Leader's Digest January 2007
From PLN
Leader's Digest January 2007
by Leslie Dillon
January 9, 2007
Harvard Business Review special issue on leadership
HBR has devoted its January issue to leadership. I've summarized the 3 articles I liked best. If you want to read one in full (or any of the other articles for that matter), they're available via EBSCOhost; or you can order a reprint from HBR for $6.00 or get a free 24-hour pass to HBR here. You have to select "Click here to read this article for FREE" and then sit though an interminable ad! HBR lets you print articles and lift 500-word excerpts.
"Courage as a skill"
Courageous action is "a special kind of calculated risk taking" learned and refined over time. Good leaders are willing "to make bold moves," but they make those moves "through careful deliberation and preparation." Business courage is a skill acquired gradually through decision-making processes.
Taking an intelligent gamble requires an understanding of the “courage calculation”: six discrete decision-making processes that increase the likelihood of success:
- Setting primary and secondary goals
- Determining the importance of achieving those goals
- Tipping the balance of power in your favor
- Weighing risks against benefits
- Selecting the proper time for action
- Developing contingency plans
Desmond Tutu has said that good leaders have an "uncanny sense of timing." These questions can help you determine if the time is right:
- Why am I pursuing this now?
- Am I contemplating a considered action or an impulsive one?
- How long would it take to become better prepared? Is that too long?
- What are the pros and cons of waiting a day, two days, a week or more?
- What are the political obstacles? Can these be either removed or reduced in the near future?
- Can I take steps now that will create a foundation for a courageous move later?
- Am I emotionally and mentally prepared to take this risk?
- Do I have the expertise, communication skills, track record, and credibility to make this work?
(Kathleen K. Reardon, "Courage as a skill", Harvard Business Review, Jan. 2007.)
"What to ask the person in the mirror"
As leaders rise through the ranks, their opportunities for honest feedback decrease. And by the time a manager's missteps show up, it’s often too late to make course corrections. Therefore, it's wise to make periodic self-assessments.
Author Robert S. Kaplan, formerly of Goldman Sachs, identifies seven areas for self-reflection and questions that go with them, which I've paraphrased:
- Vision and priorities. (How often do I communicate my vision and priorities? Can my staff articulate them? Having 15 priorities is the same as having none!)
- Managing time. (Do I spend my time in ways that will let me achieve my priorities? Your staff will determine how to spend their time from the way you spend yours.)
- Feedback. (Do I give timely, direct, constructive feedback? Your direct reports know what you're doing wrong. Cultivate subordinates who'll tell you the truth.)
- Succession planning. (Have I picked one or more potential successors? If you haven't, you're probably not delegating as you should.)
- Evaluation and alignment. (Am I attuned to changes in the environment that'll require organizational changes?)
- Leading under pressure. (How do I behave under pressure, and what signals am I sending my staff?)
- Staying true to yourself. (Does my leadership style reflect who I truly am?)
Kaplan advocates writing down what you do every working hour for a week and checking how well your actions match your intentions. (Robert S. Kaplan, "What to ask the person in the mirror", Harvard Business Review, Jan. 2007.)
"How leaders create and use networks"
After closely studying 30 emerging leaders, the authors of this article outline 3 forms of networking:
- Operational networking--geared toward doing one’s assigned tasks more effectively; involves cultivating stronger relationships with colleagues in the network.
- Personal networking--engages people from outside the organization to find opportunities for personal advancement.
- Strategic networking--uses networking to accomplish business goals; these managers create networks that will capitalize on new opportunities for the organization. "The ability to move to this level of networking is a key test of leadership."
(Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter, "How leaders create and use networks", Harvard Business Review, Jan. 2007.)
When to trust your gut
From the better late than never department... I missed this from Harvard Business School Publishing Corporate Learning the first time around, but it has some good pointers on trusting your instincts, so I'm including it now!
Management studies have found that executives routinely rely on their intuitions to solve complex problems when logical methods (such as cost-benefit analysis) simply won't do. In fact, the consensus is that the higher up people climb, the more they'll need well-honed business instincts.
