Archive for the 'General' Category
CREATIVITY – help please
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
I am writing an essay on creativity and education. A frequent statement made by people discussing this refers to a test carried out by a George Land using an instrument applied by NASA to test levels of “genius”. Here is an example:
Genius level creativity
In 1968, George Land distributed among 1,600 5-year-olds a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists. He re-tested the same children at 10 years of age, and again at 15 years of age.
Test results amongst 5 year olds: 98%
Test results amongst 10 year olds: 30%
Test results amongst 15 year olds: 12%
Same test given to 280,000 adults: 2%
“What we have concluded,” wrote Land, “is that non-creative behavior is learned
Commonly those who cite this research refer to a book by Land and Beth Jarman entitled “Breakpoint and Beyond”.
I have the book. I have searched the web. A colleague has even contacted the librarian at NASA.
None of this has yielded a copy of the actual instrument (or test) used to arrive at these results. There is in fact no reference in the book to this.
Can anyone out there find the test that Land used and which is referred to in all this literature?
Understanding Museums: Australian Museums and Museology
Friday, June 10th, 2011
Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien (eds), 2011, Understanding Museums: Australian Museums and Museology, National Museum of Australia.
The first part of a volume on developments in museums in Australia since the 1960’s has just been published as an e-Book on the web site of the National Museum of Australia.
Museums were established across many parts of the Australian continent during the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. However it was in the latter part of the twentieth century that the greatest burgeoning of museums occurred. These decades also witnessed the consolidation of a sophisticated museum profession, the creation of a single national professional association “Museums Australia” and an active participation of Australian museum professionals in the international museum context. The essays in this section jointly seek to present a scholarly study of museums and museum practice that is also accessible to people outside the museum profession, who daily demonstrate their active interest in museums and their programs.
There are 11 essays in five sections.
Museums in Australia by Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien
Conservation in Australian museums by Ian Cook et al.
Ethnographic museums and collections by John E Stanton
Transforming culture by Bernice Murphy
Repatriation by Michael Pickering and Phil Gordon
War and Australia’s museums by Peter Stanley
History in the new millennium or problems with history? by Tim Sullivan
Art museums in Australia by Daniel Thomas
International exhibitions by Caroline Turner
Collecting works on paper by Anne Kirker
Museums and the environment by Douglass F Hoese
The second part to be published in late June or July will include further essays on history and science museums. Additional sections will deal with education programs and regional museums and there will be essays on museums and digitisation and social media.
OWL’S HOOTS No 15: RETURNING ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE EMPLOYEES BY BEING PREPARED TO ACT
Saturday, October 30th, 2010
Richard Branson and Vinit Nayer have vitally important lessons for us. Both emphasise trust and openness and take risks, both focus on employees whom they recognise as being the source of a successful future.
First I have to apologise to the reader. This is the first post since February. I promised that the next post would deal with climate change: I drafted a note but was diverted by numerous other things. However, I expect a number of posts to appear in the next two weeks; one of them will deal with climate change.
Meanwhile back to another of my favourite subjects or more.
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I have written on numerous occasions that organisations depend for their future on the way people work together. I do not hold to the notion that the world has changed so fast that what we have learned about human behaviour is outdated. Equally I reject the vision of humankind forced on everyone by the market economists and their utility maximisation-self interest mantra. (Another post will report concluding comments by Professor Tim Jackson of Surrey University in his Deakin Lecture based on studies in social psychology and behavioural economics.)
At this time here is a quote from Professor Amartya Sen, Noble prizewinner in economics, at a recent seminar about Adam Smith published in the Erasmus Journal:
“While some men are born small and some achieve smallness, it is clear that Adam Smith has had much smallness thrust upon him.”
It is fair to say that the 21st century, or at least the first couple of decades, are years of the brain. The emerging understanding about the flexibility of the brain, brain plasticity, and how different parts of the brain work are truly amazing. There are implications not least for education and learning. (For more on this go to the ABC Radio National’s website for the program “All in the Mind” presented by Natasha Mitchell.)
