Boris Johnson’s resignation as Prime Minister in September was an inconvenience to Sir Ian Blatchford. For more than a decade as CEO of the Science Museum Group, where about 40% of his funding comes from the state, building relationships with those at the heart of government is a priority.
“I have made connections with this extraordinary number of people at No 10. [Downing Street]’ he says. Johnson’s contact details across his team went from “gold dust to zero” overnight. After what he called a long summer of goodbyes, he had to start over with Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss.
“The Whitehall is a great machine, but sometimes you need a certain insider’s cell phone. [number] A lot of intelligent people send things in a circular motion so that stuck ideas and decisions can be unlocked,” says Blatchford, 57.
“I’ve come to know the Sunak-Hunt circle now,” he said, adding that every change in prime minister or chancellor leads to a change in the people he needs to be at the top. “Knowing all invisible power brokers is essential.”
And, “If you want to get things done in Whitehall, you have to be logical as well as pretty pushy. And sometimes you have to lose it a little bit to get an ally.”
Nevertheless, relations with the government have weakened. Being what he calls a “rainmaker,” he encourages philanthropists and private companies to provide cash funding for projects that show how science can be applied to industry and everyday life, giving a large portion of the work occupies. “The direction of travel is firmly moving towards greater independence,” he says.
But blockbuster exhibitions can cost as much as £5 million. “My organization is overflowing with creative ideas .
The group oversees the Landmarks Museum in South Kensington, the National Railway Museum in York and three sites in the North of England. London’s science museum has seen its total number of visitors drop by 93% as the pandemic forced it to close. According to the group’s annual report, their key income measure fell by almost 80% to £7.1m. Covid-19 restrictions have made fundraising “particularly difficult and created a highly uncertain financial environment,” the report said.
Blatchford did not miss a lot of international travel before Covid-19, but the Covid-19 crisis has only added to the pressure. Arts and cultural institutions have had to scrutinize more closely their sources of funding, especially those from donors who make money through the sale of weapons, fossil fuels, or opioids. It’s getting harder and harder,” says Blatchford.
The science museum has been accused of accepting funding from oil and gas producer BP. Many environmental activists believe fossil fuel companies are greenwashing their corporate activities through such initiatives. But the complexities of the debate are exposed because, in many cases, the big banks, law firms and professional services firms that promote the same fossil fuel projects have not been targeted in the same way.
Blatchford believes that the debate in this area is often far from reality. “Business and finance are very complex and intertwined. The art world risks being eaten away by its own piety if it is not careful…Sometimes it has become almost alarming.” ” he says.
That’s not to say the group prioritizes funding above all else.Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses came from a consortium that included state-owned energy giant Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest oil producers. was a factor in refusing funding for
Blatchford thinks blood pressure is different. Besides funding green technology research, most importantly, being a publicly traded company whose corporate strategy is under scrutiny by investors. Pushing to outlaw such companies would further relegate fossil-fuel activities to a private realm operating in the shadows, Blatchford says. I think it’s important to press and say where this takes us.”
Blatchford says his commercial past was important to help him navigate the role. That doesn’t necessarily apply to artists.I have no problem with wealth…I really enjoy meeting people who have achieved great success in life.”
Blatchford embarked on what he called a portfolio career. This was unusual for men of his generation. He studied law at his College of Mansfield at the University of Oxford, after which he moved to the City of London, first in charge of international regulation at the Bank of England, then at Barclays Duzote, where he was in charge of mergers and acquisitions at Wedd. Did.
“In the 1980s, banking was a hero’s job…People can’t believe it now. But actually at the time of the Big Bang, we all entered that world,” he says. .
However, he had a creative side and there were times when he found banking “frustrating”. “The fact that it was actually relentlessly macho in a kind of boring way,” he added. “A long time, just for that.”
Blatchford transferred the craft to the Arts Council and later to the Royal Academy of Arts and the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he assumed the role of financial director. In 2010, he was appointed head of the Science Museum Group by Prime Minister David Cameron.
Exhibitions need to be planned years in advance, yet remain relevant. The museum is known for its exhibits on mankind’s ever-changing relationship with the sun, superbugs, antibiotics, robots, resistance to disinformation, and more.
Blatchford, like its peers at other large institutions, is embroiled in a culture war and under attack from both the right and the left. on issues ranging from environmental politics and transgender debate to the colonial legacy of such institutions and their largely white composition. their workforce.
“It’s so easy to get panicked by noise, Twitter feeds and social media trends,” he adds. He shuns all social media, believing it’s complicit in “destroying your sanity.”
Like all business leaders today, he is under tremendous pressure to do the right thing all the time. Blatchford, who made his 50th visit to Russia in early 2020, gave Pushkin his medal back after the country invaded Ukraine. Awarded to citizens and foreigners for their artistic and cultural achievements, he said at the time, “I cannot keep the medal that Vladimir Putin, the man responsible for this war, handed out in the name of the Russian state.” rice field.
3 Questions for Ian Blatchford
Who are your leadership heroes? David Gordon, former CEO of the Royal Academy of Arts. I was his financial director. [he was] Entrepreneurial, amazingly funny and supportive, but knew when to kick me in the shin if I felt I could do better. Appointed me to an organization that was on the verge of bankruptcy.
What was your first leadership lesson? When I was Deputy Director of the V&A, the Human Resources Director passed away suddenly. He was a great personal friend, but his team seemed heartless to me, disinterested in my grief, but curious to see what would happen on the operational side of things next. . Despite all the trendy talk about collaborative leadership, the truth is that most people expect their bosses to have the right answers and to protect them.
What would you be doing if you weren’t running Science Museum Group? depending on my mood. Either an authoritative professor of somewhere grandiose history, or a quiet wealthy banker with a fine art collection.
However, he did not always agree with the public opinion of the time. He strongly opposes the move to demolish British statues. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in the United States, racial inequality demonstrators in Bristol tore down a statue of a slave trader and threw it into the harbor. “‘Undoing history’ is an abomination to the way we work,” he said in an opinion piece for The Telegraph last year. “Our approach should be addition, not subtraction.”
Blatchford does not try to please everyone, believing that people will respect well-thought-out decisions, even if they are “reluctant.” But he also points out that people make a set of established assumptions about him. says. But he’s also gay with a Jewish husband, which he believes gives him sensitivity to the diversity agenda. .”
He faced criticism for not publicly endorsing the Black Lives Matter campaign. But “Show Boat” is “maddening,” he says. Blatchford adds that he believes in “actions, not words.”
More importantly, not only is the hiring process overhauled, but the creation of new board positions open only to people from ethnically diverse backgrounds has been met with a different set of criticisms. Inevitably, when curators appoint non-traditional candidates, some of those hires go awry, causing people to ‘panic’.
“We’ve been hiring second rate men for 2,000 years,” says Blatchford. He adds that finding opportunities for a diverse pool of candidates, from race to gender to social class, is key rather than making the “perfect hire.”
Blatchford often turns to business leaders for advice. Marjorie Scardino, Pearson’s former CEO (former owner of the Financial Times), gave him a tip that has been key to his leadership. “She said, ‘The moment you become CEO, people will stop telling you the truth. That’s the biggest risk.'” You need to hear dissent.
One of the trickier aspects of his role is how to navigate the psychology of the conference room. “Boards are essential to our lives, but they can completely wriggle all chief executives,” says Blatchford. Giving directors more options and hearing their support at meetings is very important. “The only thing about being a boss is that no one trains you… Managing upwards is a surprisingly difficult skill.”
