Change management
From PLN
Change management
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Library Leadership Network Peer Panel, Summer 2006
Edited by Frank Hermes, published January 10, 2007 The topic of discussion this month is Change Management. Change is, of course, inevitable, and in recent years we have witnessed a tremendous amount of environmental (especially technological) change that has put pressure on “public” institutions like libraries to either quickly adapt or become increasingly marginalized. As much as we would like it to be the case, organizational change doesn’t automatically follow environmental change. The result of this is that change management has become a big topic and has attracted a great deal of energy in the form of research, new consultancies, and tons of literature (some of it helpful!).
We asked our panel to comment on change management, citing their personal experiences and observations. We were not at all disappointed by the responses we received.
Jamie LaRue
This reminds me of the book Good to Great. The author makes a surprising point.In his interviews with successful executives who led their companies from average to great (three times the average annual profits of their sector of industry) he found that none of them focused on change management as such.
Usually, and certainly in libraries, change management refers to "dealing with people resisting change." In many of our libraries, this is a big issue. There is a whole host of strategies, most of which come down to "communicate with your staff." Tell them what the trouble is, or what the opportunity might be. Keep them in the loop about how things are going so far. Try to enlist their help and get them engaged. Tell them what you're trying to do: experiments that will be thoughtful and whose results will be honestly reported and used to make things better. Ask them to do it, too, and reward them when they do.
So why didn't these leaders talk about that?
Because they had a different approach: hire people who already care about those things, who do try to improve, who are willing to take risks, who can look a failure in the eye and learn from it.
Oh, and there's another thing. Fire the ones who don't.
The question is not "how do we fight resistance to necessary and useful change?" The question is, "why do we pay people to sabotage our own organizations?"
Joe Janes
My somewhat jaundiced view of "change management" is that there is no such thing. Having been through several major bouts of radical change in various organizations, I think this largely consists of making the best decisions one can given the situation and information at hand, hanging on for dear life and hoping for best while preparing for the worst.
But that's not the highfalutin’ sort of thing your erudite audience is looking for, so let me instead answer a different question--Why is change management such an area of concern for the library world?
The simple answer is because we're not that good at it. And that is understandable and even appropriate, because change brings substantial risk when you're dealing with systems (technological, intellectual and organizational) that are decades--if not centuries--old and have to be maintained and managed along with brand spanking new things.
We know that there might be great value and promise in new different staffing patterns, different technological options and uses, different knowledge-organization schemes and retrieval options, different publishing and distribution schemes, and so on, but who wants to be first? What if they don't work? What if newly emerging companies or technologies go bust? The tried and true are always tried (if not always true) but at least safe.
Safe, of course, may well not cut it. Layer on top of this a large chunk of our profession who joined it precisely because they thought things wouldn't change very much and were trained that way too, and....you see the need for serious discussions of change management.
George Needham
“Change management” is like “jumbo shrimp:” it’s a contradiction in terms.
Given that, I’m going to slide right into my old reader’s advisory role and recommend a relatively new book, The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take off and Others Crash and Burn, by Pip Coburn (Portfolio, 2006).
Coburn makes some wonderful points in the book. The most important point he makes, and one that we frequently give lip service to but just as frequently neglect, is that users are in charge. They make decisions concerning how they spend their scarce resources of time and/or money rationally. Unless we recognize this, both for our users and for our staff, change won’t happen.
Technologists and high tech companies all too often throw a product on the market because it’s cool, or does something nothing else has done, but without thoroughly thinking through what need it actually fills for the intended audience (if, indeed, they have ever thought of an intended audience). So how do you get people to change?
In order to get people to change, Coburn says two factors are weighed against one another: how serious is the problem that needs to be addressed by the change, and what is the Total Perceived Pain of Adoption (TPPA) of the change? If there is a serious problem to addressed (Coburn calls this “The Crisis”), and the TPPA is minimal--think the change from using tellers to using ATM machines--the change will be accepted readily. If the problem isn’t compelling and the TPPA is high--think Picture Phones--the change will not be accepted.