What has been happening in most organisations is decreasing attention to employees, an ever increasing retreat to routinisation. Even in the medical field – mixed practices – doctors are being told how long they can spend with patients and being sued if they don’t accept the instructions. To an extent this is a further development of the ongoing application of neoclassical economics.
So to encounter examples of this all being put aside, of attention being paid to an employee focused organisation is refreshing. I have previously mentioned one outstanding example of this in the firm Semco and also pointed up a couple of aspects of Southwest Airlines.
Another organisation well known for concern for employees is the Virgin group of companies. The founder, Richard Branson, was in Australia a couple of months ago and was extensively interviewed. At the end of the interview on ABC TVs ‘Talking Heads‘  presenter Peter Thompson asked him about stress.
Here is his response:
PETER THOMPSON: You always seem quite fresh and not very stressed, which is remarkable considering the circumstances of your life.
RICHARD BRANSON: I should be fairly stress-free, in that I have the most incredible life. I’ve got the most incredible group of people around me. And I love learning. Every day I’m learning something new. And I love people. So I love life. So I certainly have no difficulty keeping going and challenging myself.
Earlier in the interview:
PETER THOMPSON: One of your trademarks is a special relationship with the Virgin staff.
RICHARD BRANSON: Yeah, I think a good leader is a good listener. And last night I was at the Holiday Inn in Potts Point, where I’ll stay any time that I come to Sydney, because all our staff stay there. And drinking with them, but most importantly listening, and having pocketfuls of notes by the end of the evening, which I’ve already gone on and dealt with today. So…
PETER THOMPSON: Yes, you’re famous for having an exercise book in which you write things down.
RICHARD BRANSON: Yeah. It’s very important. If you don’t write things down, you don’t remember. And I think an exceptional company is a company where you get all those little details right.
Continue to essay: “Leadership: Vinit Nayer and Employees First, Customers Second“
OWL’S HOOTS No. 14: ADVOCACY: GRASP THE POLITICAL
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Hoots No. 14 – 18 February 2010: Advocacy: Grasp the Political
Downsizing: another silly idea promoted by advocates for small government and “New Public Management” and should be resisted.
(The next hoot will deal with global climate change and the fact that evidence for change includes evidence for increasing instability, not only warming: museum scientists should be actively promoting the evidence and not leave it to others.)
Twenty years ago Daniel Thomas, then Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia and President of the Art Museums Association of Australia, wrote an article entitled “Grasp the Political” (Adelaide Review March 1990)
He wrote, “What art museums most need in the 1990s is to become politically and economically conscious. They must not only equip themselves with arguments as to why they should exist, but also with hard statistical data about their costs and their benefits.
“At the same time they must be very cautious about positioning themselves within the entertainment industry. There the user-pay principal reigns; the showbiz needs of popular exhibitions can displace special-interest exhibitions, such as scholarly art-history exhibitions or difficult, adventurous contemporary art exhibitions.”
I just wonder how many people took any notice of these important statements.
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This hoot comes from sunny San Francisco – well it was when I started to write this – with its many museums including the wonderfully redeveloped green California Academy of Sciences and De Young Museum of Art, currently showing the truly astounding exhibition of Tutankhamun (see recent articles on the ABC Science site on this Egyptian Pharaoh who died mysteriously when 19 – younger even than John Keats and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi who both died aged 25) and the always marvellous San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art.
It is also time to again recommend the Global Museum site managed by Roger Smith, now Director – Online Operations (East Asia) at the British Council. Like the Arts Journal Global Museum gathers together interesting articles focusing on museums all over the world; the site also has sections on travel, jobs, resources and links to various documents as well as links to podcasts, which can be downloaded, from many museums.
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I have argued for years if not decades that museum people need to do a number of things to advance the goals of their museum:
- find how the benefits of their activities link with the benefits of other similar organisations and enterprises and seek to make common cause with them: it is relatively easy for the enemy to undermine the strategies of people or organisation acting alone, it is quite a different matter with many people pursuing a common goal;
- recognise that there are many lessons to be learned from other organisations, indeed from some which do not immediately seem relevant: leadership in a museum can benefit from understanding leadership practice in a hospital or even an airline; and
- understand that the goals of museums are not simply to put knowledge out “in the ether” but to have that knowledge make a difference for the common good; as Steve Weil said, museums are for somebody, not about something.
