PVLD Director's Blog

Congratulations to our new State Librarian Stacey Aldrich!

I just heard that my friend and colleague Stacey Aldrich has been appointed the new State Librarian of California.  Stacey has been in the acting State Librarian since her predecessor, Susan Hildreth, left to become the Director of the Seattle Public Library last spring.  I'm thrilled!

Stacey, at the relatively young age of 39, has nearly 20 years of library experience as well as training and experience as a professional Futurist. 

I've had the pleasure of getting to know Stacey as a fellow mentor on the Eureka Leadership program and through working together on several taskforces.  She is energetic, smart, politically astute, and a lot of fun.

Her passion for exploring the further horizons of the future and trying to understand what it means for libraries, her commitment to nurturing the next generation of library leaders, and her commitment to finding ways to unite libraries across this large and diverse state are just what California needs right now and I am looking forward to working with her as she takes on this challenging task.

Congratulations Stacey!

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Thank you Stephen Abram for sharing this l"manifesto" from the Canadian design firm Bruce Mau Design.  What a rich source of perspectives and ideas...I suspect it is one of those lists, like the Cluetrain Manifesto, that I will come back to again and again, and each time different elements will resonate. 

Today #3 - Process is more important than outcome really struck a nerve and helped me realize why some recent activities have been less productive than I had hoped.  I need to remember that if the process is sound, the outcome will be right even if it is not the exact outcome I set out to achieve.

I also loved #16's description of collaboration, in all its messiness and hope and #25's admonition "Don't clean your desk" made me feel a whole lot better about taking off for the Eureka Institute tomorrow and leaving behind piled up desk!

What really resonated with you?

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how we approach every project.

1. Allow events to change you.You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good.Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome.When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep.The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study.A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift.Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere.John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader.Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas.Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12. Keep moving.The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down.Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool.Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions.Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate.The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ____________________.Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18. Stay up late.Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor.Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself.If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools.Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software.The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk.You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages.Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
28. Make new words.Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty.Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
31. Don’t borrow money.Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully.Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips.The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster.This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate.Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat.When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge.Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields.Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh.People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember.Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people.Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

Rivers, Rocks, and Perspective

First, thank you to all who have expressed concern and support following my post last Friday.  I know some people have questioned why I would write something like that because it portrayed PVLD in a less than favorable light and also had a level of emotional content that people are not used to reading in a library blog.

The answer is that I write the blog for seveal reasons - to help me process my own thinking about what is happening at PVLD,in the library world in general, and in my own leadership practice; to provide transparency about the library, both the great things our staff achieve and the challenges we face, to our stakeholders (the community, staff, and supporters); and to give the community insight into the workings of an organization that they support with their tax dollars, donations, and time.    My blog is not intended to be a PR tool to just promote good news about the library, and Friday's post reflected all of these objectives. 

That said, I had an opportunity this weekend both to get a bit of a break and to reflect some more on what is going on here at PVLD.  Upon reflection I think that my analogy of rocks in a river was sound and that we certainly are feeling the stress of falling water levels, exposed rocks, and more turbulence.  I also realized, though, that the rocks look bigger when you are on the river than when you are sitting on the bank...and even smallish rocks can look pretty enormous if you find yourself out of the canoe and actually in the water.

To continue the analogy, last week felt like I fell out of the canoe.  I was feeling more stressed than I have at any other time in my 5 1/2 years at PVLD for lots of reasons, only some of them work-related. I was also feeling more tired than usual after a couple of months of intense work and more than the usual outside-of-business hours work commitments.  The result was that I felt like I had fallen out of the canoe and like I was bouncing around in the current and barely keeping my head above water...and as a result the rocks I was seeing an bumping into seemed enormous.

Over the weekend I got myself out of the water and onto the riverbank, and the rocks don't look nearly as big from that perspective.  I was able to confirm that I had done nothing wrong in sharing information about potential MOU changes with employees; had my bruises healed with an outpouring of support from my Board, friends, and colleagues; and realized that both PVLD and I are strong enough to navigate these rough waters.

Am I still concerned about the financial pressures we face? Absolutely.  Our revenues continue to deteriorate, and while the borrowing of local property tax revenues seems to be off the table for now, it could re-emerge as a threat in an instant if the Legislature is not able to reach agreement on a budget or at any time after a budget is adopted given that the State's financial situation continues to deteriorate....but we'll navigate that waterfall when we come to it.