According to Alden M. Hayashi, trusting your instincts is important when:
- Logical methods are not enough
- Decisions are complex and ambiguous
- Decisions are time-sensitive and there is not enough time to analyze all options
- Data supporting all options appears the same
(eLearning Alert from Harvard Business Online., Oct. 3, 2006.)
Quick Takes
What now for ProQuest?
Barbara Quint gives us some additional insights on Cambridge Information Group's acquisition of ProQuest Information and Learning. The new company will begin by integrating sales operations and eliminating duplication. Then it'll work on product integration and focus on growth over time. Quoting an analyst at Outsell, Quint says that the merger is
- strategically a good fit. Both are strong in the academic market with CSA more in the sciences and PQIL more toward social sciences and humanities. The overlap in content is small. So they're selling to the same market with different content. All the full text in PQIL is very important to CSA. The vast majority of their collection is abstracting and indexing services. They need more full text. In general, CSA has pretty good product development and PQIL [has] pretty strong content.
(Barbara Quint, "ProQuest Information and Learning goes to CSA: what now?", Information Today NewsBreaks, Dec. 26, 2006.)
2005 ARL statistics released
Some key facts in the newest ARL statistics:
- The average ARL university library now spends over 37% of its materials budget on electronic materials.
- Fifteen ARLs spent over 50% of their materials budgets on electronic resources.
- 108 ARL libraries spent $330 million on electronic serials.
- Demand for library education is increasing.
There's a great summary and discussion of trends here and the statistics are here (PDF).
January 16, 2007
Top Tech Trends from LITA
In case you'll miss LITA's Top Technology Trends panel at ALA Midwinter, don't fret! Three of the panelists have already predicted open source ILS's and OCLC OPACs and ILS's. Here are a few more details.
Tom Dowling
- Increasingly radical rethinking of the catalog.
- Truly portable net access.
- Open source.
- DRM follies; the most common media player is an iPod but most content works on everything but iPods.
Karen Schneider Emergence of open-source ILS -- where the "ILS products are OCLC (for libraries that do not have the resources...) and an open-source ILS for nearly everyone else." Sarah Houghton-Jan
- RSS goes mainstream
- OPAC from OCLC
- Reaching out online
- Web-based everything
(LITA Blog, Jan. 12-13, 2007.)
More trends to watch in 2007
Information Today's Paula Hane has some more trends to watch, in case you don't have enough to keep your eyes on!
- Wiki growth in numbers and importance.
- More interesting and useful content and mashups.
- Ubiquitous "Widgets" (applets or gadgets).
- More mobile computing, including Web search.
- Increasing importance of video.
- Continued effect of Google as a disruptive force.
- Ongoing struggles by media companies to make money "in the Internet era without cannibalizing their existing products".
- Changing news production and distribution.
(Paula Hane, "Wrapping up 2006; looking ahead", Information Today NewsBreaks, Jan. 8, 2007.)
The dawning of the iPhone age
John Blossom believes that the "iPhone promises to usher in an era in which people can move their electronic lives into a phone-ready device with minimal angst." The key factor here is the i-Phone's full-featured Web browser. Here's a feature list in case you haven't already seen one::
- Apple's "multi-touch" technology instead of a standard keypad.
- High-resolution, 3.5 inch touchscreen with a virtual keyboard.
- Apple's standard operating system (OS X).
- Syncs with iTunes and your PC or MAC.
- 2 megapixel camera.
- Outstanding media features.
- Standard phone features - SMS, calendar, photos, etc.
- Visual voicemail.
- Rich HTML emails.
- Safari browser--"it's the first fully-usable browser on a cellphone."
- Google Maps
- Widgets that connect to Internet seamlessly.
- Free "push" IMAP email from Yahoo!
(John Blossom, "PCs are so over: Apple's iPhone provides a robust mobile content platform", ContentBlogger, Jan. 10, 2007, and Read/Write Web, Jan. 9, 2007.).
Public libraries key to building local economic base
Public libraries build a community’s capacity for economic activity and resiliency, says a new study from the Urban Institute. Making Cities Stronger: Public Library Contributions to Local Economic Development points to a shift in the role of public libraries--to an active economic development agent, addressing issues of literacy, workforce training, small business vitality and community quality of life. The study was commissioned by the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. The full press release from Urban Libraries Council is here and the full report is here (35-page PDF). (ResourceShelf, Jan. 11, 2007.)
