Kristin Alford — Write down the vision, plan the journey
This essay was presented as a part of my work in the Design Leadership unit in the Master of Design Futures program at RMIT University.
This is the second of my conversations exploring research I’m doing at the intersection of design, leadership, and intentional culture. In this episode, I speak with Dr Kristin Alford, who is the Director of the recently-opened MOD. at the University of South Australia.
During our conversation, Kristin and I discuss how and why she came to be Director at MOD., her past careers, how they set her up for what she’s doing now, and how she has gone about designfully leading and growing an intentional culture at MOD.
MOD. is a new place (neither museum nor science centre is an adequate description) that seeks to be “Australia’s leading future-focused museum, provoking new ideas at the intersection of science, art and innovation.”
MOD. has quite deliberately worked in the open in building itself and its culture, blogging extensively on decisions, thinking, growth and more. They’ve also published their principles, which speak strongly to their practice and vision. Kristin and I discuss them during our conversation. I’ve reproduced them here because they are so very interesting:
Two-Way Minded
We will embed Aboriginal knowledge and understanding by providing space for curation, creation and interpretation within our exhibition programs.
Connected To Research, Industry and Enterprise
We will showcase research and innovation, and bring people and ideas together to promote further discovery and application.
Accessible & Inclusive
Visitors will be welcomed to the space with a mix of diverse and sensory activities catering for a wide range of prior knowledge and capabilities.
Participatory
There will be spaces for doing, not just seeing. And different ways of getting involved to ensure tangible impacts for young people.
Open-Ended
MOD. will generate more questions than answers. It will be an engine for serendipity, providing young people with experiences to draw on throughout life.
Scalable
Our experiences are designed for one and for many, to reach out and to be sustainable.
Unexpected & Audacious
We challenge the traditional. Experiences will be emotionally charged, where science and technology can be fun, but also challenging, icky and delightful. MOD. will be audacious, ambitious and globally-orientated.
Targeting a younger audience, MOD. seeks to engage visitors to explore future possibilities in career, life, technology, and society.
Kristin like John Allsopp in the previous conversation, reflects some interesting perspectives:
- this kind of designful leadership that builds a humane culture is about vision and journey, bringing your team along with you
- creating something new and special, as MOD. is, requires a perspective that pragmatically defines measures of success that may be some distance into the future; for teams to hold on to those measures and work with them is complex work requiring a high level of emotional intelligence both from leaders and individuals
There are messages emerging, just two conversations in, that I suspect will be themes across this series of conversations.
