Creating cultural leaders

For some time now, the clear message from government has been that cultural organisations need to look beyond the state for their income, to demonstrate their commercial capabilities and ability to deliver new and creative business models. Perhaps this will become even starker in our post Brexit world?

Back in 2012 Oxford University Museums started thinking about the significance of this challenge, asking how can cultural organisations reinvent themselves as businesses, albeit not-for-profit, with entrepreneurial ways of behaving, while retaining the values that make them unique cultural and community spaces.

We wanted to understand whether cultural leaders are equipped with the skills, knowledge and behaviours required for creating new business models

We offered a series of one-day training and knowledge-sharing events for professionals working in the museum and cultural sectors which focused on raising awareness, highlighting issues and ideas, and exploring different themes such as commercial enterprise and fundraising.

Our evaluation of these events demonstrated a real thirst for new approaches and ways of implementing them. But as one-off interventions, one-day events will never go deep enough to effect lasting change on individual and organisational values and behaviours.

Speeding up transformation

So we asked some specific questions around the leadership of the sector and how it could facilitate, and speed up, the pace of transformation. In particular, we wanted to understand whether cultural leaders are equipped with the skills, knowledge and behaviours required for creating new business models, or in making different complex operational decisions.

There are some excellent and well-established leadership programmes in the UK and internationally, but we felt there was space for another programme focused on developing a cadre of adaptive leaders with a more entrepreneurial mindset.

Through programmes and research, the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School works to transform individuals, organisations, business practice and society, and create ideas that have global impact. It is creative in its approach to designing leadership development programmes tailored to specific needs.

Drawing on its knowledge, experience and contacts, we reframed our thinking for a new type of cultural leadership intervention. Together, we designed a programme that draws on the academic theory of entrepreneurship and adaptive leadership, while weaving throughout strong and inspiring case studies of cultural leadership that embody innovation and change.

Launch of the programme

After two years of research and development, we launched Oxford Cultural Leaders (OCL) and have now run it in March 2015 and April 2016. The programme is delivered within a coaching environment where theory is explored and tested through provocation, fast-moving motivational sessions, experiential learning and reflective opportunities. It creates a space that feels emergent and challenging and stretches participants to step outside the learning space.

The OCL alumni are a group of dynamic and reflective directors, heads of department and senior managers who attended the programme with the intention of challenging and redefining their identity as a leader and their vision for their organisation. They have generously shared their challenges and have contributed to a melting pot of ideas and experimentation.

From the outset we wanted OCL to attract international participants who would bring their own diverse views, experiences, skills and knowledge, adding to the depth of our faculty’s offer, providing peer support and networking extending beyond the week in Oxford.

To date, we have brought together 37 creative and inspiring cultural leaders from the UK, Europe, Canada, the US, New Zealand and Australia in an environment designed to be disruptive, yet supportive. They have been able to take risks, break old habits, reflect on how they think and behave, and develop mechanisms for dealing with demanding situations.

Shaping the programme

We evaluated the first cohort in detail and made it clear that we wanted them to help us shape the programme. The evaluation proved so insightful that we have continued this approach with our recent alumni. Their feedback is enabling a highly iterative process of design and experimentation that will ensure we anticipate, as well as meet, the needs of future cohorts.

And it’s been encouraging to hear how the programme has had an impact over time. We want to offer a programme that enables tangible change to happen.

Lucy Shaw is Head of the Oxford University Museums Partnership and Programme Director for Oxford Cultural Leaders.
www.oxfordaspiremuseums.org/oxford-cultural-leaders
E: lucy.shaw@museums.ox.ac.uk
Tw: @LVShaw