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I spent 10yrs working as both a museum curator and middle manager while austerity made a bonfire of jobs across local government. One experience I recall were the external commentators who thought they were lobbying to preserve a perceived ethos and certain roles they thought key
There was an unfortunate tendency for them to do one or more of the following, all largely guaranteed to be exactly counter-productive...
1) It is never helpful to the prospects of anyone in a time of retrenchment to have someone else define their job as being about what they know, rather than what they do with what they know
2) Using phrases like 'dumbing down' or describing a curator or other role as somehow oppositional to creating experiences for visitors always says more about the commentator than the reality of these jobs, but it can still encourage a negative perception amongst snr managers
3) It is always easy to criticise an organisation when you don't really understand its financial situation. Past financial position is no measure of a changed future...and how many times can people confuse capital assets with revenue income?!
4) Equally, perhaps an org. might just understand its internal and external strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats better than someone who has given it all of 5 mins analysis based on a news report or two?
5) This was particularly true with local gov. when many did not recognise the mus. was part of a much larger org. with a broader remit, trying to be more than the sum of its parts. You didn't have to agree with all their decisions, but as a start you needed to share their reality
