LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
Celebrating Culture
How Star Insights helped LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes create a Strategic Framework to guide the organization and fulfill its purpose in Los Angeles
A Cultural Institution
Located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes (LA Plaza) is a museum and cultural center that centers the Latino experience in Southern California. Dedicated to preserving and sharing stories of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Latinx people – and especially their place in the history of Los Angeles – LA Plaza is a community hub that puts on transformative exhibitions, events, and experiences celebrating Latinx culture.
“As one of LA County’s cultural institutions, we tell stories. We don’t collect artwork, we collect stories – lived experiences. And we do that through a variety of ways, from exhibits to events, salsa nights, and multicultural art-making workshops. We also have a working, teaching kitchen, because food is such a critical part of so many cultures.”
Leticia Rhi Buckley
CEO,
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
Like many institutions, LA Plaza was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though they made a commitment to retain all of their staff, and adapted to delivering their mission in new ways, the closing of their historical building – known to many as a gathering place – significantly affected their opportunities to connect with their community.
Emerging from the tumult of the pandemic, hiring a new CEO, and celebrating its 10-year anniversary at the same time presented LA Plaza with many organizational challenges and opportunities. These inflection points inspired LA Plaza to ask some fundamental questions about its future, while maintaining a commitment to honoring its founding ideals and purpose.
“What was clear was that I needed a strategic plan. But I didn’t want it to be the sort of thing that, once it was done, it was going to be sitting somewhere. I wanted a framework that was going to provide that entry point for people at all stages – wherever they were in the organization – to get everyone on board and aligned.”
Leticia Rhi Buckley
CEO,
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
Driven by the desire for an excellent guiding strategy document that would align the entire organization, LA Plaza engaged Star Insights.
Missing: Alignment on a Clear Direction
Like many non-profit organizations, especially those in transitional periods, LA Plaza was facing issues of clarity. With three CEOs over the first ten years of their existence, plus the impacts of the pandemic still being deeply felt, LA Plaza, as an organization, was doing too much for too many.
“There was a lot of ‘Well, we’re going to do this because we’re going to do it.’ My predecessor had been very focused on building out the external programming, and creating things to get people here and to know what was happening. That was necessary at the time, but there was not enough focus on the internal – building the infrastructure, providing the support, or being very clear about what we do and why we do it. When I came in, it was very clear to me that we could not continue to operate in that way.”
Leticia Rhi Buckley
CEO,
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
This lack of clarity and alignment on where they were going was impacting key activities like fundraising, partnerships, stakeholder engagement, and more. Without a clear sense of who they were or a shared collective vision, the organization was struggling to navigate the changes before them.
“I’ve got an amazing group of staff and board members, who are very committed and passionate about the mission. But what we were missing was a clear directive. You asked everybody and you could kind of see oh, we all have the same North Star, right? But nobody could really sit there and articulate it in a way that was like ‘got it.’”
Leticia Rhi Buckley
CEO,
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
Questions of language and identity further complicated LA Plaza’s attempts to articulate their North Star. While LA Plaza centers the history of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, it serves all Latinos in LA, and there are distinct differences and nuances between the many different cultures and identities that fall under those umbrellas.
As such, clarifying identity was an important focus area for LA Plaza and Star Insights during this engagement, and it played a key role in the development of the strategic framework.
Hungry for Clarity: Articulating A North Star
To help LA Plaza define their vision and articulate their North Star, Star Insights worked collaboratively with LA Plaza during the first stage of their signature Co-Creation Process, to identify stakeholders who could represent varied perspectives. This ensured LA Plaza benefitted from quality input during the Discovery & Exploration phase of the planning process.
“We were able to be very intentional in our conversations and that went a long way. We were very strategic about who was invited to be part of that conversation. Not trying to manage hundreds of people, while still getting a fully representational sample, was a huge benefit.”
Leticia Rhi Buckley
CEO,
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
Given the importance of what can sometimes be very challenging conversations, it was essential that Star Insights focused on facilitation instead of trying to drive or lead participants to any particular conclusion. By providing a safe space where the stakeholders could have these complex conversations for themselves, they were able to make decisions as a group.
“As long as we were transparent about everything, we didn’t have to have all the answers. We could say ‘This is going to be hard. Yes, this takes time. But we know in the end, it’s going to be really valuable.’ And people actually were hungry for that part. They were hungry as an organization, as a staff, and as a board to have clarity.”
Leticia Rhi Buckley
CEO,
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
Language matters, and by giving LA Plaza and its stakeholders space to discuss who they were, Star Insights was able to facilitate the exploration of their identity as an organization. By fostering understanding amongst each other, the stakeholders could come to a consensus about what identity-appropriate language would best serve their shared mission. This language would, ultimately, form a core part of the Strategic Framework, informing LA Plaza’s mission, vision, and strategic priorities, as well as warranting its own, dedicated section.
Strategic Framework
The creation of a Strategic Framework, instead of a more traditional strategic plan, has been invaluable for LA Plaza. Flexible enough to respond to changing circumstances, it has become a point of focus that the entire staff can use as a decision making tool.
“We reference the framework all the time. It’s created real focus. It provides me with focus in guiding and leading the organization, but it’s also created a sort of shorthand for the team. So when somebody comes up with some idea, I can say to them, ‘How does this align with what we talked about in the strategic framework?’ And either they can point to it or they can’t. And they know then, oh, we probably shouldn’t be doing it then, right.”
Leticia Rhi Buckley
CEO,
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
The framework has also provided essential clarity when speaking with external parties, allowing the LA Plaza team to clearly and concisely articulate who they are, what they do, and why it matters.
“Externally, it’s this wonderful tool that, when I’m talking to folks, I can give my two minute elevator pitch of who we are and what we do. And then I followed it up by saying, Let me send you our strategic framework, we just finished it. It’s so clear and it’s only 10 pages. People see it and go ‘I can see it. I see who they are, I see what they’re doing, and I see why they’re doing it.”
Leticia Rhi Buckley
CEO,
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
With their newly established Strategic Framework, LA Plaza can be confident that every new initiative or activity they undertake will further their mission, helping them build an equitable future and a sense of belonging for Latinos in Los Angeles.
