Planning for New Library Futures

Firms like IBM and Intel spend millions of dollars planning for change to ensure corporate success in future years. What about libraries? Is your board thinking about transformation? Do your administrators have a process in place to plan for change? Libraries need to change, and change significantly, and they need to start the process now. Libraries must embrace new and exciting futures that retain the profession's underlying core values and overlay new missions as well. To meet those challenges fully, however, libraries must plan for change, not merely react to it.

This call is being taken up by libraries nationwide. Like the Darien Public Library, CT, whose long-range planning process John Berry wrote about in "Inventing the Library Future " (Editorial, LJ 9/15/02, p. 6), the Ann Arbor District Library, MI, LJ's 1997 Library of the Year, engaged in strategic planning several years ago and continues to implement-and rethink-that vision (see "The Ann Arbor Experience with Future Search," p. 40). Other libraries, or consortia of libraries, can likewise create new futures for themselves using the planning tools that are available today.

Strategic planning has a long history in libraries as well as in other institutions. Recently, however, the traditional approach to strategic planning has given way to newer processes that are not only strategic in approach but are designed so that organizations are better able to create new futures. It is worthwhile for all involved in the process-and input should be gathered from all levels of the organization-to learn about the new approaches as well as the common pitfalls associated with planning efforts.

Long-range planning techniques have been in the management toolbox for several generations. In the years following World War II a number of libraries produced and published impressive blueprints that often spanned five to ten or even as many as 20 years. These plans presented a variety of statistical data usually projecting current growth patterns over a period of years.

These plans assumed that growth and change would be incremental. The planning techniques available during this period could not easily factor in the increased speed of organizational change that has occurred since the arrival of automation and Internet technologies. As a result, long-range planning became more and more speculative. The failure to factor in environmental conditions was another limitation of long-range planning of that era.

Strategic planning techniques represented a significant advancement in the art of planning. This different approach to planning recognized the importance of focusing on the relationships between an organization and its environment and stakeholders, e.g., a public library and its community or an academic library and its campus. This recognition led to the use of environmental scans. The scan allows planners to take into account what is happening in the environments beyond the walls of an organization, e.g., within the community, on campus, and among groups of faculty, young adults, unserved, and so forth.

Strategic planning techniques also enable an organization to assess its internal Strengths and Weaknesses in relation to the external Opportunities and the Threats it faces. Called a SWOT analysis, its goal is to develop plans and strategies that take advantage of an organization's strengths while at the same time minimizing or overcoming its weaknesses and threats.

By including these new dimensions in planning techniques, planners are better able to create a vision of where the library wants to go and a map of how to get there. This information can then be used to develop detailed plans that flesh out objectives and tasks. Though now more than ten years old, M.E.L. Jacob's Strategic Planning: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians (Neal-Schuman, 1990) is an excellent example of how to plan strategically.

The focus on visions, the environment, and the existing relationships between an organization's strengths and weaknesses contrasted with the characteristics of its environment represents a real advancement from earlier planning techniques. Strategic planning greatly enhances an organization's ability to develop realistic plans.

Unfortunately, though strategic planning is a very rational and objective process, the rational vision that results may not be exciting or even pleasing to an organization. Consider the following vision statement:

The University Library seeks to function effectively in its role of supporting teaching, learning, and research activities of the University by providing quality information, educational support, facilities and resources to students and researchers.

A mission states why the organization exists whereas a vision statement is intended to describe how the organization plans to achieve its mission. This vision statement-practical and rational though it is-reads more like a mission statement than a vision. I doubt whether it ever captured or inspired the library's staff to succeed. Library staffs are more likely to get excited by a vision that is clearly service-focused, with the staff at the center of the action.

Fortunately, there are planning methods available that permit a group of planners to create visions that are both exciting and very rational. This is accomplished by first creating a vision that is preferred, then linking this vision to an action-oriented strategic planning process. A number of planning or organizational change methods that combine emotional and rational planning techniques are described in The Change Handbook, edited by Peggy Holman and Tom Devane (Berrett-Koehler, 1999).

Among the organizational change processes described there are 'Preferred Futuring,' 'Whole-Scale Change,' and 'Real-Time Strategic Change.' All three are proven methods for producing organizational change, and all three share a number of common characteristics. They all facilitate the creation of visions that reflect what people hope and aspire to achieve, not what people believe may happen. They all also assume the planning process will involve those who have a stake in the outcomes. They all take a systematic approach to planning that will lead to improvements across the organization.

No matter what the specific form or goals of your planning efforts, some general principles apply. First of all, is the need to gain the commitment of staff by admitting them to the process. There should be a deep and abiding commitment throughout management to the principles of democracy. Management needs to keep firmly in mind that empowering people to help shape the environment in which they live and work is most likely to create a supportive staff that is willing to sustain efforts to create new futures.

Very often, structured change methods begin with a major planning event, which typically may last from one to three days. However, the real work only begins once that is finished. Organizational change is not achieved at a single event; change is a process that takes place over an extended period of time.

This requires commitment to follow through by both management and staff. Implementing plans requires investing time and money. Beyond these tangible resources, many changes also require a commitment to personal change. Planning events may plant robust seeds of what can be accomplished in the organization, and such events will certainly raise staff expectations. If management promises that changes will occur, a failure to follow through as promised is likely to set the organization further back than it was before planning began by increasing staff cynicism toward planning.

If the underlying goal of planning is to deal with change, it is essential to allow flexibility in the process and always guard against rigidity. This should be self-evident, but it is amazing how often a planning process gets bogged down because some staff members have a difficult time changing course once an implementation process is underway. There has never been a time when circumstances changed so rapidly-flexibility in attitude has never been so important to a planning effort as it is now.

