PVLD Director's Blog

Confronting the "yuck"

PVLD is in the process of developing a new Strategic Plan with the coaching and support of business consultant Patty Minor.  Among other things, Patty is teaching us to cast a critical (in the best sense of the term) eye on everything we do, and to have the courage to "call out" things that need to be changed or stopped.  It's not an easy process, especially in a management team that wants to be "nice".  We're learning that "nice "isn't such a good thing when it is a way of avoiding difficult issues or conversations, and that a truly strong team is one that finds ways to improve across organizational boundaries...even when that means delivering constructive feedback to your colleagues or your boss.

With thoughts about this learning process on my mind, I found two blog posts that I read over the last couple of days particularly relevent. 

The first, Never avoid the yuck from the Slow Leadership blog is a wonderful articulation of how important it is for leaders to confront the "yuck" (the stuff you'd rather avoid knowing about) if we, and our organizations, are going to grow and improve.  I found the three questions posed by the author at the end of the post very helpful...especially the second one!

• What issues in your workplace are you trying to pretend don’t exist?
• What questions do you really, really not want to hear the answers to? Go ask them!
• Do you want to run a ‘stupidest thing we do around here’ competition?

This morning I read this post on my friend Fran Pullara's Sacred Ordinary blog.  I had never heard of Michael Josephson until I read Fran's post, but his essay "It's Not Easy" really struck a chord in light of the work the PVLD leadership team is doing.  It's about the challenge of being a person of integrity and character, but it's also true for organizations... and also talks about the importance of being honest with ourselves and others.

It's not easy, but it sure is worth the effort.

He's right...it's not easy, but it is definitely worthwhile 

Practical wisdom

This video of Barry Schwartz speaking to the recent TED conference takes about 20 minutes - but is well worth the investment of time.  I found his insights into what constitutes "practical wisdom" and the folly of using rules and incentives to try to direct human behavior both thought-provoking and inspiring.  It gave me another conceptual framework to explain my instinctive dislike of incentive-based compensation systems.  It also reinforced my commitment to transforming a library (and by that I mean most libraries, not just PVLD) culture that has a long tradition of trying to manage the behavior of our customers using rules and incentives (albeit reverse incentives in the form of fines) into one that has the minimum number of rules necessary for efficient operation buttressed by employees that have the authority to apply their practical wisdom to solve the problems they are faced with in their everyday work. 

(And thanks to my friend Eileen for leading me to the video!)

The Leader's Prayer

From the Execupundit blog

What should be the number one daily prayer of leaders?  Lord, don't let me make things worse.

Now that's a prayer I can relate to!

The Importance of School Libraries

Yesterday my husband emailed me this story from Sunday's New York Times about the changing role of school librarians and the role that a qualified school library media specialist (a term that usually refers to someone with both a teaching credential and a Master's degree in library/information science) can play in teaching the information literacy skills that are so important in today's digital age.

The NY Times story particularly resonated for me because our local school district just announced the layoffs of all of the part-time library aides who run the school libraries at all of the PV elementary schools. In practical terms this means that effective April 1st the elementary school libraries, which like those in many California schools have long been staffed entirely by part-time paraprofessional aides rather than professionaly qualified librarians, will either be entirely unstaffed or staffed by parent volunteers.

The announcement of the layoffs was accompanied by a statement from the School Superintendent (whom I like and respect, and who is having to make very difficult decisions in the face enormous fiscal challenges) to the effect that school libraries "are not core to the educational program".  Ouch!

There is a very large body of research that demonstrates a direct correlation between access to good quality school libraries and educational achievement, and that demonstrates the educational value that a qualified school library media specialist can provide in terms of curriculum support and information literacy education.  Properly staffed and funded, a school library can be at the very heart of the educational program.

I have no criticism of the soon-to-be laid off library aides in PV - they are talented people who do a great job encouraging reading and providing access to books and other educational resources with little training, limited access to professional support, and scant funding.  I've thought for a long time, however, that much more could be achieved if they were supported by a qualified school library media specialist at the District level.  Now it is clear that even that will be a distant dream.

