Pivot. And repeat.
I have never been good at sports, but if nothing else, 2020 has taught me how to pivot around the unexpected over and over again. I imagine this is the same for many.
I mentioned in previous articles, the museum where I work in Southern Florida was closed to the public during the 2020 pandemic for just short of two months and reopened to the public in early May. My perception of time has been lost since that one week in mid-March when the entire country, and just about every museum in the US started shutting their doors. I remember going into a team meeting with other managers and my supervisor asking us if we had at least 2 weeks worth of remote work. I said ‘yes’ and jokingly added that I had such a backlog of work that I could probably be home 3–4 weeks no problem. Ha. The November-me laughs at the March-me.
The ‘closed’ period for the museum now feels short-lived, but while in the midst of it, it felt like a never ending black hole. The first few weeks were some of the most stressful in my entire work career as I struggled to find odd jobs and remote work for a staff of 9 who’s entire job had previously been dependent on open doors. I had to make a case for retaining their jobs, so I desperately put together trainings, workshops, webinars, and called around to other departments to find something/anything for them to do. Then once we got into somewhat of a routine, the conversation too quickly became about what to do upon reopening, and then within about a week’s lead time, the decision was made and we were reopening to the public. We had to pivot once again to make this new world work. We needed the revenue, we needed to keep jobs, and we had some (very few) examples from other museums leading the charge to reopen.
I’ll admit that after weeks in captivity, I mean quarantine, it felt strange to be out in the world again and around other people. I’ve read articles about how we’re all a little socially awkward now as we reenter the world. It’s true. I remember being paranoid about washing my hands and using hand sanitizer, sometimes questioning if one squirt was enough so I would bath my hands, arms, and elbows in it. Then for about the first month after reopening the focus shifted from preparing to reopen to staff and visitor safety, and team morale. Quickly we found that our frontline staff had varying levels of comfort being around visitors and we listened and heard, and provided a series of safety measures and policy changes to help them feel better about it. We tested things out, tried, and failed sometimes. Succeeded at a few others. To make matters worse, though we reopened to only about 20% of our regular visitation initially, I found that for those visiting, tensions were higher and situations would escalate much quicker than normal. A visitor who was upset over something would now immediately ask for a Manager or yell at the Associate.
As some of those behaviors continued and visitors and staff remained tense, the next pivot for me was due to changes in County regulations. This period of time consisted of attending weekly virtual Mayor town hall meetings and trying to decipher some of the new regulations. Over Labor Day weekend the regulations changed Friday night at 8pm which closed many local attractions for the holiday weekend. Though we weren’t closed, we had a huge unexpected surge in visitation that Saturday and Sunday that we could never anticipate and our usual visitation of then about 30% jumped to more than 75%. A good problem to have? Well, we weren’t prepared (how could we be?) The pop-up BBQ food truck that we had scheduled that day ran out of food by 1pm, and those tensions from staff and visitors again went through the roof. Other changes to County regulations were also quick pivots affecting mask policy, group numbers, required signage, and curfew times. It was challenging to keep up with it all, and still is.
The next pivot came shortly after Labor Day and put us in an organizational frenzy to find new earned revenue sources and exhaust previous ones in whatever way possible. This stage brought me back to the stress levels of the first few weeks of the museum closing. I’m not a sales person, and sometimes it becomes unclear if my job is about the visitor experience or about getting money for the museum. It makes sense to a degree, my department brings in 60%+ of our organization’s annual budget. So if there’s anywhere that earned revenue can be gained, it is from us. But the focus shift from visitor experience to revenue is not exciting nor enjoyable for me. I’m not comfortable when I think we’re compromising the visitor experience for anything- for restoration/conservation, for other events or programs, and least of all for revenue. Of course I understand why all of those things can be a necessity at times, but they still bring me some level of discomfort if I think it will negatively effect the visitor experience.
I really love the museum that I work at, so I don’t want to give the impression that this shift to focus on earned revenue is a negative reflection of the museum or it’s stewards. I actually think it’s the opposite, and it is where many museums find themselves right now. We were closed without any incoming revenue for months, and then we reopened at less than 20% revenue that slowly increased over time but is still nowhere near where it was last year. That is not sustainable. So for many museums to survive right now, there has to be a focus on earned revenue. I understand that, but I still don’t like it.
This week, after I drafted this article, I was forced to pivot once again. This time I should’ve anticipated it, I suppose I knew it was coming. I just hadn’t been able to recalibrate and let it sink in that peak season is upon us. We’re in it. So the pivot this week has been towards peak season planning. We are expecting only about 50–60% of our normal visitation for the time around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. That helps, but it’s still a lot of people coming in when we need to enforce social distancing and safety measures. Also, to give you some perspective: that is a 25–60% increase from the busiest day we’ve experienced since reopening in May. Based on what I’ve learned over the last 6 months, we’ll need to be prepared for increased anxiety from both staff and visitors. We need to test out ticketing options during Thanksgiving that will have us prepared for the busier week at Christmas. We’re also planning a peak season prep meeting to get all front-line staff on the same page, hear their concerns, and inform them about some of the changes to ticketing and precautions we’re taking.
As it has been the case with all of these pivots, I have no idea how long it will last. I also have no idea what’s coming around the corner. However, I read recently that many museums in Europe, including the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre Museum have had to close their doors AGAIN due to rising numbers of COVID-19 cases. I read that and panicked because that could potentially be another major pivot. With each of these shifts I had no way of knowing what was around the corner. The only constant that I’ve had in my work for the past 6 months was that every time I started to think I knew what I was doing, there would be another pivot and priority shift.
At some point we will stop pivoting. Right? We just need to get to that point, and who knows how many pivots there will be between now and then. I attended a workshop on emergency preparedness last year and the presenter asked us to think about what was a worst case scenario. Then she said, “think about what’s worse” then “and how could that get even worse?”. It’s not fun to think about the absolute worst case scenario, but maybe we need to be thinking worst case and even worse that so we can be overly prepared for the next pivot we have to make. If my worst case scenario is having the close to the public again, I should be prepared for closing again due to pandemic, hurricane hitting and a zombie apocalypse all at once. That way if just one of those things happen (based on how 2020 is going so far, I’m assuming it’ll be the zombies), I’ll be prepared.
I’m sure we’re all at a place emotionally this year where we are tired of all the pivots. I sure am. I’m burnt out. So I think to get myself through the next however many months of this continued shifting I need to try to prepare (maybe even emotionally more than physically) as much as possible for the unexpected. The unexpected will happen, but we can try to be ready for it.