Social networking sites and teens
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released a report on social networking Websites and teens, which shows that:
- 55% of online teens use social networks.
- 55% have created online profiles; older girls predominate.
- 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often; 26% visit once a day, 22% visit several times a day.
For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends. The press release has additional statistics. For further details, check out the full report (10-page PDF). (Stephen's lighthouse, Jan.7, 2007.)
Bad bosses
A study at Florida State University documents the effects of bad bosses on employee health and job performance. The study surveyed more than 700 people who work in various jobs and generated the following results:
- 31% of respondents reported that their supervisor gave them the "silent treatment" in the past year.
- 37% reported that their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
- 39% noted that their supervisor failed to keep promises.
- 27% noted that their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
- 24% reported that their supervisor invaded their privacy.
- 23% indicated that their supervisor blamed others to cover up mistakes or to minimize embarrassment.
("Most returning to work for a bad boss", Associated Press, as cited by MSNBC, Jan. 2, 2007.)
Quick takes
MaintainIT Project
The MaintainIT Project, a 3-year project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has the "overall objective of helping libraries sustain their public access computing services." The project team is gathering information and success stories about Public Access Computers (PACs) in public libraries and plans to issue a series of guides for different kinds of public libraries documenting best practices and information about how they can be implemented. The first guide will focus on small, rural libraries and will be available this spring. (Michelle Boule, ALA TechSource blog, Jan. 10. 2007.)
Information Institute awarded grant to study public libraries and the internet
ALA has awarded The Information Institute, College of Information, at Florida State University a 3-year $1.4 million grant to study public libraries’ use of the Internet. National surveys for each the next three years will probe how public libraries are connected to the Internet, the impact of funding changes on libraries’ connectivity, and sustainability of public library computer services. This effort continues the research conducted by Bertot & McClure since 1994. You can find more Information about their studies here. (ResourceShelf, Jan. 10, 2007.)
Peter Jacso likes Web of Science
Peter writes:
- This granddaddy of citation indexes has kept adding new content and software features.. and now has reached a very important milestone. The clustering of results set by eight criteria; the instant calculation and superbly informative and compact visualization of new citation measures, such as the sum of times a paper was cited; the insta-charts showing the contour of publishing productivity and citedness pattern of the chosen entities (authors, journals, organizations, topics) across time; and the exporting of these details into a spreadsheet and/or to the free version of the Web-based Endnote software represents more than a series of evolutionary steps.
The full review is here. (ResourceShelf, Jan. 11, 2007.)
Academic Libraries: 2004 now available from NCES
Key findings from FY 2004:
- 155.1 million circulation transactions.
- 1.4 million reference transactions in a typical week.
- 3,700 academic libraries held 982.6 million books and other paper materials.
- $2.2 billion spent on information resources.
The PDF is here. (ResourceShelf, Jan. 11, 2007.)
Impact of electronic publishing on investments in serials
Despite declining serials unit costs, ARL libraries' serials expenditures are increasing on average more than 7% per year. About half the money spent on serials in 2004-2005 was for electronic serials. (Martha Kyrillidou, "The impact of electronic publishing on tracking research library investments in serials," ARL Bimonthly Report 249, Dec. 2006. Via ResourceShelf, Jan. 10, 2007.)
Libraries add more than 100K books to Internet Archive
There are now more than one hundred thousand downloadable, searchable, books on the Internet Archive. Contributing libraries include:
- Boston Public Library: The John Adams collection.
- The Getty Research Institute: Major collection of books on art and architecture and an alternate collection on the performing arts.
- Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley: Texts documenting the California Gold Rush and Western expansion.
- Johns Hopkins University Libraries: The James Birney Collection of Anti-Slavery materials.
(ResourceShelf, Jan. 10, 2007.)
January 23, 2007
OCLC symposium report
More LITA Top Technology Trends
Roy Tennant
- New catalog possibilities: OCLC and open source as OPACs.
- Open source goes mainstream: over 250 Georgia libraries are using an open source ILS they wrote themselves.
