Ash Mann in conversation with Rachael Davies: Imagination, resilience, & letting go | NDF AGM 2025

So, uh I guess it's evening to you, morning to me. Um but welcome to uh the NDF AGM, uh what we refer to as a fireside chat, but I have no fire. Um but >> I have candles in front of me, so fire in the in the room. And we've been talking a little bit for a while, Ash, but um what would be really helpful is um I have your bio, but nobody wants to hear me read it out, but uh it was really good listening to you just briefly talk about your experience. So, by way of introduction, can you just give us an idea about um what you've been doing um so far in the digital realm in the world? >> Yeah, certainly. So, I think I'm probably the archetypal generalist. Um, you know, I'm a sort of self-taught coder back in the day. I My undergrad was in music technology. I've always been a tinkerer with digital things and tech technological things. Um, I've held various roles in the cultural and nonprofit sectors inhouse. I I went through a period of always being the first digital manager in a few organizations which was an interesting experience sort of helping people to define what that even meant. Um I then ran uh Substract for nine years which is they're a digital agency based out of the UK but working with cultural organizations around the world normally on on web projects. Um, and then last year I I went freelance and I'm now a consultant that works with organizations on things that normally involve some combination of a strategic challenge or opportunity, um, institutional capacity, technology, and audiences. Um, and those ex exist at different levels of volume in each of the different scenarios I find myself in. Um, and I I sort of run a podcast. I do a newsletter. I find this stuff interesting and have sort of been doing versions of it for the last over 20 years now. >> Perfectly placed to talk to our uh our AGM audience today. Um and you and I have had a bit of email exchange, but um we've uh got a discussion um today that looks at imagination, resilience, and I love this phrase, letting go. Um so by way of kind of kicking off that that conversation, should we talk a little bit upfront about why this topic and why now? Um and particularly for glam because as we were just saying um a few of us are experiencing you know the somewhat backflow of chaos still out of co and also in a world that is uh somewhat changing at a rapid pace and the ability to be able to cope with that. So yeah interested to hear your thoughts around uh that from your position in the world. >> Yeah. So I mean maybe I'd start with why imagination and then I'll go to the sort of moment that we're in because yeah it feels like we talk about imagination a lot in our in our sector you know creative vision >> ambition innovation >> but imagination on its own isn't going to change anything and I think what matters as much but doesn't get as much airtime is the sort of the scaffolding the conditions that helps imagination move from aspiration to, you know, actually having a tangible impact on our organizations and and our visitors and our audiences. Um, so, so I'm interested in maybe talking a bit about imagination, but also talking about the sort of systems that that imagination exists within in our sector. um and maybe what we might be able to do to allow more imagination to happen, but that imagination to be able to be nurtured and sort of turned into impact. Um and I think the moment that we're in, as you've just said, everyone I speak to at the moment is describing this this pattern of sort of acceleration of challenge. It seems like there are more challenges that are more strongly felt across a greater array of of how they exist. Um, accompanying that there is sort of quite significant levels of like fatigue bordering on burnout um >> on a like sectorwide level. I I think and that there also seems to be this widening gap between not even ambition but sort of expectations and the realistic capacity that organizations have to to deploy. Um, and and and so I'm sort of interested in how imagination maps onto that as a possible not solution, but tool that we might be able to use to try and work out what we do. What are we going to do to try and dig ourselves out of this this situation that we find ourselves in? >> I guess the other thing is, you know, change never goes away. change is actually more of a constant than we all think. And even having that uh capability and thinking about the way that we can best deploy imagination is something that will always happen. But I think the other point that you'd put in one of your emails to me, which I thought was great, is this actually is about potentially enjoyment and a bit of hope. So without being too rosy or positive, you know, we do have some degree of privilege in the work that we do and the way to bring our audiences with us and our organizations a longer path to something that's a little more positive and joyful. Um, >> absolutely. >> Which I really liked. So, so yeah, should we dig into it a little bit more and think about you talked about what are those conditions and thinking about what we are needing to consider at this moment in time um with all those challenges that we have in front of us. >> Yeah. And I I think it's maybe interesting to start with thinking like what's the nature of the challenges that we're that we're facing. Um and there's this distinction that I think is quite helpful from a a thinker called Ronald Hyetsz. Um, and he makes a distinction between what he describes as technical problems