Leader's Digest July 2008
From PLN
Leader's Digest July 2008
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by Leslie Dillon, published August 1, 2008
Leadership
In search of growth leaders
“[S]enior managers need to do more to recognize, develop and encourage [their] managers to achieve organic growth.”
What’s organic growth? It’s internally generated growth—different for libraries than for for-profit companies, but library directors want and need to grow their budgets, their collections, their staff’s skills, and their user base, so organic growth is as important for libraries as it is for corporations.
“Growth leaders produce above-average organic growth … and create better value for customers.” They look for opportunities and achieve “breakout results” by using their entrepreneurial skills.
Based on three years of testing and interviews, this article gives us a look at the characteristics of growth leaders and a guide to developing these managers.
- Rich, diverse experience. Varied experience early in their careers gives growth leaders skills that help them launch growth initiatives.
- Belief in their own abilities. “For them, life is a journey of learning.” They thrive on “accepting challenges, taking action and getting … results.”
- Changing the rules. Instead of seeking certainty and relying on data for planning, “growth leaders think like entrepreneurs.” They’re willing to gather data, “but they don’t rely completely on” it.
- Managing risk. Growth leaders embrace new ventures, but they’re not risk seekers. In fact, they seek to minimize risk.
- Preferring people over data. Growth leaders’ successes are “based more often on thoughtful exploration of customers’ needs than on dry market data.” Detailed knowledge about individual customers is preferable to seeing them as data in reports.
- Pragmatic idealists. Growth leaders hold “people ruthlessly accountable for results” and at the same time engage “their passion to build something great together.” They’re “tough but fair.” Growth leaders are also pragmatic about corporate bureaucracy and know what battles to pick.
In fact, the growth leaders interviewed for this study knew how to work around corporate bureaucracies and skirt restrictive processes as “they executed their initiatives. The[se] managers tended to ask for forgiveness afterward instead of permission before.”
Sean D. Carr, Jeanne M. Liedtka, Robert Rosen and Robert E. Wiltbank, "In search of growth leaders," MIT Sloan Management Review, Jul. 7, 2008.)
What is leadership?
Leadership is often discussed but rarely defined. If you don’t know what leadership is—if it’s not a clearly internalized value—how can you be a leader? The author of this article believes that this simple mantra can be used to define leadership:
“Leadership is about having the self-confidence to do what is right even when it is not popular.”
Not just for managers
Leadership as defined above isn’t just for managers. When a manager inserts himself/herself into the process, line staff may know that the decision isn’t right for a particular circumstance. In fact the decision may even make the decision-maker look foolish, but the staff member “says nothing to the manager because, after all, he is the boss.”
Managers don’t always have all the information they need to make an informed decision. They rely on staff to supply them with “information that will help them make the right choices. Few managers try to make decisions without the counsel of others. However, not enough employees step up and raise their concerns early in the process.”
Creating a culture of communication
Organizations need to create a culture where employees are encouraged to speak up before the “ship hits the iceberg.” “Growth comes from people challenging the status quo and feeling confident that they can present ideas…without retribution.”
“Oftentimes, the best ideas are found by talking with those who do the work every day. People need to feel empowered to share what they feel is right.”
(Lee B. Salz, "The sales dodo: What is leadership?" Sales & Marketing Management’s ManageSmarter, Jul. 24, 2008.)
Technology
Our Kindle
The eBook has arrived at last! It’s Amazon’s Kindle and we own one (well, it’s my husband’s, but he lets me use it sometimes). It isn’t perfect and it is expensive ($400), but it’s well over the threshold of what’s needed to guarantee its success and usher in the era of the eBook.
What’s to like
- Satisfies the 4 B’s—use in the bathroom, bus, at the beach and in bed.
- Easy on the eyes—easier maybe than some print books.
- Comfortable to hold.
- Easy to adapt to. Before I’d finished my first book, I was reaching out with my right hand to turn the page — as if it were a “real” book!
