2007 ALA Annual Conference Session
Kathryn Deiss: Find the shimmer and shine in your organization and promote it!
Ms. Deiss, Content Strategist at the Association of College and Research Libraries, began with an analogy that points to the difficulty of addressing change. Identifying trends and patterns [and then adjusting staff to meet these changes] is a bit like picking out patterns in a flock of starlings in flight, a near impossible task.
Use creative strategies to identify trends from fads
When is something new and just a fad and when is it a trend and an emerging pattern? Sometimes, Ms. Deiss suggested, identifying what isn't changing helps develop the context in which to identify what is changing.
Test your mental models and test them "insistently," she advised. Change your perspective frequently. How do others view your service? Mission? Task? Ask why we believe what we believe? One leadership guru suggests that we ask why we're doing five times and that this can lead to a deeper understanding of one's assumptions. Sustain the old and new only as long as they support your institution's intentions.
Encourage divergent opinions and ideas
Dissent is valuable and helps lead to creative decisions. Staff that have alternate views are important to honing shared values. Allow the disapproving position. Create a space in which ideas are shared openly and not judged. You can test all ideas through whatever filters are necessary for the institution later.
Share the leadership
Ms. Deiss argued that shared leadership can maximize a library's capacity to respond to change, to create and adapt. Ask how staffing reflects the library's goals? How should a library organize itself to achieve its goals? Try out new organizational identities. Try it out in conversations first to help get the creative thinking going. Ask what the library would look like if we were NATO? A school library? An academic library?
Ms. Deiss concluded with a quote by Robert E. Quinn, Professor at the University of Michigan School of Business, "We have two choices, slow death, deep change" and recommended Deep Change: Discovering the Leader (1996) by Quinn.
Tara Lynn Fulton spoke of leading in an environment of rapid growth.
Dean of Library and Information Services and Associate Provost at Lock Haven University, Stevenson Library, Ms. Fulton described the challenges of the library as the college rapidly grew from 3,500 to 5,000 students over a period of several years. Library staffing, however, did not change, with 14 staff, 50% professional and 50% support, struggling to meet the increased demands for services.
Outside consultant hired
The library hired Marilyn Hamilton to develop a program for the reorganization of staffing that was non-threatening and in which opportunities for change were viewed as benefiting both the library and the staff.
Change made comfortable
Staff were engaged in personal dialog and small group discussions as plans were made to reorganize staffing. Staff were given non-threatening opportunities to adopt new organizational identities and to train for new jobs.
Teams replace departments
Reorganization of the staff was viewed important to organizational outcomes. Over a period of two years, library staff was reorganized. Teams replaced departments. Both professional and support staff served on these teams. Ad hoc teams were formed for specific projects. Staff can annually choose different roles and serve on different teams. Staff can have multiple organizational identities.
Irene Herold: Addressing dysfunction
As a new director of the Mason Library at Keene State College, New Hampshire, Ms. Herold a described a library where departments had become dysfunctional and breakdowns in communication between key components of the library were the order of the day. There was a recognition among staff and others that change was needed.
Kotter's eight-step framework
Ms. Herold adopted the eight-step framework for change that was developed by Harvard Business School professor John P. Kotter (Leading Change, 1996) as her guide.
The eight steps are:
- Establish a sense of urgency
- Create the guiding coalition
- Develop a vision and strategy
- Communicate the change vision
- Empower broad-based action
- Generate short-term wins
- Consolidate gains and produce more change
- Anchor new approaches in the culture.Kotter's 8-stage process
Ms. Herold acknowledged that Kotter's approach has been criticized as being manipulative. But she argued that Kotter's approach does create an atmosphere of crisis and that can help motivate staff to participate in a process of change.
Administrative Team Retreat and Strategic Plan
Ms. Herold also spoke of forming a new administrative team as part of her approach to directing needed changes. The team first met with her in a two-day leadership retreat and used Patrick M. Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (2002) as a focus for the retreat. The team then developed a strategic plan that provided the framework for the change needed in the library.
Susan M. Cambell: Leading facility-driven change
Susan M. Campbell, Director of York College of Pennsylvania library, shared her experience in leading a reorganization of staff during a major building renovation.
The library hired an outside consultant to develop staff training and reorganization.
A leadership group was formed to consider facility and staff reorganization. A retreat was scheduled for the group that focused on building trust. A leadership inventory to help staff self-identify their leadership style was used.
Opportunities for staff development were provided regionally and nationally. In-house training was also provided.
Ms. Campbell finished with a quote from Abraham Lincoln, "The good thing about the future, is that it comes one day a time."
Suggested Reading:
Robert E. Quinn. Deep Change: Discovering the Leader, 1996.
John P. Kotter. Leading Change, 1996.
Patrick M. Lencioni. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, 2002.