Am I still concerned about the union's comment that I should not talk to employees about possible changes in MOU conditions - yes, but I'm not going to let that fundamentally change my leadership style or my basic personality.  If we need to "shoot the rapids" of a fiscal emergency we'll work together as a PVLD team to do it in a way that inflicts the minimum possible pain on all concerned.

The biggest lesson for me is that I need to find a way to keep myself out of the water.  I can't let myself get so stressed that I lose the perspective of being able to accurately size up the rocks in the river and work with the staff to deal with them.  I need more time on the riverbank and less time in the canoe - after all we have a talented and dedicated management team that is quite capable of steering the canoe without me!

With that I am off for a few days of vacation, and after that I have promised myself to do much better at taking the breaks I need.  If I'm not in the office,or available by email,  or out in the community as much as I have been in the past it will be because I'm taking some time to rest on the river bank.

I'll be back next week...hopefully in better spirits...

Rocks in the River

I sometimes think that managing an organization is like steering a canoe down a river.  When times are good and resources are abundant it's like being on a river that is full of water and flowing freely.  In those times you need to keep your eyes ahead and look for bends and you may encounter patches of still water that require everyone to paddle harder, but generally you can plot your course and steer accordingly without much fear of hitting major obstacles.

When times are tough it is like the water level in the river drops and all of the sudden rocks that had been submerged start showing.  Now instead of focusing on the bends and curves downstream you also have to be very alert to the rocks that might be right in front of you and the turbulence they cause.

Here at PVLD the rocks are starting to show.  Sometimes they are inefficient work practices that were acceptable when resources were abundant and are now barriers to getting things done.  Sometimes they are policies that no one paid attention to but that seem absurd when exposed.  Sometimes they are working relationships that were strained even in good times but tear apart completely when they hit the rough water.  Sometimes they are work performance issues that could be tolerated in good times but are intolerable in the more stressful environment. 

Most of the time the rocks can be addressed - streamline the work practice, change the policy, address the work relationship or performance issues, etc.

But sometimes they are so big that they challenge the very way you lead the organization.

This week I hit one of those, and I'm still bleeding.

On Wednesday we had a meeting with union representatives to discuss options for dealing with the financial situation we are in and, in particular, the uncertainty about whether the State will borrow our property tax revenues.  It's no secret to anyone who's watched my body language or who follows me on Twitter or Facebook that I was upset and disappointed by that meeting.

People may think "She's just upset that she didn't get what she wanted."  It is true that I am very disappointed that a proposal that I think was fair to employees and bought us some time to deal with the fiscal crisis was rejected without even giving the affected employees an opportunity to consider it, but that's how these things go sometimes and the union is accountable for its own decisions.

What really hit me hard was that the union informed me that the employee presentations that I made a couple of weeks ago, during which I explained the budget situation and talked about what I saw as some of the options for addressing it including things that I clearly stated would need to be negotiated and agreed with the union, was in their view an unfair bargaining practice.  This was certainly not my intent.  I was just trying to keep employees informed about the situation, help them understand the cost structure of the organization, and give my views on the kinds of employment actions being taken by other organizations and widely reported in terms of whether they would be effective at PVLD.  I clearly identified those that I understood to be subject to union negotiation.

 I was told that all discussion of employment terms and conditions governed by our Memorandum of Understanding must be held with union representatives and not employees, and the unspoken implication was that to do otherwise  would expose me to a charge of unfair labor practices.

This hit me like a punch in the stomach, and it has taken me a couple of sleepless nights and a couple of days of hard thinking and reflection to understand why.

Not being able to  to talk to Bargaining Unit employees below the management level will certainly require a change to my leadership style, which tends towards trying to share as much information as possible, but I've worked in that environment before and I can certainly do it.

What I am finding truly agonizing is that 1/2 of the PVLD Management Team are, for some reason shrouded in the fog of history, in the same Bargaining Unit as the other employees.

When I arrived at PVLD 5 1/2 years ago I found a divided management staff.  The "non-represented" Managers who handle the administrative functions of the District (Finance, HR, Facilities, and IT) were clearly treated differently/better than the managers of the library operations departments (Adult Services, Branches, Circulation, Technical Services, Young Readers Services) who were responsible for delivering the services at the core of our mission,  supervise the vast majority of our employees, and have the greatest influence on how our customers and our community perceive the library.

The "administrative" Managers were clustered (sequestered really) in the "admin corridor", which had its own kitchen area, restricted access, and the aura of an executive office.  The Finance Director and Library Director developed and managed the budget with little input or involvement from the "library service" managers.  Management meetings that included both groups were rare.

