Matt Hamilton : Libraries and Innovation : creating environments for encouraging and supporting creativity and innovation among staff
How do we begin the messy job of creating a culture of innovation
What will you need? Patience, perseverance, vision and a way to empower staff
Patience is hard to come by for innovators, we see something and want it now, and have made the change before others even see it coming
Get comfortable with ambiguity
incubation
Don’t be afraid to use the word – pilot, even if it fails it encourages others to try new things
Look before you leap, but don’t be afraid to leap
To lead others – we need to create and communicate a compelling vision, build ways to communicate and to listen even if you don’t like what you hear
Keep articulating vision until its truly shared, this means address the concerns of people who aren’t on board
Look for hidden treasures, mine the skills that already exist, find out what ppl did before they came to your organization, discover passions and hobbies
Push power down org chart wherever and whenever possible
Empower staff at all levels of organizations
Create an environment where people enjoy coming to work, this helps the best people come to you
Give your ideas and your people the time they need – you’ll get the most out of your people if they are allowed to grow, the same is true for your ideas
Let your staff play – like google allows employees to spend 10% of time on project of own design
Question – if we are gonna have these new duties how will we get everything done? Allows staff to work on things of their own choosing if they found time
Demonstrate that we trust and respect our staff to made good judgement in pursuit of noble goals
If you lead them to freedom they will follow, freed from monotony, cubicles and stifling policies
Sing praise of colleagues in and outside of org
Don’t try to do too much, some of your project will rust while pursuing others
We can’t all move at the speed of our ideas
Where the world sees trash Africa recycles – balls of trash childen in afica use to play soccer
Questions:
You talked about pushing power down the chart, do you have examples for directors on they can do that? Let your staff make decisions
Have you ever crashed and burned trying to start a project if so how do you reinstile confidence? Yes, build up a peer group so you can demonstrate the idea outside of the organization, then inside might reconsider
With new duties how do we find time? How do you motivate people who just say they are too busy? Talk with staff, background, career goals and what got them excited? They were so excited that they could select something and follow through with it that they were able to find time. There are some people who are particarlury motiviated to do anything other than to come to work and get their paycheck
Rick – Likes idea of project and things being in beta, can sometimes do things because it’s a trial, sometimes can bring others on by saying where just gonna try this for a while
Librarian by Day 