Change Making in the Sector

The Former Head of Corporate Affairs at the British Library (BL) and now freelance cultural consutlant – Miki Lentin – chats decision making, leadership and what the sector has to offer society

This is a new series for cultural content looking at change-making in the sector.

It asks:

• Why do digital projects get stuck?

• Are there systemic problems with museum and GLAM senior leadership and understanding of / decision-making around digital?

• How can great leaders create digital change (or any kind of change) and bring people along with them?

My first participant in this series is Miki Lentin. Miki describes himself as having had a ‘varied background’ punctuated by years abroad travelling the world with his family. He’s the former Head of Corporate Affairs at the British Library (BL), a role that encompassed digital but also comms, marketing, strategy and community engagement. He works independently and with consultancies such as Cultural Associates Oxford. He’s also had his own business in catering. He now works full-time as a freelancer on a variety of strategic, leadership and change-making projects. Outside of work he’s a writer (he released his first novel, Winter Sun, last year) and a writing mentor for refugees under the Write to Life group, part of Freedom from Torture.

You can find out more about Miki on his website or by following him on Instagram.

We chatted about how to get noticed at a large organisation, working with boards and the importance of digital, but we started with a conversation about the importance of our sector.

Here’s a quick clip (full interview below):

What motivates you to work in the culture sector?

I entered the sector because I was driven by doing something worthwhile with my skills. I still am.

I have a personal interest in heritage and archives. It's good to try and pursue work that you are genuinely interested in.

But I'm also becoming increasingly more interested in working on projects that I can see the value in. Either through changing people's lives or having a serious impact on a place. I think that you can do that through heritage and culture.

In a time where all the rhetoric that you hear is about difficult choices, you don't really hear much about hope. You don't really hear much about optimism, and whilst there are always tough choices to be made, culture and heritage can provide a sense of hope and optimism to people. It can help with people's mental health. It can help with skills development. It can help with confidence, can help with education and learning about different cultures. That's a good thing. That's what drives me.

As I've got older, I've certainly got a lot more appreciation of culture. It moves me a lot more than it used to. Maybe it's the world that we're living in, but it does generate a lot more emotion in me than it used to. That's something that I take a huge amount from. I think other people do as well, especially in difficult times. You do need that; something that you can latch on to and get meaning from that maybe you're not getting from other things.

Making change

What does good leadership look like?

We come across a lot of leaders in the cultural world. Those leaders who really stand out are the ones that are able to take their people with them and be clear, decisive yet supportive and generous at the same time. It's a difficult skill. Sally Shaw, who runs Firstsite, she's a great leader, in a tough part of the country. She’s someone who's true to their values.

A good leader, to me, is someone that will go, we want to do this. There is no money, but let's try and explore another way to do it.

But in general, sometimes I feel that in the sector we're missing some people who can provide that sense of hope and optimism in a clear way for people. Mind you, that's also missing in society more generally.

What are the differences between trying to implement change as a consultant, as opposed to in-house?

To a certain extent, it depends on how seriously the organization takes you.

I’ve certainly found that as a consultant, you can be more honest than you can in-house. There certainly was a lot of nervousness in the BL about upsetting – or not towing the party line – or going against what senior executives wanted and what they thought was the right thing to do. Everyone was a bit too polite.

Some institutions are just so big that it's quite difficult for you to implement change. You have to be quite energetic and persuasive to get stuff done.

Moving up in the sector; management and consultancy

What advice would you give to someone looking to advance to a manager level within the cultural sector?

People who stood out for me when I was at the BL were those who were willing to take on something that was difficult and problematic, and own it. Those were the people who got ahead and did well. I developed the Knowledge Quarter. I became known for that. I know people who took on other things that were difficult and complicated, and they became known for those, and then they managed to move up. That's what you have to do in a big organization, you have to become known for something. Otherwise, you could sit there forever and no one will know who you are.

Look for an opportunity, or take an opportunity, and be gregarious with it – really go for it. It's too easy for people to be sucked into the vortex of working in a big organization, and think ‘I'm just going to sit here and do the day job’. That's great for some people. But if you want to move up, then you need to get noticed. And to be noticed, you need to make a name for yourself.

