Chapter-Level Leadership Education Challenge Grant

The Task Force on Chapter-Level Programming sent a call for proposals for the Leadership Education Challenge Grant to all the chapters, the medlib-l listserv, MLA-FOCUS, and MLA News on September 15. A follow-up message was sent in early November to the chapters and medlib-l. Information on the award and the application form have been posted on the Section website:

http://data.georgetown.edu/dml/lms/LMS Chapter-Level Leadership Education Challenge Grant.htm

The task force is looking forward to receiving and evaluating the submissions.

Submitted by
Jane Blumenthal, AHIP, Chair
Task Force on Chapter-Level Programming
blumentj@georgetown.edu

 

LMS Program 2004

The Leadership and Management Section is sponsoring one contributed paper session and cosponsoring two other sessions at MLA 2004 “Seize the Power” in Washington, DC. We are the lead sponsors for Part 2 of “Paths to Power” subtitled “Negotiation and Advocacy,” which will be moderated by Jane Blumenthal. Our cosponsors are the Public Services Section, Corporate Information Services Section, and the Assessment and Benchmarking SIG.

LMS is cosponsoring “Paths to Power Part 1: Empowerment by the Numbers, Using Your Data to Negotiate with Administrators” with the primary sponsor, the Corporate Information Services Section, and the Assessment and Benchmarking SIG. The session consists of an invited panel followed by a town meeting. The section is also a cosponsor for the Hospital Libraries Section contributed paper session “Power Rangers: Plugging into the Power.”

These sessions, with their emphasis on negotiation, collaboration, marketing, and data analysis and use, are clearly in the mainstream of concerns for the membership at large as well as for the section. They reflect the LMS strategic planning goals of sponsoring a joint session with the Hospital Libraries Section (Advocacy) and of programming on partnerships and alliances (Lifelong Learning) mentioned in the chair’s report above.

Program Committee members include: Faith Meakin, chair, Jane Blumenthal, co-chair, Charles Greenberg, Amy Lyons, and Lora Thompson.

Submitted by
Jane Blumenthal, AHIP, Co-Chair
Program Committee
blumentj@georgetown.edu

 

Management Case Study: Interlibrary Loan Charges

In the past, your library has not charged your users for interlibrary loans.  However, this year you’ve been asked to partially recover the cost, and you’ve decided to charge $7.00 per loan beginning the next fiscal year.

The VP to whom you report insists that the organization must take responsibility for providing for the information needs of its employees, and therefore, you will not charge individuals for ILLs that are related to their work.  Instead, each department is asked to budget for its ILL charges.  During the budget preparation time, you provide each department with a count of its ILLs for the past three years, and ask departments to use this as a guideline.  You realize of course that it’s all coming from the same pot anyway; what difference does it make if the money is in the library’s budget or departmental budgets?.… But you have no say on this.

Most of the departments follow instructions and budget for interlibrary loans.  At the end of each month, you simply request a transfer of funds from the borrower’s cost center to yours.  Very smooth process.

The problem, however, is the departments who either forgot to budget for ILLs or decided they wouldn’t do it.  Let’s use Respiratory Therapy for an example.  A respiratory therapist asks for an article via ILL.  She doesn’t have a cost center to charge it to, says her department head won’t provide one.  She says she’ll pay the $7.00.  Remember, however, that you’ve been told by your supervisor that individuals shouldn’t bear the financial responsibility for their information needs.  Therefore, you can’t accept her money. 

As the Library Director/Manager/Supervisor, you feel you can make exceptions.  After all, you did budget for some ILL expenses; you could absorb the cost for this person.  But how far will this go and how many times will this happen?  Perhaps of more concern is the issue of consistency from the front line staff.  If they had the authority, they would absorb ILL charges for every one who didn’t come in with a cost center They feel very uncomfortable denying service to anyone, especially if the requester is willing to pay.  The library is getting some bad press because of this policy. What the staff isn’t seeing is the VP’s principle that the institution should be responsible, not the individual, and that the library doesn’t have limitless funds. 

Although you agree in principle with your VP, he won’t budge.  In fact, when you discussed this with him, his response was:

 “If the hospital, in its infinite wisdom, decided to cut back on pain medication, you wouldn't expect the staff to pick up the cost just because they felt strongly that patients in pain need medication. Probably an unfair example but... even though Nursing has made a conscious decision to withhold funding for continuing education (and therefore lets nurses "choose" to pay it for themselves), I say that is not right and don't really want to appear to condone the practice of asking employees to pay for something that is the hospital’s obligation to pay by offering a similar solution.”

While you perhaps see your VP as a stumbling block, you also know that at budget preparation time, the administrative body, as a whole, never came out with a statement that they supported the information needs of the staff and would “put their money where their mouth is.”  You don’t really want to go behind your VP’s back collecting the money; what to do with it creates additional problems and concerns.  And, come the end of the year, you are ultimately responsible for your library’s bottom line and the cost recovery you predicted for the year.

