Last month, I was invited to speak to a group of science outreach folks on my campus about cultural facility development, and the many sandtraps and surprises we’ve discovered in the arts. There is a ”new constellation” of science facilities currently opening or under construction at UW-Madison, and this group is working to understand how to engage that construction and align it with their work.
The gist of my conversation was this: structure influences behavior, and not just in the obvious ways. In the development and construction process, the lure of the visible and physical aspects of the facility can draw our attention from the invisible structures we’re creating at the same time: capital structures, cost structures, political structures, organizational structures, and even policy structures that inform all of the above.
Just as a new physical structure will inform and influence the choices and behavior of its occupants (”we shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us,” said good ol’ Winston Churchill), these invisible structures will also lead us to perceive, behave, and interact differently. So, in the end, we may have a shiny new facility, but we may have lost the ”facility” to actually deliver what we built it for.
The artful manager must therefore work to ensure that all structures involved with the construction of a new facility are aligned with mission, and appropriate to purpose. That’s where a full spectrum of business knowledge, urban planning insight, human resource expertise, and fiscal elegance will come into play.
I concur.