The first portion of this article is based on a series of posts by Eric Schnell at The Medium is the Message, used by permission. That's followed by two other commentaries on libraries and innovation.

Thinking About Libraries and Innovation

Consensus Building Cripples Library Innovation

Originally appeared as this October 13, 2008 post.

I am not a fan of consensus building, an approach that is common in many, if not most, library organizations. While such an approach can be effective for small groups it has a number of shortcomings in larger groups, or if used to manage an organization.

The Trouble with Consensus

One of the problems I have with consensus building is that an individual or a small minority can effectively block agreement to a proposal or idea. It unfairly tips the decision-making scales towards a staff member who may simply like existing conditions, which may continue to exist long after the majority would like the conditions changed. Consensus building has the potential to reward the least accommodating group or staff members while punishing those trying to innovate.

By giving all group or staff members the right to block any idea or proposal, an organization can essentially be held hostage to an inflexible minority or an individual. The impact this has on a library's ability to create innovative library services can be significant since creative or alternative ideas can be blocked or slowed by a small minority.

Discussing Innovation to Death

Consensus building also focuses on the need to discuss the topic ad nauseam and the need to seek the input of anyone would could possibly be affected. This turns decision making into a very time-consuming process. This poses a liability to organizations trying to become more innovative since decisions often need to be made quickly. Since innovative process often result in half-baked solutions, it is simply not feasible to incorporate the opinions of everyone who could be affected in a reasonable period of time.

Why Libraries Tend Toward Consensus

Library organizations probably migrate to consensus building since they generally want to work towards agreement, not disagreement. Yet, innovative organizations more often create atmospheres in which there is a great deal of disagreement and debate. Staff in innovative organizations learn how to disagree and build up a tolerance for disagreement. In such organizations, everyone is encouraged to act based on their individual motivations, and are rewarded simply for acting, rather than for success or failure. If libraries wish to create a culture innovation, we must 'allow' staff with the desire and energy to act on their own vision. This means that libraries must also empower staff to act by changing the system of rewards and support non-consensus decision-making processes.

Innovation Tends to Counter Consensus

Throughout history the most innovative ideas have been in opposition of the consensus opinion. According to Robert S. Root-Bernstein, the decision to go forward with an innovative idea should not be made because everyone agrees that it will work but on different criteria:

• The idea is controversial, striking at the heart of the field. (Libraries tend to want to avoid controversy)
• The idea hasn’t been tried before and is therefore likely to yield new knowledge regardless of the outcome. (Libraries tend to wait until 'someone else' does it first and publishes it in the literature. And if it fails nobody will ever forget it did.)
• The idea is designed in such a way that it would easily be seen whether it worked or not (Libraries tend to over-think solutions and make things more complex than they need to be)
• The research is relatively inexpensive compared with the possible pay-off for success: There's a high potential return on investment. (See above)
• The idea has a champion (or leader) who is willing and eager to risk his or her time and effort to implement the program. (Libraries support this notion, but there also needed to be a task force or committee with full representation and, oh, there still needs to be a consensus)

Comments

M. Leggott agreed in general and added some notes. Excerpts:

• If you take a non-hierarchical, let's make decisions now, non-traditional approach to building consensus, it can be very empowering.
• You need leaders in the group...who know when to say "OK--good discussion: let's take Door #3 and go to the next item."
• The observation that libraries tend to want to avoid controversy is bang on. I would suggest that this does not have to be the case, as long as people like you highlight that encouraging controversy need not be a bad thing.

Does the Innovation-decision Process Impact Library Innovation?

Originally appeared as this October 31, 2008 post.

It occurs to me that while libraries do want to innovate our service development lifecycles are way too long to be really innovative. We wait until a technology has emerged before we even start learning about it. We then investigate possible service applications of a technology only when a majority of the staff are comfortable. Adding onto the lifecycle is the need to build consensus during the planning process and making sure the service is perfect before releasing it.

Can We Speed Up the Development Process?

So, the question I keep asking colleagues is whether libraries could speed up the service development lifecycle if we were more proactive in providing awareness and how-to knowledge about innovative / disruptive technologies / services as they were emerging, rather than waiting until they emerged?