- Enough power. Lasts many days without recharging.
- Able to accept different formats.
- A sizable collection of both free and for-purchase books. Available best sellers usually cost less than $10. As the Kindle pipeline cranks up, more and more recently published books will be available.
And more:
- Wireless capability. Here’s a scenario–You’re at the beach, and the weather is awful. You contact Amazon (you can even do this from your car!) and discover that the new Alan Furst novel is available. You download it instantly for $9.99. Let it pour!
- Amazon’s energetic development of available books. An eBook reader is no better than the the books available for its use. Having Amazon as the conduit from publisher to reader is a real plus here.
- Experimental new functions. Web browsing, GPS, iPod features, Wikipedia, and dictionary look up are available. Email and messaging are in the works. While these experimental features will need improvements to be truly useful, they should come quickly in today’s collaborative environment. Can Skype be far behind?
What’s not to like
- Easy to lose your place. The page turning bar on the left can be easily engaged. So if you don’t pick up your Kindle carefully, you’ll suddenly be on page 500. Sliding a rubber band into the slit behind the page turning bar will help you avoid that.
- Difficulty navigating back to your place. Sometimes when new users lose their place, it’s hard to get back to it.
- Typeface I didn’t particularly like the serif typeface. You can change the size, but hopefully soon you’ll be able to change typefaces.
The Kindle won’t replace the paper book any time soon, except perhaps for specialized uses, e.g., students. Key uses will be for travel, for storing and using tools that are available free, e.g., dictionaries of foreign languages, reference works of all types including encyclopedias, and for collections of eBooks downloaded from free services. Most of the classics now available on the Web can be made available in Kindle format.
Here’s a great set of over 100 tips for the Kindle linked to by George Needham, a fellow Kindle owner, on It’s all good.
Services
How to maintain your customer service brand promise
Outstanding customer service “has become an imperative” according to Anand Subramaniam, VP of Worldwide Marketing at eGain, a major developer of customer support software (used by some early virtual reference systems). Your “customers will not hesitate to defect to competitors if your business does not deliver on its service promise.”
While the article is intended for companies with call centers, Mr. Subramaniam lists several ways to deliver on your customer service brand promise that are particularly relevant to today’s libraries:
- Align customer service operations with brand strategy. “Don’t mix a 'Wal-Mart-style' operational approach with a 'Nordstrom-type' brand intent…”
- Set service levels based on rigorous strategic and operational criteria. Your “customer relationship intent” should be “a foundation for setting service levels.” Service levels should be based on things like evolving customer expectations.
- Manage expectations through proactive communications. “Setting the right expectations is critical in making the right promise and keeping it.”
- Enhance staff experience for better customer experience. To “increase the probability of delivering on the customer service promise,” route requests to the right people. Include “customers’ ’state of mind’ or emotion to the routing framework.”
- Provide staff with a complete view of customers. “Forcing the customer to be the contextual “glue” is one of the most cited sources of customer frustration…” A “unified customer interaction hub…can help achieve quantum improvements in customer experience and loyalty.”
- Eliminate knowledge and best practice silos. “Service resolution and fulfillment often span multiple people” and work areas.
- Leverage robust workflow management. “Implementing robust workflows to eliminate service…gaps across people and [work areas] will maximize the probability of meeting service levels.”
“[P]roactive expectation setting can sometimes make a big difference in retaining unhappy customers.”
(Anand Subramaniam, "Eight ways to maintain your customer service brand promise," Sales & Marketing Management’s ManageSmarter, Jun. 24, 2008.)
The future of reading
The July 27 New York Times started its series on the future of reading by asking: R U really literate if U never crack a book? The article gives an excellent overview of how the Internet is changing the way people read.
Today’s teenagers spend hours a day on the Internet, some at popular sites like fanfiction.net, where you can create your own stories and add characters and revise plots in existing stories. Some of the writing there is full of spelling and grammatical errors. But is what they do there legitimate reading?