Coburn provides lots of examples of both successful and failed introductions that are illuminating and entertaining. There are many lessons we can apply to working with our customers, our colleagues, and (dare we say it?) our boards of trustees.
Mike Crandall
I just finished teaching a basic management course to our next generation of library leaders this past spring at the University of Washington Information School, and it struck me as they presented their final projects how much change is embedded in every aspect of management these days. The case studies they presented, while covering everything from Wikipedia to a local library system to a health care company, all seemed to deal with upheavals in the internal and external environments that raised issues requiring a fundamental understanding of change management by the organization’s leaders. None of the problems were simple, and none could be ignored, because they cut to the core of the organization’s structure, leadership, planning processes, and control systems—the basic elements of management itself.
What became evident to me as the students presented their analyses of the cases, and discussed options and recommendations, was that their grasp of those basic elements of management was what allowed them to parse the complexities of the situations, and move toward solutions that could be achieved. They were comfortable talking about reorganizations and communication styles and strategic planning, and were able to operationalize the ideas they had in ways that could be achieved within the resources and constraints of the organization. It was clear that most of them were used to change, and considered it to be a part of life; what they had gained from studying basic management theory and practice was a set of tools that they could bring to bear on the problems that they faced on a daily basis.
All of which is a long way of getting to the point that in order to deal with change effectively, as with most other complex problems, you still have to have the basic tools to work with. A solid grounding in the principles of management, and the chance to apply those principles to complex situations in an educational setting, provides the practice and critical thinking needed to prepare our students for their role in managing change in the real world. I’m optimistic that they will take it from there, and look forward to watching their impact on libraries and our society in the future.
Loriene Roy
First, I think it is important to acknowledge that faculty face personal challenges in keeping abreast of new technologies, new research results, and the changing demands of the settings where our students will work. Faculty can employ strategies to help refresh their understanding. These strategies include:
- Maintaining contact with newly employed students to learn through their experiences;
- Connecting with practicing librarians by inviting them to serve as guest speakers and to join them in joint writing and research;
- Attending professional meetings and training opportunities;
- Bringing their personal expertise to professional communities such as advisory boards;
- Engaging in participatory research; and
- Employing service-learning models in their classrooms.
As for the question of how can LIS programs help students acquire the ability to not only respond to change but to initiate change and flourish within the inevitable environment of change? There are continuing pressures on LIS curricula—the need to inculcate enduring principles, the fundamental philosophies of the field, bench-centered techniques, and attitudes. Of these, perhaps it is attitude that is the most difficult to alter but the most essential. My own approach is to try to teach by example. My own strength is one of connecting people with each other. In many of my classes this translates to placing a student in contact with a client or supportive individual. In other classes, this involves coordinating a class-wide initiative such as the creation of a virtual library for a tribal college, a bridge to a technology Website for tribal community libraries, or helping train librarians working in rural and small libraries in Texas on the use of statewide databases. I use several strategies in group management to accomplish these tasks. These strategies acknowledge the strengths that students bring, their learning styles, and the need for each contributor to adapt, respect and sometimes change their own patterns of behavior and learning in order to work successfully in the group.
Gary Strong
As I opened a planning retreat for our new Web Services Advisory Committee last Friday, I was struck by the fact that once again I was speaking to a group of staff about change. I also realized that we were not taking on this task of thinking ahead using some pat text book or process driven by "outside forces." We were sitting down and thinking about where we want to go and how we should deploy a new team assembled to take our web services in totally new directions. Since coming to UCLA three years ago, I have been leading an academic library in change. And, there are a few thoughts I might share drawn on this experience and that of leading a major state library and large urban public library.