The latest book on innovation I have opened up is Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations. One section jumped out at me since it was a mashup of the innovation theme with library decision making process.

The Innovation-decision Process

As defined by Rogers:

The innovation-decision process is essentially an information-seeking information-processing activity in which the individual is motivated to reduce uncertainty about the advantages and disadvantages of an innovation. This is a social process involving talking to others.

Rogers describes three types of innovation related knowledge.

1. Awareness-knowledge is simply information that the innovation exists. This information simply motivates than individual to seek out
2. How-To Knowledge, which consists of how to use the innovation 'properly.' This is an essential type since rejection may occur if the amount of information relative to the complexity of the innovation is inadequate.
3. Principles-knowledge consists of information about the underlying functionality of how the innovation works.

Participatory Learning and the Development Lifecycle

What I instinctively liked about the Learning 2.0 approach, and what I now understand, is that its success may be because it contains all three knowledge areas. Participants are made aware of various online tools, are provided a hands-on / how-to opportunity to play with each, and by the end the participants should have a conceptual understanding of the underlying principles of Web 2.0 / the social web.

So, it makes sense to me that if a library creates a participatory technology learning environment it would create a more active innovation-decision process, which would then speed up the service development lifecycle.

Library Innovation Requires Regularizing the Irregular

Originally appeared as this September 8, 2008 post

To move towards a move innovative organization requires experimentation, trial and error, doing new things, and breaking rules. Libraries looking to become more innovative are confronted with reality: it takes a hundred crazy ideas to find ten worth funding experimentally in order to identify one project worth pursuing. As it has been said: It takes a lot of acorns to grow an oak tree.

Coping with an Anti-innovation Culture

The challenge is that most library organizations are structured and managed to continue current practices rather for than for innovation. Both strategy and resource alignment are focused on supporting short term missions and goals. This holds library organizations captive to a culture that is antagonistic toward innovation. Such a culture kills most attempts at innovation and can eventually drive innovative individuals away. It is not that the individuals within a library do not want to innovate, they talk about it all the time. Simply put, the structure of library organizations and their approach to management may make them unwittingly systematically hostile to innovation.

The Neck of a Bottle is At the Top

Gary Hamel notes that that the bottleneck within an organization that ultimately throttles innovation is almost always located at the top. Organizations are trained to look to the top for clues about where it's going. In such organization the vast majority of people have simply ceded responsibility for innovation. When the authority to set strategy and direction is held so narrowly then attempts at innovation inevitably falter. Therefore, new voices and new thinking are essential for a library to create a culture of innovation.

In his book The Future of Management, Hamel discusses new management principles which can help transform a library into a more innovative culture, including:

• Variety, diversity, experimenting, depoliticizing / depolarizing decision making
• Flexible resource allocation
• Enabling activism through democracy (devolution of accountability, distributed leadership)
• Engagement and mobilization for a common cause
• Increasing the odds and finding serendipity

More from Hamel

Other interesting quotes from Hamel:

To a large extent, managers play the role of parents, school principles, crossing guards and hall monitors. They employ control from without because employees have been deprived of the ability to exercise control from within. Adolescents outgrow most of these constraining influences; employees often aren’t given that chance. The result: disaffection. Adults enjoy being treated like 13-year olds even less than 13-year olds.

One can fairly describe the development of modern management as an unending quest to regularize the irregular, starting with errant and disorderly employees. Increasingly, though, we live in an irregular world, where irregular people take advantage of irregular events and use irregular means to produce irregular products that yield irregular profits.

Try to imagine what a democracy of ideas would look like. Employees would feel free to share their thoughts and opinions, however politically charged they might be. No single gatekeeper would be allowed to quash an idea or set the boundaries on its dissemination. New ideas would be given the chance to garner support before being voted up or down by senior execs. The internal debate about strategy, direction and policy would be open, vigorous, and uncensored. Maybe this sounds hopelessly romantic, but such a thoughtocracy already exists—not in any big company, but on the web.

