Successfully Herding Cats: Planning for Success at Any Scale

ID: WMA2026_610

Track:

If Saint-Exupéry was right, “a goal without a plan is just a wish,” then join us and get excited about planning. Explore practical tools to create and work with your plan. Gain a deeper understanding of why we plan and how plans are practical tools across museum activities – exhibitions, programming, annual goals, “what if” scenarios. Bring your planning challenges and explore tools that can help you be successful now, and in the future.

Session Information

Format: Regular session/panel (roundtable, single speaker, etc.)

Uniqueness: Nothing like this has been offered at WMA in years, and participants will workshop their project plans and obtain real-time feedback.

Objectives:

•  Hands-on experience with planning tools and real-time feedback
• Understand why we create a plan and how they can be useful in multiple ways
• Gain understanding about measuring progress and reporting against the plan (how to know if the plan was successful)

Engagement: After an intro/overview of the importance of planning and measuring, participants will form breakout groups, where presenters will offer practical tools and invite participants to share any “go to” tools of their own. Then participants will use these tools to explore how to navigate their own particular planning challenges, getting real-time feedback and insight from the group and presenters. Groups will then share highlights with the full group.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Curators/Scientists/Historians Development and Membership Officers Events Planning Facilities Management Personnel Marketing & Communications (Including Social Media) Registrars, Collections Managers Technology 

Professional Level: All levels 

Scalability: Anyone working in or with museums can benefit from good planning and successfully working a plan. From annual department plans to high-level museum plans, project plans to scenario plans, actually making progress often depends on identifying and communicating what you’re trying to achieve, knowing and working the steps to move you toward that thing, and measuring your progress along the way.

Participants