The library business is changing – please excuse our dust during renovations!
‘Only while sleeping do you make no mistakes. Mistakes are the privilege of the active person, who can start over and put things right.’ – Ingvar Kamprud, Founder of IKEA1
As we reach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the business of running an effective and efficient library – within a university or college setting, as well as within a municipality – has become more challenging than ever. The business of gathering and sharing information is one that has many active players. The library’s historical role as the primary source of information and data for research and learning purposes is being challenged and in some cases replaced by a battery of other players – Google Scholar, Amazon.com and Wikipedia to name a few of the new emerging sources of data in today’s wired world. With this shift in the position of dominance that was once the natural claim of virtually every library, it means that where a library’s primary resource once was its collection, this is no longer true.
The library’s ‘collection’ can now be accessed from a variety of locations – other than the library building itself. On a college or university campus, some students claim that ‘I don’t need to go to the library any more – I can access what I need on-line, without even leaving my room.’ Little do they realise that this on-line accessibility is being provided and supported by the library. It’s as though the library has become somewhat invisible on campus.
So … if the collection is no longer the library’s dominant resource, what is? It is the people component of your operation. It is the people who work diligently on behalf of your patrons and customers – even though they may be somewhat invisible, behind the scenes. It is the staff members who make up your library team who have now become your most vital resource.
In any business where your services can be accessed from a variety of sources, it is your people who are the differentiating factor that determines whether your patrons and customers come to you – or go elsewhere to have their needs met. In a time when financial resources are constantly under pressure, the statistical data that outline the relevance of your services becomes a huge leverage point, or a huge limitation point, as to your relevance when you are only one of several departments or business units of a larger corporate enterprise seeking your ‘fair share of the budget pie’.
So, if this premise has merit, then the critical question is: ‘How can we maximise our impact, through our people, to ensure a degree of relevance and security for the future?’ Answering this is the fundamental purpose of this book.
We wrote this book as a practical resource for library leaders in a variety of settings. It is not designed or intended to be an academic piece of work, totally supported by new and original research data. Instead, we chose to write this book in a pragmatic, conversational style that we hope will encourage library leaders to consider ways of focusing an appropriate degree of attention on your people – your human resources, the resources that create the greatest leverage value in achieving your organisational mandate and goals.
The ‘art of people management’ is not a new skill or a new science or a new field of study. However, it is a field in which one must try to be as relevant as possible as the needs, expectations and aspirations of your staff shift and move in an ever-changing world. We have tried to include some new theoretical concepts, some recent research data, some lessons learned over many years of practical experience along with some of the solid truisms presented by several leading authors from years past. Much of this wisdom and these insights have stood the test of time when it comes to the basic practices of sound human dynamics and effective people management practices – even in today’s fast-paced, technologically connected world.
The real-life examples cited throughout this book have been drawn from the current and the past professions of both authors – as senior executive officers in various types of organisations, as a library leader for one of the authors and as a management consultant specialising in organisational effectiveness and human resource management for the other author. The examples represent real-life experiences from a variety of sectors: the private sector, the public sector, the academic sector and the not-for-profit agency sector. The breadth and depth of this combined experience, which includes periods in a variety of different cultures and countries, helped us to recognise that there are some relatively universal truths and practices that seem to be very effective when it comes to managing staff. We have also discovered that there are some practices that may be very ineffective in certain work settings. What is critical is to be able to determine which practices are best suited to any specific setting or culture in different parts of our global community.
This is not intended to be a definitive book on the subject. Instead, it is intended to prod the reader into examining their own specific situation through various lenses and various insights. If any of the ideas, concepts or tips presented here seem to make sense and you feel that they may have a positive impact in your own library setting, then feel free to experiment with various ways to apply your new insights to improve the quality of work life in your own organisation. If some of the concepts give you some discomfort that’s good too. Don’t dismiss them prematurely. Most sound improvements and changes have their roots in discomfort. As one author so eloquently put it:
‘Hope has two lovely daughters – anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to change things.’2
Our efforts to make life in organisations better are the fuel for searching out new, innovative techniques to help staff members feel important and valued for their daily efforts and contributions. That’s what makes it possible to develop the most effective library system in the world – wherever you may be located.