Change is damned difficult. Mostly because it involves people. People who are dedicated and committed to what has been done. People who have ideas and opinions that often differ. And, of course, resources are never sufficient to do everything that we think should be done. But change is going on all around us. We decided that we were not going to start a training process about change. Instead we would jump in and begin to make change. First, we attacked our strategic plan. Most individuals with whom I spoke could not remember what was in the last strategic plan or actually where they could find it. That told me a lot. Everyone had a set of differing opinions on what was needed. And no one trusted "them." So we began a broad based discussion leading into two different submittals of budgets which attempted to build on a common set of principles and themes to stop the budget cuts and stabilize the library's budget.
At the same time, we undertook to give facilitation training to all managers, supervisors, and unit leaders. We needed to begin building a culture of collaboration and sharing. To date over 100 staff have completed this training and folks are encouraged to practice the skills and get together at least quarterly to share successes. The retreat on Friday was led by one of the staff who is a "star" facilitator and is trusted to move discussions forward.
Faced with needing to complete a new strategic plan for the campus due last December, we formed a Strategic Planning Task Force broadly representative across the library. As they met and gathered ideas and positions, we held four open meetings for staff to come together and discuss various aspects of the plan. And we met the campus deadline. But not to stop there, each unit has just completed their work plan against the strategic plan for this current academic year and within each unit work plan, individuals have set their work down as well. We defended our budget request to the campus based on our strategic plan and got high marks.
We now proceed to work against our agreements. So the retreat work product is yet another step in this process of change: Broad discussion that seeks agreement on direction.
And it is what is working for us, not what someone has written in a text book or learned in a workshop that remains on the shelf when we get home. It has to work each day, every day.
Bill Crowe
This comment comes with the perspective of a sometime student of library history whose dissertation research touched on change (Verner W. Clapp as Opinion Leader and Change Agent in the Preservation of Library Material, Indiana U, 1986).
Clapp practiced and promoted change throughout his career, most of which was spent at the Library of Congress, from the 1920s through the 1950s. He became the founding President of the Council on Library Resources, just fifty years ago, in large part to promote changes of all kinds, and succeeded brilliantly.
The observations I can share may be obvious to those of us with a good share of gray (or no?) hair: that our profession always has attracted and grown a few leaders who can see opportunities and then are able to articulate the rationale for change in ways that energize--even inspire--others to action.
The visionary who lacks the ability to move others to act often is isolated. The energetic type who lacks vision typically does no more than polish the brass. Successful leaders of change must have both attributes and be prepared to accept sometimes vicious criticism, even obloquy. They must have that sure ability to maintain a healthy perspective--always ready to listen but also always committed to act, with others, even when (or especially when!) action carries the risk of failure.
Change agents of this kind--who often are successful--also tend not to fret about whether they receive credit or recognition for what they accomplish. For example, Clapp was covered with honors in his day, but was consistent in deflecting credit to others--at times to avoid showing his hand, but more often because all he cared about was the result. He would not have been surprised, for example, at the less than flattering treatment he received a few years back in Nicholson Baker's widely reviewed book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. He would have read the criticism with genuine interest in learning, but would have shrugged and moved on!
Above all, we think of the late Frederick G. Kilgour, a visionary leader who was a half-generation younger than Clapp, and whose capacity to lead change in librarianship--and manage change in several organizations, including OCLC itself--was, in this writer's opinion, unparalleled in his time. Indeed, he dragged us, "kicking and screaming," into the future.
Editor's Note: Among his many achievements, Fred Kilgour was the creator of the WorldCat database, arguably the most useful tool used today by libraries and their “customers.” OCLC recently introduced “Worldcat.org” which makes the database available to anyone with a web browser. As you use this great search mechanism, think about Fred, his many contributions, and the importance of change.
PLN Director's note: Worldcat.org is available on the PLN home page--and books noted within articles are typically linked to their Worldcat.org records. If you've used Worldcat.org and set a zip code, the link should show libraries near you that hold a book--or, as in Bill Crowe's case, a dissertation.
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