Category Archives: Strategy

Interpretive Planning for Dozens of Sites

Arroyo Seco Parkway National Scenic Byway Interpretive Plan produced by Engaging Places for the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority in May 2012.

If you’re interpreting a group of sites or a heritage area, you might be interested in reviewing an interpretive plan I completed earlier this year for the Arroyo Seco Parkway National Scenic Byway. When the Parkway was completed in 1940, it connected Los Angeles and Pasadena and began southern California’s Freeway Age. It’s also a region that has a dense concentration of museums, historic sites, parks, historic Main Streets, architectural landmarks, and unique businesses, including the Gamble House, Huntington Library, Lummis Home, Heritage Square, and Olvera Street. To bring attention to these cultural riches, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority commissioned me to develop this plan and work with a local stakeholders, build on an inventory of assets developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and integrate audience research conducted by the Community Land Use and Economic Group and Decision Support Partners.

The planning process followed a traditional approach by collecting content to develop topics and themes; conducting visitor research to identify target audiences; and finally Continue reading →

AAM Unveils New Logo, Name, and Attitude

AAM logos: old and new

Today, the American Association of Museums becomes the American Alliance of Museums, which may appear at first to be merely a cosmetic change ushered in by a marketing consultant, but actually signals some significant changes in attitude. Those of us in the history field often felt like outsiders at AAM, which seemed to be dominated by art museums, our classier and richer cousins. But take look at the new AAM and you may find two major changes that may appeal to history organizations:

1. Accreditation becomes the end Continue reading →

What Sites Can Learn from the Olympics

The summer Olympic games in London are now over and if you were watching, I bet you not only reveled in the athletic competition, but you also contemplated the logistics and expenses. Those of us who work at historic sites don’t experience events like most other people. Sure, we like the music, food, and tours, but we also look at the placement of signs, calculate ratios between attendance and restrooms, check out the store for items we can sell, and mentally map out visitor circulation and note the bottlenecks. Or is that just me?

The Olympics is just another special event, although it’s huge and involves a cast of thousands and decades of planning. The designers and planners of this event are the best of the best, so what can historic sites, at a much smaller scale, learn from their experience? One of the most valuable lessons is that Continue reading →

Put Your Organization to the Rorschach Test

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If you’re finding that your organization is in a rut and you no longer feel as inspired about its work, it might be useful to look at it in a new way by creating a “word cloud” of key documents, such as a strategic plan, mission and vision statements, interpretive themes, or visitor evaluation. A word cloud is a visual presentation of the most frequently used words, sized by frequency. For example, if you use the word “history” ten times more than “preservation” in your strategic plan, “history” shows up much larger than “preservation” in the word cloud. The word cloud allows you to look at your organization from a different perspective: words jump out at you and prompt questions about what’s being emphasized (and what’s not).

As examples, in the slide show above I’ve assembled word clouds from the first few paragraphs of the About section of the websites (which often includes the mission or vision statements) of the following historic sites:

I’ve used word clouds in strategic planning sessions to Continue reading →

Let’s Give SWOT a REST

A SWOT analysis (a listing of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is a common exercise in business planning and reached the shores of the non-profit world decades ago. Some of you probably have experienced a SWOT analysis at your site as part of your strategic or long-range planning. The staff and board gathers around a flipchart to list your organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses, and then your external opportunities and threats. Sometimes there’s a bit of confusion over definitions (what’s a threat?) or where an item should be listed (is this a strength or opportunity?). You might feel a bit of competition to mention a particularly incisive opportunity or are sweating because you can’t name a strength (all the good ones have already been mentioned!). Eventually, the list might be prioritized and some items consolidated so it can be typed up and included in the strategic plan as a basis for decision-making.