and they are clear, relatively easy to solve with existing expertise, whether that exists within your organization or not, and what he calls adaptive problems. And adaptive problems are messier, harder to define, don't have a one clear solution, and they're normally cultural in some sense. And I think that maybe the reason, one of the reasons that everything feels so hard at the moment is almost every challenge we are facing is adaptive in nature and a response requires a change in habits, you know, being able to take people with you. Um, clarity, shared understanding. It's not just about skills or better tools. Um, and I think that maybe digital practitioners are more comfortable with this because most digital work sort of mixes, you know, it's a it's a heady mix of technical and adapt adaptive problems that non-digital practitioners maybe perceive as adapt as technical problems. Um but I I think that the danger that exists in our current moment is a misdiagnosis of the challenges that we're facing as problems with a technical solution >> rather than actually these are adaptive challenges. We can't probably just buy some new tools or hire a couple of new roles or reorganize our teams um and expect them to be resolved. Um, and and I guess just extending this this idea a little further, there was a philosopher called Carl Pauper, excellent name. Um, and he wrote he wrote an essay in 1965 where he defined challenges as either clocks or clouds. Um, and you can fix a a clock by taking it apart and tightening its bolts, but you can't fix a cloud in the same way. And so I think that's it's another um version of of of of that diagnosis I suppose. And I think we need to try and recognize that what we're dealing with is a is a sort of a a context that requires quite messy solutions that are going to be powered by people and collaboration and culture. um and they will probably be quite slow to fix. Um and in the past I've talked about this idea of like slow change and fast change and cultural organizations um are generally quite good at fast change. That is sort of like you know doing a rebrand, getting a new website, but they're maybe less good at sustaining the slow change, you know, around behaviors alignment because of the quite reactive nature of a lot of the organizations that that we work within. Um, and I think coming back to our sort of umbrella topic, that's where imagination actually becomes really useful, not just as like having new ideas or blue sky thinking, but actually as a way to explore these adaptive challenges, test assumptions, start to experiment with what better conditions might look like. because I think the challenges that we're facing sort of require a combination of patience, learning, collaboration, and imagination supported by structure, which we can maybe talk a little bit more about in a moment. >> So, sort of like a ways of working. Um, one of the areas that you know you you you were um highlighting was the work through Acme of the digital mentoring. And I there were a couple of phrases that really um kind of um stuck out to me. This whole thing around uh increasing a greater tolerance and receptiveness to experimentation, feeling comfortable with ambiguity, knowing that things are going to be unpredictable. uh and then using imagination as I think these were your words actually uh in terms of uh being curious and with that curiosity you start to feel a little bit more secure and then with that security you start thinking about that as a way as being able to feel in a positive position to be able to tackle things. This sounds all quite theoretical I guess at the moment. So um knowing that our audiences uh are working in real time um what are your thoughts around how this then transfers into the working environment with uh you know with some really interesting application of that digital mindset and imagination. >> Yes. So I mean you referenced that the Acme um and Australia Council um CEO mentoring program that happen that's happened twice now. Um there's a really good evaluation report that I would encourage people to skim. Maybe it's quite a long document. Um but I think yes that report identified that this trait of digital imagination was really important but it also identified that that trait was only effective and valuable and impactful where there were specific organizational conditions. >> Yeah. >> Um and those were things like time to think and learn. um access to and I think this this is important sectoraware experts so it wasn't just an expert in a particular digital thing but someone who understood specific constraints and priorities of of cultural organizations um they also identified that it was really important to be able to access exchange with peers who were tackling similar problems and also that there needed to be enough organizational stability for experimentation to feel safe. >> Um, and those four things might all feel slightly luxurious to people listening to this, but they are also sort of deeply tangible things that can be created. Um, I I it's possible to create those four things within most organizations. how possible it is at the moment for individual organizations to do that is going to be wildly um different depending on or organizations context but certainly the acme research identified this I'm currently involved in the leadership development program um working with uh cultural leaders in the UK and very similar things are emerging that when the cohort on that program have been able able to start to create some of these conditions within their