Effective Project Management

Many people have asked me, "How on earth can you be a project manager?" Of course what they are really asking is, "Please advise me on the realities of project management", I then proceed to do so at length. They then show their enthusiasm by running off at speed in the opposite direction to get their projects started.

So it's about time the world at large took tips from the master.

Firstly, what is a project? 

The Project Management Institute define it as,

'a temporary group activity designed to produce a unique product, service or result.'

Clearly they have no idea. What a project is in reality is,

'a never ending solo activity with a bunch of time-wasters designed to produce frustration, disaster and hair loss'

Given that every project is destined to fail, the prime skill of any project manager is to survive it without losing your job.

The project can then be broken down into this realistic model that a careful manager can achieve successfully. This process should be undertaken quickly with supreme confidence whilst conveying an heir of frustrated ambition (practice it in the mirror).

1. Enthusiasm

Start with enthusiasm as you need to recruit the time-wasters. You need to find victims for later, so at least one member of the project needs to be expendable. But if you actually find anyone with any competence then delegate/delegate/delegate.

2. Disillusionment

This follows hot on the heels of stage 1. The instant realisation, now that you've actually bothered to look at the project, that you lack the time, money, resources, skills and general ability to achieve the project - a particularly acute problem with large Heritage Lottery Funded projects. Your job as project manager is then to move directly to stage 3.

3. Panic
Delegate everything with impossible deadlines and treat yourself to a short holiday at this point, upon return move swiftly to stage 4.

4. Search for the guilty

If you have mistakenly recruited clever people then they will be covering their tracks like mad. If this is the case don't waste your time and move briskly onto stage 5.

5. Punishment of the innocent

This is where the sensible recruitment process now reaps its dividends. Remove the victim recruited at stage 1. The really clever bit of this project management model is the final stage 6

6. Praise and honours for the non-participants

This encourages those not in the initial project team to come in and work doubly hard to salvage what they can from the wreckage of the project, whilst you keep a watchful eye on potential victims as you put in your Arts Council Strategic Grant bid and move directly to stage 1 again.

Follow this advice and you will never be sacked for a failed project again. The main thing that kills a project manager is the hope of success. Being 90% successful and just failing is just as bad as a 10% success but a lot harder work. So set yourself up to fail, its a lot less stress and work. Then if you accidentally succeed it's a bonus (but make sure to take the credit). 

Happy managing!

Ethical Advertising for Museum Jobs

I've been working on a job advert for a new member of staff. The result is nicely clichéd, but is it accurate? My ethical resolution for new year is to be more open and honest, so I'm thinking of translating our well worn phrases to reflect the realities of work in a modern independent museum. But the question is, will I still recruit if I substitute the column phrases on the left for the ones on the right?

Competitive salary	Other museums don't pay much either.
A flexible approach to work needed	You work weekends and evenings for no extra pay
Join our dynamic museum	We’ve missed our last 3 HLF deadlines
You need to be a self starter	We have no time to train you
Be creative	You'll have no budget
Duties will vary	You are already on the toilet cleaning rota
Must have an eye for detail	We can’t find anything in the stores
We are seeking candidates with a wide variety of experience	Following the latest round of cuts, you'll be replacing three people.
Good communication skills required	Listen to management and don't ask any questions
Career minded	You have no career prospects
Problem solving skills a must	Find a way of getting the bank manager off our backs
You need to be a team player	You'll have all the responsibilities of upper management, without the pay, title or respect.
The ability to work on your own	There are no other members staff

All this reminds me of an old joke.

A Museum Manager died and his soul appeared at the Pearly Gates, where St. Peter was waiting with a frown on his face,

"The problem is, we've never had a Museum Manager make it this far before and we're not really sure what to do with you. So I've been instructed to let you have a day in hell and a day in heaven, and then you are to choose where you'd like to go for all eternity."

"Actually, I think I would prefer heaven", said the museum manager.

"Sorry, we have rules..." at which St. Peter put the him into the downward bound lift.

