Two Questions That Can Change Your Life From Daniel Pink

March 9, 2010 · Posted in Change, Video · View Comments

Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

What’s my sentence? In one sentence state what lasting impression you want to leave on the world.

For day to day motivation - Was I better today than yesterday?

Pivot Points For Change: Libraries And Librarians

March 4, 2010 · Posted in Change · View Comments

The fabulous Buffy Hamilton gave her Pivot Points of Change presentation at my library’s Staff Day last week. The points were inspired by post from Seth Godin in which he states changing everything is too difficult. Buffy applied this to libraries and librarians for the 9 pivot points of change. This is a slightly modified version of her original 9 pivot points of change for school librarians.

Instead of thinking you can only participate in face to face conferences, consider how you can participate virtually
Keep your traditional means of connecting with patrons and colleagues, but innovate at every possible touch point through social media and social networking
Keep reading your print journals, but use a feed aggregator or information portal to access and organize your favorite blogs, journals, podcasts, youtube videos, and twitter rss feeds to stay on the cutting edge
Keep networking with colleagues face to face, but cultivate a personal learning network to broaden your PLN (Personal Learning Network) to include librarians and other professionals from around the world who can inform your thinking, practice, and philosophy
Keep your traditional productivity tools, but use cloud computing to encourage collaboration and information sharing
Continue sharing your library program goals and reports through traditional formats, but also compose these in a different format, such as a mindmap, video, or other multimedia/visualization medium
Keep your traditional services and materials, but expand those services and “containers” of materials to reflect patron needs
Keep positing literacy as a primary focal point of your library program, but expand that definition of literacy to include new media literacy and information literacy as mainstream literacies equal in importance to traditional literacy.
Keep your traditional sources of authoritative information, but let the research topic and mode of research guide the integration of social media information sources and tools for delivering that content in your subject guides

Pivot Points For Change: Libraries And Librarians

View more presentations from Buffy Hamilton.

Tags: buffy hamilton, Innovation, Librarians, pivot points for change, resources

Want Innovation? Get Out of the Way

February 10, 2010 · Posted in Change, Innovation · View Comments

cc image used courtesy of Vermin Inc on flickr

We hear a lot about innovation and change these days. Everyone is talking about it, every is doing it, or at least trying to. There’s a problem though, change and innovation require more than lip service. Declaring that you are innovative does not make it so.

You know what I’m talking about, someone reads an article, attends a presentation, has a conversation over coffee and comes back to work and says – we’re going to be innovative! Maybe there are even a few committees put together. But then what? Nothing. The committees quit meeting and things go back to the way they were. Maybe one or two people are still trying, but no one is listening.

You know why? Because innovation doesn’t happen by committee or decree.

Organizations do not innovate. People innovate. Inspired people. Fascinated people. Creative people. Committed people. That’s where innovation begins. On the inside.

The organization’s role — just like the individual manager’s role — is to get out of the way. And while this “getting out of the way” will undoubtedly include the effort to formulate supportive systems, processes, and protocols, it is important to remember that systems, processes, and protocols are never the answer. - Mitch Ditkoff

So how do you create a culture of innovation? You start with the people who think differently than you do.

Diversity is one of those sticky terms that people seem to boil down to creating a Benetton ad. Diversity isn’t about some magical collection of five differently colored skin tones. It’s about bringing different perspectives and backgrounds to the table and creating an environment that values what can be gained from different voices who’ve taken different paths. Skin color (or gender performance) is often interpreted as a reasonable substitute for this and, for many reasons, it has been historically. But bringing in a woman whose attitude and approach is just as masculine as the men isn’t going to help your team break outside of its current mindset. They key is to bring people who think differently than you - danah boyd*

Then get out of their way.

Once you’ve hired a good staff, you sit down, you formulate a plan and then you get out of their way. John Limbert

Let them do what you hired them to do.

The really good people want autonomy — you let me do it, and I’ll do it. So I told the people I recruited: “You come in here and you’ve got to keep me informed, but you’re the guy, and you’ll make these decisions. It won’t be me second-guessing you. But everybody’s going to win together. We’re part of a team, but you’re going to run your part.” That’s all they want. They want a chance to do it. - Gordon M. Bethune

You can not force innovation to happen. You can provide the autonomy, the trust to allow people to be innovative.

*danah boyd’s post is about gender issues and being a woman in todays workforce. It’s worth a read (and mostly likely a blog post) in is own right.

Tags: Change, committee, different, diversity, employees, innovate, Innovation, innovative, management, Managers, think, work

How to Learn From Failure

February 9, 2010 · Posted in Change · View Comments

cc image used courtesy of connors got heart on flickr

So often when talking about innovation or change we hear someone say don’t be afraid to fail. That is harder than it sounds, I mean really; who wants to fail? Who wants to stand up in front of a group, no matter how big or how small and admit they were wrong. I know some people would admit they were wrong, but no one wants to be wrong.

Part of the problem is failure is seen as a waste of time, of money or other resources. But we can learn a lot from failure as Jonah Lehrer writes Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up

Too often, we assume that a failed experiment is a wasted effort. But not all anomalies are useless. Here’s how to make the most of them

Check Your Assumptions - Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.

Seek Out the Ignorant - Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.

Encourage Diversity - If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.

Beware of Failure-Blindness - It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.