Context 163 - March 2020

C O N T E X T 1 6 3 : M A R C H 2 0 2 0 49 Director’s cut Change management and trajectories With so much happening in the institute I hope that for this column’s occasional survey of recent activities and future plans I can be forgiven for mining our NewsBlog service, alongside other recent digital updates. Digital publication provides members with the most current reviews of developments across the IHBC’s national activities, but they are not necessarily the most rounded, so this column helps to address the challenge of capturing a bigger picture. Among its many roles, ‘Director’s cut’ is an important access route to members less inclined to look to our digital offerings. It can also reach users who, while not members, may come across our work through, for example, print copies of Context .These include, for example, copies offered at events or those circulated as part of our practice of sector-wide, profile- raising free distribution of boxes of copies Context to targeted audiences. It is worth remembering why such a diverse array of communication platforms is so important to us. The strength of our modern IHBC relies on our volunteers, members and stakeholders, and their understanding of how we work. I have previously written about how, following Marshall McLuhan, in an interdisciplinary body such as ours the medium can be the central message. More important in this column is the observation that the medium also directs the trajectory of the message. A useful case study is the rapid revision of our past IHBC ‘Membership Eletter’ digital missive – produced about thrice yearly, to update members on board meetings – to establish its new title, ‘Membership Matters’. This change consciously marks a new trajectory for the publication, towards a more welcoming format. Following the email circulation of a draft of the post-Christmas Membership Eletter, our president, Mike Brown, observed that few members will read such a dry missive, however important.The point was picked up by our chair, David McDonald, who noted that it would be more engaging with a title such as ‘Membership Matters Eletter’. After vice chair Lone Le Vay endorsed that, Joanna Theobald, our digital publications and brand lead, picked it up and produced the eletter under the new title ‘IHBC Membership Matters’. That rapid recast, concluded over a day of intermittent emails and without any intervention from myself, indicates just how dynamic change can be in the IHBC. For now, proactive collective input has changed only the publication’s title. But that change also frames the trajectory for the revisions in the next issue, and the creation of a more accessible format and style. Remembering that responsiveness to voluntary insight and oversight, especially as regards consultation and feedback, the updates and tasters on current matters listed below may well change by the time this goes to print, but hopefully not too much. The Stage 1 Consultation on our evolving Corporate Plan for 2020–25 closed at the start of the year, and a revised and adjusted version should now be out. The constitutional update is also well in play.This follows the membership’s support for James Caird’s draft ‘Proposal for Future Governance … ’ at the AGM in Nottingham.The next step was launched for member consultation and regulatory review in January. The annual update Corporate Plan for 2015–20 (‘CP20’) for 2018–19, will inform the trustees report for the forthcoming AGM. The ‘Local delivery (branch) CPD training pilot’, supporting priority CPD areas, inevitably targets only some of the priority CPD areas we know we need to address, but we intend to extend its reach very soon. Support for membership application and accreditation is developing fast, as Ramona Usher continues to build on Kate Kendall’s work with our free Membership ApplicationTraining Event (MATE) sessions.We are also formalising a second stage crit-style review session, our ‘Membership Accreditation Guidance Event’ (MAGE) sessions. A third stage – a preliminary introduction to the IHBC’s conservation concepts, targeted at newcomers, and provisionally titled ‘Mini-MATE’ sessions – means that this suite now represents the