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Guerilla Tactix: Gaining a ‘culture of innovation’ John Blyberg, Darien Library, Darien CT NEASIST, 11/15/2007

Guerilla Tactix: Gaining a 'Culture of Innovation

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NEASIST, 11/15/2007Providence College,Providence, RI

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Page 1: Guerilla Tactix: Gaining a 'Culture of Innovation

Guerilla Tactix: Gaining a ‘culture of innovation’John Blyberg, Darien Library, Darien CT

NEASIST, 11/15/2007

Page 2: Guerilla Tactix: Gaining a 'Culture of Innovation

Gorilla innovation?for ($i=0; $i<5; $i++) {

eat($banana);}

I might claim ignorance and do a talk on “Gorilla innovation.”

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Ah! Guerilla Innovation!

For the movement!

I do like the phrase “Guerilla Innovation” and it’s certainly made me think about some of the things I do in new ways.

I’m going to talk about a number of ways you can be a guerilla innovator, but I confess up front that I approach them from the point of view of an IT manager--which is what I am. I’d venture to guess that most of you here are NOT IT managers, so I’ll suggest right here that you can still be a guerilla innovator.

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Dispense with your Culture of Reaction

Contain the crisis

I do a fair amount of tech consulting for libraries on the side, and one problem that I often run into is that staff is constantly trying to play “catch-up.” Often, technology is not helping at all. In fact, technology can be a downright hinderance in many cases.

There is a lot of talk, and therefore pressure, for libraries to begin adopting and pursuing Library 2.0 projects--ie start a wiki, blog, virtual reference, RSS, whatever. But when you look at what is going on, it’s readily apparent that the technology in use isn’t even addressing the needs of Library 1.0 properly. And that can lead to crisis.

L2 depends on L1, it doesn’t replace it.

So for those libraries that are in this predicament--which are many--I recommend that they immediately stop all new technology initiatives so that the burden on the tech person or people is lifted....

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Adopt a Culture of Innovation

Regain the initiative

Once your infrastructure is in place and you have a rock-solid foundation, THEN you can think about the future.

But you cannot do that until your existing technology is working in perfect concert with your business processes.

Only then can you work to regain the initiative. And by that, I mean forward progress. Not uncertain, tentative progress, but steady, confident progress that is channeled from a clarity of vision and strength of purpose.

You have to innovate because you know its right and you have to know that you can do it, even if you don’t know how yet.

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People are the key

But if you don’t have the right people in right place, forget it. As a library, you greatest asset is not on the shelves, and they don’t have power supplies and connect to the internet. Your greatest asset is you.

Careful management of your people is critical, however. for example, I ask you, “Do you know who your thought leaders are?” Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Do you know how to identify those people, and are they being promoted and given opportunities to effect change?

Or are they being branded as ‘troublemakers’ and ‘upstarts’? Or, is their boss taking credit for their ideas and work?

As an administrator, it can be difficult to decipher what’s going on at that level sometimes, but it pays to not lose touch with your staff.

Danny Meyer, NY Restauranteur, talks about the 51% rule...

Look for the 51% in people and new hires.

I’ve said before that libraries are not “life support systems for staff” and if we don’t make the tough personnel decisions, we’re not only doing our own institutions a disservice, but we’re insulting the profession itself.

And we also need to revisit our organizational structure. For example the traditional hierarchical structure tends to inhibit communication and collaboration... [example]

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Embed your Innovators

So, once you’ve identified those people within your organization who have the potential to effect change and take the lead on new, innovative ideas, make sure that they are embedded in the staff where they can become an influencing force.

Presumably, the people you identify and empower will share a similar vision as you and by placing them strategically throughout your organization, they can help serve as a two way conduit between staff and administration.

It also gives them the exposure to see where the opportunities are.

And then have those staff members meet and conduct reviews of what they’ve found and what they’re thinking about.

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Understand the culture

And we always need to recognize that every library has its own unique cultural fingerprint. It’s what makes each of our institutions special and unique.

So we have to take those idiosyncrasies into account whenever we do anything.