Despite its popularity, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to give SWOT a rest:

The analysis depends heavily on the people participating and it’ll always be biased in that direction. If you conduct a SWOT exercise with board members who really aren’t involved with the organization, the analysis will probably be superficial and light. Stock the group with lots of educators, the results will lean towards education. There are no surprises here–people talk about what they know. The problem is that the bias is typically not recognized and you wind up building a plan on a foundation that’s skewed or weak.
It’s often long on strengths and even longer on Continue reading →

Failed Organizational Culture at Goldman Sachs Suggests Remedies for Non-Profits

Greg Smith’s public departure from Goldman Sachs after a dozen years is one of the hottest pages of the New York Times today and while I tend to ignore the personnel matters of Wall Street (oh, another tycoon getting/losing/complaining about a bonus that’s more than the value of my house), reading his statement startled me. So many of his concerns about the organization’s culture are shared by me and many of my colleagues in the museum and historic preservation fields:

1. The overriding pursuit of money that’s out of balance with mission or ethics. Smith describes a staff meeting at Goldman Sachs:

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

Gosh, if this bothers someone at a financial investment firm, shouldn’t the lack of discussion about fulfilling mission and vision really bother the board and staff at a non-profit organization? And yet most meetings Continue reading →

Haas-Lilienthal House completes Sustainability Management Plan

Haas-Lilienthal House

The Haas-Lilienthal House in San Francisco has just completed a Sustainability Management Plan, which will help them meet energy and sustainability goals while preserving its character-defining and historically significant features. Through this plan, they’ve established a goal of reaching LEED Gold, however, there’s a “stretch goal” to reach “net zero.” Many people think that historic house museums are unable to meet any “green ratings” without compromising their preservation goals, however, recent achievements by President Lincoln’s Cottage and others show it’s possible. The Haas-Lilienthal House is owned and operated by San Francisco Archiectural Heritage, a city-wide preservation organization, so plans like this not only provide a road map for greening the maintenance procedures and capital building improvements to save money and energy, but advance their position that historic preservation is relevant and historic buildings can perform as well as modern ones.

The plan was developed by Barbara Campagna, FAIA, LEEP AP, a former colleague of mine at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where she was actively involved Continue reading →

More Than 300 Museum Supporters on Capitol Hill

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Congress was visited by more than 300 leaders in the museum field on Tuesday for the fourth annual Museums Advocacy Day. The day started with welcoming messages and packets of key issues, and then off we went for meetings with our senators and congressmen. The delegation from Maryland was huge with about two dozen people and met with staff for Senator Cardin and Senator Mikulski, who were very open to our requests to support funding for the Office of Museum Programs of the Institute of Museum and Library Services; including museums among the approved partners for schools in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and opposing elimination of the tax deductibility of charitable donations. Congressman Chris Van Hollen, who represents my district, was incredibly generous with his time and came out to talk with us between votes in the House chamber.

Meeting with my senators and congressman to talk about the value of museums was a great experience, although it’s unclear how much can be accomplished in this bitter election year. More eye opening were the hundreds of people who were also wandering the halls to advocate for their cause, so we’ve got lots of competition. If we don’t participate, others will step in and happily take our place.

Museums Advocacy Day is coordinated by the American Association of Museums, and anyone is welcome to participate.

What the Latest Trends in Mobile Tech Mean for Historic Sites

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, recently released its 2012 Mobile Future in Focus report. This annual report examines the use of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) in 2011 in the United States, Canada, and overseas (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Japan). According to Mark Donovan, comScore Senior Vice President of Mobile:

2011 proved to be a groundbreaking year for the mobile industry, with smartphones hitting the mainstream, tablets emerging as a formidable fourth screen, and consumers increasingly integrating mobile behaviors into their lifestyles. As the industry continues to innovate and more consumers look to multiple devices and platforms to consume digital media, we expect the mobile and connected device landscape to be shaken up even further in 2012. As mobile channels present a more personal, social, and ubiquitous experience to consumers, advertisers and publishers have an opportunity to better engage target audiences, given an understanding of how to connect and leverage the unique characteristics of these emerging platforms.

For history organizations and historic sites, some of the findings you’ll find most applicable are:

