Being a director or a manager in the 21st century is not an easy job. Today’s y-and z-generation employees are different from their predecessors and are making ti hard to keep teams motivated and “get things done”. Most of our science centres and museums are run by the generation that founded them, yet the audience we are working for is a new one and the people we are working with are younger and younger. Will this change the concept of a science centre itself? How to be a modern director or a manager? What are the new “tricks” and “tips” to become a 21st century leader? Hear from experienced directors who recently joined the science centre sector or who have done something unusual in their organisations. Their ideas are innovative and easy to adapt. And don't hesitate to share your own!
Facilitator
Session speakers
CEO
Gothenburg
Sweden
It is all quite simple. But yet so hard.
Usually success in a business comes down to doing things that are theoretically simple but really hard to do day and day out. We normally spend a lot of time on “organizational smartness” developing new strategies for innovation, digitalisation, fundraising, communication etc.
What if we were to put in the same effort to create “organizational health”? To build a winning team with high morale, high productivity, minimal confusion and high capacity of self-leadership. Is is hard work but really quite simple. Here is how we do it.
CEO
Mechelen
Belgium
In order to prepare Technopolis for the future we needed to redefine our mission and vision. We decided to co-create this with all employees and our stakeholders in a bottom-up process. This ensures that everyone owns the vision. In a second step the organisation was flattened to make sure collaboration became easier. The third step was to empower our employees to set the strategy and define the projects.
Key changes to our way of working were:
- focus on inquiry based learning rather than deterministic experiments
- co-create with partners and visitors, involve your local ecosystem.
- build an online community and provide a relevant offer for them
- broaden your target audience
- manage your internal talent well
CEO
Hellerup
Denmark
Leaders are expected to be rolemodels. They are expected to motivate staff, inspire them, listen to new ideas and to be able to change directions. Expectations are high, and that is how it should be. Nevertheless the most important task for the top-management is to clearly show the direction for the whole organisation, set the milestones and then step back and be ready to interfere if things get out of the way.
In this process we sometimes tend to forget the importance of the staff as motivators and instinctive change agents. We value the experienced employees who know how we use to do things and how to work independently without substantial guidance from the leader, but we rarely talk about the importance of young and more unexperienced staff.
Going from an “old organization” to a more untested and newer organization is both a difficult transformation and a gift that the new Experimentarium in Copenhagen recently went through.
WP Lead (vice rector, education)
Vantaa
Finland
“Change is evident, or is it?”
All leaders today need to deal with changes. They emerge from the changing operational environment, technology, visitor preferences and behavior, competition, funding, and even from very unexpected events. It has becoming more evident that our staff is aware of the needs and motivations for change and that the organization as a whole sees changes as opportunities rather than threats. However, this cannot be taken for granted. There is always resistance for change in various forms. My presentation will give a few hints of what things can be made more transparent for the whole organization, how to create an environment for constructive conversations and critical approaches rather than destructive rumors. The use of different channels of communicating is discussed as well as how the organizational culture may or may not gradually change toward more flexible, adaptive and proactive mode.