When you step on a treadmill and start to jog, your heart automatically increases the blood supply to your muscles. When you stand up in front of an audience to speak, your adrenal gland spontaneously pumps out a hormone that accelerates your heart rate and heightens your faculties. And when you glance at someone who is physically attractive to you, your pupils dilate reflexively, drinking in the agreeable visage. Automatic. Spontaneous. Reflexive. These aren’t the words we typically use to describe deep change in large organizations. And therein lies the challenge: to make deep change more of an autonomic process—to build organizations that are capable of continuous self-renewal in the absence of a crisis.

Using IDEAS to Create an Innovative Library

Originally appeared as this July 14, 2008 post

I have been reading The Game Changer by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan. The book provides a different way of thinking about management processes to make innovation a central driver of a business. It draws upon the authors experience at Proctor and Gamble. There, they made building an innovative culture a fundamental part of the organizational strategy by using the concept of IDEAS.

• Inclusive - the benefits of diverse thinking and ideas
• Decisive - eliminating organizational debate and overanalysis to enable faster innovation development
• External - being in touch with customers
• Agile - able to react quickly to changing customer and market conditions and taking calculated risks
• Simple - ongoing streamlining and simplification of structures and processes.

Great on Inclusive and External--Not So Hot on Decisive, Agile and Simple

I think that libraries do the inclusive and external parts very well. However, we have a lot of work to on being decisive, agile, and simple.

In fact, we tend to have very specific processes and procedures (committees; task forces) to encourage debate and overanalysis (all areas must be represented) which prevents us from being agile (12-18 month development cycle).

The book also reinforces two other characteristics of innovation that I have learned. First, innovation is not about the end product. It is not about the widget produced. Instead, innovation is all about the new interpersonal connections and the intersection of ideas which emerge.

Second, leadership plays a very important role. Leadership does not mean the administrative organization. Instead, it is about building a pipeline of leaders which allow a culture of innovation to grow and be sustained. These leaders can exist at any level of an organization. They must be given opportunities to lead and learn.

Moving Towards an Innovative Library

Originally appeared in slightly different form as this November 24, 2008 post.

What are the elements of innovative library organizations?

The graphic above, inspired by a graphic in Lafley & Charan's The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation, depicts a continuum of six concepts vital to building a more innovative organization.

Inspiring Leadership

The innovation continuum begins with leadership. Leadership sets the tone for everything a library does. Innovation is all about change. During times of change an organization will be unstable, characterized by confusion, fear, a temporary loss of direction, reduced personal productivity and a general lack of clarity about the organization's direction and mandates. A time of change can be a period filled with emotion, with employees focusing on what is changing and being lost and therefore unable to look into beyond the present and into the future. Employees not only need to have confidence in their leadership so they have someone to look to during times of change, they need to be inspired by them.

While a director or formal management group may be the most visible leaders, most library organizations have leaders throughout. Innovative organizations would also seem to have a higher number of change agents and idea champions. As Helene Blowers points out, Innovation starts with 'I.' The challenge is identifying innovation leaders, cultivating their potential, and empowering them to act. While these individuals may not be leaders in the hierarchical sense, they are extremely important leaders in building staff buy-in and moving ideas ahead. It therefore takes inspiring leadership to spot and cultivate organizational leaders.

Courageous Culture

If leadership is the starting point, creating a courageous culture is the foundation. A climate and culture conducive to innovation will generally be open to change, willing to take risks, tolerant of debate and disagreement, playful, stressing flexibility and adaptability, and celebrating both individual and group achievements and failures.

When it comes to implementing innovative change, there is an inevitable resistance as individuals discover that they may be giving something up. In many organizations, simply suggesting a change is often met with a negative attitude. Nothing is more deadening to the innovative process than having an idea shot down even before it has a chance. Changes in culture, behavior patterns and how change is approached are critical to moving towards an innovative organization.

Training and Development

Sir Francis Bacon is quoted as saying "Knowledge is power." Indeed, innovative organizations have knowledgeable staff equipped with the skills they need to innovate and perform. An organization looking to become more innovative should expect, no, require that its people advance their understanding and broaden their point of view beyond individual responsibilities.