Some argue that the Internet is “the enemy of reading” while others defend it. The defenders don’t deny the value of books, but they argue that the classics aren’t for everyone, and “some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.”
One problem is that standardized reading tests don’t test for online reading skills. Some countries will start testing for “digital literacy” next year, but not the United States. There’s no question that book reading and Internet reading differ. And while there are links between teens’ declining reading scores and a slump in their reading for fun, it’s not clear whether they think of what they do on the Internet as “reading.”
How online reading differs from reading a book
- Searching for answers to questions is “central to online reading.” Book readers form questions less frequently; searches are limited to TOCs and indexes.
- Online readers have to find and evaluate information at multiple sites, synthesize it and build answers from these different sources. Book readers “have high confidence in books”; information there is “already organized and synthesized.”
- Online reading is interactive. Online readers share ideas and respond to and create content via the Web. Book readers “interact less directly and less often.”
Online reading may also shorten our attention spans (see "Is Google making us stupid?" in the Atlantic), and research has shown that Web users are “persistently weak in judging whether information is trustworthy.” On the other hand, some people with reading difficulties read better online than in books and low-income children given access to the Internet from home show improved reading scores.
”Some literary experts say that reading itself should be redefined. Interpreting videos or pictures, they say, may be as important a skill as analyzing a novel or a poem... Books aren’t out of the picture, but they’re only one way of experiencing information in the world today.”
There’s been little large-scale testing of digital reading skills, but the Educational Testing Service has a digital literacy test that “requires students to solve informational problems by searching for answers on the Web.” Of the 20,000 students who’ve taken it, only 39 percent of college freshman showed “’core functional levels’ in Internet literacy.” Some literacy experts advocate for federal testing of digital reading skills in the nation’s report card tests, but traditionalists “have held sway” and the next round of tests will include only “print reading comprehension.”
Next year, “the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers reading, math and science tests to a sample of 15-year-old students in more than 50 countries, will add an electronic reading component. The United States…will not participate.”
In spite of the ongoing debate about the importance of digital literacy, people agree “that children need a wide range of reading experiences.” What’s not clear is whether today’s Internet junkies will ever read books for fun and how that will affect them in the long run.
(Motoko Rich, "R u really literate if u never crack a book?", The New York Times, Jul. 27, 2008.)
How should libraries handle online resources?
Reading and writing about The New York Times article on the future of reading made me think again about the W. B. Yeats exhibition at the National Library of Ireland.
This splendid online exhibit transported me back to my English-major youth and thrilled me with Yeats’ reading of Lake Isle of Innisfree, pictures of Maude Gonne, of Yeats’ wife (not Maude Gonne), several brief documentaries—on and on. What I would have given to see all of this when I was studying Yeats in college!
I read about the physical exhibit (where much of Yeats’ work on display has been digitized) in The New York Times. The print edition of the Times didn’t mention the online exhibition, but the the online edition did.
Questions
- Is viewing the online Yeats exhibit legitimate study? Is it equivalent to reading the book about the exhibit? Less? More? I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know, but I do know that I was able to sample the online exhibit from home--no delays, no trips to the library, no ILL requests, no gasoline used, no costly trip to Ireland.
- What should libraries be doing about providing access to these rich Web resources? The online exhibition is cited at the end of Wikipedia’s excellent article on Yeats. But I didn’t find it in WorldCat or in any of several library catalogs. OCLC now offers a Web harvester, which may help. Libraries will need to move quickly though to link to these online resources, or--is it already too late, and should we just let Google and Wikipedia handle it?
- What’s your library doing about online resources?
What you can learn about customer service from the Disney Institute
The Disney Institute’s three and a half-day course has a lot to offer other organizations about how to deliver quality service. How are other organizations like Disney?
- They have customers from multiple generations.
- Their customers have increasingly high expectations.
