The slides from a workshop on developing digital strategy for the museums sector delivered as part of Museum Ideas 2016. Help your organisation learn how to integrate digital practice into leadership and management across all departments.

1. Digital Strategy for Museums
Workshop @ Museum Ideas 2016
Alex Morrison, Managing Director (alexm@cogapp.com)
Gavin Mallory, Head of Production (gavinm@cogapp.com)
4th October 2016

2. Agenda
What is strategy?
Museums and digital
Why do you need a digital strategy?
Museum digital strategy case studies
A model for digital strategy
How to develop a digital strategy
Summary
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3. What is strategy?

4. Exercise: What is Strategy?
What is strategy?
What is the best example you know of strategy in action?
Five minutes
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5. What is Strategy?
“The term ‘strategy’ should mean
a cohesive response
to
an important challenge.”
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt page 6
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6. What is Strategy?
“The kernel of a strategy contains three elements:
a diagnosis,
a guiding policy,
and coherent action.”
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt page 7
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7. What is Strategy?
There are many definitions of strategy.
What all definitions have in common is that strategy is the responsibility of
leadership.
‘Strategos’ is the Greek word for ‘general’.
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8. Museums and digital

9. A Director’s View
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoEXeNnusFE © cogapp.com, 2016

10. What do we mean by ‘digital’?
The exact scope of ‘digital’ may vary from one organization to another.
There may be installed kiosks, digital signage, internal digital services, apps
and other kinds of digital publication.
For most purposes and most organisations, a good starting point for a
definition of ‘digital’ might be:
All public-facing digital services, including websites, apps and social media,
and all the operations that directly support them.
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11. Museums and digital
“Museums are being redefined for a digital age. The transformation, museum
officials say, promises to touch every aspect of what museums do, from how
art and objects are presented and experienced to what is defined as art.”
New York Times article, October 26, 2014
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12. Exercise: Museums and digital
Someone asked me the other day: ‘what is distinctive about museums and
digital’?
What would your answer be?
Five minutes
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13. What is distinctive about museums and digital?
Content-rich
Content that can only be made available digitally
On-site and online possibilities
Large public audiences
Non-standard business models
Non-commercial pay scales and limited resources
High ethical standards
Very good at core business - not so good at innovation
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14. Why do you need a digital
strategy?

15. Why do you need a Digital Strategy?
Digital activity in the economy is growing at an unprecedented rate (>20% p.a.).
The digital environment is disruptive of critical business processes including
marketing and fundraising.
The digital environment is itself frequently disrupted.
Because the digital environment is uniquely dynamic, the organization’s digital
operation is always (necessarily) a work-in-progress.
Digital’s position in the organization chart is likely to be anomalous and shifting
upwards as it grows more rapidly than other areas and becomes increasingly
important.
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16. Why do you need a Digital Strategy?
Senior leaders are likely to be less familiar and less comfortable with digital:
hence not able to assess the strategic context* for themselves;
hence reluctant to engage.
*strategic context is a key concept
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17. Exercise: Challenges and Opportunities
You are the director of your organisation.
What are your top three challenges and opportunities?
Five minutes
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18. Museum digital strategy case
studies

19. Case Studies
We have done strategy work in one form or another for many clients usually as
part of a larger implementation project.
The three following extracts come from published projects that we have NOT
worked on. What do you think?
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20. Smithsonian
Creating a Digital Smithsonian is an ambitious five-year plan that lays out how
we will accomplish digitization — the activity that will help us realize these
benefits. It outlines strategies to digitize our collections and research holdings
along with the descriptive, interpretative information that accompanies them. It
recognizes that the Smithsonian is poised on the edge of a new era, one where
the power of technology can combine with Smithsonian resources to create
unprecedented access. Digitization is one of the best investments we can make
in our future.
2010
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21. Tate
Through the development of a holistic digital proposition there is an
opportunity to use the digital to deliver Tate’s mission to promote public
understanding and enjoyment of British, modern and contemporary art. To
achieve this, digital will need to become a dimension of everything that Tate
does.
2013
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22. Exercise: Strategy review
Working collaboratively, [museum group] will create meaningful, enjoyable and
participatory digital experiences to engage audiences with our collection,
increasing reach, reputation and revenues through artistic excellence.
You are the director of [museum group]. Would this be likely to uncross your
arms?
If yes, why?
If not, how could it be more persuasive?
Five minutes
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23. A model for digital strategy

24. Strategy in the Organization
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25. Overview
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26. Leadership
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27. Overview
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28. Management
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29. Overview
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30. Operations
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31. Overview
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32. How to develop a digital
strategy

33. How to develop a Digital Strategy
Need to engage leadership (with the rest of the team).
Need to engage adjacent departments e.g. Marketing and IT.
Need to provide a way for leadership to review and understand the strategic
context...
... and then formulate a vision and objectives.
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34. How to develop a Digital Strategy
Facilitated process undertaken by a strategy team reporting to the Head of
Digital.
Strategy team begins with a review of context:
Environment, organization, target audiences and digital programmes
Business plans, stakeholder interviews, customer research, analytics
review, peer review, industry trends, technology trends, review target
audiences, etc...
Turn the findings (and generous quantities of the data, lots of graphs, tables,
case studies and diagrams) into a giant slide deck.
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35. How to develop a Digital Strategy
Organize a two-day workshop
Day One:
An Introduction to Digital Strategy
A review of the contextual research with exercises
e.g. What is our proposition for each target audience segment?
Day Two:
Revisit Day One - what did we learn?
More exercises including sources of value
This workshop should involve: as many key members of the senior leadership
team as possible; managers of the digital programme and lower-level team
members; leaders from adjacent departments including marketing and IT.
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36. How to develop a Digital Strategy
Write up the results of the workshop and fill in any remaining gaps with
additional research and analysis.
Submit to senior leadership for review
Send a revised draft to the workshop team for their comments
Submit a final draft to senior leadership for their sign-off
Initiate the next phase of work, set up monitoring and management review
functions.
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37. How to write up a Digital Strategy
Four main sections:
Target audiences
Leadership
Management
Operations
Each section details: context, vision and objectives.
Add an introduction, executive summary and other front matter.
Add appendices with key exhibits from the research.
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38. Digital Strategy: Summary

39. Digital Strategy: Summary
For the organization to be effective Leadership, Management and Operations
all have to play nicely together.
Strategy is the enabling contribution of Leadership.
Digital strategy is necessary and distinct from other kinds of strategy.
The goal of digital strategy is a statement of vision with detailed objectives,
based on evidence and ‘owned’ by senior leadership.
Our functional model provides an effective foundation for digital strategy.
Our method, based on systematic contextual research and facilitated
workshops, allows leadership to engage and feel comfortable formulating a
digital strategy.
Armed with a signed-off strategy, Management can manage, Operations can
operate, and Leadership can be sure that things are going as they should. ;-)
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40. Further reading
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz
Who do you want your customers to become? by Michael Schrage
Understanding Museum Visitors’ Motivations and Learning by John Falk
Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles by Bernard
Cornwell
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41. Thank you!