and being responsible for developing new streams of income as well as increasing income through licensing and on-line activity.

We are committed to a multi-facetted programme of organisational change which involves putting audiences needs at the heart of the organisation, increasing our entrepreneurialism and exploring how we can use new technologies to transform our visitor offer as well as the service; you will drive forward this shift in gear and perspective as well as project managing different initiatives from staff development and training to capital projects.

You will be an excellent leader with good commercial experience, strong persuasive skills and well-honed management skills, ideally gained in the cultural sector.

 

Week 70 at work

Good week.

  • Did an overview with Lauren about how we use digital tools to help us work together as a team
  • Reviewed an idea about using online training for embedding Our Museum and decided to focus elsewhere – i’ve seen so many online communities die I had other suggestions
  • Management meeting
  • Waved farewell to Kerrie who now goes on maternity leave
  • Met our first group taking part in our Student as Producer programme for 2014/15 in which they’ll be seeing if they can build a way to count people into each gallery using sensors and visualise in fun ways
  • Attended 300 seconds to hear new speakers
  • Contributed to Arts Council England digital reference group
  • Learnt how to conduct an exit survey with Fay at the helm
  • Interviewed for my own job which I got whoop which now officially makes me Head of Digital
  • Alistair Reid, our new Service Director did a good meet and group with us
  • Spoke at Smarter rather than harder: Getting digital to deliver at RAMM – great event

 

 

Week 53 at work

Last week marked a year in the job and this week seemed like a new chapter. I got up to:

  • Met with the whole team to highlight what our key Arts Council goals are for Q2-Q4
  • Worked on streamlining our data collection but this feels like losing battle
  • Showed our Head of Collections the great work that BIG lab are doing and agreed to give their two prototypes a trial
  • Tried to move our online shop to the next step but stumbled
  • Reviewed ALL outstanding requests for design work (3D, print, web) which again is tough trying to steer the ship
  • Had a great catchup with Andy about scanning and getting our cranes to talk
  • Attended two open data related evening events, mysociety meetup and ODUG local user group
  • Spent quite a lot of time firefighting small issues
  • Welcomed David Butler and his research cohort from The University of Southern Mississippi for a four day exit survey around museum collections and slavery – special shout out to John
  • Tinkered with some website bits…
  • On Saturday I gave two short talks on Ada Lovelace and her connection to The Red Lodge Museum