Can Social Psychology Predict Successful Museum Project Teams?

Did you ever notice how particular teams or working groups at some museums always seems to produce interesting, successful projects, while other museums filled with equally likeable and intelligent people never quite seem to get their projects to fly?

I kept coming back to memories of successful (and unsuccessful!) museum project teams as I read the fascinating article in the New York Times about the research conducted by the Project Aristotle group at Google, entitled "What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team."

The article is really worth reading for yourself, but I'll give you a bit of the punchline in this post.  (SPOILER ALERT!)

After looking at over a hundred groups at Google, the Project Aristotle researchers determined that the key factor for project teams to become successful was "group norms."

Roughly translated, that means that each group's "culture" determined the outcome of the group's work more than any other factors --- not age, gender, education, experience, even overlap between group members on different teams.

From the article:

"What interested the researchers most, however, was that teams that did well on one assignment usually did well on all the others. Conversely, teams that failed at one thing seemed to fail at everything. The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ‘‘good’’ teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright."


Successful project teams shared two common qualities.  On good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion:

"As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well.  But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined."

Secondly, all the good teams had something the Project Aristotle researchers called high "social sensitivity."   Which means that successful team members were skilled at picking up on nonverbal cues --- like tone of voice, or facial expressions, to determine how other team members were feeling.

So given their findings, and Google's strong desire to improve the success of project teams, did the researchers draw up a list of prescriptions for teams to follow?  Not at all!  Rather, the Project Aristotle group shared their data and findings with people and assumed groups and their leaders were smart enough and motivated enough to incorporate the findings into each working group's "culture."

But most importantly, even for a data-driven company like Google, everyone in the organization came to realize that success was not always something that could be "optimized" or driven strictly by some one-size-fits-all business principles.

Again, from the article:

"Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized."

And I think that is what holds tremendous promise for the future of museums and our projects --- that our interactions with each other as museum workers, and our interactions with the people who visit museums, can be grounded in rich (and yes, sometimes complicated) emotional experiences.

Onward!

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What Makes an Exhibit Designer a Great Creative Partner?

I love the Venn diagram at the top of this post.  It comes from this article from Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn.

Weiner's article made me think about the qualities I look for in the best collaborators, folks I think of as great creative partners.  I definitely agree with the three qualities that Jeff Weiner highlights, but
here’s a short list of questions that can help you get a sense of whether an exhibit designer might be a good (or great!) partner for your museum’s next project:


1) How do you prototype exhibits?

Every aspect of an exhibition, including labels, can be tested out with visitors before the “final” version is produced. This does not have to be a horribly expensive or time-consuming process. As a matter of fact, masking tape, markers, and cardboard can go a long way in creating simple prototypes.

Avoid anyone who says things along the lines of: “We test out everything in the shop...” or “ We don’t need to prototype, because our stuff never breaks.” You need to turn real visitors loose on exhibit prototypes to avoid the dreaded “I never thought they would do that with our exhibit!”

You can find a free downloadable article on exhibit prototyping at the POW! Website.



2) What’s your favorite exhibit?

If your response to this question is either a blank stare or a glib sales pitch --- RUN! Ideally, the designer can report on why specific aspects of an exhibit component or entire exhibition interested them or moved them in some way.

For example, I loved a large scale interactive based on one of the scenes from a children’s book by William Steig. There were magnet-backed creatures and plants that multiple visitors could move around a room-sized jungle scene. This was part of a larger exhibition of Steig’s drawings in a normally “hands off” museum, The Jewish Museum in Manhattan. It was clear through this area, and a few others in the Steig exhibition, that the designers wanted to provide some colorful, open-ended experiences for families.



3) Will you let us directly pay subcontractors?

Money changes everything, doesn’t it? The financial aspects of your exhibit process should be as transparent as possible. The best designers allow you to see “the books” so you can be assured that the maximum amount possible of your project resources are being spent on items that will show up in your exhibit galleries.

Beware of too many miscellaneous fees, or excessive charges for things like FedEx. It is reasonable for any designer to cover their overhead charges, but it is just as reasonable for you to ask to contract directly with specialists serving as subcontractors to avoid excessive “markups”.



4) Can we use green materials?

No, I don’t mean Kiwi Corian! Your exhibit designer should have an increasing familiarity with environmentally friendly materials. Even if your potential design partner is not a “green expert”, they should be willing to work with you to create designs, and employ solutions, that are sustainable.

A great resource is the greenexhibits.org website.



5) Have you ever worked in a museum?

While this is not a complete deal-breaker, a design solution from someone who has actually had to fix an exhibit after 600 fifth graders have pummeled on it carries a lot more weight with me than a beautiful computer rendering from a recent design school grad.

Don’t be afraid to ask practical questions like, “How will this work with large school groups?” or “Will this computer interactive automatically reboot if it freezes up?”



6) Who are some of your repeat customers?

At the end of every crazy exhibit project and installation, after everyone has had a few days to obtain the requisite amounts of food, sleep (and showers!) you ask yourself an important question: Would I ever work with (fill in the blank) again?

The people whom you continue to work with, and who continue to work with you speaks volumes about your work ethic and the ability to get the job done. The mark of a great museum exhibit designer is how they overcome unexpected challenges related to timing or finances or the other hundreds of things that could cause a project to become unhinged.


What are some of the questions you ask potential creative partners? Let us know in the "Comments" Section below!



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)