Smartphones Gain Adoption Among ‘Early Majority’, Driving Mobile Media Consumption. “Nearly 42 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers now use smartphones, along with 44.0 percent of mobile users across the EU5 (comprised of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK). Mobile media use – defined as browsing the mobile web, accessing applications, or downloading content – saw increased growth as a result, surpassing the 50-percent threshold in many markets, supported by the proliferation of high-speed networks and increased public WiFi availability.” Nearly half of cell phone users have internet access, so ensure your website is maintained and up-to-date because increasing numbers of people will be using the smartphones to make decisions as they travel. What we don’t know is how popular smartphones are among visitors to historic sites and history museums–that may be something to explore at your site (just ask!).
Mobile Retail Information Leads to Emergence of Smartphone Shopping Behaviors. “More than half of the U.S. smartphone population used their phone to perform retail research while inside a store in 2011, illustrating the emergence of savvy smartphone shoppers who bring online shopping behaviors in-store – a trend seen in other markets as well. At the end of 2011, nearly 1 in 5 smartphone users scanned product barcodes and nearly 1 in 8 compared prices on their phone while in a store.” You may discover that visitors are looking at their phones when they are in your store. They could be evaluating your products, comparing prices, or making a purchase (“this is a great book, let me order it on Amazon.com so I don’t have to carry it with me now”). Your little museum store has just become part of the global marketplace so you’ll need to increasingly think about what’s distinctive, unique, or better than your competitors around the world and may have to change your inventory in response. And I bet that visitors will be doing the same comparison soon as they choose among the many things to do in your community (“hmm, should we go to an historic site, a winery, or downtown? Let’s see what Yelp recommends.”).
Mobile Devices Fuel Social Networking On-The-Go, Driving Real-Time Online Interaction. “64.2 million U.S. smartphone users and 48.4 million EU5 smartphone users accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile devices at least once in December 2011, with more than half of these mobile social networking users accessing social media almost every day. While mobile social networking users showed the highest propensity to read posts from people they knew personally, more than half of those in the U.S. and nearly half in the EU5 also reported reading posts from brands, organizations, and events.” With so many people using social media such as Facebook, Google+, Flickr, Yelp, and Foursquare, remind them to share their experiences of your site (at the end of the tour, remind visitors to share their visit on Facebook and Yelp). You’ll slowly build a reputation. And if you haven’t already, be sure to create and maintain a page in Facebook, Google+, Flickr, Yelp, or Foursquare.
Mobile Connectivity and Connected Devices Encourage Cross-Platform Digital Media Consumption among ‘Digital Omnivores’. “Tablets quickly rose in popularity in 2011, taking less than two years to account for nearly 40 million tablets in use among U.S. mobile users and outpacing smartphones which took 7 years to reach the same. By the end of 2011, nearly 15 percent of U.S. mobile users also had tablets – a trend seen across other markets as well.” Tablets are quickly becoming a common technology along with smartphones and laptop computers. That won’t affect historic sites very much as long as you keep your website and apps up to date (see below), but it may open up a new opportunity for producing unique digital guides or visitor experiences through Kindle or iBooks. Apps, e-books, or websites designed for tablets may soon replace or supplement portable DVDs, podcasts, and audioguides.

Thinking about developing an app?

Smartphone Platform Wars Intensify As Android and Apple Take the Lead in Most Markets. “The Google Android and Apple iOS smartphone platforms emerged as the leaders of the U.S. smartphone market in 2011, with Android just a few points shy of capturing half of the smartphone market and iOS accounting for nearly 30 percent of the market. In the EU5, Android saw similarly significant gains, unseating market leader Symbian in 3 out of the 5 European markets measured.” If you are developing an app, sorry, you’ll still need to develop it for both Android and Apple iOS.
Surge in Mobile App Usage Shapes a Dual Mobile Browsing Experience, Fueling Category Growth. “In 2011, both the U.S. and EU5 saw the growth in mobile app use exceed the growth in mobile browser use, leading to both markets seeing the same percentage of their mobile audience use both apps and browsers to access mobile media. Health ranked as the fastest-growing mobile media category in the U.S. in 2011, followed by Retail and other commerce-related categories such as Electronic Payments and Auction Sites.” The use of apps has grown this past year and it looks like it’s caught up to mobile browser use–smartphone owners are using apps and internet browsers at the same rate (if these distinctions are confusing, check out the explanation at the New Media Campaigns blog). And if you aren’t thinking about online sales and payments, start now or risk losing revenue (check out PayPal and Google Checkout and see if they still have special rates for non-profits).

For more details, download a free copy of 2012 Mobile Future in Focus report.

Webinar on Strategies for Financially Sustaining Historic Buildings

The California Preservation Foundation, a statewide historic preservation organization, has been offering a series of lunchtime webinars (well, lunchtime on the West Coast) on a variety of topics that would interest staff and volunteers who work with historic sites, including window restoration, fundraising, architectural styles, historic landscapes, and tax credits.

On Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 12 noon Pacific time, I’ll be sharing a webinar with Jim Newland of California State Parks on building a stable financial foundation for historic sites by rethinking Continue reading →