In addition, we should be looking at our communities as a source of inspiration and an indicator as to what will be successful and what will not. For example, the work I did in Ann Arbor was very successful, but won’t necessarily translate into success in Darien CT.....

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Provide a counter-vision

Why are you here today?

Why do you think Innovation in libraries is important?

Why should we be doing more than just reference and circ?

If you can’t articulate why these sorts of issues are important to yourself and others, you’re not going to win the hearts and minds of your staff or co-workers.

So develop an ideology both personally and with others in your library, then TALK ABOUT IT with people. Let’s them in on your enthusiasm and passion. Those are infectious qualities that make people feel good and are incredibly motivating.

This can be as simple as writing down a few ideas to as formal as drfting your own personal ‘mission statement’ -- sort of a Jerry McGuiresque approach. Or it could blog about it or simply exchange emails with some people about your thoughts.

Also, practically speaking, you’re going to eventually run into opposition, and you need to be able to come up with a counter vision that, in essence, overwhelms or neutralizes theirs.

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Shore-up your infrastructure

As I mentioned before, you need to fix your problems.

As an IT manager, I’m acutely aware of what’s going on with my systems. I know, for example, that we average about 99.7% uptime across the board. But I’m dissatisfied with that because it’s that .3% that can come back and bite me in the ass.

Now if your library is only running at, say, 95% uptime, then you’re subjecting your users to 5% downtime. That’s totally unacceptable and you can safely assume that you have little to no credibility with the staff.

It also means that, practically, you don’t have the means to support innovative projects for any sustained period of time.

It is so critical to lay that groundwork and establish credibility, otherwise, you just going to further impact your service levels and your users will not take your ideas seriously.

I’ve worked in IT in three different organizations, two libraries and one engineerng firm. In all three cases, I’ve started by rebuilding everything...

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Develop Flexibility

And once you do that, take a look at your processes and figure out how to do it better, faster, cheaper. How can you be more nimble?

Work on cutting your response times in half, then do it again.

This is, in many ways, dependent on what I was talking about in the previous slide--you’ve built up your credibility, now go beyond that and start developing a reputation for excellence.

You want to position yourself or your department, not just as someone that should be listened to, but someone who can’t be ignored.

So you begin by identifying the areas that seem to habitually trip your department up. Examine them closely as a group and try to see what the core problem is. Then isolate that issue and develop a streamlined process to address it in the future.

I’ve made a pledge to our staff that if they really want to do something that involves technology, I will not say no. We will find a way, we will find the money, we will find the time.

Sometimes it takes a leap of faith to say, “yes, we cal do that” when in the back of your mind you’re thinking “I have no idea how we’re going to do that.”

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Aggressive Mobility

How quickly can you mobilize your department to act on something in short notice?

You want to be able to say, “yes, we can do that by Friday.”

In other words, we need to be flexible and fast.

Also, when you’re talking about pursuing innovation, it’s important that you don’t dwell on one component or one project for too long. Remember, we’re talking about creating a culture of innovation here.

That doesn’t mean that we should start projects willy-nilly ad abandon them. It means that we need to project an image of continuous innovation, and thereby helping to inculcate that state of mind into the rest of the staffs--change their expectations s that they’re not comfortably settled into a cushion of status quo.

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Economy of effort

You want to make sure that the effort you and your department expends on a particular task or project doesn’t exceed the appropriate amount of effort that should be expended on it.

In other words, be efficient.

First, we only have so many hours in a week and hands on deck. Common sense dictates that we’re not wasteful of those resources. For example, don’t spend a week cleaning up a virus outbreak until you’ve got a plan to keep it from happening again.

Second, You don’t want to appear to the rest of the staff as being wasteful of your time an resources. That’s not a helpful image to overcome when asking for resources.

So careful project management is very important. There is software to do that, but in the real world, using tools like MS project often takes up more time than it saves (unless big proj). Project management is, by and large, mostly common sense and the ability to be flexible and fast.

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Spend political capitol wisely

And so, you’ve built up some political capitol.

don’t spend it all in one place

sometimes that means that you have to give something up in anticipation of a potential future battle. You’re not going to get everything you want all the time, no matter how good you think your ideas and initiatives are.

