Elisabeth Leonard on Libraries

Innovation: Hype and Heresy

I think about innovation. A lot. It is an admitted obsession. I think it started because I grew up afraid of my own shadow, but once I gained confidence, I wanted to make up for lost time! Yes, it has taken me years to figure out who I am and what I want from my life. And so, yes, I can’t then be surprised that libraries are taking as long as I have taken (if you think about the life of the library in Elisabeth years…). HOWEVER….
I am ready to see libraries and librarians take an active stance. I am tired of hearing us debate our future and not act on it. It feels like we are marching in place, rather than moving forward. And this is happening as new professionals leave the field because their ideas are not heard, as existing librarians have their salaries frozen and their job duties increased as positions are frozen or eliminated.
I want us to admit to our successes. I often hear “fail cheaply” given as innovation advice at library conferences. Look, if there is one thing librarians do not need to hear it is advice on frugality! We are innately good at that. So, I exhort you instead to think about succeeding extravagantly. Shout your success from the rooftops! It may seem immodest, but really, if we can’t brag about ourselves, who else wIll?

Organizational innovation
Organizations have personalities. You can tell when you visit libraries and talk to the staff how different one library can be from another. So what makes for a library strategically innovative?
• An explicit definition for innovation
• An organizational recognition that innovation is both a culture and a goal
• A shared mission and strategic direction
• Willingness to spend resources on innovation
• Training and support for existing staff
• Hiring new employees who want to be part of an innovative culture and who have talent to contribute

Let me talk about why and how these organizational documents are important. When I have interviewed librarians and middle managers about their organizational documents, many are unsure if innovation is mentioned anywhere. More telling is that many are unsure if their library has a mission statement or a strategic plan. If an organization wants to be clear about its direction and wants to have everyone work toward the strategic direction the leader has set, then that must be clearly and regularly communicated.
What does innovation mean at your organization? I have seen it mean anything “new” to anything that uses technology. For me, innovation is something new to your organization, including products, services, and processes, that adds value for your patron. The value piece is key. I have seen too many times when something is introduced in a library simply because another library has done it…and that idea maybe didn’t add in value locally, but it starts to spread because some library directors seem desperate to illustrate they too can change.

The strategic planning process itself illustrates a library’s personality and employees instinctively take away clues. A hierarchical and autocratic management structure is much less inclusive than a flat structure. If library management wants to believe that everyone in the library will be innovative and thinks that the managers will write and present a plan that says that…and then believe that they have created a culture of innovation, think again! Innovation in such an organization can exist, but it is much more likely to exist as pockets of innovation than as a library-wide pervasive culture of innovation.
Budget
Ideally, the organization’s administration is willing to put its money where its mouth is by allocating funding for new ideas that support the strategic plan. Here’s an idea for managers to try: let go of some control. Let everyone in the library present a plan for an idea and ask for funding for it. This is kind of like the business plan competitions you may see elsewhere on campus!

My tips:
• Reinforce positive behavior, even if the outcome is exactly what you personally wanted. Changing behavior takes time, so recognize the small steps that get us all there.
• Create opportunities. Find ways to give people a voice and ways to act on their ideas.
• Be intrepid.
• Look outside libraries for ideas. We can be too incestuous with ideas.
• Recognize when your idea is not the best and be willing to work to see someone else’s vision come to fruition.
• No one wants to lead…but no one wants to follow. We must do both.
• Be willing to have tough conversations, so create a safe environment where everyone can be heretical.
• Innovating can be threatening. Be kind to each other.
• In my innovation utopia, managers check when and how they say no….and employees do the same.
• Find your joy. This one comes from my grandfather who told me this when I was a teenager. Joy doesn’t come to you and chasing it is frustrating. Make finding joy a regular activity in your life.
• Breathe.

Why this long list? Because each part when added together creates a healthy whole, both organizationally and individually. We all are responsible for fertile soil, regardless of position in the library, age, gender, or years of experience. All ideas should be welcomed. Every library should be able to avoid the hype of innovation and instead find their way into a strategically placed future that demonstrates the real value of their library.

Want some research I have done that illustrates this?  Here are some figures from findings presented at the Conference for Entrepreneurial Librarians with my co-author Betsy Clementson, and which will soon be published in New Review of Information Networking.

Librarians' innovative characteristics

 

Comparing our sample to other results

 

The Rabina paper is very interesting!  If you haven't read it, take a look.  Rogers Diffusion of Innovations is a classic read and one of the most highly cited work in all the social sciences.  However, both these works look at consumers, while our research looked at organizational innovation. 

 

ALA Council

It's a funny thing to write constantly about the value of marketing and then feel unsettled when it comes to promoting one's on platform!  However, I am running for ALA Councilor at Large and I am proud to be running (even though it really does feel odd to post about it!).

Here's what you'll see, if you make your way through all the names on the ballot, about my position:

My focus, if elected to ALA Council, will be to make ALA processes and messages more representative. What makes ALA so powerful, its diverse membership, is also what can sometimes make it seem so impersonal and distant. Libraries are under pressure to demonstrate their value. There are lots of stakeholders willing to help, from publishers to librarians to ALA itself, but ALA’s unique position is one where it can help provide best practices and tools to help librarians better promote their value and the value of their library. I have worked for this throughout my career with librarians from all types of libraries. Currently, I listen to librarians and help find the path for publishers to us all reach our goals of making research more accessible. In the end, I hope I can offer ways for ALA to leverage all our individual voices for a greater common good.