For the past 5 1/2 years I have worked very hard to create a single leadership team that encompasses both the administrative and library service functions and works together to create and execute the strategic vision for the organization.  We've changed the budgeting process to give every Department Manager more involvement in and accountability for the budget for their department.  We meet regularly as a Management Team.  We introduced a new Strategic Planning process that engaged the entire Management Team along with the Board of Trustees in developing the Strategic Plan. And along the way the fact that 1/2 of the team members were subject to a different system of employment was submerged as we worked together to steer the PVLD canoe towards the future.

On Wednesday that boulder became exposed, and I smacked into it with devastating results.

The reality is that at a time when PVLD needs unity of leadership more than ever, I can't engage 1/2 of the Management Team (the ones who provide leadership to most of our employees) in helping think through options and scenarios for addressing our budget deficit if those options and scenarios include changes to the MOU (and of course many of them do).  Those options and scenarios could have a profound impact on our financial situation, our services, how we are perceived and supported by the people we serve and who pay our salaries, and on employee morale and we will be making decisions without the input of the Managers who are responsible for providing our core services.

Even more significantly to me is that the force of impact of this boulder has made a huge crack in our efforts to create a single, unified leadership team and I'm not sure how we're going to glue it back together when the water levels rise again and the turbulence subsides.  It is breaking me apart that I can't share information or get input on critical issues with people whose opinions I respect enormously, and that I now in effect have to go back to having a two-tiered management team.

It also means that I can no longer pretend that PVLD is fundamentally different from (and better than) city and county libraries where the Director and in some cases a handful of others are "executive management" and the library service managers are "middle management" whose interests are assumed to be different.  We're not.

One of the things that I love most about what we have built at PVLD is the sense of "one team" across our three libraries, between the Board and staff, between PVLD and the Friends, and across department boundaries.  It's not perfect, and frictions and disagreements do emerge, but we have come so far together.  This is the first time in 5 1/2 years that something has come up that I feel truly threatens that achievement, and it is literally making me sick.

It is also something that I can do little to nothing about.  Those who know me know that I am always looking for how we can address issues and move forward, and so not being able to "fix" this situation is very uncomfortable.

I'm going to need some time to think about whether I have the will, the desire, and the strength to push forward in an this environment, and whether I am prepared to accept the restrictions on my leadership behavior.  I love this community and this staff, but I know from past experience painfully gained that I do not want to work in an environment of "us and them."  If I can't figure out how to move this boulder, I may be the one who needs to move.

I certainly have no intention of not honoring my employment contract with PVLD, but for the first time since I came here I am seriously thinking about my options once it comes to an end.

With that sobering thought I am looking forward getting out of the water for a few days as I visit family next week and rest and reflect.  Keep me in your thoughts.

Wishful thinking

I've been working very hard to share as much information as possible about the financial pressures we face, and the options I think we have to address them, with PVLD employees, other stakeholders, and the community.  At the same time I've been trying to maintain and portray a positive and optimistic outlook in the face of these very trying times. 

Upon reflection I realized that the model I've been using is one I learned from my several mentors who have a military leadership background, and that is exemplified in this video of Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore, who wrote We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (as an aside, I found the video on Michael Hyatt's blog after Googling "leadership and accountability"...you can see what's on my mind!)

As you can see from the video, one of the key elements of this model of leadership is the need for the leader to inspire confidence and a determination to prevail despite the odds.

The problem, as I've painfully learned over the past couple of days, is that efforts to inspire confidence can have the unintended consequence of shielding people in the organization from the harsh reality of a situation which in turn can lead to wishful thinking that is disconnected from that reality.  My guess is that on an actual battlefield this is not the issue it can be in a non-combat situation....when bullets are flying and bodies are falling the reality of the situation is pretty clear to everyone, and the leader's efforts to inspire confidence are clearly understood to be within that reality.

Here at PVLD I think many people have not yet come to grips with the difficult situation we are in, and I worry that my attempts to put a positive face on things have contributed.  While I want to be positive, I also want to be honest, so here are some of the "wishful thoughts" I am hearing and my take on the actual situation.