And if it's not working out, then it's not working out, go and do something else. Don't sit around here and do nothing.

Were you clear when you left your BL role, whether you were kind of set as a freelancer or was it a shot in the dark?

I've been quite lucky with the fact that I know a few people and I’ve managed to get work. But I didn't come into this with a huge amount of expectation or knowledge. I'm a bit of an opportunist and a bit of a risk-taker. I'm quite happy to go into something and not know where it's going, and then see what happens.

I knew that when I moved into freelance, I had to meet people. I did spend quite a lot of time meeting people, having coffees with people, and discussing my experience. That's really critical for anyone who wants to go into freelance work.

How boards affect senior-level decision-making

How effective would you say the board model is for making decisions?

I think it varies. I’ve been on some where they’ve been great; they’ve worked quickly and effectively, and they provide good insight, I think, without being too pushy or kind of too kind of know-all-ey.

But I've worked with a lot of smaller heritage organizations, and I think they can really suffer from this issue of…. why are these people on the board? They're doing it because they think it's a good thing to do, and that's great. However, they don't always have the skills, the understanding, and the innovative thinking in order to see how an organization could potentially be run.

A few years ago I worked on a capital project, and we had to find evidence that the proposed project was is something the organisation’s audience wanted or needed. So, if we don’t know what the audience wants, let’s find out. Without talking to people, without understanding what their needs and wants are, how are you going to define a strategy or programming that meets that?

I think bigger organizations are a bit better at this, because they've got a broader group of people to work with. But I think smaller heritage organizations really struggle with this.

That's interesting. What should the role of a board member be? Should it be setting the strategic direction?

I think boards are there as a sounding board for the executive, and to challenge and ask difficult questions and come up.

What I don't think a board is there for is to just rail-road home certain pet projects and just think that that is the right thing to do. And we just see that too often, that there seems to be a lack of alignment between what the board wants and what the executive wants. I think that that's an odd way of working. I don't know whether that's just specific to heritage and culture, but it seems to be quite pervasive in this sector.

A board is there to support, it's there to challenge, it's there to provide a sounding block, and it's there to provide support where necessary, but it has to know its limits as well.

Where digital projects get stuck in the sector

One of the frustrating things with digital is that organizational strategies often treat it as a service department rather than a strategic function. How have you navigated fixing a collective vision and getting people on board in the sector?

We always had this debate in the BL as to what we mean by digital. I remember there were endless amounts of digital strategies. It seems strange to me that an organization that is all about information management and research is not digital-first. Right from not being able to get a reader's card through your mobile phone. You can buy insurance and change your electrical supplier on your phone in two seconds, or your bank. You should be able to do that with a national library, and you can't. That to me seems weird. People will say, well, it's got to do with copyright and IP and security. But if I can change my bank account in five minutes, which is just as secure, why can't I do it for a cultural service as well? I think that the cultural sector has really struggled to do these things. It's always about retrofitting, rather than starting from a digital-first perspective.

And that also comes down to things like developing a content strategy for the website. That was always really difficult at the BL. Some people saw the website as a place to dump loads of stuff. Some people wanted it to be more specific; to provide specific resources for people or information about collections items.

In my mind, the importance of digital today to the cultural sector is in terms of audience development. What’s your view on audience development in the sector - how is it working and how should we be thinking about it?

Audience development is multifaceted. It's not just about developing new audiences, or reaching out to audiences who perhaps don't engage with you as an organization. It's also about understanding what’s motivating your audiences to engage with your organization, what is their reason to believe.

I think a lot of people see audience development as a way of reaching groups who are not engaging in cultural and heritage organisations. And it is partly about that. But it's also about ensuring that the offer that you provide to your audiences is robust, and you're looking to develop the offer.

A lot of organizations really struggle with being audience-led in their programming. They come up with the idea first, and then they shoehorn it to an audience rather than thinking the other way around. Part of that is understanding who your audiences are, but part of that is aligning that with your brand message; your vision and values. A lot of organizations struggle to connect those things.