In the meantime we are expecting that our usage will go up as students and parents turn to the public libraries for homework support...we just wish we were better equipped to help.  Our staff resources are already stretched with current programs and rising library use, and while our librarians are outstanding they are not trained educators and lack the pedagogical knowledge that a school library media specialist brings.  We also lack the relationships with individual teachers and the "on the ground" knowledge of what is being taught in the classroom that are a product of daily interactions on the school site.

While I fully understand the fiscal crisis facing the schools, I can't help but wish that something other than the school libraries were the first vicitms.

Questions for a rainy Friday

Sometimes the fates conspire to send you the message you need to hear!  I ama fan of the Possibility Virus blog , which always in addition to motiviational articles usually includes several thought-provoking questions.  Two questions in today's post really spoke to me as I read them during a break from clawin through a way-too-long "to do list and trying to squeeze more commitments into an already jammed calendar -

• If I was to examine your calendar, or to track how you spent your time ... what conclusion would I draw about what matters to you?
  
• What's the gap between your proclaimed priorities and reality?

Good questions to ponder during the rainy weekend to come....on first reflection I'm not sure I like the answers!

Feedback to Warm a Library Director's heart

We have a terrific staff here at PVLD, and they work very hard to provide outstanding service to our customers.  Despite our best efforts we occasionally slip up, and when we do it's usually pointed out pretty quickly. The same isn't always true when it comes to incidents of great service.  That's why three messages I received today were so appreciated.

The first was an email from a customer who had been helped by Young Readers Librarian Linda Flint which said -

Thanks very much for the detailed feedback. I appreciate your department's thorough consideration of my request.

 

I am grateful to know of the support for Early Literacy Skills through programs offered by the library and look forward to taking part in some of them.

 

I thank you also for the compilation of the existing library DVDs that support early reading skills.

 

I appreciate your time and efforts on my behalf and the openness of your Department in treating the inquiries of a patron. Not only that, but your second effort to provide me with some helpful alternatives is much appreciated.

 

I am sharing this e-mail with the director of the library so that she will be aware that you, Ms. Flint, and your Department headed by Ms. Henry are functioning at a high level and serving the interests of the patrons of the library.

 

That was followed by an email from a library "regular" with glowing praise for a classical music concert organized by our newest librarian, Ashley Burdick.

 

And if that weren't enough, late this afternoon I received a voicemail from a very appreciative customer who had through a series of unfortunate circumstances racked up a substantial bill for a lost book, which she subsequently found.  Unemployed, desparately seeking a job, and in difficult financial circumstances she called to see if she could get any relief from having to pay the full amount owed the library.  Assistant Circulation Manager Melissa Little was able (within our policy framework) to assist her, and you could tell from the emotion in her voice how meaningful this was as she told me that she thinks the Palos Verdes Library District is "the best ever".

 

Of course Linda, Ashley, and Melissa are only three of 80 outstanding employees, every one of whom contributes to providing great service to our customers but few of whom get recognized....but I am very grateful for them all. 

 

The saying "people are our most important resource" has become a cliche, but it really is true.  That's why as we face our budget challenges I will be doing everything in my power to make sure that we don't take actions that cause damage to what I think is our most valuable asset - the employees who work so hard to provide outstanding library services to our community.

 

 

Budget challenges

We are putting the finishing touches on the PVLD "mid-year" budget, which will be presented to the Board of Trustees next week.  PVLD operates on a July 1-June 30 fiscal year, and each January we take a look at our actual revenues and expenses for the first half of the year and then make adjustments to our budget to reflect any circumstances that were unforeseen when the budget was approved the previous spring.  We also update our forecast for the next fiscal year to give us a more realistic sense of what our financial future looks like.

The good news is that despite some pluses and minuses in individual budget line items, we are forecasting that we will end the current fiscal year with a very slightly larger than anticipated surplus thanks to some great work by the staff to cut costs and to some unexpected grants and other income.  This will allow us to fund all necessary capital maintenance projects this year and next.