We believe this book can become a valuable resource for current library leaders – Chief Librarians, Library Deans, Library Managers and Library Human Resources professionals. It may also enable the next generation of library leaders – the library staff members or students in library academic programmes who have aspirations for positions of leadership within a library – to begin to understand and to value the importance of people management skills. We hope it will be a catalyst for these individuals to work on developing and expanding the skills and competencies needed to create a dynamic team of library staff members who are willing and able to face the challenges of the library of tomorrow.
Effectively managing your people, in order to achieve the greatest potential for your library, is clearly a very significant management competency for leaders in any library setting. How well prepared are you to meet this challenge? We hope that some of the ideas and insights outlined in this book will contribute to generating the motivation one needs to become a truly effective leader of the ‘People Resources’ of your library. Being able to release and capitalise on the talents, energy, spirit and technical competencies of your people, in the service of your patrons, clients or customers becomes a major portion of your job responsibilities as the Chief Librarian, the Library Dean or a Library Manager. To achieve this goal, library leaders and managers must be able to create a workplace environment that makes it possible for staff to feel truly engaged in the overall direction and strategy of the library. Although this may seem like a very obvious point, it should not be treated lightly.
Although every leader and manager who holds some responsibility for employee performance would love to find the key to releasing and activating the talent and energy of staff members, the truth is that this key is owned and operated by individual employees. They will use the key when they feel engaged and involved in their work. The leader’s and the manager’s task is to create the type of workplace environment or setting that generates employee engagement. Without this engagement, management efforts to produce constructive corporate results will be severely compromised.
Stephen Covey writes about the concept of employee engagement in his book The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. He presents some findings by Harris Interactive, the originators of the Harris Poll, from a poll of 23,000 US residents employed full time within key industries. Their poll revealed these eye-opening statistics:
Only 37% said they have a clear understanding of what their organisation is trying to achieve and why.
Only 1 in 5 was enthusiastic about their team’s and organisation’s goals.
Only 1 in 5 workers said they have a clear ‘line of sight’ between their tasks and their team’s and organisation’s goals.
Only half were satisfied with the work they have accomplished at the end of the week.
Only 15% felt that their organisation fully enables them to execute key goals.
Only 15% felt they worked in a high-trust environment.
Only 17% felt their organisation fosters open communication that is respectful of differing opinions and that results in new and better ideas.
Only 10% felt that their organisation holds people accountable for results.
Only 20% fully trusted the organisation they work for.
Only 13% have high-trust, highly cooperative working relationships with other groups or departments.
In commenting on these startling statistics, Covey compares these results to a typical soccer (football) team.
‘If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only four of the eleven players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only two of the eleven would care. Only two of the eleven would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but two players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.
The data is sobering. It matches my own experience with people in organizations of every kind all around the world. Despite all our gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for. They are neither fulfilled nor excited. They are frustrated. They are not clear about where the organization is headed or what its priorities are. They are bogged down and distracted. Most of all, they don’t feel they can change much. Can you imagine the personal and organizational cost of failing to fully engage the passion, talent and intelligence of the workforce? It is greater than all taxes, interest charges and labour costs put together.’3
These data only reinforce what we believe is the greatest organisational waste in organisations today – the waste of human talent and energy. Far too many employees leave work at the end of the day or the end of the week, with a sense that they have not made a real contribution. They feel that they had more to give – but for some reason, they were not motivated or challenged or required to give more than they did. This represents a huge potential waste or loss to an organisation.
With statistics like this, the leadership challenge facing library leaders is quite evident. If you believe that the contribution of your people is important to the success of your organisation, then your ability to create a motivating climate in which employees are eager to activate their ‘engagement key’ every day as they walk, drive, ride or roll into your workplace must be your number one priority – every day!
