Transforming collaboration, creativity, and alignment
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is a cornerstone of cultural enrichment, fostering connections between art and community. Central to this mission is the Education Team, a small but wide-reaching department delivering up to 2,000 programs annually across three clusters: Families, Youth and Schools; Adult Programs; and Community Engagement. Their remit is to inspire audiences and raise awareness of initiatives that broaden accessibility to art and culture.
Emerging from the pandemic, the museum naturally found itself re-examining its connection with visitors and the wider community – a shift that prompted the Education Team to embark on their own transformation. To align with the museum’s evolving identity, they set out to reset their team culture: enhancing collaboration, encouraging creativity, and aligning on shared values that would guide their work.
How the DMA Education Team and Bracket worked together
To achieve these goals, the DMA Education Team partnered with Bracket on a bespoke 8-month culture reset program that would improve team culture and cohesion, creating the conditions to further enhance the visibility and effectiveness of their already high-quality outputs. The program focused on three key areas:
- Creating shared values to better support alignment and building a clear vision for the team’s work in the context of the museum’s wider transformation;
- Developing frameworks that encourage better collaboration across the Education Team’s three clusters: Families, Youth and Schools; Adult Programs; and Community Engagement;
- Equipping the team with the creative and strategic tools and mindset to confidently navigate change.
The program kicked off with Bracket’s diagnostic, followed by a series of team sessions to assess the current culture and identify opportunities for improvement. These highlighted key strengths such as team cohesion and output quality, as well as improvement areas like fostering more intentional communication methods.
This was followed by a full-day, in-person workshop designed to build a unified vision and set of shared values, as well as an opportunity to explore collaboration as a team. Program highlights included:
- Visioning: Creative exercises and interactive brainstorming techniques to inspire aspirational thinking; helping the team articulate a shared vision focused on accessibility, innovation, and meaningful connections.
- Building shared values: The team co-created six guiding principles to shape decision-making and behaviours, ensuring accountability and alignment.
- Program streamlining: Identifying ways to adapt or enhance initiatives to align with their collective vision and values.
The program encouraged the Education Team to turn their creative energies inward, applying the same innovative mindset they use with visitors to strengthen their own team dynamics. Each shared value they created included both internal and external statements, helping to keep them accountable as a team, and with their visitors. This approach unlocked new collaborative pathways and fostered a more creative, playful team culture.
Throughout the program, Bracket provided ongoing support through follow-up sessions and regular check-ins to ensure the team sustained momentum and successfully embedded these cultural changes into daily work.
“Working with Bracket was an invaluable experience. Making time to focus on improving our team culture was a necessary step to help us prepare for change, and the program gave us the positive shift we needed to approach the next phase of our development. Our new values have been pivotal in shaping team goals, enhancing collaboration, and staying accountable to the outcomes we set. The energy from the workshop and our time with Bracket has carried into our everyday work, keeping us moving forward with confidence.”
STACEY LIZOTTE, CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART
Key Numbers
Based on our diagnostic tool, the team achieved remarkable improvements:
10%
increase in overall team culture score
34%
increase in actively living their values as a team
33%
increase in having regular conversations about how they work together as a team
By the end of the program, the Education Team now stands prepared to approach the institution’s transformation with a renewed sense of purpose, creativity, and collaboration.
Outcomes of the programme
Stronger alignment: The newly developed shared values now serve as a decision-making framework, uniting the team across their three clusters and aligning their efforts with the museum’s broader transformation goals.
Better collaboration: Cross-cluster collaboration has significantly improved, encouraging the team to better leverage their collective knowledge and experience.
Breakthrough in communication: Meetings are more productive, with structured formats that encourage meaningful input. By incorporating moments for smaller break-out conversations, the team feels deeper connections across clusters.
Enhanced creativity: The team now approaches challenges with greater strategic and creative confidence, supported by a safe framework for generating bold, ambitious ideas.
Streamlined program: By reimagining their approach to programming, the team has begun to focus on high-value initiatives that support one another across all three clusters. This process is helping to align programs more closely with the team’s vision and approach a more effective structure.