organizations actually the beneficial effect of that is felt almost immediately. Um so whilst it might feel slightly luxurious and slightly can we afford to do this there is I think a growing body of evidence to show that when organizations can carve out the time can start to create this sense of safety around experimentation and can start to connect into a wider network of both support and exchange with peers that that can start to hold a space for um really productive experimentation. >> You'd made this comment to me that was really interesting. Like it really stuck out to me and I thought, "Wow, I want to ask you more about this." Um the work that you're doing at the moment in the UK. You'd said, um the sector's difficulties with doing less, saying no, being clear and aligned about what the priorities are is also a break on progress and impact for many. And I thought that's really fascinating because as a middle management person or someone who's going to be working in senior leadership, we have an expectation to be able to do good governance, efficient management, deliver on time. We have all these very sort of traditional tools that we use uh and very much around managing risk and making sure that we are responsible with public funding. But this kind of you know tension with the break on progress or the impact for many is that they would like to do more and take risk but then we have this tension. Um can you talk a bit more about that because I I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, certainly. And I think maybe this is a relevant moment to mention a re research report, easy for me to say that I published earlier this year which looked into >> failure in digital >> um because I think a lot of these ideas were present in that analysis as well. So I heard from almost 50 um cultural organizations who shared stories of digital projects of all kinds that had failed and we looked at the reasons why those projects had failed. Um and there were some really clear things that came out of that. I mean perhaps most importantly to reiterate is that most digital project failure was not because of anything to do with technology or technical reasons. Um so the findings sort of were that projects are rushed, goals are vague, leadership support is inconsistent, teams are really stretched and lessons go unlearned. um you know there was sort of this uh people described that we either launched the thing and then immediately moved on to something else or the thing failed and we immediately moved on to something else. There isn't this sort of um embedded practice of reflection and then capturing what those lessons actually are so that they are useful again in the future. Um and so so I think that there may be six shifts that it would be good for cultural organizations to consider. Um I think the the f the first and perhaps most important one is to make it um safe to fail you know and that's not to say you're encouraging failure but that you're acknowledging failure is part of learning you know it's not a source of shame. Um, and maybe a reframe there is rather than saying it's safe to fail, you're aiming for it's safe to learn because if you never fail, you're never going to really learn any lessons. >> Yeah. Safe to experiment, isn't it? >> Exactly. Exactly. Um, and sort of making that habitual across an organization, you know, from across every level and that leaders are really modeling that that curiosity is is welcomed, normalizing that, encouraging that. Um, you know, this next one is really super obvious, but I think almost every story of failure that I received had a version of this not present, and that was be really clear about your goals and what success looks like before you start the project. You know, why are we doing this? Um, and so often I'm brought into projects halfway through where that question is very differently understood across the mix of people that are working on a project. I think that's a really key thing. Sorry to interrupt. It's it's across the group of people for sure. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that in in that what I'm not describing is I'm not saying drive for consensus because you will probably never achieve consensus. >> But what I am saying is you need to drive for clarity and agreement on what the goals actually are. Even if not everyone is saying and I think this is the right thing, you want them to say I don't think that's the right thing but I do agree that's what we're doing. >> Yeah, for sure. I think there's a thing here that the next one is maybe difficult you know within a sort of constrained funding environment you know I know lots of organizations having to make difficult cuts but we heard and this is a version of a challenge again I hear a lot of um projects projects are fund funded until the go live date and then not beyond at all and actually with almost every example I can think of you need to have some level of sustained resource beyond that initial launch point because otherwise you're you're setting it up for failure from from the start. Um and you know that that maybe means you need to constrain your ambition and with what the thing is that you're launching so that you're actually protecting resources to maintain and evolve that beyond the go life point. Um uh the next one is around sort of building reflection into the rhythm of your work. Um and that's you know that can be as sort of prosaic and every day as like regular check-ins asking questions like what what is working? Let's capture that and what isn't working? Let's capture that