Your Library's Future

We read the stories in the paper: an organization with tremendous influence goes from leading edge to leaderless in one horrible stroke of fate. Recently, McDonald's Corporation announced the sudden death of its chair and CEO, Jim Cantalupo. Yet the organization barely skipped a beat, announcing a new chair and CEO within days. Investors barely responded, and the $40 billion multinational purveyor of Big Macs and Supersize Fries survives better than most of our waistlines.

The saving grace for McDonald's is succession planning, a common program in large corporations. Leaders of such organizations understand that they are obliged to stakeholders to ensure a successful transition. Without plans for replacing top leadership talent, whether the departure is sudden or not, the corporation will suffer.

Many librarians understand that they, too, have enormous responsibilities to stakeholders—the members of the public who rely upon their libraries for education, research, enrichment, and enjoyment—as well as the library's employees.

Take a look at your demographics. We are working with a large East Coast urban library that realized it was time to begin a succession planning process. The first thing we did was to analyze where it was. This is how its leadership pool breaks down:

Director and deputies, Department and Assistant Department Heads Total: 24; age 55+, 10 (42%); 50–54, 5 (21%)
Branch and Division Managers Total: 63; age 55+, 29 (46%); 50–54, 16 (25%); 71% are over 50.

Most under 50 are not in public service. Of nine assistant department heads, none is under 40; 63% are over 50. Thus, the current leadership and those who would be their natural successors will retire simultaneously, leaving a huge leadership vacuum at many levels across the library system.

To confront this problem, some libraries have adopted what William J. Rothwell calls "comprehensive succession management," which "anticipates changes in management," creating a strategic plan that provides for putting "the right people…in the right place…at the right times to do the right things."

The public sector has burdens that private employers may resolve with a few more dollars: whereas in private industry most managers possess MBAs and formal management training, library managers come from the ranks of librarianship. They rarely receive formal instruction on how to achieve goals, motivate staff, prepare budgets, manage buildings, and maximize employee potential.

Succession planning is more than planning for contingencies if the proverbial Mack truck wipes out your management team (heaven forbid!). It means assessing, as the Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR, has done, the number of key positions (not just top management positions but all variety of specialties and areas of expertise) that could become vacant in the near future. And, once the gaps are identified, providing training, coaching, special assignments, and other developmental opportunities so that staff members are ready to move into them when the time comes. This development of "bench strength" is important in small and large libraries alike.

At the root of the issue is the appreciation that the library's most important, most valuable asset is its people. Succession is an issue for any generation, but it is hitting the profession's radar as the culture at large begins to confront the expected retirement of the baby boomers (63 million or so). Most prescient managers understand that there is not a huge cadre of trained, skilled workers ready to step into their places. The profession is asking who will run the libraries when this talent leaves.

The answer is simple. Libraries will be run by people identified by current managers as both qualified and trainable and who are given the right opportunities to develop the needed skills.

When the Multnomah County Library began looking closely at its potential loss to retirements in 1999, the library found that its figures were similar to those often quoted in the literature: 40% of library managers and 20% of librarians would be eligible for retirement by 2003, with another 33% eligible soon thereafter. At the same time, a staff survey ranked "advancement possibilities" low as a reason to work at the Multnomah County Library. The library had a solid reputation that attracted strong external candidates, but the research indicated a competitive recruiting environment, as well as an anticipated shortage of library school graduates.

Armed with this information, senior managers listed key management and knowledge positions and identified potential successors for their own positions and developmental experiences for those individuals. Some examples of developmental needs include budgeting, career planning, supervisory skills, exposure to new people and challenges, networking and relationship building, influencing without authority, leadership, political acumen, and political savvy. The library also launched an effort to make all staff aware of the need to focus additional energy planning for future staffing needs, including building a resource on the library's intranet devoted to succession planning.

The library encouraged employees to make their career interests known. Based on feedback from staff, the library saw the need to shift a portion of training (structured and self-directed) from technical and functional expertise to soft skills, including leadership and employee development. The Employee Development and Project Bank Intranet sites were created to provide staff tools for self-directed professional development.

A new performance management system was implemented. Staff now have an opportunity to participate in a 360-degree peer-review process and regularly discuss their performance and improvement needs with a supervisor. There was some initial concern and resistance to this process, so it was made optional. Considerable training was provided for all reviewers. Peer reviewers have learned how thoughtfully to convert daily gripes into feedback that can help a colleague improve work performance and working relationships. Many staff members who took advantage of this form of feedback have found it to be positive and supportive.

The Lead Worker position was introduced at the Central Library. This gave staff represented by the union (most library staff, including librarians at the Multnomah County Library) an opportunity to experience some aspects of a leadership position in their work units. Lead Workers were encouraged to select a mentor and meet with that person regularly. Since then, additional informal mentoring relationships have evolved around the library system.

New soft skills training curriculum was created to cover developing leadership, managing change, motivating staff, resolving conflict, budgeting, facilitating meetings, developing supervisory skills, handling anger/emotions in the workplace, and team-building. The library also began introducing external nonlibrary trainers and curriculum.

Staff were also encouraged to take advantage of leadership programs inside and outside the library profession, including the Snowbird Leadership Institute, Leadership Portland, Urban Libraries Fellows, and Pacific Northwest Library Association Leadership Institute.

As a result, the library has seen over a dozen internal promotions in the last 18 months alone. Several librarians and support staff have had the Lead Worker experience. Overall, the librarians at Multnomah County Library report seeing lots of excitement surrounding the competition for promotions, with strong internal candidates available for most openings.

And the need has certainly been borne out: since the initial studies, Multnomah County Library has seen a 50% turnover in the makeup of its senior management team and a turnover of one third in its branch heads. Despite this, usage continues to grow, budget problems have been dealt with, and responsive new programs expand the library's offerings.

The future is around the corner. What you do now ensures the viability of your organization going forward.