As the doors opened in hell he stepped out onto a beautiful golf course. In the distance was a plush hotel; around him were many friends - past fellow colleagues, all smartly dressed, happy, and cheering for him. He played a perfect round of golf and afterwards went to the hotel where he enjoyed a superb meal with old friends and colleagues. He met the Devil, although reminding him of a past Director of the British Museum he was actually rather nice, and he had a wonderful night telling jokes, drinking and dancing. Before he knew it, it was time to leave; everyone shook his hand and waved goodbye as he stepped into the lift. The lift went back up to heaven where St. Peter was waiting for him.

"Now it's time to spend a day in heaven," he said.

So he spent the next 24 hours lounging around on clouds and playing the harp and singing, which was all very pleasant as well. At the day's end St Peter returned.

"So," he said, "You've spent a day in hell and you've spent a day in heaven. You must choose between the two."

The Museum Manager thought for a second and replied, "Well, heaven is certainly lovely, but I actually had a better time in hell. I choose hell."

Accordingly, St. Peter took him to the lift again and he went back down to hell.

When the doors of the lift opened he found himself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in rubbish and filth. He saw his old colleagues dressed in rags, picking up litter and putting it in old sacks. The Devil approached and put his arm around him.

"I don't understand," stuttered the Museum Manager, "Yesterday I was here, and there was a golf course, and a hotel, and we ate lobster, and we drank and had a wonderful time. Now all there's just a dirty wasteland of rubbish and all my colleagues look miserable."

The Devil looked at him and smiled. "Yesterday we were recruiting you, today you're staff."

Yet More Museum Motivational Quotes

Such was the astonishing lack of reaction to my first set of quotes to inspire you in 2014, I thought I would do it again. It's too easy to repeat a blog on the same topic I hear you cry. Guilty as charged, but I call the BBC, ITV, Sky, etc. as my fellow defendants in the dock. In the true spirit of sequels the quotes are more of the same - just not as good. Regard this as the Jaws 2 of motivational quotes and you will derive enough innocent pleasure to make reading it worthwhile, whilst at the same time saying 'the first one was better'. Mind you, Godfather 2 was better than the original... and Toy Story 2, but they are exceptions to the rule ... oh and Aliens as well. But at least Godfather 3 was rubbish as were the rest of the Alien films - and what about Toy Story 3, I was in floods of tears and permanently drunk the week after. Now, where was I? Ah yes - more quotes:

1. "Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your museum, the blueprints of your exhibitions." Napoleon Hill


2. "The key to success is to focus the museum on things the audience desires not things they fear." Brian Tracy


3. "Success is getting what you want for your museum. Happiness is wanting what you get for your museum." Dale Carnegie


4. "Objects are necessary for success because in museums, as in all displays of importance, victory comes only after many struggles with display cases and countless labels." Og Mandino


5. "A real museum decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided." Tony Robbins


6. "If you can't control your anger, you are as helpless as a museum without displays wanting to be visited." The Book of Proverbs


7. A mediocre museum tells. A good museum explains. A superior museum demonstrates. A great museum inspires others to see for themselves." Harvey Mackay


8. "Education delivery, accreditation standards, accessioning, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience." Jack Vance


9. "Take care of your museum. It's the only place you have to work." Jim Rohn


10. "You can have everything out of museum work you want, if you will just help visitors get what they want." Zig Ziglar


11. "The number of times I succeeded in writing the perfect label was in direct proportion to the number of times I failed but kept on writing." Tom Hopkins


12. "If you have every object you want, you need to build something far bigger than your current stores." Seth Godin

Yet again joyfully borrowed and amended from Inc. Magazine. Read the actual quotes here http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/12-great-motivational-quotes-for-2013.html

Inspirational Museum Quotes for 2014

Enough New Year reflective nonsense for the time being. Reading some motivational quotes for New Year* I have been inspired to inspire you to greater efforts in 2014 by sharing the wisdom of great thinkers throughout the centuries. Had any of them been museum managers this is what they would have said:

