by Paul T. Jackson, Trescott Research

© March, 2011

“People are resilient because they have to be…although the scars never disappear totally.”

By the time Naisbitt came out with his book Megatrends 2000 wherein he said people would likely have 4 or 5 careers, I was already on my sixth career track. Here are some lessons about being flexible and adaptable and future ready from those six careers.

Lesson 1:  Be open to new possibilities.

Over time I’ve experienced many successful endeavors simply by allowing them to happen and doing my best at the tasks given.

Without a job, and while attending a performance of the Royal Ballet of England in Detroit, I was standing next to an older gentleman.  We found we had mutual friends and interests, and I was invited to a late night dinner with him. Our dinner conversation led me to my library career under Kurtz Myers, head of the Detroit Public Library Music Department.

Years later, after my university position ended, I went to the office supply store to get some copy paper for my old wet copier.  The proprietor showed me the new 3M dry toner copier, and after looking at the copy sample, I exclaimed, “Wow, I could sell this!”  The proprietor said, “You’re on. When can you start?” Thus started a career of selling office supply and machines; helping people organize their files and paper processes. This knowledge and work eventually brought me to learning and selling computers and a partnership with a computer firm helping build databases for companies and organizations.

In all of these positions I was using all of my knowledge and past experience in libraries, music publishing, research, writing, and office supply and able to do a superior performance because of it.

Lesson 2:  Be Inquisitive and ask questions.   It can lead to new ventures.

In undergraduate school, a philosophy professor had told me, “Solutions start with questions.”

At library school I felt there was a need for an organization whose archives of recorded sound could come together to share information.  I wrote and asked the curator of the Ford Museum collection, Frank Davis, what it would take to get these and other archivists together. His response was, “First, we have to have a meeting.”  This led to several meetings including an exploratory one with 22 librarians and archivists attending. They represented the largest collections of recordings in the United States.  We met in June of 1965 at Greenfield Village/Ford Museum after the American Library Association conference in Detroit.  We met again at Syracuse University, and there, in 1966, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) was founded with over 40 people attending, representing not only U.S. collections and archives, but also Canadian broadcasting and the United Nations sound recording libraries.  ARSC ( http://arsc-audio.org/ ) is now in its 45th year of existence. It only takes a question, and action, to start something significant.

Lesson 3: Give Responsibility; Take Responsibility

As a supervisor it is your job, your responsibility, to help those you supervise. This includes mentoring and developing your staff. You need to be able to teach them to take over your job, or at least keep the place operational if you are not there; no one should feel threatened by this.  It is making things better, even people.

I gave inmates responsibility to operate their prison library and law library.  They came back with ideas, they helped with grant writing, they improved services, and they took turns running the classes on writing business plans, legal research, and helping in the reading lab.  I helped train them on computers. The Corrections Accreditation Commission reported twice, our library “second to none [in the nation]” over the 8 plus years I was Director. Great things happen to your staff and their self-esteem when they have responsibility.

Lesson 4: Focus on problems–It’s not about you or me.

Someone on staff takes credit for your idea—get over it!

You have to change to smaller space—get over it!

Someone damages your ego—get over it!

Your library closes—get over it!

None of these things are important to the business of solving problems for the employer or customers.  I’ve survived all these things and in the end found solving problems was more important than who got credit. The programs I’ve helped build have survived, which to me is vastly more important.

At the music publishing group, TRO, Inc. representing over 32 publishers in 18 countries, the executives were often arguing, but once the problem was solved or the action agreed upon and discharged, they would be seen heading out the door for lunch together.

Remembering what you learned makes you so much more valuable for the next job.  Get over the closing and go on. Solving problems for the company, the employees, the customers, is the mission of every employee. This is what is remembered.

Lesson 5:  Think altruistically about leaving!

Leave something better than expected.

Growing up, my mother taught us we were to leave things better. I’m not rich financially. My career didn’t follow a well thought out plan.  It wasn’t something I started out to do.  Along the way I created new libraries, new businesses, and helped establish a national association.  I count myself a success.  When you get done, (do we ever get done?) by being resilient and practicing the lessons, you too can say, “I did good.”

Two of my favorite quotes:

“Remember, to get anything done, you first have to start.”

“The one who says it can’t be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.”