There are a few museums where staff have taken the argument up to the frontlines and tried to convince those in government and the community that a certain approach to a situation is appropriate and that some others are not.
“Layoff the Layoffs” is the title of an article in Newsweek for Februrary 5, 2010
Pfeffer’s recent article is a good summary of why the downsizing of organisations, which has been quite a fad for some decades and has been popular in the last couple of years as a device for coping with the GFC, is anything but economically positive quite apart from its often devastating effects on the people involved. Museum executives faced with the demands of downsizing, especially when it is part of “encouraging organisations to be more entrepreneurial” have a responsibility to their museum and their staff to make it clear to those who are promoting the “solution” that they do not agree with it. Unless there are the most convincing and carefully thought through justifications!
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Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University where he has taught since 1979. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books including The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations, and Unconventional Wisdom About Management, a collection of 27 essays about management topics, as well as more than 120 articles and book chapters. Pfeffer’s latest book, tentatively entitled Power: An Organizational Survival Guide is to be published early 2010 by HarperCollins.
These quotes give a sense of where Pfeffer is coming from:
Power centres around scarce and critical resources and in times of uncertainty those with established credibility tend to be favoured as the enlightened. Those in power tend to define problems in ways which institutionalise their power. The more institutionalised the power is the more likely it is that the organization will be out of phase with its environment (from a 1977 paper with Gerald R. Salancik)
Organizational success comes more from managing people effectively than from attaining large size, operating in a high-growth industry, or becoming lean and mean through downsizing – which, after all, puts many of your most important assets on the street for the competition to employ.
Pfeffer opens his Newsweek article by pointing out that when the tragedy of September 12 2001 struck there was vast uncertainty about the future of airline flights. Almost all US airlines, and many other corporations, immediately laid off staff. Southwest Airlines did not. (I have written about this company before in “Lessons from Southwest Airlines” and “A chat with Herb Kelleher“) Southwest, which in fact has never laid off staff in its entire history, is now the biggest domestic carrier with a market capitalisation bigger than all other domestic carriers combined. Southwest’s former head of human resources once told Pfeffer: “If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?”
Layoffs, Pfeffer observes, have become an increasingly common part of corporate life, some firms seemingly in permanent downsizing mode. If an industry is declining downsizing would seem inevitable. But in industries where demand is fluctuating? When a company lays off staff in a downturn, staff  have to be when the upturn comes and demand increases. In the process considerable costs have been incurred!
Here is a quote that will surprise some and anger others even more: “A recent study of 20 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development economies over a 20-year period by two Dutch economists found that labor-productivity growth was higher in economies having more highly regulated industrial-relations systems – meaning they had more formal prohibitions against the letting go of workers.” So much for the notion of employment flexibility leading to economic growth!
Here are myths dispelled by studies of the effects of downsizing:
- Companies that announce layoffs enjoy higher stock prices than peers
- Layoffs increase individual company productivity
- Layoffs cut costs
The negative consequences of downsizing are particularly evident in R&D-intensive industries and in companies that experienced growth in sales.
Layoffs lead to lower morale leading to employees looking for another job at the first sign of better times, greater distrust of management and greater likelihood of stealing from the firm.
Layoffs also have a significant negative effect on the economy since laid off workers spend less, may demand social services payments from government, their houses may end up having to sold because of mortgage default and so on. The consequences to employees themselves can be devastating! Pfeffer says, “Layoffs literally kill people”.
(In the US those who lose their jobs also often lose their medical insurance which, as well as expected outcomes, can also lead to violent behaviour. Reviewing Michael Moore’s latest film “Capitalism: A Love Story ” Chris McGreal (The Guardian, 30 January 2010) writes, “Early on, Moore sets out the meaning of “Dead Peasants” insurance. It turns out that Wal-Mart, a company with revenue larger than any other in the world, bets on its workers dying, taking out life insurance policies on its 350,000 shop-floor workers without their knowledge or approval. When one of them dies, Wal-Mart claims on the policy. Not a cent of the payout, which sometimes runs to a $1m (£620,000) or more, goes to the family of the dead worker, often struggling with expensive funeral bills. Wal-Mart keeps the lot. If a worker dies, the company profits.)
