The 3 Modes Model and Digital Work Canvas

If you’ve ever struggled to explain what 'digital' really means in your organisation or found yourself trying to juggle projects that seem wildly different under the same label, you’re not alone.

Here’s why that matters and how a new approach might help.

Why language matters

'Digital' work in the cultural sector has come to encompass an enormous and diverse array of disciplines, skills, and types of work.

But the language we use hasn't kept up.

The term ‘digital’ is now so stretched that it risks meaning everything and therefore almost nothing. If you asked 10 people working in the cultural sector how they would define 'digital' you would probably get 10 very different replies.

Without more precise ways of talking about this work, it’s easy for confusion, misalignment, and disappointment to arise. This is something that was cited again and again in my 2025 research into digital failure across the sector.

So I have been exploring better ways of thinking and talking about the types of work we mean when we say 'digital'. Ways to build a shared understanding.

Because while a CRM implementation, a livestreamed performance, a UX audit, and a VR commission are all labelled as 'digital', they demand very different skills, mindsets, and success measures. Yet we often group them together under the same catchall term, 'digital', creating confusion and risk.

Introducing the 3 Modes Model and the Digital Work Canvas

To help bring more clarity, I’ve developed two simple, practical tools:

• The 3 Modes Model is a framework for defining the mode and intent of digital work: is this about enabling, engaging, or expressing?
• Digital Work Canvas is a tool to help organisations visualise and map the different kinds of digital work they are undertaking or considering.

Together, they aim to make conversations about digital work clearer, sharper, and more productive.

The 3 Modes Model

This framework allows you to map digital work across three areas of focus, Enable / Engage / Express. These aren’t departments or silos, they’re modes (or types) of digital activity, and most organisations work across all three.

• Enable: Laying the groundwork. The infrastructure, systems, workflows, and internal tools that make everything else possible.
  • For example: CRM implementation, digitisation of collection assets, skills development, data architecture, rehearsal tech.
• Engage: Building relationships. How you connect with audiences, funders, and communities.
  • For example: websites, SEO, social media, audience analytics, digital fundraising, accessibility.
• Express: Creating meaning. Cultural and artistic outputs that are made possible, enhanced, or extended through digital.
  • For example: digital exhibitions, livestreamed performance, interactive archives, digital commissions, immersive art.

Thinking in these terms starts to give us a more practical language for describing what we are doing and why. Are we investing to enable, to engage, or to express? Are our digital ambitions aligned across these areas?

And these modes won’t exist in isolation. Very few examples are just one 'thing'. Here are four radar plots showing how different types of digital activity span across the Enable / Engage / Express dimensions:

• Digital commission (e.g. VR experience) leans heavily into Express, but also draws on Enable and Engage to reach audiences and run smoothly.
• Livestreamed performance strongly blends all three, technical infrastructure, audience interaction, and artistic output.
• CRM implementation is primarily Enable, with lighter touches of Engage.
• Accessible online exhibition spans all categories quite evenly, highlighting how accessibility is both enabling and expressive.

Framing digital in this way might help to build shared understanding, align teams, and avoid the trap of seeing digital as a specialist concern, rather than something that could and should support the whole organisation.

The Digital Works Canvas

The Canvas adds a second lens by plotting digital activities along two axes:

• One axis runs from internal to external. This asks the question is this work aimed at the organisation’s inner workings, or its connection with audiences?
• The other runs from operational to expressive. I.e. is this work about enabling systems and structures, or delivering creative and cultural experiences?

By mapping real-world examples, the Canvas below makes it easier to see where activities differ and how your portfolio of digital work can balance function, connection, and creativity.

How this could help you

Understanding where your digital work is focused and what it's really aiming to achieve isn’t just a theoretical exercise.

It’s the foundation for more thoughtful strategy, stronger alignment, and more sustainable delivery.

Using the 3 Modes Model and Digital Work Canvas can help you:

• Build a clearer digital strategy grounded in the realities of your work
• Set the right expectations and success measures for digital projects
• Avoid overload by seeing where your team or budget is stretched too thin
• Identify gaps and opportunities across your digital activities
• Support mission-driven ambitions or strengthen functional digital foundations, depending on your organisation’s goals

Why this matters

When digital work is framed only through the lenses of efficiency, audience reach, or revenue, it risks being siloed into departments (usually marketing or IT), understood narrowly as promotion or operations, and disconnected from the organisation’s creative or cultural purpose.

This mindset shrinks the potential of digital, reducing it to "selling tickets" or "streamlining CRM" rather than using it to create and share meaning, extend cultural experiences, or explore new forms of artistic expression.

The 3 Modes Model helps push back against this narrowing by making expressive purpose explicit:

• Enable strengthens the infrastructure that makes cultural work possible
• Engage builds and deepens relationships with audiences and communities
• Express uses digital as a medium for cultural creation, storytelling, and meaning-making

By naming "Express" as a valid and vital mode of digital activity, the model:

• Legitimises digital creativity and innovation
• Opens up new strategic conversations beyond marketing
• Helps organisations map where digital work already serves their mission, and where there’s untapped potential

What if your focus is mainly on efficiency and reach?

I know not every cultural organisation needs, or wants, to treat digital as a creative medium.

For many, the priority is ensuring that digital work strengthens internal systems, improves audience communication, and supports revenue streams.

The 3 Modes Model and Canvas support this too.

By helping you map activities with a focus on Enable and Engage modes, you can still:

• Align internal and external digital efforts
• Set realistic, purposeful success measures
• Avoid overloading teams or losing focus
• Make more strategic decisions about digital investment and priorities

Not every organisation needs to invest heavily in Express-led digital work, but every organisation can benefit from clearer, more joined-up digital planning.

How I can help you apply it

I work with cultural organisations to apply this thinking practically whether that's:

• Auditing and mapping your current digital activities: Map your digital work across Enable, Engage, and Express, highlighting gaps and strengths.
• Facilitating workshops to build shared understanding: Run collaborative sessions to build a shared language and prioritise your digital activities.
• Advising on digital strategy, structure, and investment: Support leadership teams to align digital work with mission, audiences, and resources.
• Helping teams align projects with organisational goals: Ensure that digital projects are focused, realistic, and success measures are aligned to intent.

If you’re interested in using the 3 Modes Model and Canvas to make your digital work clearer, stronger, and more aligned, I’d love to have a conversation.

I'm always happy to offer an informal chat, no hard sell, just a chance to explore how this could apply to your work.

The story behind the framework

This work grew out of conversations I've had over the past year or more, and my own struggles in defining exactly what I meant when I said 'digital'.

I've written more about my thinking in this article.

Share your thoughts and help shape the model

I’m treating this as a starting point, not a finished map.

If you have feedback, examples, or challenges that could sharpen this approach, I’d love to hear from you.

Drop me a line at ash@ashmann.co or connect with me on LinkedIn or Bluesky.