- They have to deal with their own princesses and pirates.
- Every organization needs to sustain and engage its workforce.
An organization needs to maintain a delicate balance between quality employee experience, quality customer experience, and quality business experience. If you can keep your employees happy, they’ll deliver “great service” to your customers.
Disney sets out to exceed customer expectations by “paying attention to every detail of service delivery.” In fact, Disney staff are trained to want to exceed expectations.
At Disney customers are compared to snowflakes–no two are alike. Staff are empowered to deliver what they believe to be the “right service for each guest.” The company listens to what staff have to say, ideas are shared and “deserving workers” are recognized frequently. This process is formalized in “an annual employee attitude survey.”
Disney hires “based on attitude rather than aptitude.” Research shows that employees and customers “have the same expectations. Make me feel special, treat me as an individual, respect me and make me knowledgeable.” Disney also transfers “decision-making authority down to the lowest possible level.”
(Margery Weinstein, “Keys to the kingdom”, Training Magazine, July/August 2008, pp. 24-28, digital ed.)
Marketing
Great library slogan from Better Homes and Gardens!
The “Healthy You” section of the August 2008 issue of Better Homes and Gardens suggests that in addition to learning a new language or playing a musical instrument, people who live long and live well are “avid, curious readers.” Beside the following blurb is the ALA library logo:
- Forget credit cards — the most important piece of plastic in your wallet is your library card.
OCLC’s study of library support in America
In case you haven’t already heard much about OCLC’s report From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America, here’s a brief summary, with some help from Barbara Quint and Norman Oder.
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and conducted by Leo Burnett USA, the report (PDF free; print copies $10) “provides detailed voter segmentation and analysis of groups on the basis of their likelihood to support library funding.”
Target: Public libraries serving populations of less than 200,000.
Primary goal: To understand “which voters are most likely to provide definite library funding support, which voters will provide limited or no library funding support, and which voters represent probable support for increased library funding.”
Some findings
- Library funding support is related more to voters’ attitudes and perceptions than to their demographics.
- Library funding support is only marginally related to library visitation.
- Many people don’t know how public libraries are funded or the full extent of services offered.
- “‘Passionate librarians’ help generate library funding.”
- Voters who see the library as a "transformational" force as opposed to an "informational" source are more likely to support increased funding.
Strengths
- Excellent data, useful insights and great graphics!
- Useful decision-making tool.
- May help librarians target their “messages to the right segments.”
Weaknesses
- Limited to statistics of on-site use of physical facilities; omits website usage.
- Ignores alternative funding sources.
Recommendations
- Brand libraries as “transformational,” “capable of changing and enriching people’s lives.”
- Promote the concept of equal access. “The … most compelling argument in support of funding increases for public libraries is the important truth that U.S. public libraries provide equal access to valuable information resources for all residents.”
Recommendations from elected officials
- Stress “the library’s return on investment (ROI) to the community.”
- “Build strategic partnerships with other public services and programs.”
- Proactively seek library support.
- Get “constituents to influence elected officials.”
- “Stress the library’s broad nonpartisan appeal.”
Conclusions
While people see the library as “a provider of practical answers and information,” the study concludes that this “is a very crowded space, and to remain relevant in today’s information landscape, repositioning will be required.”
Cathy De Rosa, OCLC marketing VP and principal author of the report, believes that the study’s “findings suggest that a large-scale advocacy campaign targeted at the right segments of the voting public has the potential to drive increased funding support.”
Read more about the report from: Norman Oder, "OCLC report suggests ways to generate new library support," Library Journal, Jul. 15, 2008; Barbara Quint, "Voters and public library funding: An OCLC market research report", Information Today’s NewsBreaks, Jul. 21, 2008. Or get it here; individual chapters are available as well as the PDF of the full report. At the very least, bookmark it! I think you’ll want to come back to it. Full disclosure: I used to work for OCLC.