Governments around the world have adopted the strategy of downsizing claiming this will lead to working smarter. The consequences of such downsizing have often led, as in business, to poorer service. At the same time as downsizing, outsourcing has also been promoted as allowing the organisation to fous on its core business. But as with downsizing it is now realised this seldom works to benefit the organisation as tasks and skills critical to the enterprise are realised as having to be in-house where they can be influenced appropriately by the culture and the staff involved interact with staff in the “business core”. One of the problems is that the downsized organisation seldom has the skills to develop an appropriate brief and project management regime for the outsourced contractor.
Most importantly, a downsizing operation seldom is accompanied by a clearly explained strategy for the future which will lead to a better company which is clearly explained to employees, those affected and those who are to remain. One of the critical jobs of leadership is not done!
These outcomes have been evident for some time and the failures in museums are the failures in business.
For instance, Right Associates (“Lessons Learned: Dispelling the Myth of Downsizing”, Philadelphia, 1992) found that in 66% to 75% of companies which had downsized neither profitability or [productivity] had increased. They argued that companies must investigate alternatives, define the new organisation, plan the downsizing, develop a communication plan and nurture the survivors. Observing that outplacement assistance fosters positive career growth they emphasised that change has to be embraced: no person or organisation can escape the consequences of downsizing.
In the study of museums around the world it was found that the museum organisations that were perceived by staff to have achieved successful change outcomes, were also perceived to have managed the change process through a strategically linked vision of the future state and communicated in ways which enabled participants to know what would happen and how they would be affected by the change, provided appropriate financial, human resource and training in support of the change the change; executives were prepared to devote the time to meeting with people and created the energy to get the change initiated and sustained by leadership action which emphasised patience and support and leading by example through modelling the appropriate change behaviours. (See Morris Abraham, Des Griffin & John Crawford, “Organisation change and management decision in museums”, Management Decision 37/10, 736-751, 1999.)
Museum executives faced with the demands of downsizing, especially when it is part of “encouraging organisations to be more entrepreneurial” have a responsibility to their museum and their staff to make it clear to those who are promoting the “solution” that they do not agree with it. Unless there are the most convincing and carefully thought through justifications! (Note that the responsibility of boards and executives is in the first place to the future of the organisation.)
OWL’S HOOTS No. 13: CO-PRODUCING THE MUSEUM AND WHAT ACTUALLY DO WE THINK WE’RE DOING?
Monday, December 21st, 2009
Hoots No. 13 – 21 December 2009: “Co-producing” the Museum using social media; Education and “Radical Hope”: Noel Pearson’s essay on education and Indigenous Australians; an observation on the misdirection of attention on learning and teaching.
Co-producing the Museum – Social Media and Interaction with your Museum
On the Museum Marketing website Jim Richardson has written a very interesting article about the communications revolution “coproducing the museum”. It is the text of a keynote address he gave to the Museum Association’s Social Media Day.
Amongst the things he has to say are these:
“Change in the internet has been clear for anyone to see, with the shift from static web pages to dynamic and sharable content and social networking. The internet is no longer just a place to find information; it is now a forum for collaboration, a place to create, curate and share content online. This has changed the way we work, influenced the way we think and adjusted our individual place in society forever.
The explosion in social media has created a socio-cultural shift; the way that people act is changing and audience expectations are snowballing both online and offline, and museums need to think beyond simply building a fan page on Facebook, writing a blog or starting to use Twitter to keep up with the change.â€
He points out that people who use Facebook, iPhones, iTunes and Wikipedia, with its hyperlinks allowing users to “drill down” through information, find many of their interactions with museums, including their websites, to be unsatisfactory: static and difficult to engage with.
