The first Keynote speaker of the conference, Steve Denning, can be credited with striking the tone for the whole conference. An author of several economic/management books, Denning challenged libraries to reinvent their model for management–suggesting that failing to do so as Creative Economy reaches the final phases of its emergence would relegate us to the same fate as Blockbuster, Kodak, and the like. He definitely spoke in broad strokes when it came to libraries, but I think it might be useful to ruminate on what his definitions of the old and new model look like in public libraries today.

The Old Model

• Core Goal: Produce outputs
• Role of Management: Control individuals
• Coordination of Work: Vertical bureaucracy
• Core Value(s): Efficiency (do more with less)
• Communication Strategy: Managers tell people what to do

The New Model

• Core Goal: Delighting customers
• Role of Management: Support/enable dynamic teams
• Coordination of Work: Agile/Scrum, and lifelong learning
• Core Value(s): Continuous improvement/Transparency
• Communication Strategy: Horizontal storytelling

We certainly are very comfortable with outputs; who hasn’t advocated for library funding by quoting circulation numbers and program attendance. I suspect that, in our heart of hearts, these numbers are not of deep personal importance to librarians. We get that our work transforms lives, and that’s most likely the reason most of us come to work in the morning. But I think our record is mixed in the delighting customers end: while we relish the opportunity to do this with reader’s advisory, going the extra mile on the desk, etc., much of our vocabulary, infrastructure, and even the services we provide value internal expediency over pleasant user-centered design.

Maybe I’m fortunate, but I haven’t had many managers that deeply embraced a strict ‘control the workforce’ methodology. Systemically though, we have problems here too. Performance reviews focus on efficiency and outputs. We give lip service to innovation, but workflows are often structured to avoid it.  Too often, great ideas from front-line staff hide in obscurity while management is busy focusing on outputs and scarcity.

The vertical bureaucracy is alive and well in our institutions. Boards set vision and accompanying strategy, administrators establish practices, staff follow policies and inertia.  Resources are pinched, and the opportunities for staff to truly elevate their game via a culture of lifelong-learning is stunted coming out of the gates.  Similarly, the ability to iterate and adapt is often short-circuited by bureaucratic inertia, disenfranchised staff, and too many sacred cows with not enough supporting data.

I think the work we must do to adapt to the new model most squarely lands in the “core values” department.  Precisely at a time where we feel the most pressure for efficiency, we are tasked with reinventing ourselves into a swiftly iterative, constantly improving, and horizontally transparent organization.  This is the core of our trouble:  how do we find a model that soothes our (typically bureaucratic) funders while simultaneously empowering our staff to recreate our work in this manner?

The communication strategy is a key piece of the “how.”  Our staff must be empowered to have access to deep data so they can effectively communicate our rapidly evolving story to our customers.  Everyone needs to be a data analyst, and everyone a storyteller.  At least our profession typically recruits folks with strengths for each: our task is to make it both, and to create the necessary tools, policies, and culture that systemically supports this endeavor.