Managers

Even Managers Need Continual Training

May 31, 2010
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What a great idea, even managers need to keep learning.  I’m impressed by the program and the transparent approach ACPL is taking, I hope to see more as they year goes by. via LSLC Training Blog Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Share on FriendFeed Buzz it up Share on netvibes share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Buzz it up Subscribe to the comments on this post Print for later Tell a friend

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Top Ten Links Week 21

May 31, 2010
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Top Ten Links Week 21

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 5/21/2010 thru 5/27/2010. Ok I’ll confess right off the bat, I cheated, there are 12 links this week.  I just couldn’t cut them down. A couple of these deserve their own blog post so shame on me for not giving them the attention they deserve. 1. How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking - great article from Peter Bregman with some clear reasons why you should stop multi-tasking A study showed that people distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQs. What’s the impact of a 10-point drop? The same as losing a night of sleep. More than twice the effect of smoking marijuana. Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process. Even better are the six things he learned the week he stopped trying to multi-task. I really need to do this First, it was delightful. Second, I made significant

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Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go

December 2, 2009
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Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go

The issue of control comes up over and over again when we talk about the online world. It recently it came up at Internet Librarian in many different ways, including: How do I stop a staff member from wasting time on Facebook? How do we control what staff are saying online? Management wants everything posted online (Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc) to go through PR. We don’t want employees to be able to access social networking sites? What about privacy? We can’t allow just anyone to post a comment without approving it first. How do we know a student is who they say they are? I have answers to all of these questions, but these questions aren’t what this is about, what they represent is, control. Or the illusion of control. The desire for control comes from fear. Fear of change, of the unknown, of doing things differently, of a situation not created by us, of taking risks. It is human nature to fear these things, it’s how we’ve survived.  So is adaptation and times are changing, just as they always do, and we need to adapt. In the internet age your image/brand no longer belongs to you. It belongs to

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Managers – The Message You’re Sending About Time is Affecting Customer Service

October 19, 2009
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Managers – The Message You’re Sending About Time is Affecting Customer Service

The choice you need to make is will it affect it in a good way or a bad way? We are all busy. My to-do list is so long at this point I keep a master running list and a small list just for today, because looking at the long list inspires panic. As individuals, managers and organizations it can be easy to keep adding responsibilities, expectations and tasks to our list and to the lists of others. Especially at a time like this, when you may be short staffed, or just busier than normal (library usage goes up during a recession) or both. Unfortunately this attitude towards time can really hurt you in customer service. How staff feel about their time and the expectation from management affects how they interact with patrons. It’s the difference between handing someone a call number and vaguely gesturing towards the stacks and leaving the desk and walking the patron to the book. It’s the difference between hand the book over and walking away or asking if you can help them find anything else. It shows up in the type of greeting patrons receive in that minutes of extra chit-chat so many love, in

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photo by Beth Tribe

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