and sort of unpick that. Um when you start to habitualize that type of conversation as well, you get better at surfacing issues earlier which in turn reduces the cost, effort, complexity of fixing them. Um certainly also in my observations those types of questions lead to better conversations which leads to better work. Um, so sort of building that reflective practice into the rhythm of the organization. Um, and and lastly, and you hear calls for this in every conference you've ever been to, but fostering collaborative, but I think this this next word is important, empowered teams. You know, I I work a lot with leaders and a lot of leaders express to me that they get very frustrated that everything seems to get escalated. You know, every type of problem immediately gets pushed up to the highest point in the organization for a decision to be made >> and that is >> symptomatic of disempowered teams. Teams not sure about what they're allowed to make decisions about. And so I think fixing that is good for your teams because you're giving them agency, you're giving them power, you're giving them more control over the work they're doing. But it's also a good thing for leaders to do because you are clearing a load of stuff off your plate. You know, not as much stuff is going to get pushed up onto your desk if you're fostering more empowered teams. Um, and there was a really sort of there was a nice couple of quotes I just want to sort of read verbatim. So, one person said, "The real failure is pretending everything went fine when it didn't." And so, I think sort of remembering that. And the next one is someone said, you know, not everything needs to be a huge success, but we do need to learn something from it. And I think the idea of learning is really, really important because so often I see organizations stuck in this cycle of making them same mistakes every 3 to 5 years because people leave, stuff gets forgotten, and that's really inefficient. And when we don't have as much resources as we would like, that is sort of a a really dangerous way of wasting time and money. The thing I think that's really I mean you know a lot of this term spells I'm sure with many people listening to this as well as myself but um this empowerment of staff and in and trusting expertise because you have the right ingredients collaboratively across your team and so trusting them with some of the decision- making um and being able to contribute and also just being really clear about what your level of responsibility is as a leader so they don't feel the weight of everything on their shoulders. they are free to go and imagine like you said you know do some of that thinking um there was something else that you you'd noted as well which I thought was really great was also taking responsibility about experimentation across all levels of the organization um because it's good to empower your staff at the same time you need to recognize as with that last quote illustrated that if you're asking people to experiment you're also asking them or say giving them permission to fail fail and learn for the organization. Uh, and taking that responsibility around that. >> Oh, have you paused again? >> No, no, no. I'm I'm I'm I'm here. And I and I think, you know, as with imagination, I'm not just saying have loads of ideas >> with experimentation. I'm not saying just throw a load of stuff haphazardly at the wall and hope some of it sticks. You know, >> we don't have the luxury of being able to do that. you know, everyone has uh more work to do than they have time to do it. Um, and ambitions that out outstrip the budgets available. But I think you know if we return back to our description of the current moment we are facing and I'm going to use that word an unprecedented set of challenges that are either novel in nature. You know the culture sector hasn't had to deal with them before or they are larger in scale than the culture sector has had to deal with in recent memory. And so the the sort of tried and tested tools and approaches that have got us to where we are today are probably not going to be appropriate for dealing with that completely novel set of challenges. And so therefore experimentation becomes essential in trying to work out how we move forward, how we actually take our organizations sustainably forward from here. Um and again that can't be something that is only held at an operational level or only held in executive conversations. It needs to be a practice that sort of threads through the >> the mindset and frames lots of what institutions do in sort of every every corner. And I think again this this this word experimentation is you know like so many words digital what does that mean? Experimentation what does that mean? I think it's about um it's about being quite specific and potentially quite uh small scale initially with with the ideas that you're testing but being really clear about why you're carrying out an experiment. You know is there a new opportunity that you've seen? Is there a different solution to a challenge that you're experiencing? Being clear about what the experiment involves, how long it's going to run for, and how you'll know whether or not it's successful. Because certainly the the organizations that I sometimes work with, this fear of experimentation seems to come from fear of the unknown. You know, it's like, oh, it'll be a distraction. We don't really know what what it'll involve. We don't really know how we'll know whether or not it's working. And actually if you can have quite specific and clear conversations about