Wishful thought #1 - If we can only avoid the borrowing of our property taxes under Proposition 1a we'll be fine

Reality - The 2009/2010 budget adopted by the Board of Trustees (without any Proposition 1a impacts) is barely balanced.  We do not meet our reserve policy requirements, and we do not fully fund our upcoming capital maintenance needs.  We only achieved this results by making significant cuts to services and by asking the Friends of the Library to double their level of support.  The 09/10 budget reflects a 1% growth in revenue but a 1.4% growth in expenses compared to this fiscal year, with the "salaries and related" expenses that comprise over 71% of the budget growing at twice the rate of our revenue.

Furthermore, if our estimates of our property tax revenue for 08/09 prove to be off  when we get our final numbers in August (e.g. because of increased defaults), we could start 2009/2010 with less money than we thought and move into a deficit situation.  The projection for 2010/2011 shows a further deficit of as much as $175,000 in the operating budget, with no money available for capital maintenance needs.

We need to continue to find ways to cut expenses, and it is hard to see how we can achieve the savings we need without reining in salary and related expenses.

Wishful thought #2- We need to continue to cut services instead of affecting employee compensation.

Reality - We have already made cuts that have a significant impact on our customers.  We've eliminated databases, cut the budget for books/movies/audiobooks etc by 20%, increased fees, and next year the library will be open 250 hours fewer than it was this year.  Some of these changes actually benefit staff or reduce workload (e.g librarians get off work at 8 instead of 9, fewer purchases means less cataloging and processing).  It is not reasonable to expect the community to continue to bear the brunt of the financial situation.

Also, service cuts that don't deliver real cost savings don't help much.  For example, further cuts to library hours only make sense if we also cut salary and related costs proportionally, which means salary cuts.  We can continue to cut the materials budget, but at some point the associated reduction in staff workload also needs to be addressed.

Wishful thought #3 - We serve an affluent community, surely they can afford to provide more support

Reality - This community is more diverse and less generally affluent than it seems.  Many families, including some on our own staff, are stretching their resources to the limit inorder to live here and take advantage of the excellent schools.  The population is also aging, and a large number of residents are people who bought their homes back in the 60s and 70s when prices were low, retired from not-particularly high-paying jobs, and now live on modest pensions, Social Security payments that will not be increased for the first time in decades, and investments that are very much depleted.

Our community is also not unaffected by the general economic circumstances.  10% of all Californians are unemployed and that includes many of our residents.  Many residents own businesses that are struggling or even failing. Many have seen the value of their homes, the money they have saved for their children's college educations, and their retirement funds decline significantly.  Many of those who remain employed are losing employer funding of their retirement plans, paying substantially more for their medical benefits than we do, being furloughed, or experiencing pay cuts.  Is it realistic, or even fair, to ask them to suchion us from experiencing any financial impact?

Plus, residents already support the library financially at a much higher level than do most other communities.  Our local public revenue per capita is nearly three times the California average, which allows us to have a staff to population served ratio much larger than that of other communities. We also charge fees for services that in many other communities are free such as movie, audiobook, and video game rentals.  In addition, our hardworking Friends of the Library group will be providing an astounding 6% of our funding next year, and over 200 community volunteers give over 27,000 hours of their time each year.

That is an amazing level of support, and I don't think we can reasonably ask for much more in the short term.

Wishful thought #4 - We have money in the Gift Fund, and the Friends have money in their reserves.  Let's just use that to get us through the crisis.

Reality - Both the Gift Fund balance and the Friends reserves were accumulated over many years and are there not only to help in the event of a rainy day (and we all agree that it is raining!) but to support the long-term needs of the District to expand and enhance facilities, technology, and services.  This coming year we are already drawing on both reserves - as already mentioned the Friends are doubling their level of support, and we are drawing on Gift Fund monies in 09/10 for some of our Strategic Plan initiatives as well as for some of our capital maintenance needs.

Furthermore, according to a report on the radio this morning, California is experiencing the worst recession since the Great Depression and we are unlikely to see any significant improvement in the economy until the end of 2010.  Property values are likely to decline further, and to remain stagnant for years so we can't count on any increases to our core revenue source for a long time. If we spend all of our "rainy day" funds this year and next we could be in real trouble down the road.

Depressing as they are, these are the realities of our situation.  That is why I keep saying that I am trying to find ways to keep as many options open as possible, so we are not backed into a corner where we have to inflict a lot of pain on employees or the community.  I also want to find solutions that "share the pain" rather than having a disproportionate impact on the community vs employees, or on one group of employees over another.  I am already concerned that the cuts we have made so far are directly impacting the pay of our part-time hourly employees, many of whom rely on their modest incomes to pay for medical care, go to school, or supplement small retirement incomes.

