In the third episode of The Museum Professional's Summer Survival Guide series, Amy asks the community a bigger question. "All summer, we've been getting you ready to step away and enjoy a vacation. But what if your museum ran this smoothly all year?" Amy talks about the difference between a museum that runs on one person's memory and one that runs on systems the whole team can see.

Links from the Episode:

• Sign up for the Summer Series
• AAM National Snapshot of United States Museums 2025

More Free Resources for Museums:

• Getting Visitors Through Your Museum’s Doors: Building Connection in a Noisy World ebook
• Museum Planning Calendar
• Museum Metrics Template

About the host:

Amy Kehs is a brand strategist and communications expert for museums. She has owned Kehs Communications since 2000 and has worked for the most renowned and well-loved museums in Washington, D.C. Her goal is to ensure that museums thrive into the next century and she hopes people will come to love museums as much as she does. Her proven process sets up proactive communication habits for museums, cultivating relationships with visitors who will want to return and bring a friend. Want to talk more? Click this link to book a call.

It's episode three in the summer series, The Museum

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Professional's Summer Survival Guide.

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All summer, we've been getting you ready

to step away for a great summer vacation.

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Today, a bigger question:

what if your museum could run

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this smoothly all year long?

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Let's get started

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Hello, and welcome to the

Love My Museum podcast.

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I'm your host, Amy Kehs,

and I love museums.

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I'm also a brand strategist and

communications expert for museums and

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the creator of the Love My Museum method.

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So if you work in a museum and you

wanna get more visitors through your

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doors, you're in the right place.

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My method will help you with that.

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I've spent decades helping museums just

like yours become places their communities

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can't stop talking about Today is episode

three in the fifth annual summer series.

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This year, the summer series is

called The Museum Professional's

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Summer Survival Guide.

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If you're new, here's a quick recap.

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All summer long, I've been sharing

small, practical ways to get some

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of the weight off your shoulders so

you can actually enjoy your summer

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and maybe even take a real vacation.

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We have documented the

tasks that depend on you.

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We've let go of some of those things

that were never really yours to do in the

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first place, and we've started mapping

those workflows your museum runs on.

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And we're doing it together

here on the podcast and also

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in my weekly Tuesday email.

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I hope that you are still working

through that list that we built in

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the beginning, using the tips and the

shortcuts that I've shared to turn those

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tasks into simple standard operating

procedures or SOPs, instructions

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for how the work actually gets done.

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And keep going with that, because

today it is all coming together.

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Now, I want to talk about one of

the words in today's title, depend.

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How to build a museum that

doesn't depend on one person.

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Because I don't want you to

misunderstand what I'm saying.

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Here's what I see all the time.

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Museum professionals are burnt out, and

so many of them skip their vacations

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or never really unplug because they

are certain that the second they step

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away, everything will grind to a halt.

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The newsletter won't go out.

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Maybe an important person

doesn't get a call back.

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An event will fall through the cracks.

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So they just stay.

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They stay tethered to the work

all year because it feels like

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the museum depends on them.

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And here's the thing.

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Your museum does depend on you.

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It depends on your expertise, your

judgment, your relationships, the years

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of knowing this community and this

collection that nobody else can replace.

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And that kind of

depending is a good thing.

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That's you being genuinely valuable.

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But there's another kind of depending,

and that's the one that I'm talking about,

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and that's the one that's hurting you.

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It's when the museum depends on

you because everything is living

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in your head and nowhere else.

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The how something gets done, the

passwords, the steps, the who to call.

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When all of that is stored in one

person's brain, one person's memory,

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the museum doesn't depend on your

expertise, it depends on your presence.

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And that is a very fragile

way to run anything.

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Remember that statistic that I

shared back in our first episode

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this summer, It was a statistic from

the American Alliance of Museums.

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Only 4% of museums are using systems or

tools to lighten the load on their teams.

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I want you to think about

what that really means.

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It means almost everyone is

running on memory and not systems.

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The whole operation is living in people's

heads, and when it lives in your head,

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you can never really put it down.

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But you, you've spent

all summer changing that.

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Everything we've done, documenting tasks,

letting go, mapping workflows, has been

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about moving the work out of your head

and into systems your whole team can see.

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And that is the difference between a

museum that depends on a person and

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a museum that depends on a process.

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And a museum that depends on a process,

that is a museum that hums So let

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me show you what humming looks like

because I've seen both ends of it.

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I once worked with a museum that had two

full-time staff and one part-time person.

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That's it.

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They impressed me and

just wowed me every day.

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They accomplished more than teams

three times their size did, not because

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they were working harder or longer or

because they had a big budget even.

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it was because their internal

communications ran like clockwork.

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There was no wasted motion.

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There were no useless meetings.

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N- there was no instance of

two people quietly doing the

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same task without realizing it.

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Everything was built

together as one system.

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When someone was out,

the work didn't stop.

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That is a museum that hums.

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I've also seen the other end of it.

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I've done communications audits where I

sit down and interview everyone on staff,

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and I'll never forget one where someone

on the education team had no idea that

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the communication staff had built a whole

library of resources, things that would've

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made the education team's job easier.

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Nobody was doing anything wrong.

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Everyone was working really hard.

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They were just working in

their own departmental silo.

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The museum wasn't running as one system.

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no one knew what the other one was doing.

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And this is why I say every museum has

the potential to hum, no matter how small.

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It isn't about size or budget.

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It's about whether the work

lives in a shared system or

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scattered across people's heads.

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It's the difference between a museum

that holds together because each person

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is carrying their load, and one that

holds it together because the whole

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team can see how things get done.

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This all year version, where your

whole team runs from one central place

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instead of a dozen scattered inboxes

and notebooks, is the, the deepest

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work that I do with my consulting

clients, and we have a name for it.

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We call it a communications hub.

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And I mention it because I want

you to know that a museum that

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hums, that you're imagining right

now, that can be a real thing

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. It's buildable, and you've actually

already started building your own

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communications hub this summer.

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So here's your action for this

week, and it has two simple steps.

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First, find one silo.

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Look for one place where work is

siloed in your job at your museum.

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Maybe it's a task that your own

team might actually be doing twice.

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Maybe it's a resource that you have that

another department has no idea exists.

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You only need to find one.

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And then second, set up one

conversation to break down that silo.

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Maybe put a short meeting on the

calendar with someone that you don't

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usually coordinate with and just

share what you do, what's on your

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plate, what things are you creating.

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It might be someone from a

different department, or it

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could be somebody on your team.

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Then look together for two things,

where your work overlaps and where you

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could make each other's jobs easier.

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That one conversation is

how a museum starts to hum

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If you're on the email list, next week's

email is going to give you a simple

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internal communications audit checklist,

a way to go find those departmental silos

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If you're not on the email list,

the link is in the show notes.

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The series lives in both places,

and they're built to work together.

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That's all for today.

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Keep loving your museum,

and I'll see you next time