To that end, many library organizations are moving towards a competency-based assessment system that recognizes individualized learning styles and methods. In this model, every employee and their supervisor should be accountable for continuous learning with training goals spelled out in annual performance reviews. Exploring and refining new skills, ideally outside of their area of expertise, should be of high value to the organization.

Enabling Organizational Structures

Most mature organizations, and libraries certainly are that, reach a sustaining level where the focus is on efficiency. Employees are slotted into specialized roles and are gathered together in social groups based on those roles and the resulting processes. Therefore, each employee's web of social connections mirrors the way their work is organized. As Chris Trimble points out, most social connections are made with others in closely related specialties sharing similar perspectives and are shaped by the demands of the same customers.

Being a part of a particular social network for a prolonged period of time influences individuals in significant ways, such as internalizing the "ways of thinking" (groupthink) of that network. Yet, innovation initiatives are often most successful when there is an unusual interaction between employees. How do many brainstorming or strategic planning sessions start off? By counting off and creating new groups. Otherwise, people tend to organize into the same social groups.

Organizations that are unstable or responding to instability are also more likely to innovate. A constant slight discomfort gets individuals out of their comfort zones, gets them talking to one another and can create new connections where none previously existed. Trimble says:

Breaking networks is the only way to prepare an organization to take innovation efforts beyond mere ideas. You can train an individual about what an innovation is and why it demands different behavior, but you can't retrain an organization simply by training the individuals within it. The individuals may acquire knowledge, but organizations are more powerful than individuals...

Streamlined Processes

Andrew Van De Ven observes that people and organizations tend to focus on, harvest and protect existing practices rather than paying attention to developing new ideas. The more successful an organization is, the more difficult innovation becomes. Clayton Christensen echoes this theory. While conceiving an idea may be an individual activity, innovation requires collective effort to push and build those ideas.

Transforming innovation into practice involves so many individuals that those involved may lose sight of the big picture. Innovation transforms the structure and practices of an organization. The challenge is creating a culture where process does not get in the way of innovation.

Resource Reallocation

Many innovative ideas die simply due to limited resources. While resources are often equated with dollars, resources also include time, people, materials, existing equipment and assistance. To become more innovative, inspired library leaders need to reposition staff to support innovative projects and programs, through new hires and reassignments where appropriate.

The efforts of staff who develop successful systems should also be rewarded. Innovation activities need to be recognized when making decisions on merit increases, promotions and even tenure. If such rewards exist, more staff will be interested in engaging in innovative activities. In the end, participation in the development of innovative solutions needs to become a vital part of the librarian's career track, and as such should be reflected in how the librarian's work and resulting scholarship is defined and evaluated.

Library Labs--Innovation Platforms

Library innovation requires risk-taking and creativity. It also requires a willingness to view some innovations as experiments or prototypes, with the clear understanding that experiments and prototypes may change rapidly, may fail or may simply not succeed enough to warrant continuation.

Library innovation prospers in an environment that allows for speed--fast prototyping, rapid development. One way to create such an environment, in a library or group of libraries with adequate resources, is an innovation platform: A sandbox or a lab.

OSU Library Labs: Concept to Production in 90 Days

By Erich Schnell, adapted from this April 9, 2009 post on The Medium is the Message. Used by permission.

The number of libraries discussing the concepts of agile development, perpetual beta, and rapid prototyping is encouraging. The one thing all of these approaches have in common is the idea of including customers as active participants in the development and/or testing of new products and services. To that end, many libraries have created library lab sites to distribute various experimental and half-baked tools and gadgets.

A library lab allows an academic library to introduce new services at any time, not just during the three week window between semesters or when the services are ‘perfected.’ It creates an environment for users to experiment with new services. It is a showcase for projects under development or consideration. There is really no limit to what can be put on a lab site, nor is it limited to just technology solutions. A lab site allows a library to invest just enough resources to see if the idea is worth investing in, or let go of prototypes in a dignified manner.