Let me be clear.  I have worked for years in academic libraries and have taught library science students about libraries.   I have worked with public librarians, academic librarians, and corporate librarians. I am now working for a publisher to better the understanding we have about library needs and to help librarians communicate those needs to the publisher I am proud to work for -- and I remain a librarian, even though I am no  longer employed in a library.

Why run for Council?  Because ALA has the largest impact on all librarians of any U.S. organization and that impact should be as positive as we can all make it.  I continue to work as a librarian and want to continue to represent other librarians and their needs.  The voice ALA provides for us all is so vital that I would not be able to forgive myself I didn't try to be part of the process that I have sometimes criticized from the sidelines (or from the benches when I have been on an ALA committee and worried about positions ALA has taken).

They say is sales to always ask for the buy...so here goes!  Vote for me.  I promise to listen to what your concerns are and to passionately represent those concerns if elected.

With that out of the way, the ballot is full of talented people who I would be pleased and honored to see represent me...take the time to go through the ballot and vote!  I know it is long and that there are over 100 names on that section of the ballot, but as they say, only you can change the world!  Vote.

 

Discovery seems to have taken the library world by storm, and rightfully so! At a time when information proliferation and easy searching (Google) have led researchers to believe that information is more than a commodity, that it is a right, Ranganathan’s ideals seem easier to obtain. In this technological era, perhaps to every book its reader should become to every search its finder? After all, our attention seem to be focused on search, almost ignoring the purpose of the search, which is to find and then to use information. If discovery works, do we all start to have more time to think about information use, rather than information discovery? And if so, does that change how we produce and distribute information?

Leveraging what MTV knows about millennials

I have no idea what methodology MTV used or even how many people were included in their study, but according to a blog post in HBR today, MTV has some lessons to impart!  In a post called Millennials Are Playing With You, there are statements like Half of Millennials said "People my age see real life as a video game" and almost 6 out of 10 said "#winning is the slogan of my generation".

Now, while I rage against stereotypes, as I rarely feel like the stereotypes about MY generation fit ME, I think it is still worth contemplating if there are any generalizions that may be useful.  If it is true that "They see the workplace as a multiplayer game where power players can find the back door to the top floor; cell phone contracts are riddled with exploitable loopholes; and navigating the car purchasing experience is akin to advancing levels, with 'experience points' gained along the way."...should libraries and publishers talk to milennials differently?  Does it mean that we shouldn't engage with these students in a way that has them feeling that others see them as novices?  Alternately, does entering the scholarly game as a novice make students work harder...or do they just look for the easter eggs?  I admit that when I play games, if there is a tough game, I buy the guide that includes mapping out the levels AND provides the loopholes!  If that is common with millennials, than shouldn't we all do more to create meaningful guides, guides that acknowledge the oddities of our game and that then provide a way for students to engage differently...to engage meaningfully and without having the perception of "cheating"?

 

Entrepreneurship and libraries

If you haven't heard, one of my big concerns for libraries is how library managers manage innovation.  In many organizations, innovation can translate into almost anything that seems bright and shiny, a notion that doesn't address my definition that includes adding customer focused value.  In other libraries, entrepreneurship is the catch word for innovation...and it can mean everyone moving in different directions, all doing very cool things, but without any joint stratetegic goal. 

Knowing that is my point of view, imagine my excitement when I saw:

This article examines the strategic role of middle managers in the corporate entrepreneurial
process from an attention-based perspective. By integrating literatures from multiple disciplines,
the authors delineate the attention-based effects on how middle managers provide the
impetus for different types of entrepreneurial opportunities (i.e., exploratory vs. exploitative
initiatives). Specifically, middle managers, constrained by the attention structures of the firm,
likely prescreen entrepreneurial opportunities from lower organizational levels and attend
primarily to those that align with the strategic orientation of the firm. This tendency may be
moderated by the presence of other players, middle managers’ structural positions, and the
availability of slack resources. Moreover, in their efforts to sell initiatives to top management,
middle managers may leverage “policy windows”—patterned regularities and irregularities in
and around the organization—to exploit existing attention structures to their advantage or
perhaps to dismantle those structures.

Charlotte R. Ren and Chao Guo.  Middle Managers' Strategic Role in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Process: Attention-Based Effects.  Journal of Management, Novemeber 2011.

I was especially struck by the last sentence, which focuses on how middle managers are selling the ideas to top managers. What impact do historical policies and precedents play in moving ideas forward? The authors suggest that middle managers can leverage a situation "by turning existing attention structures to their advantage or even dismantling those attention structures. For example, when a predictable policy window opens in a defender organization, middle managers who want to sell exploratory initiatives can package their initiatives to conform to the strategic orientation of their organization, that is, as exploitative, to increase their odds of success."

OK, I know many people are almost allergic to management, management theory, and management advice....but let's face it...anyone who manages, must understand the political landmines and the opportunities within an organization in able to be impactful.  This is not opportunism, it is a social and organizational reality.  What is difficult is figuring out which structures matter and then determining how you will work with what you find.  I spoke at the Charleston Conference in early November and mentioned that one way to help your idea succeed is to learn the language of your manager....and to really sell your idea, combine their native language with a sprinking of references to the strategic plan (assuming you have an active strategic plan), can really make a difference to how your manager receives your idea. 

We all want to see good ideas become actionable.  For librarians with a entrepreneurial bent, having a middle manager who can act as a champion (or as initiative sellers) for that idea, and who understands the organization well enough to move the idea forward to action...that is invaluable!!