These two sets of commentaries originally appeared as Library Leadership Network Peer Panels in September and October 2008, and were edited by Frank Hermes. Consider them adjuncts to Strategic Planning: An Introduction.

Strategic Planning: Process and Practice

Here are the questions we posted to the panel:

• Does your library (or organization) have a “living and breathing” strategic plan?
• How often do you think strategic plans should be done? Why?
• Who should be involved in this planning? Why?
• What guidelines do you use to set objectives for your library/organization?
• What do you do to communicate your strategic plan? To whom?

Gary Strong: An Academic Library Perspective

Living and Breathing is exactly what our strategic plan is. Moreover it is a process not a “document.” It drives our resource allocation and our discussions of deployment throughout the entire library operation. The current plan is located here.

[How often?] It’s not about how often, but how do you sustain and monitor and renew your strategic planning process. Again it is not about the document, it is about how it drives the organization.

[Who's involved?] For UCLA Library the senior management team is responsible for making the strategic plan work. Every unit does an annual “work plan” and every individual is responsible for completing and annual “work plan.” At the end of the year, each report progress and discuss gaps and shortfalls as well as successes. Recommendations are gathered as to how the strategies and outcomes should be adjusted based on new information that comes through the process.

[Guidelines to set objectives?] What we do needs to reflect where we want to go. It is the detail of how we are going to get there. So strategies and outcomes get defined and work units and individuals attach themselves to taking responsibility for achieving progress and success.

[Communicating the plan and to whom?] First to all staff, then the campus (both the campus administration and to the faculty through the Academic Senate Committee on the Library and Scholarly Communication), then the system. It is on our web site. It is the framework for regular discussion in our management council meetings. Requests and proposals developed internally have to indicate how the work will relate to the strategic plan.

Jamie LaRue: A Public Library Perspective

I've tried to adopt almost a seasonal approach to planning. We do have a Long Range Plan with some 10 strategic directions, adopted as part of a facilitated process some 7 years ago now, with several community members. (I recommend putting some newspaper editors on the team. They look at the clock, say "deadline!" and can write a comprehensible mission statement in 4 minutes flat.) The plan has been sturdy--the Board looks at it annually to see if it still makes sense. It continues to serve as the frame for our annual discussions. But next year, we'll go back to the drawing board. Our community has changed.

Beyond that, our quarterly cycle looks like this:

• 1st quarter - managers poll their staff for best ideas. The springboard question is this: what's the one thing we've got to get right next year? Here's another: what would you love to be working on next year?
• 2nd quarter - manager meeting to toss out the best ideas, argue about them, whittle it down to something that looks doable in the following year.
• 3rd quarter - presentation to the library board to check direction, congruence with public expectations and the long range plan. Early budget discussions.
• 4th quarter - final budget preparation and adoption, followed by work plans for the next year.

The idea is to give front line folks a chance to report on their best thinking, managers a chance to argue things out and commit to a list of key items, the board a chance to approve or revise, and administrative staff a chance to get it to balance. At every step of the way, we report on results (agenda, minutes, intriguing ideas, formal approvals) through a variety of staff communication channels (staff meetings, an intranet) and public venues (presentations, newspaper columns, press releases).

Mike Crandall: The View from an i-School

The University of Washington iSchool started a major strategic planning effort two years ago, and we are in the implementation phase of that plan at the present time. If you want to see the results, the process, and read all about it, here is the website for your reading pleasure. I think this addresses most of the questions raised in this month's topic.

I've been through many strategic planning exercises in different environments, and I have to say that this one was one of the most organized, thoughtful, and inclusive efforts I have been a part of. The action strategies under each of the major initiatives have been assigned to specific leaders, with resources, timelines, and supporting members documented and tracked. As each action strategy is completed, the results are communicated to the school, and celebrated. It's quite impressive to watch these being ticked off the list, and to see the real change that comes as a result.

The plan covers five years, and I fully expect that we will do this again before it runs out, hopefully with as much success as we are having this time.

George Needham: OCLC's Approach

OCLC has a living, breathing strategic plan. We prepare three-year plans, and we update them annually through a series of meetings between product managers, vice presidents and finally the OCLC Board of Trustees. Each plan is based on a realistic assessment of the needs of libraries as expressed in Members Council, advisory committees, informal meetings and the library literature (electronic and print). This is a long and complex process, but it results in a plan within which we find our niche and help move the cooperative forward.