One of the important steps that a library administration has to take is to decide which planning method to use. The Darien PL employed a strategic planning process that involved the use of focus groups. The Ann Arbor District Library used a version of Future Search (see The Change Handbook for a fuller description of Future Search). There are many other well-defined methods that can be used to generate desirable organizational change. There are designs intended to help organizations improve the quality of work, to redesign jobs, to open communication channels, or to help bring an organization together so that it can achieve its preferred future. These are only a few of the purposes for which the processes can be used. A library will be best served, whatever method it employs, if the method embodies all of the following characteristics.

• The process should honor the past and acknowledge the present before it focuses on a new future
  If organizations are not willing to learn from where they have been and where they are, they will find it difficult to move ahead. An organization must learn from past successes and failures; it must also acknowledge what is currently working in the organization and, more importantly, what is not working. Staff concerns and grievances must be addressed. For example, if communication between administration and staff is poor or a chasm exists between professionals and clerks, progress on a new plan, no matter how inspiring, will be very difficult because all unacknowledged disputes will be dragged into the future.
• The process should involve a true microcosm of the organization
  All levels of a staff from the director to the newest circulation clerk ought to be represented in the planning process. All job classifications and categories, all units including public and technical services, all branches as well as the central library should be invited to participate. The goal is to get the full range of staff perspectives.
  Many of the organizational change processes in use today can actively involve hundreds of people. Some companies will shut down operations for several days so their entire staffs can be involved. Ideally, an entire staff should be involved in the planning/change event, but, of course, closing down a library system is very difficult; therefore, it is extremely important that those who participate in a planning event represent a true microcosm of the organization.
• The process should avoid either top-down- or bottom-up-produced visions
  Visionary leadership is important, but visionary leadership is not enough. If a visionary leader can't achieve community and staff buy-in, an organizational change effort will be unsuccessful. Some might view this assertion as an exaggeration, but if you think so, then ask yourself this question: 'Could I implement my plan without staff cooperation and board support?' If the answer is, 'Of course, I'll need staff and board support,' then what you need is an organizational change process that provides for community input and produces staff buy-in.
  Bubble-up visions were popular a few years ago. This approach to organizational change was a reaction to years of autocratic management. While bubble-up visions might have had staff support, if they didn't also have the unqualified commitment of management and support of governing officials, these efforts most likely ended up spinning a lot of wheels and causing lots of frustration. Again, what a library needs is a strategy that finds support at all levels of the organization.
• The process should tap the expertise of the staff
  Library staffs are much more knowledgeable than is often appreciated. The true wisdom embedded in an organization will emerge from its staff when they all share the same base of information and are thus able to see the whole picture. When information is shared, it is the staff who will find the best answers for most of their own challenges. I have found in my work that staff-driven answers are usually much better than answers produced by outside expert consultants.
• The process should identify and prioritize initiatives
  Don't be overly ambitious. While a big-picture understanding is essential, it is also important to recognize that some changes may be dependent on other actions being taken first. Some staff members must continue to do the 'old stuff' while the new initiatives are being implemented. Don't exhaust the staff who are committed to change. Keep in mind that not everything can be done at once, and, more importantly, not everything needs to be done at once.
• The process should examine the entire system
  Focusing narrowly on activities will not resolve complex systemwide problems, e.g., reference and cataloging impact the entire system; they shouldn't be studied in isolation. Real wisdom and synergy in planning are realized when the interconnectedness of relationships are recognized in the process. Bringing together various units and activities of the organization enables the organization to see itself as a whole and therefore makes it easier to tackle successfully change that is broad-based.

These planning methods really do work. They also make it easier for those engaged in planning to avoid the most common pitfalls associated with organizational planning and change efforts. However, no matter what approach is used, achieving success in organizational change efforts is still extremely difficult. The vast majority of projects probably fall far short of their hoped-for objectives. There are a lot of reasons why success eludes organizations. Among the most common culprits are plans that don't generate staff support, implementation plans that become overly rigid and inflexible, or plans that are overly ambitious.

If the method is overly rational, both the process and the outcomes may fail to excite those charged with moving it forward. Discussions can be too focused on what people think is going to happen rather than on what excites and induces people to act. For many, that may mean talk of a technology-oriented future rather than a service- and staff-oriented future. In this environment the human side of library service can get lost. The lesson is to make sure people have a vision that motivates them. Planning projects that are too ambitious lead to staff exhaustion during the implementation stage. Since one product of the strategic planning process is a broad array of objectives and tasks to be performed, a library's administration must be careful that its plans do not overextend and eventually overwhelm the staff with the work to be accomplished. Rather than scaling back the issues to be addressed, implementation can be phased in over time. The planning process should keep focused on priority activities. Planning and organizational change efforts that are too rigid become an obstacle to success. Strategic planning projects are highly structured and supported by much written documentation. The very existence of these documents unintentionally often becomes a source of trouble. Once a goal or objective is put into writing, some people feel that the written statement is tantamount to an administrative commitment to fulfill the objective or task in its current state. But changes that appear logical and necessary today may be unnecessary in a couple of months. An organizational change process must always remain flexible so that new ideas can be easily and successfully introduced.

Libraries can function as important community or campus information agencies. There are already many examples of libraries that are marching ahead to exciting new futures. There are many effective planning tools available that can be used to chart the way. What we need now are library leaders who have the will to act and are ready to tap into the excitement and commitment of the 'best and brightest' of their staffs.