Blatant Berry: The Impossible Job

The professional rumor mills work overtime these days, delivering a disconcerting array of gossip and reports of library directors in trouble. While official announcements rarely say so with such candor, library directors have been fired or forced into retirement, have escaped untenable situations to find new jobs, or, in a few rare cases, stuck it out and survived. The viable tenure for a library administrator seems to be shrinking. Usually the difficult and dirty work of removing a director is executed by trustees, commissioners, or other elected or appointed officials. The coup de grâce is performed in secret proceedings where the details of the settlement of the relationship and the public statement are negotiated.

“It is the responsibility of library trustees to make policy. It is the job of library directors to execute that policy and manage the library.” That was the oft-repeated gospel in library administration classes when I attended. The most naïve students actually entered the work world thinking that all library administrators and trustees not only agreed with the idea but practiced it. We learned later that such an ideal separation of powers is rarely, if ever, achieved in practice.

The principle is valid. However, few administrators or the members of their governing authorities have the tolerance and flexibility needed to maintain the balance of power and still make the right policy and operating decisions. Few have learned how to navigate the troubled waters when administrators disagree with their bosses on the board. Yet I remember a strong director who was faced with board opposition to acquiring video formats because it competed with a local store wisely agreeing to acquire the library collection from that store. The discount in purchasing locally was a bit lower, but everyone was happy.

Administering library operations can be dangerous work. The library landscape is littered with the remains of directors who tried to enforce that separation of powers strictly without applying the human understanding needed to keep governing officials and trustees engaged in the running of the institution. Other fatalities include those who gave in too easily or who tolerated galling micromanagement by a zealous board chair, politician, or influential trustee or donor.

We got truisms in administration courses because there are no formulas for management. It is an art, not a science. The astute manager uses quantitative measures when making the case, qualitative measures when trying to convince, and PR and persuasion when all else fails.

Despite posturings to the contrary, administrators often run into trouble by assuming power where they really have very little. It doesn’t solve problems for a manager to claim prerogatives, take control, or assert, by virtue of a job description, contract, or other understanding, that decision-making belongs to him or her.

Every issue requires both principled strength and consistency, coupled with deep sensitivity to the others involved and utter flexibility to allow outcomes not initially contemplated. That, of course, makes the task nearly impossible. Sometimes the price of principle is the job, like the administrator who acquired popular materials in Spanish to serve a large immigrant constituency and then was attacked by anti-immigration forces.

In truth, no administrator is always right, and much of administrative success is in taking losses with magnanimity and grace. That means abandoning grudges and animosities and knowing when to quit the debate. It took me nearly all of a 40-year career in libraries and library-related management to discover how much more I needed to learn.

Now that I’ve reread the pious platitudes I just wrote, I realize why administrators get the big bucks and often have relatively short tenures. The work is tough, they often lose, and whether or not they are at fault, they get the blame because they are in charge, or so they were told when accepting the job.

What is the formula for administrative success? Keep learning. Be deeply sensitive, totally flexible, wise, and tough. And if that doesn’t work, try for another job because the one you’re in is impossible.

jberry@reedbusiness.com