He quotes The Centre for the Future of Museums, “For Americans under 30, there’s an emerging structural shift in which consumers increasingly drive narrative. Technology is fundamentally enabling and wiring expectations differently, particularly among younger audiences, this time when it comes to the concept of narrative.
“Over time, museum audiences are likely to expect to be part of the narrative experience at museums. While the overall story might not change, how it is presented may change to allow visitors to take on a role as a protagonist themselves.”
He gives some really interesting examples of museums which have grasped change in the way they use social media to allow active interaction by virtual and physical visitors. Some of them are:
Tate Modern released songs, initially exclusively inside the museum, to which visitors could listen through listening posts and later on the Tate Tracks microsite, then invited the public to participate in searching for an additional track. The invitation potentially reached up to two million people. Young musicians were invited to compose a piece of music inspired by an artwork in the museum and the public were invited to vote for their favourite submitted composition.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art launched a project – “It’s time we MET” – asking people visiting the permanent collection to photograph their experience and using Flickr enter it in a competition to star in a new advertising campaign. Almost a thousand pictures were posted; a panel of judges selected two winners and five runners up.
N8 Audiotours asked members of the public to create their own audiotours about items found in venues around Amsterdam.
Brooklyn Museum launched 1stfans. “1stfan membership is an interactive relationship with the museum that takes place online and in the museum. Part of this relationship is through websites like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr where private members’ areas contain content for 1stfan members. The content in these areas includes artists composing tweets, members sharing pictures, exclusive videos and access to an active online community.”
The V&A in London used a skillfully designed web page to lead people through webpages containing clues to which interested bloggers responded. “The bloggers received further cryptic messages over the next few weeks and 7thsyndikate also entered their real lives with graffiti planted near their homes and adverts placed in newspapers. This all ended with an instruction to dress in a hat and sunglasses, and with a newspaper under the left arm, these spies were to meet a man wearing a tan mac, bowler hat and dark shoes at the Albert Memorial in London. From here he marched them single file to the entrance of the V&A and the exhibition “Cold War Modern”. In total, 35 bloggers made it to the special preview of the exhibition.”
Education: Noel Pearson
Those who read this blog will know of my interest in learning. I wrote a response recently to the Quarterly Essay, “Radical Hope” by Noel Pearson, director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership. The response was kindly posted on the “Save our Schools” site by Trevor Cobbold.
“Radical Hopeâ” traverses very important issues in respect of the education “gap” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, maintaining cultural identity on the margin, the nature of learning and indigenous rights including responsibilities of governments on the one hand and individuals on the other.
As Mr Pearson shows there are extremely significant findings from educational research relevant to the education of Indigenous students. Education in the western tradition of the dominant society in Australia does not by any means require suppression of Indigenous identity: in fact quite the contrary. Maintenance and strengthening of identity is fundamental to survival for almost everyone, a fact suppressed by advocates of assimilation. Diversity of identity strengthens society!â€
Quarterly Essay 36, “Australian Story” by Mungo MacCallum includes a series of responses to Pearson’s essay by people such as Fred Chaney (a director of Reconciliation Australia), Peter Shergold (Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2003 to 2008) and Peter Sutton (University of Adelaide and South Australian Museum and author of “The Politics of Suffering…”).
Closing
While the world is crying out for creativity and innovation the attention, at least of the media and business and politicians, is focused on league tables, judging teacher effectiveness by student test scores and performance pay. All these are significantly flawed and little evidence of positve contribution of them is available. The studies of learning and education show that early childhood is the critical time for intervention and that well qualified and highly regarded teachers are what make, in the long run, the greatest difference to educational achievement and a life lived, along with encouragement at home and a strong sense of self worth.
It’s rather like the major issue of now being the personal behaviour of golfer Tiger Woods, as economist Paul Krugman observed in respect of global climate change and the COP15 meetings in Copenhagen in his debate with Bjorn Lomborg.
A recent contribution to On Line Opinion by Peter Vintila observed that “Most of us believe that climate policy aims to protect an endangered planet from a badly-ordered human economy. Now listen to just about any politician or industry spokesperson and you soon hear something different: the point, all of a sudden, is not to protect the planet but to protect the human economy from the planet.”