The best known plan we've done was published in 2000, a plan we headlined, "Weaving the library into the web and weaving the web into the library." Out of this came such projects as WorldCat.org and WebJunction, both intended to make it easier for libraries and the web to come to a productive, if uneasy, alliance.

This year, we're focusing on web scale, creating cooperative projects that allow libraries to marshal their collective resources into a critical mass that will be visible on the web. Another feature of web scale is to remove unnecessary redundancies from the individual library, and allow routine functions to be done at a web level. If you want to hear more about this, catch Jay Jordan or Lorcan Dempsey's next speaking engagement.

A new feature of our planning this year is a series of special projects that we refer to as the "red dots." These are the major projects on which we will be working on the coming year. Spotlighting those key objectives means that we have greater focus for the staff and improved clarity of purpose.

One of the ways OCLC management has been faulted in years past by the staff is for not sharing the strategy. This year, we printed a small eight-page booklet for the entire staff, outlining the strategy and explaining how the various parts come together in a consistent whole.

A key factor of a successful plan is that it can't be done in a vacuum. If the plan is not centered on the community the institution is organized to serve, it is doomed to failure. A bunch of bureaucrats sitting in a room deciding what they think their communities would like will not be as successful as a few people listening to what motivates their customers (or potential customers) and then thinking hard about what it is the library can do to be part of the customers' success.

Strategic Planning: Measurement

As we all know, a Strategic Plan that sets no measurable, relevant goals is best used as a plant stand. So we put the following questions to the panel as a guide in assembling their responses:

• What measures do you use to tell you how you are doing vs. your strategic plan?
• What do you feel is the most appropriate single measure of success for a library? Why?
• Who is involved in setting measurable goals?
• How are goals and results communicated to your various constituencies (staff, board, users, funders)?
• What role does cost/benefit analysis play?
• What do you think of “outcome-based” measures of success?

We received responses from three panel members, each representing a different type of organization—but all relevant to any organization.

George Needham: Library Cooperative

everal years ago, OCLC adopted the concepts in Jim Collins' short monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking Is Not The Answer (2005) to create new metrics that measure how well we're hitting our strategic goals. Collins suggested that not-for-profit organizations needed to completely understand what they were trying to accomplish, and build metrics based on that, rather than merely aping what for-profit companies do. He suggested three areas in which to focus:

1. Superior performance
2. Distinctive impact
3. Lasting endurance

We've built measurable metrics around each of these areas.

• In superior performance, we measure revenue and growth in the number of institutions that use OCLC services.
• In distinctive impact, we measure growth in several areas, including the holdings and titles in WorldCat, search traffic, and click-throughs to member web sites.
• For lasting endurance, we look at contribution to member equity over a rolling five year period.

These metrics were developed over time through a consultative process that included the staff who contribute to achieving the goals: in other words, just about everybody.

Formulating what to measure is not as evident as you might think. For several years, we've had an ongoing debate among the Strategic Leadership Team (composed of the vice presidents of OCLC and Jay Jordan, the CEO and President) about whether and how to measure the impact we have on the profession with such non-revenue services as OCLC reports, our many speaking engagements, the papers and symposia to which we contribute and making WorldCat available on the open web. But the metrics to which we have staked ourselves are agreed upon by the Strategic Leadership Team, the President and CEO, and the Board of Trustees.

The best metric I've heard of recently for measuring a library's success comes from Joan Frye Williams, a well-known consultant and my frequent partner on the podium for library events. She says the best measure for libraries is repeat business. After someone signs up for your service, how often does he or she come back for more? It's an old rule of thumb in the business world that it's easier to keep a customer than to convert one, so this makes a lot of sense, and it shouldn't be a difficult statistic to pull from most systems.

Outcomes to me are the key. When I started in libraries in the 1970s, everything was measured by inputs: How much money do you receive, how many books do you have, how many linear feet of shelving, how many chairs? In the 1980s, we started thinking about outputs: How did you spend the money, what was the turnover rate of the collection, how many visits per capita did your community make to the library? In the 1990s, with some prodding from the new Institute for Museums and Library Services, we started to get our heads around outcomes: what happened to individuals or a community because of the work the library did? This has been very difficult to measure, and many librarians to whom I have spoken actively resist even trying to measure results.