The idea of an OSU lab site has been kicked around internally for at least a year. The challenge was that other projects and job responsibilities kept the project in concept mode. Well, today we soft-launched OSU Library Labs.

In late January, as I prepared to transition to my new emerging technologies role, I assembled a small team of five people to (finally) move the project forward. The team members were selected based on both their interest in emerging technologies and in doing a project, well, differently. Since the project was outside the responsibilities of the team members, and given that we have a traditional organizational structure, I worked on an elevator talk (um, err, email) to present to the appropriate managers to gain 'permission' for staff involvement. Fortunately, everyone was excited by the project concept.

Once the initial team was assembled, the first thing we discussed was the need to work against natural tendencies of wanting to get buy-in at all levels and creating the perfect service. This was actually harder than one would think and surprising since we had no outside pressures. In fact, we had support for doing things differently. Goes to show how old behaviors are hard to change.

Once we granted ourselves permission to behave differently, the team decided to work on two-week deadlines. We met in person four times for an hour each. We kept things as simple as possible and kept catching ourselves when we began to over think or over plan. As the title says, it took us 90 days from the first time we began discussions to the posting of our “Hello World” entry.

The team has already gotten props for how fast we got the project up and online. Congrats team!

OSU Library Labs Blog

This April 16, 2009 post describes the OSU Library Labs from an OSU community perspective:

Five guidelines for successful staff involvement

The Ohio State University Libraries staff are always experimenting with new technologies and services that can help make access to information, resources and services easier. We have two challenges once we find something interesting:

• How do we make our community (you) aware of our experiments so that they (you) can take advantage of them?
• How can we organize our experiments in a way that they can be stored and discovered?

We brought a small group together to discuss these challenges and the result was OSU Library Labs. We will be using OSU Library Labs to communicate new and experimental services offered by the library (usually Web-based, though not necessarily) so the community can try them and, more importantly, offer your feedback. We will use that feedback to either improve the service before its “official” release or help us decide if we will even offer a service. OSU Library Labs is not just a place to house our experiments, it is an experiment itself.

Please subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter to keep up with our new services and tools as they are released.

And this April 9, 2009 post, “OSU Library Labs: Browser search extension,” offered the first experiment on the site:

Popular browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, have built-in search windows which can be populated with various search sites. OSU Libraries has made it simple for library customers to add the OSU Libraries Catalog as a browser preferred search site.

Why a Search Extension? Since the search extension is associated with the browser, the library user does not have to visit the catalog or library web sites in order to conduct a search.

How to get the Search Extension: [Step-by-step illustrated instructions omitted on LLN.]

A Sampling of Other Library Labs and Experimental Pages

As noted in Schnell's post, there are other library labs--roughly 20 in this directory in late April 2009. Quick notes on a few of them...

Test Pilot, Vanderbilt University

“What is this place? Test Pilot showcases contemplated and proposed additions to the Jean and Alexander Heard Library production environment. It provides a venue for the testing and refining of services nearing production. We actively solicit your input on the usefulness and usability of all items featured on this site.”

Current items include:

• A new interface for The Revised Common Lectionary, a schedule of Biblical readings coinciding with the Christian churc year calendar.
• A new interface for DiscoverArchive, Vanderbilt University's digital repository.
• DiscoverLibrary--“a next-generation search and discovery tool designed to simplify searching the expanding universe of resources in the Vanderbilt library digital environment.”

...and several more.

labs.library, University of Pennsylvania

“Welcome to Penn Libraries Labs. Here you can learn about some of the research and development activities of the Penn Libraries IT and Digital Development department. You can also try out some of the products we're developing and testing.”

Current items include:

• Sushi Toolkit--“built to prepare the University of Pennsylvania for the upcoming transition to harvesting COUNTER data using the SUSHI protocol. Due to community interest in our work, we have decided to release it to the public.”
• Subject Maps--“building new tools for browsing and discovering library resources, using conceptual maps based on Library of Congress subject headings. The aim is to provide more effective subject-based discovery that takes maximum advantage of the investments libraries have made in subject cataloging. “
• PennTags--“This bookmarklet allows users to add tags and annotation to records in Franklin for future reference in. Once the bookmarklet is on your bookmarks toolbar, click on it to save, tag, and annotate pages including Franklin Records, VCAT records, and other webpages.”