that, it doesn't need to be some giant monthsl long pieces of of work that's a complete black box. You can be experimenting as I said at all levels of >> one of the things I you know I've always got on the side of my mind is um the practical reality um of then and I really like the idea of smaller experimentation and being nimble to put that through. But um one of the readings that you sent through which we were talking about before we pressed record on this chat was the Ed Rodley post uh which is about this sort of idea about anti-fragility and the right ingredients that you have in an organization to be able to to be able to respond to the challenges across all all echelons. Um do you want to talk a little bit about that? I I quite like that idea about the balance that was talked about at the end with the barbell. >> Yeah, sure. So yeah, Ed's post is great. Um, if it's out there, I think on his his newsletter. Um, and he's talking about this book from Nasim Talib, which is called antifragile. Um, and in that there is this uh idea that Nasim calls the via negativa. um which is defined as the route to resilience through subtraction rather than addition. You know, and Ed, I think quite correctly diagnosed that the museum sector is quite good at additive solutions, you know, more stuff. We'll have a new new platform, we'll start a new program of activity, we'll hire a new role, whatever it might be. Um, we're not so good at subtractive solutions. So, stopping doing something, you know, saying no, we're not going to pursue that funding opportunity. We're not going to worry about this particular challenge at the moment. Um, and it's also worth saying that humans as a whole, there's been some research around this. Um, their our I'm a human. there our natural response to to problem solving is to add more stuff. >> It's not natural for us to solve a problem by taking away. Um but in antifragile talib describes this really effective practice of subtraction and actually if you think about it potentially every no that you say every subtraction that you make is going to create a little pocket of oxygen whether that's like time or money or attention. And in those pockets of oxygen, that's where experimentation, imagination, and learning can happen. Um, but it's it's difficult. I absolutely recognize that it's difficult because subtraction is pretty laughable maybe to think about when you're already running super lean. You're running on the bare minimum. You know, lots of teams aren't making a choice between addition or subtraction. They're sort of in survival mode. Um, and also we have a lot of funding models that reward newness and they reward this sense of more. >> Um, but they don't really reward either maintenance or a a stopping of activity. Yeah. >> Um, but you know this the whole focus of antifragile from what I can tell through Ed's article is about resilience and you know busyiness is not resilient. You know busyiness is super fragile. And so I think we maybe need to have some really tough and really honest conversations about doing less, knowing when to stop something, knowing when we can simplify something, or being really clear about what the core things are that we're protecting and what is u maybe more elective. And I think even for organizations that are in that sort of crisis survival mode, in those modes when every other resource that your organization has available is rescending, imagination sort of becomes potentially the only thing that you can have agency over. Um so I think imagination is is still valuable even in those really constrained and difficult contexts. Coming to the end of our conversation, I know that a lot of us really find examples uh in real life really helpful. Um and knowing that you work with so many organizations of different scale, it would be great and and even outside the sector even um if you want to give us a couple of uh examples of some of the things where you think would be useful case studies or things that people could go and have a look at. >> Yeah, certainly. So, I'm going to maybe pick uh two recent examples, places I visited this year. One from Finland and one from Switzerland. Um because I'm I'm in Europe, so let's go full European. Um so, I was in in Zurich a couple of weeks ago. I went to the museum for Galung, which is the design museum in in Zurich, and they had part of the building was dedicated to an exhibition that they called Museum of the Future. Um and in that exhibition they had uh programmed 17 digital experime experiments to explore how their collections could reach people differently. So this was everything from some AI stuff um through to the world's biggest digital image. It was like three terra pixels. It was enormous. Um through to a bunch of motiontracking play experiments that used um uh Swiss puppets from a contemporary puppet designer from 1918 as the sort of creative catalyst. And then there were all these experiments from these post-graduate students using a variety of of digital um tools and techniques. And what I liked about it is that a it was presented as part of the museum's main program. It was given significant real estate within the building. It wasn't sort of uh in an annex that you had to walk through another gallery to get to and like you know one small slightly sad set of headphones that where the right ear cup didn't work and you know weren't quite sure what you were looking at. It was it was a diverse and interesting set of experiments that were from museum practitioners, digital artists, students. um they had brought together