To add further complexity to this situation, today the whole field of human resource management – or People Management, as we prefer to call it – is facing some extreme pressures that we have not experienced for more than sixty years. In many of the developed countries of the world today, we are faced with a diminishing supply of people entering the labour market at the very time when a significant portion of the current labour pool is preparing to retire and exit the labour market. This has all the signs of ‘a perfect storm’. How does one attract and retain a skilled, motivated workforce when there are a variety of attractive, alternative opportunities being presented to the members of your staff team and those who may become members of your staff team? What does it take to attract skilled librarians and skilled professionals in your field in today’s information age society? Are the recruitment techniques you have been using still viable in today’s competitive labour market? What motivates those who make up the new workforce of tomorrow? Will the same attractors of years past work for the generation of tomorrow? Are their needs and values the same as those you have encountered with staff over the past ten, fifteen or twenty years? Based on the information we have been examining and the recent experiences we have gathered from clients in other fields who are facing these same questions, the answers are in a stage of transition. The human resource management function is becoming recognised as one of the most critical variables to achieving organisational success.
The world of information management is changing. The world of work is changing. The world of people management is changing. That’s because the world itself is changing. Those who can keep pace with these waves of change and can manage effectively in this ‘perfect storm’ will hold a distinct advantage over those who are stymied by these changes and are unable to make the changes needed to retain relevancy in a world of rapid and dynamic change.
Through this book, we hope to share with you some of the tips we have learned. These tips will become the ART of People Management. The components of this ART are:
– Attention – to the needs of the individuals who make up your staff and to the needs of your organisation
– Results – to achieve organisational success as well as career success for individuals within your organisation
– Techniques – that have been proven to be effective over time and which need to be continually updated to meet the differing needs of different groups of employees.
Many of these tips have been learned the hard way – through trial and error in managing employees. For one of us, this experience was obtained within a variety of library settings in Australia and Canada over the past fifteen years. For the other, this experience was obtained through fifteen years of management experience in a variety of public sector and private sector organisations along with another fifteen years as a management consultant with clients throughout Canada, the USA and internationally. Both of us are ‘graduates of the school of hard knocks’, where the tuition is high, but the education is priceless. In addition, each of us has detailed educational as well as operational credentials in managing staff teams in a variety of settings – within libraries as well as within other public sector and private sector organisations.
Building from this experience base, we plan to introduce the relevant skills and techniques that make up the ART of People Management and also provide some real-life examples of how these techniques have been successfully applied in real time. Wherever we can, we will provide reallife examples that will reinforce the lessons learned over the past number of years as we have worked to hone our skills as effective people managers.
We hope that you will join us on this journey as we explore some of the ‘best practices’ that we have uncovered in our ongoing search to discover the real ART of People Management.
Summary
With global access to many sources of information through technology, the traditional value of the library’s collection as the primary source of information is shifting.
The library’s human resources are quickly becoming its most valuable resource – through the level and the quality of the service provided to its clientele, in various forms.
Employee engagement is the foundation for a motivated workforce – and employees hold the key to employee engagement.
Library leaders have a primary role of helping to establish and sustain a motivating workplace environment that fosters and supports employee engagement.
The ART of People Management
R – Results
Library leaders will find that their reputation as an effective leader will be directly related to the level of employee engagement generated within the workplace.
The success of your library is directly related to the level of employee engagement you help to create – the two are intricately related.
Engaged employees tend to stay with an organisation over a longer period of time than those who are disengaged.
T – Techniques
It is important for library leaders to regularly seek feedback and input from staff.
In a world of work where employees seem to have more choice than employers, the game has shifted and successful leaders will make the necessary shifts in their own leadership styles to stay connected to their staff and their needs.
1.Ingvar Kamprud’s initials, coupled with the initials of his home in Sweden – Elmtoryd Agunnaryd – were the inspiration for the company name – IKEA.
2.Courtenay, Bryce (1989) The Power of One. New York: Random House.
3.Covey, Stephen R. (2004) The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. New York: Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster Inc.