- Massive digitization means massive opportunities and massive challenges. Tennant doesn't claim to know all the implications for libraries and their users yet, but he urges us to think long and hard about this issue.
Eric Morgan
- Increasing availability of full-text data/information, presenting real opportunities and challenges for libraries.
- Repurposing existing staff to try to remain relevant.
- iPhones & friends are getting bigger and user expectations will change accordingly.
- Library catalogs are a hot topic, but is this something library patrons care about?
- Increasing vendor consolidation.
- Ubiquitous networking.
- Understanding of the advantages of XML is increasing.
- Accessibility issues caused by use of AJAX.
(LITA blog, Jan. 16 and 19, 2007. Here's a link to the 1 hour, 45 minute podcast of the LITA Top Tech Trends program.)
Strategies for IT planning
Karen Schneider suggests some great strategies for IT planning by non-IT departments:
- Sit down with your IT people and ask what their schedule is, and where your needs for new stuff fit in.
- Do some IT planning. Where do you want your department to be in 6, 12, 18, or 24 months? Write everything out, from the most fundamental to the most blue-sky.
- Nothing is “free.” Second Life isn't “free.” Instant messaging isn't “free.” Wordpress isn't “free.” These technologies come with maintenance and deployment issues.
- Share your tentative plans with the IT department.
A few tips:
- Don't blindside the IT department.
- Less is more: Find five technologies you like; focus on three; implement one.
- When you speak of IT, please be kind!
(ALA TechSource blog, Jan. 19, 2007.)
Why don't all public libraries make registration as easy as Downers Grove does?
Downers Grove PL in Illinois lets patrons register for library cards with just their drivers license, and you can fill out your application for a card online in advance! I recently applied for a library card at the Durham County (NC) Library. It took 2 trips and identification and address information from "official" correspondence (voter registration card, gas bill, etc). I was told that current address information was required because someone from another county might try to use the Durham library. Heaven forbid! If the library turns potential patrons away once, I wonder how many never come back a second time? (Personal rant inspired by Jenny Levine's Jan. 12 post on the Shifted Librarian!)
Quick takes
Google to digitize books from University of Texas Libraries
Google will digitize at least one million volumes from the University of Texas Libraries’ collections, working from selection lists prepared by the Libraries. (UT Austin press release via ContentBlogger, Jan. 22, 2007.)
Google plots e-book coup
Google and several top publishers are working on a system to let readers download whole books to their computers in a format that they could also read on mobile devices. With 380 million people using Google monthly, this could boost e-book development and have a big impact on the publishing industry and book retailers. The platform will let publishers give their readers full access to online books. (The Sunday Times, Jan. 21, 2007, via ContentBlogger, Jan. 22, 2007.)
Social OPAC
John Blyberg has released SOPAC (social OPAC), a set of social networking tools integrated into the Ann Arbor District Library's catalog. Users can rate, review, comment-on, and tag items. SOPAC has been released as open source and it works on III. (Catalogablog, Jan. 22, 2007.)
Sirsi/Dynix sponsors Alliance Library System's SecondLife Library 2.0
From the release:
- The two Second Life islands sponsored by Sirsi/Dynix are Info Island and Teen Info Island, which is named "Eye4YouAlliance." Alliance Library System--the lead agency for Info Island, the adult library island in Second Life--has been described as "one of the most innovative regional library systems in North America." ...The purpose of the Second Life Library 2.0 is to provide real library services to Second Life residents.
(Sirsi/Dynix Press Release, Jan. 19, 2007, posted in Library Technology Guides, Jan. 19, 2007.)
OCLC back in the ILS business
Andrew Pace comments that "OCLC appears to be firmly back in the ILS business, at least in Europe". (HecticPace, Jan. 22, 2007.)
Scopus will index back issues
Scopus has signed agreements with publishers and societies including Springer, the Nature Publishing Group, the American Physical Society, and the American Institute of Physics to add more abstracts dating back to volume 1, issue 1 of their journals. This content will be available to Scopus users at no extra charge. (PRNewswire, Jan. 19, 2007, via ContentBlogger, Jan 22, 2007.)