"An artefact cannot be polished without friction, nor a curator perfected without excellent accreditation documents." Seneca

"Don't go around saying the heritage sector owes you a living. The heritage sector owes you nothing. It was here first." Mark Twain

"Enthusiasm, backed up by nonsense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for a museum." Dale Carnegie

"It doesn't matter whether the Dow is 5000 or 50,000. If you're an idiot, there is no bad time to start a museum." Guy Kawasaki

"Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when the museum visitor seems most challenging." Joseph Campbell

"The problem with many a museum is that it takes away the requirement to set your own visitor route, to explore your own learning, to find your story." Seth Godin

"You are your museum's greatest asset. Put your time, effort and money into training, grooming, and encouraging your greatest asset." Tom Hopkins

"It is only necessary to have storage, for artefacts without storage facilities are useless." Casanova

"If money is your hope for survival you will never have it. The only real security that a museum will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability." Henry Ford

"Museums that are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their objects." Andrew Carnegie

"If you have no confidence in your collection, you are twice defeated in the race for visitors. With confidence, you have great exhibitions even before you have started." Cicero

"It is not the strongest of the museums that survive, nor the most intelligent of staff that survives the cuts. It is the ones that are the most adaptable to change." Charles Darwin

*All quotes gleefully ripped off and improved from Inc. on-line magazine. 

If you want to read the actual quotes they can be found here. http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/12-great-motivational-quotes-for-2014.html

Ave Atque Vale

New Year is a time for reflection, unless you happen to be a vampire of course. So I was leafing through past blogs and noticed the first posting justifying my last 3 years of perceptive and articulate blogging was missing. So I though I would resurrect it in some sort of Catullian Ave/Vale Janus type thingummybob.

"If you work in the museum sector in the UK you will inevitably have been part of many meetings recently that involved discussions about cuts and closures. Lots of head shaking and sighing is the order of the day.

A major rethink in the nature of museums has to go on. What should museums do? What is a museum? Is it a community resource? Is it a heritage attraction? How can we do more with less? In the end good professionals are losing their jobs.

A key museum task is the serious business of making the past relevant to the present, often in a fun and engaging way. Anyone involved in this business knows how difficult this is, especially now when the organisation is looking over your shoulder expecting value for money or income generation.

The purpose of this blog is to completely rethink the idea of museum and help professionals enjoy the underlying absurdity of managing the past. Some call it 'blue sky' thinking. I think we need some thinking that better reflects the weather in the UK.

In this country we look at the sky and know it is only going to get worse, we cannot rely on it. The only reason we go abroad is not for culture and new experiences (although that is what we tell ourselves) it is simply to look up at the sky and know that is the weather we are guaranteed for the day. However, I'm getting sidetracked.

The Cloudy Vision
However desperate the situation might be it can never be serious in the Museum of Unreason. There is no problem so intractable that can’t be solved by unreasonable thinking. Absurdity is normality."

Has anything changed? Is that vision still as essential today as it was when I stole the inspiration from Charles Handy's 1989 Age of Unreason and I quote,

"... discontinuous change requires discontinuous upside-down thinking to deal with it, even if both thinkers and thoughts appear absurd at first sight."

But has my blog changed anything? Do I still appear absurd? If so, do I need a new direction? Am I a John the Baptist or even a Frank the Museum Pantisocratist or just one of the millions of deluded bloggers clogging up the ether with irrational rationalities? And if so, should I sack yet more staff and give myself another pay rise to make myself feel better? Or instead, be nice to the Chair of Trustees for once and even learn the cleaner's name? Decisions, decisions, decisions.

I think more reflection is needed. More reflection on Mr. Handy's thesis and what this blog has achieved. Still no Museum of Car Parking Spaces. Still no inspirational Museum Association keynote speech. Perhaps 2014 is the year?


Happy New Year to you all!!