...and more, including five browser plugins.

BSU Libraries' Web Lab, Ball State University

“The Web Laboratory showcases projects and proposed additions to the Ball State University Libraries web environment. It provides a venue for the testing and refining of services prior to their official release to the BSU community. Please have a look around and try out the items featured. Then, use the “add comment” link to tell us what you think.”

Current items include:

• Find Audiobooks
• My Library @ BSU'--“a customizable library web portal page for students, inspired by iGoogle and MyYahoo. It is designed to organize and present the excellent resources provided by University Libraries based upon the courses you are taking.”
• MultiSearch--BSU's new federated searching product, searching 50 databases simultaneously.

...and more, including browser toolbars.

ACPLib2.0, Allen County Public Library

“Web 2.0 refers to the “second generation” of web-based communities and services that facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. ACPL uses many of these web sites to communicate with our users, to share new ideas about library services and materials with the wider Allen County community, and to collaborate on internal projects.”

Current items include:

• Most Popular Titles--an array of book covers
• Search Cloud--“See popular search terms. Highlight a word to see how many times it has been searched.”
• Easy Login--“a service that allows you to create your own username and password to sign into the Allen County Public Library. Create an account and see how easy it is to login to our catalog.”

...and more, including several blogs, ACPL on various social media sites and browser plugins.

Experimental Options, Deakin University (Australia)

“Experimental Options is where Deakin University Library demonstrates tools that are not quite ready for the red carpet premiere but may be useful ways to access the library! All these tools are experimental so they may behave unexpectedly. Please give them a try and most importantly let us know what you think...”

Current items include:

• Deakin University Library Search Facebook application--“Search Deakin University Library resources through facebook. Add the application to your profile, type in the information you are after and search results will open in a new window.”
• iGoogle Gadget--“Add the Deakin University Library iGoogle gadget to your iGoogle homepage. Similar to the facebook application, you will be able to search Deakin University Library resources from your iGoogle homepage.”

...and others, including options not created by Deakin University Library.

Web Laboratory, University of Alabama Libraries

“The Web Laboratory showcases projects and proposed additions to The University of Alabama Libraries web environment. It provides a venue for the testing and refining of services prior to their official release to The University of Alabama community. Please have a look around and try out the items featured. Then, use the “add comment” link to tell us what you think.”

 

Current items include:

• New web site design--“On January 6th, the University Libraries launched the newly redesigned web site. We are excited to see the site go live, but we are also working to add new features as we move through the semester....”
• New library search page--“A new streamlined page for searching library resources is now available. The Library Search is designed as a complement to our current and future web site by providing users with a clean interface for easy access to our resources.”
• New search and discovery interfaces--“The University Libraries are looking at several search and discovery applications to improve the usability of the Libraries' Catalog and other library resources. We invite our users to take a look at some of the new interface possiblities....”

...and others, including browser toolbars and plugins.

Planning for Innovation: Experience at the Library of Congress

By Deanna B. Marcum, excerpted from Planning: First Step in Innovation, Marcum's keynote address at the 2007 PALINET Annual Conference.

Early in my tenure as head of library services at the Library of Congress, I realized that innovation would be necessary, and must be practical. Since “practical innovation” is the theme of this conference, I assume that your experience with innovation, and the challenges you face, are similar to mine. Therefore, I hope it might be useful to you for me to describe the re-examination that we at the Library of Congress are giving to what we are doing--a re-examination to determine what changes we really need to make, and how, effectively, to do it.