So, what do you do?  Deny service to your users?  Absorb the cost?  Talk some sense into your VP, and if so, how? 

Editors’ note: This case study is an actual problem submitted by an LMS member.  Post your comments and suggestions on the listserv:
mla-lms@mlahq.org. 

 

Side by Side Leadership: An Old Concept with a New Spin Can Help Libraries Be More Viable and Facilitate Organizational Productivity

Introduction

To hear management say “our people are our most valuable resource” is nothing new.  But to have management demonstrate how critical the investment in intellectual capital is to the development and education of our new generation of leaders is quite a different story.

Side by side leadership is a new model of leadership that promotes improvements in team and organizational performance presented in a new, best selling book by Dennis Romig.  Side by Side Leadership places emphasis on the “whole person at work.”  The concepts presented in this model can help to release previously untapped human potential of library staff and enhance the longevity (retention) of the library's most valuable assets--its trained and experienced knowledge professionals.

In the workplace of the 21^st century, inundated with teams and seeking the secrets to developing empowered knowledge workers, old-style top-down hierarchy leadership just doesn't get the job done.  The most intelligent, most motivated, hardest-working employees, who possess the intrinsic knowledge to help the library and the organization keep its competitive edge, often leave in search of positions where they can participate in the development of the library. Those who stay often perform far below par, due to feeling powerless and unappreciated.

The new, dynamic economy driven by information, technology, innovation, and creative relationships demands a new kind of leadership. In many of our libraries, whether academic medical libraries, corporate healthcare agency libraries or hospital libraries, managers and supervisors are failing.  One of the reasons that managers and supervisors are failing is the lack of appropriate leadership training that teaches them how to lead collaboratively. “There is no factor that has more impact on library productivity than leadership. Good leadership can create highly motivated and loyal employees, a positive work environment and, as a result, outstanding performance. On the other end of the spectrum, poor leadership can lead to unengaged employees, high attrition and overall poor performance.”

Collaborative Practice

Side by side leadership encourages collaborative practice and group brainstorming for problem solving and decision making.   Although brainstorming is time consuming, it is usually very productive. Effective brainstorming involves getting team members together, discussing problems, and then opening the floor for the exchange of suggestions on improvement, with no criticism being allowed.  Often the most promising solutions are developed from the most unworkable or silly ideas.  The most critical part of this brainstorming exercise is giving employees the opportunity to provide input and feedback on the most viable ideas presented. 

The final step is to decide how to implement the solution. This usually can be done quickly, because normally when people see the solution, they see how to implement it quickly and efficiently. The fact that team members have input not only into coming up with the solution but into coming up with the  implementation process gives them buy-in to the process and can diminish the chance that they will sabotage the implementation.

Side by side leadership is based on seven principles that include two-way communication, bridging resources internally and externally, sharing visionary goals, facilitating total participation, fostering outside-the-box thinking, filtering creative ideas, and transferring decision-making power.

Many of these principles are not new to libraries; however, the utilization and incorporation of all of these principles together form the basis of the side by side leadership concept.

According to the concept presented in side by side leadership, in order to flush out viable solutions,  you must encourage employees to think of many ideas, techniques, what if’s, and why nots.   Your functional teams must be able to generate many ideas and discard the ones that you determine not to be viable, based on your knowledge and training.   Those people with the knowledge base to assess an idea should be tapped to help weed out bad ideas.

Knowledge (both intrinsic and extrinsic) and professional experience are important in sifting out the best ideas.  In selecting the most valuable ideas for our libraries, teams and leaders depend on the same kind of expertise. “Teams are great at brainstorming up a huge reservoir of innovative options, but it takes knowledgeable individuals to guide the team in picking the best alternatives.”  (Wood, Mento, and Locke, 1987).

When leaders set specific, reachable targets for simple work-related tasks, productivity dramatically increases. Complex work, like planning a new library or designing new processes to facilitate access to information, cannot be performed effectively by simply setting the bar high and working hard.  It requires selecting effective strategies based on the best available knowledge (Wood, Mento, and Locke, 1987).

Risk Taking

Librarians certainly look at risk differently from other people.  We too often don’t ask, “What is the risk of doing nothing?” We aren’t accustomed to taking calculated risks; thus, we stop growing and the organization has no problem justifying library closure.

In libraries that introduce innovative products and services, “managers avoid risk-less projects because a ‘sure thing’ holds no promise of competitive advantage, no opportunity to out-learn competitors.” (Leonard, 1995)

Knowledge seeking has to be integrated as part of the library management team culture.  When major problems arise, representatives from different functional teams (with appropriate knowledge) should be called upon to meet and discuss the issue.  Team members then should be given time to get ideas and opinions though benchmarking, networking and literature searching. After a reasonable period of time, the managers reconvene to share what they have learned and to apply the new information toward a solution.