quite a diverse cohort of different collaborators that supported and helped curate the exhibition. And so I think that was a good example of like genuine experimentation existing at the heart of a museum's practice rather than sort of innovation theater. Um, and so I think that was interesting and there's stuff on their website um, that you can check out. And I think that was maybe interesting to me because it it was polished. You know, it was an a nicely designed exhibition that it didn't it didn't feel ramshackle going around, but it was clearly experimental in nature and some of these experiments were much more successful than others. And I think that was quite a usefully brave decision that they made. A framing it so clearly as a set of experiments and b sort of learning in public um and allowing that plurality and diversity of perspectives and voices to have fed into what that ex exhibition looked and felt like. So I think that was a nice example of the ex experimentation stuff done credibly. Um and then maybe if we talk about we go back to this idea of imagination and this idea of conditions um and this idea that imagination doesn't need to be just something that exists at the top of an organization in strategy conversations. So the main library in Helsinki is called Udi. Um recently reopened in a beautiful Zara designed building. Really stunning building. But I think what's really interesting is that the um the focus and the nature and the design of the library, what it actually does, how it operates, the services that it offers was co-designed with the input of 3,000 citizens of Helsinki. Um, and I think, you know, again, that was a really genuine, I think, um, expression of code design, but that didn't only come about because they had a new building. They have a long sort of two decade long practice of genuine sort of openness and engagement with the public. Um and so again, this wasn't performative in nature. This was a genuine um exercising collective imagination. And there's a there's a really good article which I I'll reshar a couple of times where one of the librarians says, you know, this isn't a library that librarians would ever have imagined. This only exists because we asked the people of Helsinki to help us imagine what a library for them needed to look like, feel like, function like. Um, and then they they created structures through which that um that imagination could be articulated um and that that sort of ownership could be delegated and and distributed. And so I think it's a really nice example that actually collective imagination between an institution and 3,000 perspectives from the public doesn't need to be chaotic, >> but it does need designing and it does need scaffolding and it does need uh designing over a realistic sort of time horizon. And you're seeing some other versions of this sort of reimagining um in the UK. The National Gallery recently, >> yeah, Birmingham Museums Trust absolutely did this sort of um they call it Citizens Assembly and the the National Gallery. >> National Gallery. Yeah. >> Um borrowed but to take an inspiration from that idea as well. And so I think it's interesting to see an organization like the National Gallery which is you know 200 years old conservative with a small C in nature um you know big slow is opening itself up to that um nature of external reimagining. I mean how how much impact that program will have let's see but I think it's interesting that that we see more examples of this and I think again it's um an example in Helsinki at UDI where imagination isn't just about enthusiasm and having loads of ideas actually in order for it to feed through into anything meaningful or tangible you have to have those structures and it has to be focused and it has to be engaged with intentionally. So I don't that's just to say I don't think we it's useful for organizations just to say we're being more imaginative. We invite imagination from our audiences. It sort of needs to have a purpose. >> Yeah. That goes back to that whole preconditions. I mean I think you know you should come to New Zealand. you should come to Alteora Ash because there's some really interesting practice here that's been going on for many years especially in line with fertility practice and considerations of uh of inviting people and ensuring that um people who need to be at the table are at the table. Um, so you know, you could almost track an evolution in museums for this practice and see how it's it's evolved over time and how that is a really useful and responsive healthy way to ensure that you remain relevant as well as fit and able in the society that you're servicing. So yeah, I feel like you need to come here and we could we could talk more about the cultural context in which we work. Um it'd be really interesting to compare that. Uh >> yeah, absolutely. >> So Ashley, I just want to say thank you so much on behalf of NDF for uh you know making time for us today was really appreciated. Uh so many good links and thoughts that you had. Um and what we will do uh we will make sure that those links are available. We'll post them up somewhere so that our members can access them uh and you know follow up and listen to your work on your podcast. Uh, and also go to your website. Um, I know I recently listened to one about the choreographer Brandon Powers, uh, and his intersection of his work with VR. So, I thought that was really fascinating. So, yeah, it would be great. So, thank you so much for your time. Oh, >> you're so welcome. Thanks for the invitation. >> Great. Thank you.