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Continuous Education

We also need to be educating ourselves on all fronts.

Keeping up on the latest trends and technologies is critical. It’s not necesary to blog, or instance, but you really should be following whats going on in technology and in our industry. If you’re not taking advantage of RSS, start. Begin seeking out blogs and news sites that you like and respect (and maybe some you don’t), subscribe to their RSS feed and make a point of checking on them periodically throughout the week.

And educate yourself in the traditional sense. Hopefully your library has a staff development budget--it ought to. Take some classes. If you can’t do that, organize seminars internally so that expertise can be shared that way. Learning 2.0 and 23 things are great tools that both motivate and educate staff.

I’d seriously question someone’s commitment if they were only interested in maintaining their personal set of core competencies. That’s the 49% that anyone can learn. The inquisitiveness and initiative and desire to accumulate knowledge and understanding and applying it to the job is a big part of that 51%.

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Deploy and Hold

In IT, it’s a given that when you deploy something new, you’re going to have to put out fires.

But it’s important that you deploy strongly and hold the line. Yes, put out the fires, but don’t back down from your commitment to the project.

Yo also need to follow through on your deployments with any neccery work to ensure its continuing success.

For example, if you’re trying to get blogs going, you better be blogging up a storm yourself, liasing with your staff bloggers, encouraging them to write, giving them ideas, complementing them on their work, and so on. Until you’re sure a project is a success, you cannot back down. Seth Godin’s “The Dip” talks pretty strongly on this point and I recommend it to any project manager.

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Flexible data structures

We’ve got to start thinking in terms of modular data.

We are often too myopic in our long-term vision for the data that we gather and create.

Good data is a wonderful thing, and when we recognize that it can be used in more ways than originally intended, we can be smart about creating flexible databases and indexes that account for the unknown requirements of the future.

I’m stealing the term “total information awareness” away from our government and using it in our library because it captures, perfectly, the relationship I want to have with our data, our information.

Also, “total information awareness” should really only be used by institutions that genuinlely care about your personal privacy.

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Adopt:

And open source gives us the tools to do just that.

Open source = freedom. It’s as simple as that. Open source is grass-roots and it’s the ultimate example of Guerilla innovation.

Look at linux, for example. Yes, it get a ton of development money and help from IBM and Novell now, but how did it get to that point? It certainly didn’t start as a funded project...[]

LAMPFirefox

Expertise required, but worth it.Expertise also required for proprietary SW.

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Judicious use of vendors

Three things about vendors.

First, Important to take full advantage of our vendors. Our vendors are a critical component of our business model. Our ILS vendors represent the most significant technology investment that we make. So it really behooves us to make sure that we’re taking advantage of all they offer in terms of support, implementation, and integration.

This applies to other vendors as well. If you purchase PCs from Dell, take advantage of the deeply sophisticated enterprise management programs they make available as incentive. If you purchase through a company like CDWG, offload a lot of the clerical work you do onto them and take advantage of your reps expertise. Sure, these guys are salespeople, but they’re damn good at what they do and they can help you a lot.

Second, It’s vitally important to choose the right vendors. Anytime you commit to a new vendor, you’re committing to a relationship. So do your homework, take your time and find out what they can do for you. Sometimes it’s more cost effective to NOT go with the cheapest offer.

Third, leverage vendors where it makes sense, but be very aware of how they impact your flexibility--especially when it comes to your ILS vendors who are really slow to recognize that cooperative innovation could be mutually beneficial.

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Partnerships

We can never go it alone.

Reach out to other libraries and forge partnerships.

Distributed effort is far more effective than indiv. effort

Darien is committed to forging partnerships--critical component to our vision of the future. Willing to invest in it.

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Patience

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Which is bad news to Horizon users.

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Example:

[pines]

Other examples:Hennepin CountyAnn Arbor District LibraryJessamyn WestUPenn - Penn Tags, Penn VibesU Rochester, eXtensible Catalog

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Thank-you!John Blyberg

[email protected]