Survival through Creative Thinking

Many libraries are being faced with threats to their survival.  Derailing these threats requires coming up with ideas that don’t fit the pattern of other people’s thoughts — that is, thinking “outside the box” or “coloring outside the lines.” It means looking for the possible in the seemingly impossible, seeing things in new ways, questioning assumptions, encouraging innovative thinking. All of these things carry the risk of failure. But not to take this risk carries a bigger risk — the near certainty that your library will be closed and direct access to information resources will replace qualified knowledge workers.

When the time comes to take action, having as much information as possible reduces the risk by making it easier to predict the results accurately.  Libraries collect and analyze data from many sources both inside and outside the organization.  Not only can we facilitate side by side leadership in the library but we can be the primary facilitators of side by side leadership within our organizations.

We live by the doctrine of information being the essential ingredient in minimizing risk.  This is the basis of evidence based medicine.  Library leaders and functional teams should, however, avoid “analysis paralysis” — the compulsion to keep collecting and analyzing data rather than making a decision.  Information overload has been the death of many promising endeavors.

Breakthrough Leadership

Breakthrough Leadership or the ability to facilitate an innovative solution using collaborative teamwork is an intricate part of side by side leadership.   Five roles of side by side leadership are provided that include:

• Personal Leadership: Living in alignment with your own values and achieving breakthrough goals in your work.

• Interpersonal Leadership: Managing relationships in a way that enhances breakthrough performance.

• Knowledge Leadership: Influencing practices and methods inside and outside your organization through your knowledge and breakthrough ideas.

• Team Leadership: Successfully and efficiently leading teams and other small groups to achieve breakthrough performance and innovations.

• Organizational Leadership: Guiding whole organizations to breakthrough performance.

Rarely does one individual excel in all five roles. Since all roles are important for organizational breakthrough, library executive and management teams should be comprised of individuals who, together, excel in these five areas.

How can Library Leaders Help Facilitate Side by Side Leadership?

Training is a critical element of successful leadership.  Everyone should be trained in breakthrough team leadership skills so the skills can be modeled. Library leaders should also model the organization's culture and values. Leaders must always be looking for individuals who naturally think in terms of systems, business trends, and creative visualization of what can and should be. Nurture these people as they can become strategic and organizational leaders. Enable leaders to network with other leaders to encourage idea sharing and to gather data about trends and future developments. Guidelines such as these create and support breakthrough leadership development.

Create leadership development programs that identify the strongest dimension each leader or potential leader possesses. Then provide opportunities for continued growth in their areas of current strength, or in new leadership dimensions.  Professional coaching is a good way to achieve elements of this development.

Library leaders can help employees think creatively when they help individuals “own” their goals, provide opportunities for variety in their job and encourage experimentation without critical evaluation.  Employees must understand the big picture and know where their work fits into this picture.  Managers must take care to let the extreme achievers shine and take action to guard against overload and burnout of these star employees.  They must make sure their work is meaningful and that each individual has input into problem solving.

Side by side leadership is another opportunity for librarians to develop new leaders and develop the break though leadership in existing leaders needed to achieve more balanced and effective leaders.

References:

Csikszent, Mihaly (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

Leonard-Barton, Dorothy (1995). Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation.  Boston: Harper Business School Press.

Rogers, Everett (1995). Diffusion of Innovations (4th ed.). New York: Free Press.

Romig, Dennis (2001). Side by Side Leadership: Achieving Outstanding Results Together. Austin: Bard Press.

Wood, Robert E.; Mento, Anthony J.; and Locke, Edwin A. (1987). “Task complexity as a moderator of goal effects: a meta-analysis.” Journal of Applied Psychology 72 (3), 416-25.

Submitted by
Rosalind K. Lett, AHIP

Learning Opportunities from the Special Libraries Association

SLA offers a Virtual Learning Series of seminars which include web-based visuals and audio conferencing.  These seminars are each 1 ½ hours and may be registered by site, i.e., one fee per site rather than one fee per individual. Examples of upcoming seminars include:

• Building Communities of Practice (COPS) for Knowledge Exchange

• Keeping Current: Info Pro Secrets

• Meaningful Measurement Systems

To see a list of other future seminars, go to the web site at http://www.sla.org/content/Events/distance/virtsem2004/index.cfm where you will find titles, descriptions of content, and information about speakers.

Two recent offerings were:

• Business Planning: Building the Plan and the Buy-In

• The Visible Librarian: Asserting Your Value through Marketing and Advocacy

To see others from 2003, go to http://www.sla.org/content/Events/distance/virtsem2003/index.cfm.  Past courses included topics such as crisis communication, project management, and crucial conversations. Don’t despair if you see something interesting that you missed! Past seminars are each available at a reduced price in the form of a V-Pak which includes an audio tape of the session, hardcopy of handouts and instructions on how to access the Powerpoint presentation on the web.