The bad news is that as we look to 2009/2010 we have cut back our forecast of anticipated property tax revenue and are facing inflationary cost increases in a number of areas.  The result is that we are currently facing a projected deficit of $124,000 in 09/10, will barely meet our minimum reserve policy, and will not have enough to fund necessary capital maintenance projects in 2010/2011.  And even if the economy and housing markets improve in the next year or so, the current decline in the stock market almost certainly means higher pension costs in 2011/2012 and beyond.

On the (somewhat) brighter side, coming up with $124,000 in additional revenues and/or cost savings for next year won't be easy, but it's less than 2% of our total budget...and we are much better off than many other organizations.

Recently I attended a meeting of about 25 Library Directors from the greater Los Angeles area, most of whom reported that they are being asked by their jurisdictions (unlike PVLD and Buena Park most public libraries are part of city or county government) to cut their budgets by anywhere from 5% to 15%....targets that are almost impossible to achieve without significant cuts to staff and services.

That was followed by a conversation last Friday with State Librarian Susan Hildreth, who was at work despite the fact that like other State employees she and all of the other State Library staff were technically on furlough and not being paid.

At lunchtime today I heard our local School Superintendent, Walker Williams, talk about the huge budget cuts the School District is facing in the current fiscal year, which have already resulted in the issuing of layoff notices to many of the non-classroom staff including all of the library and technology aides in the elementary schools, with many more layoffs to come.  

The grim news from the School District was followed by seeing  this notice on the Buena Park Library District blog  announcing reductions in employee pay and benefits this fiscal year.

My conclusion?  Based on what we know today we certainly have a challenge ahead of us, but it's not an insurmountable one.  This spring we're working on a new strategic plan, which will certainly include finding ways to raise revenues and making careful choices about how we spend our money...and knowing how creative our employees are I think we'll find a way to close the budget gap without significantly reducing services and without making employees bear the burden in their paychecks.

Of course if the State decides to "borrow" our property tax revenues as a way of solving their budget mess, or the impact of the stock market decline on our pension costs comes sooner than 2010/11, then the challenge will be much greater and all bets are off.  In the meantime we'll be doing verything we can to negotiate these very tricky waters.

Too Busy to Blog

I'm coming to the end of an insanely busy couple of weeks - work-related commitments in the community every day (including weekends) and most evenings; lots of legislative issues requiring my attention in my capacity as Chair of the California Library Association Legislative Committee; and the start of important planning activities for PVLD (new Strategic Plan, rethinking of our fundraising plan, and preparation of our 09/10 budget in the face of lots of fiscal pressures) that require lots of preparation, meetings, and discussion; and the list goes on....

The result is that it has been more than a week since I last posted to this blog - which I think is the longest stretch without a post since I started it.  That doesn't seem like a big deal, but to me it is a critical indicator of my effectiveness, since it reflects the fact that I have not had the time to read and reflect that is necessary not just to write a good blog post, but to be a good leader.  In my view it's not a good thing when I get so caught up in dealing with the immediate and urgent (even, or maybe even especially, if the immediate and urgent includes working on strategies and long-term plans) that I don't have time to look at and think about what is going on in the wider world.

Today, though, I finally got a chance to catch up on reading a few things I'd tucked away for future reference and was struck by this post from Seth Godin's blog.  If my personal experience is anything to go by, he sure hit the nail on the head in terms of the importance of what he calls "process knowledge" versus "domain knowledge."  The work of a Library Director is almost entirely about "managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities."

You need to know enough about the "library domain" to make good choices and decisions, but being an expert reference librarian is not what it takes to be successful.  What has been most useful to me in this job has been the process knowledge gained in my 20 years in non-library corporate management, not what I learned in library school.  And some of the domain knowledge that is most useful is not from the library domain at all, but from fields like fundraising, marketing, and business.

In a strange way, reading Seth's blog post made me feel better about the craziness of the last couple of weeks which, when I look back, have been almost entirely about "process" as he defines it, but now I'm looking forward to (hopefully) getting a bit more time to read and think about "domain" stuff related to libraries and what they need to be and become...and to sharing some of those thoughts more often on this blog.