Our re-examination is taking place as part of an effort, within the Library Services division of the Library of Congress, to develop a new strategic plan, one to cover the five years 2008 through 2013. We began the process in July 2006. We began in a way that I do not necessarily recommend but that seemed necessary, given the size of our organization. Building a plan from the grass-roots up may be preferable, but with 3,000 employees, we would have had to spend way too much time processing views if we had started by collecting them from everyone. Partly for that reason, and partly because I was new in the job and needed to give the staff an introduction to my own outlook, I started the process, for purposes of discussion, by outlining a plan. I studied the work of all fiftythree of the divisions within Library Services at the Library of Congress. Then, in one wild weekend, I wrote as fast as I could. Out of this whirlwind I drafted a set of key objectives under the following five broad goals for Library Services:

1. To collect and preserve the record of America’s creativity and the world’s knowledge
2. To provide the most effective methods for connecting the Library’s users to our collections
3. To deepen the general understanding of American cultural, intellectual, and social life, and of other peoples and nations
4. To provide leadership for the library community
5. To manage for results.

Our division directors and I then set aside a day to discuss my draft. We went over all the goal and objectives thoroughly and made many changes. We put the resulting draft on an internal Web site and invited comment from any staff member who wished to provide it. Over the next few weeks, we reviewed comments from staff, and again reworked the objectives under each goal. Finally, we produced a document that nearly everyone found useful for elaboration.

Next we formed working groups--38 of them--to develop recommendations on how we might get from where we are to where we want to be in terms of achieving objectives in the plan. We invited staff members to volunteer to serve on these groups, and 250 did. Our staff directors chose a coordinator for each group, and we met with all 38 to talk about the planning process and what we hoped to accomplish. We asked each working group to develop a document defining its own scope of work, which the directors reviewed. In this way, by November 2006, we had produced a management work plan that included goals, objectives, and the ways in which each group expected to carry out its charge. Each accepted a deadline, which varied from two to six months, depending upon the complexity of the group’s assignment.

Beginning early in March 2007, our division directors formed themselves into a review committee to read and comment on preliminary reports from the working groups. The directors provided comments, sometimes quite extensive, for consideration by the groups as they wrote their final reports. These, too, were subsequently read and commented on by the division chiefs. Then we posted, on our internal Web site, the full set of recommendations, for review and comment by Library Services staff, and for review by anyone within the Library of Congress community who might be interested. We used the comments from this review to revise the plan again, which we are now putting into final form—a plan, as I will explain later, that contains significant innovation that I think is also practical.

From this process, I think we learned five major things.

1. Innovation becomes possible when most members of the staff of an institution support the need to be innovative. Support for innovation at the Library of Congress came through use of a process that engaged the staff, despite my having done an initial outline. I have described our process in some detail because staff involvement is so important. Had I issued a directive saying we will innovate, it would have had little effect. But engaging staff in doing research, generating reports, and commenting on them produced thoughtful results and helped everyone realize why, in particular areas, we need to innovate.
2. Innovative results require taking time. Though the process we used took less time than would have been required by starting with a general appeal for thoughts from all staff, the lengthy steps we did take proved valuable. The working groups had to have time to do research, conduct interviews, and then vet their preliminary findings with colleagues. The back-and-forth commentaries from directors helped refine ideas for directors and working-group members alike.
3. A staff-intensive process can build not just interest but even excitement and motivation. Informally as well as formally, staff members became involved. One heard discussions in the halls, and excitement about ideas for the plan became almost palpable. Moreover, friendly competition developed among working groups, each becoming motivated to be “the best.”
4. Directors must commit to and really stick to the schedule. The requirements of every-day administration made it hard for our division chiefs to take time to read, really think about, and then provide extensive comments on the working group reports. But had they not given priority to responding fully, the reports would have sat in limbo, and the enthusiasm of the staff groups would have dissipated. After a while nobody would have taken planning for innovation seriously.
5. Maintaining staff enthusiasm requires continuous communication about the progress of the process. Not only was it necessary that we keep the process moving but that we let staff at all levels know, at each point, where things stood and what would come next.

Those are the things we have learned about the planning process.

Related Articles

• Innovation notes - A range of notes including more from Gary Hamel.
• Innovation lessons - Commentaries based on real-world examples.
• Innovation and libraries - Notes from the library literature.
• Creativity and innovation - Commentaries on innovation focused on creativity
• Do libraries innovate? - The September 2007 LLN Peer Panel comments on this question.