On the positive side we have managed to get this far without experiencing the pain many in other libraries and other communities are already feeling.  We also have an amazing staff who I know can and will pull together to help us get through the next few rough years and continue to provide the levels of service that will sustain our community and secure their continued support...but this is only possible if we have a shared understanding of the reality of the situation.

Tough times, tough choices

The budget situation for the State of California, and by extension for local governments like PVLD is grim and getting grimmer.  We are faced with continued declines in assessed property values, resulting in flattening or even declining property tax revenues, as well as the near certainty that the State will "borrow" local property tax revenues.

The PVLD staff have already trimmed nearly 10% from our 09/10 budget, and it now looks like we need to cut another 10%.  We've already cut our budget for online databases and for library materials, left several vacant positions unfilled, reduced the budget for staff training, and tightened our belts in a number of other areas...and now it looks like we need to cut as much as an additional $700,000.

My job is to work with staff and the Board of Trustees to come up with a budget that does the least harm to the greatest number of stakeholdersin the short-term while protecting the health and vitality of the library district in the long term.

I've been having some sleepless nights a I wrestle with the tough choices that need to be made.  I don't see any way of balancing the budget without cuts to library open hours; further reductions to the budget for books and other library materials; and higher overdue, DVD rental, meeting room rental, and other fees.  

This will result in reduced services and higher "out of pocket" costs for library users just when they need us most, as evidenced by the rapid growth in library use.  This fiscal year-to-date (July 08 through April 09) PVLD's door count is up 20%, our circulation of library books and other materials is up 16%, and attendance at our programs and events is up 12% compared to the same period last year.

It also will result in hardship for our staff as we will need to freeze compensation; and consider unpaid furloughs to align staffing costs with reduced library open hours; and continue to freeze non-essential vacant positions at the same time that the staff is working harder than ever to keep up with the demand for services, we are asking them to do more to support revenue-generating activities such as the Passport Service, and we are already short-staffed in a number of areas.

As a leader one of my goals (actually I see it as a duty!) is to do all of this without losing community support for the library or hurting staff morale.  This is what keeps me up at night.

My husband manages the Manhattan Beach Library, which is one of the 84 libraries in the Los Angeles County Library System so he is a fairly small cog in a very large wheel.  Not having much influence can be frustrating and most of the time I wouldn't trade my job for his, but this morning we were talking about the budget challenges and he said something like "I guess I'll wait and see what comes down from Library Headquarters, since there's nothing I can do about the situation".  At that moment not being the one who has to make the hard choices seemed pretty good to me! 

Hope for the future of libraries

This past Wednesday I had the privelege of attending the one year reunion meeting of the Southern California area Eureka Fellows.  The Eureka Leadership program is sponsored by the California State Library as a means of developing future library leaders. Eureka Fellows are selected through  competitive applications process for a year-long leadership development process that starts with a 5-day intensive leadership institute followed by completion of a major grant-funded project over the course of the next year with opportunities for mentoring and follow-up coaching along the way.  I had the privilege of serving as a mentor for the first cohort of Eureka fellows a year ago, and Wednesday's event was the culmination of their journey.  PVLD was also fortunate to have two staff members - Branch Manager Jennifer Addington and Circulation Manager Eve Wittenmyer - selected as Eureka Fellows.

On Wednesday  the participants gave presentations on their projects to their Library Directors and the Eureka facilitators.  I was blown away by both the quality of the work they have done and the marked development in their confidence as leaders.  I knew last year that this was a special bunch of people, and seeing them at the end of the Eureka process reinforced just how special they all are.  The future of libraries is in very good hands!

Apart from the pride I felt watching the presentations, every single one of them gave me a new idea or inspiration.  All of these presentations should be up soon on the Eureka blog soon, but here are some highlights -

