Having the right organization
From PLN
Having the right organization
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Library Leadership Network Peer Panel, December 2007
edited by Frank Hermes, published January 2, 2008 In November, we talked about “Hiring the Right People” to help us run our libraries. This month we shift to a related topic: “Having the Right Organization.”
Four senior level job postings at the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County recently caught our eye:
- Director of Community Engagement and Development
- Director of Library Experience
- Director of Organizational Resources
- Director of Research, Strategy, and Innovation
Not exactly Technical Services and Public Services, eh? Truly these are new jobs, not just new titles for old jobs. So this month we asked the Peer Panel for their reactions to this and similar changes taking place in how we structure organizations to help meet the changes in the environment in which we operate. We asked the panel to consider these questions:
- What exactly is driving organizational changes of this sort?
- How do you think the level reporting to the director should be organized?
- What changes have you made in recent years—-and how have they worked?
- Is it possible to change the organization without changing the people?
Loriene Roy
These are great job titles. My first reflection is that these are middle management positions but require the flexibility/innovation that we often associate with newer professionals. I see several key words in the job vacancy announcements that hint at what might have lead to the development of these positions: "leadership cabinet," "collaborative style of organizational leadership," "interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving" and "matrix management."
So, what might be driving this change? There may be a number of influences: desire to change, opportunity to change, incentive to create change; Desire to reorganize in a user-centered direction; Willingness to make change and take risks.
Gary Strong
Communities change. I refocused several positions while I was at Queens and we are doing so at UCLA. We just filled a new position as Director of Undergraduate Initiatives and have expanded the traditional roles of the cataloging center to now include metadata. The AUL for Collections now is the AUL for Scholarly Communication and Collection Management incorporating preservation, digitization, and outreach to the faculty in managing their own copyright. And we now have an AUL for the UCLA Electronic Library.
[As for the other questions:] I keep the direct reports under 10 and then delegate broadly throughout the organization. We have almost 50 managers so there is no way for me to do them justice on a day-to-day basis.
I mentioned some of the new positions above. At a recent retreat of our Management Council we did an exercise that asked folks (some 40 plus) to stand in groupings indicating which UL appointed them. Most were appointed prior to my arrival at UCLA. I then ask for those whose positions had changed to move to the six or so that I have appointed. All but eight in the room moved there. I believe that indicates that we are indeed changing. Most jobs have changed and more will as we progress forward.
Some people will change happily. Others find that it is just too difficult. We also have to find ways of letting people gracefully bow out when it just doesn't match up to their desires and where they want to be.
- To which Loriene Roy adds, addressing the last question: I think these results are intertwined. We depend on people to bring about change, work with them through change, and rely on them to sustain efforts and continually seek and welcome the opportunity to change. It's not for everyone, though.
George Needham
Organizational change is a subject I am intimately familiar with; OCLC leadership has been reorganized twice this year, and I am completing the year with a different boss than I began it with. And this has been a very positive experience for me. OCLC has had to reorganize to take into account the changes in the library market place over the past few years, the fact that we have acquired a number of companies and the wonderful personnel additions we've had this year.
So what is driving the new organizational structures that are described in this ad from Charlotte? I think it is the result of taking a close look at the world in which your library is functioning today and arranging its bureaucracy to address today's real world. How well you catalog your books or how neatly the spine labels are attached is less important today than how well you connect to your community, or how the visitor experiences his or her time in the library.
A wise woman once told me that bureaucracy is nothing more than an organized way of paying attention. The way you structure a bureaucracy determines what is going to be addressed, much the way that what you measure generally tends to get done. This is the genius of creating high level positions to look at these vital areas. (Full disclosure: I have a good friend who is applying for one of these positions.)
The other issue that I think these titles address is that there is no library jargon in here. Most reasonably literate people wouldn’t be able to tell you what “Technical Services” is in the library setting. But the titles Charlotte has selected are titles that are common in a number of settings, from business, to academe, to the not-for-profit/NGO world. Anything we can do to break down the Berlin Wall of library jargon is OK with me!
Jamie LaRue
I, too, did a re-organization, creating the following Associate Director positions (filled through promotions):
- Community Services - overseeing all branches, public relations, and literacy outreach
- Virtual Services - IT infrastructure, database development, call center (which uses these electronic resources to provide central system-wide telephone reference)
- Research and Collections - so much of what we do now tracks according to various benchmarks. That statistical gathering and analysis, as well as the management of our ordering and processing departments, is another public service, in my view. They're all public services!
- Finance - business and budget operations.
- Human Resources - people and organizational development.
- Executive Assistant - this is the person who tracks what we said we'd do, and whether or not we did it. The still, small voice of conscience.
The first three are librarian positions; the last three, I've filled with people with extensive private sector experience. These are my "direct reports"--who then oversee the rest of the organization.
I think there are several dimensions to this kind of reorganization.
- Hierarchy is still, often, the flattest and most efficient organizational structure. When an organization grows, it becomes more difficult to coordinate activities and ensure communication. The important question becomes: who are the right "lieutenants?" Sometimes, the position title clarifies the need. Sometimes, you build a structure around the key strengths of the people at hand. But in general, the challenge is to find people who "get" the central vision of the director, but have the skills, authority, and responsibility to make and communicate independent decisions to fulfill that vision.
- No one organizational structure is right for all time. The players change; the organization changes; the community changes. The warning signs that your current organizational structure isn't working are legion. But among them are staff confusion (what are we doing again? why?), service inconsistencies (that branch does it one way, but we do it another), muddled lines of communication (tell the committee? tell your supervisor? did it ever get up to the top?), and drops in productivity (circ per capita, reference questions per librarian, story time attendance, etc.). When that happens, it's time for another shake-up.
- The development of a culture of accountability and achievement. Recently Shirley Amore, City Librarian of the Denver Public Library, told me about a workshop she attended in which a wise old researcher said that just two qualities identify a strong team: openness to new ideas, and mutual affection. Building that team means learning to be both tough and honest with one another -- because finally, the team succeeds only if the objective measures bear it out. The competition is not with each other, but against a larger environment.
This all sounds so simple. But every administrator knows that your organization is nothing but people, and people are so surprising, so internally inconsistent, so petty and so brilliant by turns, that it's a miracle anything ever works. Not to mention the problem that can occur when the director (that's you) is him- or herself the problem.
Administration is an art. But it's the art of communication, and of constant adjustment to an ever-changing reality. I suppose that's what makes it fun.
Related articles
- We got trouble... - an overview for articles on internal difficulties.
- How healthy is your organization? - Comments on organizational health from librarians and others.
- What can organizational structure do for user-centered change? - Ryan Deschamps offers a thought-provoking discussion.
- Libraries and organization development - Maureen Sullivan discusses the discipline of organization development as it applies to libraries.
- Problematic organizations - A few non-library notes on organizational difficulties.
