Beyond the Back Hallway Divide: Why Cultural Institutions Struggle with Internal Alignment

Walk into almost any museum and you can feel two worlds humming along in parallel. Out front (Front of House), the floor staff are wrangling school groups, calming confused visitors, and improvising around the unpredictable chaos that is the public. In the offices behind the scenes (Back of House), educators are designing programs, marketing is tightening the next campaign, development is chasing upcoming grant deadlines, finance is ensuring that the operations continue to function as expected, and leadership is outlining long-term strategy.

Both halves think they’re doing the essential work, and both halves are right. The problem is what happens between them.

This FOH/BOH divide isn’t just an organizational quirk. It’s been documented for decades as a structural fault line in cultural institutions. A 2025 report by Museums Association (UK) found that public-facing roles in museums and heritage sites carry unique emotional demands, including stress, burnout risk, and “emotional labour” distinct from other museum functions. A 2019 survey by Front of House Museums found that FOH workers report feeling undervalued and powerless more often than colleagues in BOH roles: 58% of FOH staff said they felt undervalued, versus 24% of BOH staff; only 37% of FOH staff felt they could impact museum practices compared with 80% of BOH staff. Frontline staff operate in an “interpretive and emotional labor environment” (see Rentschler & Gilmore, 2002), constantly navigating immediate social and physical demands; meanwhile, administrative staff live in a world of planning, metrics, and mission-aligned programming that’s structurally insulated from the visitor experience.

The divide isn’t subtle; it shapes how museums function, how staff feel, and ultimately how visitors experience the institution. The American Alliance of Museums has noted persistent “communication gaps” between public-facing and administrative roles, particularly around expectations, decision-making, and how success is defined. FOH tends to measure success by visitor response. BOH tends to measure it by institutional priorities and long-range impact. Both valid, both incomplete. And when those worlds drift apart, everything slows down: program execution, communication flow, staff morale, decision-making. It’s the museum-world equivalent of trying to row a boat when half the crew thinks you’re going to the lighthouse and the other half is aiming for the pier.

Here’s where the irony sharpens.

In a former role, I had tour guides approaching me to ask why Marketing never featured them in ads. Supervisors told me they felt as though their input wasn’t important, despite building communication channels to address this exact point. FOH workers complained that field trips and other “less important” activities that happened outside of standard operating hours got too much attention. And the Learning team was constantly frustrated that FOH staff used their materials without asking. A former colleague of mine set out to close this gap. As the Training Supervisor, he was one of the few individuals who could truly understand the FOH/BOH divide, because he experienced it regularly. So one day, he approached me with an idea. He designed a deceptively simple initiative: an organization-wide proficiency program. Every department would teach every other department what they actually do. Finance would demystify restricted funds. Marketing would explain audience segmentation. Learning would talk through the intention beyond learning experiences. And in return, BOH staff would spend time shadowing tours, supporting family days, or working the floor during peak hours.

The idea was pitched and leadership loved the idea. My colleague left the meeting room, pulled me aside and said, “In all my years here, that felt like the first time the Deputy Director listened to me.” The plan was approved instantly and he got to work planning the program. And then (predictably and tragically), it fell apart. The moment implementation discussions arrived, it was labeled “optional” by the same people who cheered the idea loudest. Optional is a death sentence of cross-functional learning. The project dissolved under the very cultural forces it was trying to fix.

Researchers (in education, museum studies, change management, or organizational culture) would not be surprised. Studies on organizational culture in museums note that hierarchical norms and departmental silos are among the strongest predictors of internal friction (Kotler & Kotler, 2000; Scott, 2006). Institutions often valorize collaboration in theory, then quietly default to convenience in practice. The FOH/BOH tension is not a failure of goodwill, it’s a failure of structure.

The good news is that this is fixable. Alignment doesn’t emerge from inspirational speeches or monthly staff meetings. It comes from creating systems that make understanding each other’s work unavoidable, because the alternative is too costly. Museums already know how to design learning experiences; they simply need to apply those principles inward.

If this resonates, I put together a short downloadable playbook that outlines several practical alignment strategies, including the resurrected, full version of the organizational proficiency model - I believe it deserves another look, from organizations who may be at a stage to honestly assess their internal tensions. The institutions that thrive over the next decade will be the ones that treat internal alignment not as a “soft” priority but as infrastructure. When cultural organizations finally bridge their own internal cultures, they become infinitely better at serving the public they exist for.