I think this is an untenable position in the long run. We need to be able to stake a claim to measurable, verifiable results, or there is very little reason for anyone to invest in our future. The recent financial system meltdown shows what happens when we all accept a premise without fully investigating it. ("50,000 bad mortgages equal one good investment? I'll buy that...") It would behoove us all to remember the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, and make sure we are well-cloaked in real data to make our case!

Loriene Roy: Academia

I can respond from several perspectives: the cycle of work as a faculty member and the cycle associated with service work, such as that with ALA. Faculty work is performed with the mission of the university, for example in mind. UT-Austin's vision statement is: What starts here changes the world.

My strategic plan is more an idea of a vision statement. What would I like to see done in the future with this work? That being said, there are other measures that a faculty member might employ, depending on his or her appointment level. Untenured faculty would have a narrower agenda.

• Teaching: measures include enrollment (enough students registering for classes), end-of-semester evaluations, number of students returning for other classes, graduation rate, number of students entering the profession in public libraries and academic reference positions, and so forth.
• Writing/publication: the standby of publication rate and impact. Ability to complete work in a timely fashion, citations to published work, authority and stature of publication venue.
• Service: meaningful work that provides students with opportunities to engage in communities of practice. Achievements of current and former students.

What do you feel is the most appropriate single measure of success for a library?

Of course, the old standby was circulation but I think a more meaningful metric would be lives changed! Of course, this would be difficult to measure.

Who is involved in setting measurable goals?

All those involved. PLA's "Planning Process" has helped public libraries incorporate a way to involve the public along with other stakeholders in strategic planning.

How are goals and results communicated to your various constituencies (staff, board, users, funders)?

As far as students, they enter classes to find a syllabus that identifies expected performance levels and resultant evaluation. This is an ongoing negotiation with the professor helping the students strive to do their best within the framework of assignments.

What role does cost/benefit analysis play?"In many ways, time is the largest cost of the work I do. If time invested results in a tangible, then it is probably a good investment. What do you think of “outcome-based” measures of success?

The outcomes I work with tend to be course completion leading to graduation of students. The next level is when students accept new positions. This is the most rewarding time for me: seeing my students working, thriving, contributing to the library workforce.

One of my favorite books is Look to the Mountain by Greg Cajete. He talks about how Native people find fulfillment in their lives. I think his cycle explains how many people can find lives of balance and completion: being, asking, seeking, having, sharing, celebrating.

Jamie LaRue: Public Library

About five years ago now, one of my Trustees, an auditor by profession, asked why libraries didn't seem to have benchmarks. So we spent some time trying to describe metrics: so many circulation transactions per circ person, so many reference transactions per reference librarian, so many books shelved per shelver hour, so many acquisition dollars per technical services staff. I don't claim that our numbers are industry standards; but I can claim that our productivity in all those areas has grown as a result of our using these measures each year, and particularly around budget time.

About three years ago, I approached Keith Curry Lance, saying that public library directors provide too much statistical data to our Trustees. Was there some way to whittle down all these numbers to just a handle that made sense? Lance came back with five measures that were, he said, "highly correlated statistically." These numbers predicted library success (in all cases, the higher the number, the better):

1. Staff per 1,000 served
2. Total expenditures per capita (replaced later w/ logins per cap in the LJ Index as an attempt to fold technology into the results)
3. Library visits per capita
4. Circulation per capita
5. Program attendance per capita.

So we started doing those stats, and comparing ourselves to other libraries across the county that fell into our population range.

I believe this had the powerful effect of getting our board to think more strategically, not just looking at numbers that went up or down, but about library initiatives that would actually generate more circulation, more visits, more program attendance.

I would add another measure that is not nationally gathered: percentage of households with an active library card. This measure of "market penetration" is a powerful planning tool, literally providing you with the addresses of households that don't use the library, thereby opening up the possibility of direct mail, neighborhood demographic analysis and more.

This response is not quite what Frank asked. He wanted measures aligned with specific long range planning goals. To that end, we certainly do try to attach these things at the senior management level, before they are presented to the Board, and which are used to hold ourselves accountable. Beyond that, senior management reviews our progress toward these goals quarterly, as well as providing one page monthly updates to the Board.