Featuring The Museum of Us
Over the past several years, San Diego’s Museum of Us has built a reputation as a highly regarded leader in museum field. Noticing a collective culture of neglect as an overwhelming number of colleagues were leaving their jobs, the museum’s CEO Micah Parzen set about to identify the pain points of those who work in the industry. In response, he led the Museum of Us in implementing new human resource policies and practices that would ultimately rebuild his team and the organization.
Others in the field began to take notice. Among them, the federal Institute for Museum and Library Sciences, who invited Parzen to apply for a large leadership grant to further develop and scale his team’s work. Would it be possible for the Museum of Us to share how they had course-corrected with other museums? The answer lay in a human-centered workplace program. With a steady stream of big ideas, Parzen reached out to SVP to see if they would help him define a program framework and plan to catalyze a human-centered organizational culture turn in the museum field.
Lead Partner Robert Hill and Partners Laura Georgantos and Marty Goodman became a team of trusted advisors. Together they laid the foundation for the Museum of Us’ human-centered workplace program to be implemented in museums across the country. The project was divided into three phases: 1) defining human-centered workplaces; 2) developing a functional plan for the program; 3) preparing for implementation. SVP consultants facilitated several sessions asking questions, anticipating challenges, and ultimately mapping a pathway to long-term sustainability.
"Our work with SVP added extraordinary value and has successfully set the stage for us to achieve our goal of catalyzing a a human-centered organizational culture turn in the museum field and beyond." – Micah Parzen, CEO
Parzen and his team now have a defined program framework that can be used as a collective model across the museum field once funding is secured. SVP is honored to have been invited to offer the experience and perspective of its talented consultants in the effort to build an improved organizational culture for those in the museum field and beyond.
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