Tate: Reinventing Operations to Become a Different Type of Company

Abstract

It was an unexpectedly warm and sunny day. ‘July in London sometimes has pleasant surprises,’ reflected Julian Bird, Tate’s Chief Operating Officer. Julian, an energetic-looking man in his late thirties, stretched his long legs and looked into the distance. He had joined the Tate organization a year earlier, in July 2007. It was an exciting challenge: Tate Director⁴⁶ Sir Nicholas Serota had put him in charge of running all of Tate’s operations, which meant that the day-to-day organization was now his responsibility.