• Irma Morales of the Orange Public Library reported on her project to capture the history of the barrio where her branch library is located.  As part of the project she hosted a day-long event where community members were encouraged to share photos for addition to the local history collection, learn about little-known parts of the community's history such as the role it played in desegration of Mexican-Americans, and share their experiences.  What a great way to involve the community in developin local history resources!
• Thea Blair of the Mission Viejo Public Library talked about her project to install a low-vision reader and adaptive workstation for the visually impaired to meet the needs of her aging community.  I had never thought of reaching out to the Lion's Club as a partner to help us serve the visually impaired, but when Thea reminded us of their interest in vision issues it made perfect sense....
• Robin Isaacson of the San Diego County Public Library named her project "Words Gone Wild" and talked about how she is using a new online catalog interface to as she put it "free cataloging information from the constraints of the MARC record" and allow people to search the catalog in ways that make sense to them.  It was a great articulation of why the whole concept of "social cataloging" is important.
• Our own Eve and Jennifer reported on their "Culture Quake" project to transform PVLD's customer service.  For me the eye-opener was how much they've accomplished without me even really knowing what they were up to!  I'm looking forward to seeing the customer service wiki that they have in development.
• Cheryl Eberly of Santa Ana Public Library gave a moving and inspirational talk about her "Circle of Mentoring" project that connects at-risk youth with adult mentors, and also gives the youth the opportunity to mentor younger kids.
• Amanda Schukle of San Diego County Public Library described her project to give librarians data and tools so they can create Customer-Driven Collections.  Amanda has a way with words and I loved her "Dump the Junk" weeding report and "Bang for Your Buck" collection turnover report.
• Patricia Rivera of Buena Park Library District went first and gave an amazing presentation of how her "Library Lures Latinos".  She has done a great job of engaging staff in reaching out to the Latino people who make up a significant part of Buena Park's population.  She had lots of quantitative data to demonstrate the resulting increased library usage by Latinos, but to me the biggest indicator of success was the story she told of a staff member who used to get frustrated about the hesitancy of Latino patrons to speak to staff, until she herself went to the "Spanish for Non-Spanish Speakers" training for library staff and realized how difficult it is to use a language not your own.
• Cara Vera of Rancho Cucamonga described her library's participation the the City of Rancho Cucamonga's "Healthy RC" initiative.  It was a terrific example of the library adapting its existing resources to position itself squarely at the heart of something important to its community.  It also gave me an idea about our library taking the lead to develop a "Healthy PV" initiative.
• Christina Wainwright of San Diego Public Library's project was to use library programs to build long-term relationships with community members instead of "one night stands" where people enjoy a program, but then that's it until the next one they come to.  Her goal is to use library programs to create bonds both between attendees and with the library.  She described her successful "Monday Night Meetup" program where people give "speed book reviews" in "speed dating" format, and then those reviews spark conversations and connections.  She also described how she now evaluates each program in terms of both the level of interactivity between participants that it fosters and the degree to which is anchored to the library's core services, and aims for programs that offer both as these are the ones that foster long-term relationships.  Christina transformed how I am going to look at our PVLD programs in the future.
• Susan Broman of the Los Angeles County Public Library talked about her "Get Up From Behind the Desk" project to encourage and support local efforts to provide adult programming - no easy task in a massive, complex, and tradition-bound library system!  Susan has a talent for developing tools that help librarians do things better and more efficiently, and I have know via my husband, and LA County Community Library Manager, that she is having a major impact and helping transform the entire Adult Services culture at LACPL.  Her staff "What Are We Reading" blog also gave an idea for a similar blog that our staff could write for the community. 
• Polly Cipparone of San Diego County Public Library has developed a "The Future is Now" wiki for staff to share information about change initiatives in her library system.  I thought the idea of allowing employees to post questions and comments anonymously was an great non-threatening way to allow people to engage in the change process.
• Jeannie Kays of the Palm Desert Library (Riverside County Library System) has developed a staff training program that is a model for other libraries.  It has 6 core modules that are repeated every quarter so everyon has a chance to attend.  Training is done by staff volunteers and ranges from Beginning Reference for Non-Reference Staff to Frequently Asked Reference Questions to Using Microsoft Publisher to Create Flyers".  I think we may just steal her work!
• Genesis Hansen of Newport Beach reported on her project to use customer input to drive design of the new library website.  Apart from the very useful content of her presentation, which included examples of how staff perceptions of customer needs can be off base, Genesis had an amazingly crisp and succinct presentation...she also managed to make great progress on her project despite taking time off in the middle of it to have a baby!  I was also pleased that she shared information about her blog, Wrong Again which will now be part of my regular reading.
• Last but not least Andrea Taylor of the Fullerton Public Library presented her "One City One Source" initiative to reach out to city staff and educate them about library services.  She used meetings with each city department to tell them about the library and sign them up for library cards.  This is something we really need to do with our local cities...since we are independent of them they really don't know much about what we offer.

You can see why I was exhausted and exhilirated when I got home on Wednesday night... and why I didn't hesitate to say yes when asked to be a mentor again this year! 

 

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!