Mr. Jackson is an Information Specialist. A retired Special Librarian in Academic, Public, Corporate, and Prison libraries, he has taught research to Ph.D. candidates, and published a wide variety of articles. He is currently Editor of Plateau Area Writers Association’s Quarterly and anthology series, Contrasts. He is a member of several musical ensembles and volunteers as church librarian.  His career positions are recorded in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who International, and a profile at his web site: www.trescottresearch.com

by Aileen Marshall, Virginia Chapter, Business & Finance, Competitive Intelligence Divisions

Here we are, March 2011…am I ready…are you? The job landscape for librarians and information professionals is more than tough, as we all know. Long-employed librarians face lay-offs, and students who are graduating soon are worried about finding work in the first place. Those who are fortunate to be employed face budget cuts and worry how they can keep up their level of service. In addition to all of this we have to fight a constant battle to demonstrate that librarians are needed! Add personal issues we all face to this mix, and I’d say this could be a very stressful year.

But fear not! Don’t think the glass is half-empty when, with a little bit of creativity and boldness, we can make it half-full again. Complaining about everything that is going wrong is tiring and does not lead to anything, really. Instead focus on how you can improve existing services with non-traditional resources and your passion for our profession.

About two weeks ago I attended a webinar facilitated by Scott Brown, a competitive intelligence professional, who spoke about using social media for business research. He showed us how to extract information from sources that are absolutely free! Using non-traditional sources for our work can be a huge deal, not only to gather valuable insight but also to stretch the budget. Just looking at his resources and how he utilizes something that most people see as completely unrelated to work inspired me to look for these kinds of information sources.

But social media is not only a great tool to obtain information. Working as law librarian in a public library, I use Facebook and Twitter to promote what the Central Rappahannock Regional Library has to offer. I have managed to increase patron awareness in our services by making use of social media and our blog. Many of my patrons are even willing to speak up for the library at the next budget meeting. Statistics and personal testimonies can go a long way when fighting for more money. I also advocate for my library and our profession in general as much as I can. So many people are not aware of the vast amount of materials that the library offers, and they are amazed when I tell them. And usually they come back with friends and family. So advocate, advocate, advocate. Involve your patrons and clients in your problems in a reasonable manner. You will see results in time.

Librarians are all about collaboration. So if you find a great new resource, let others know about it. Make use of our collective knowledge and wisdom to discover new ways of doing your job and getting results. Try to get out of your comfort zone, at least a little bit, and let people know how important libraries and information professionals are. Our future will be brighter than the present if every one of us contributes just a little bit.

Aileen Marshall is the law librarian at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg, VA.
She posses a MA from the Westfaelische Wilhelms-University in Muenster, Germany, and will graduate
from the University of South Carolina with her MLIS in May 2011. She can be contacted at www.cyndera.com

by Helen Josephine, Silicon Valley Chapter, Science-Technology and Engineering Divisions

A report on the new “bookless engineering library” was included in “Morning Edition” on NPR in July 2010. After this report aired, library and literary blogs quickly began discussing the future and fate of libraries in the digital age—is it the wave of the future or the end of the world as we know it? We find that some of our student and faculty users prefer digital content to print, while others do not. The digital library is not the end of the book and print collections, but the beginning of something new and exciting.

After four years of planning, the new Engineering Library at Stanford University opened on August 9, 2010. The vision document for the new library, SEQ2 Library Vision: The Information Collaboratory informed not only the physical design of the new facility but the staffing, collection and service models as well. In addition to the challenge to replace the physical collection with digital content, three themes for the new library were called out in this document: high-touch human contact, mediation and subject expertise and mutability or continuous change and experimentation.
To achieve our goal of becoming a largely bookless library with access to all of the online resources required by one of the premier schools of Engineering in the world, the constant questions we asked of our vendors were—can we get it online?, can it be flexible?, can it be self-service? We anticipate that even more innovative information resources and devices will be available to us as we continue to evolve and experiment with new technologies, new services and new vendors.

One current experiment is our e-reader program, a combination of circulating e-readers and tethered e-readers (10 Kindle, 8 Sony Touch,1 Nook,1 iPad) with content selected by librarians. In addition to the content we have selected and purchased for the e-readers, we are also testing the ability to load and read content that we have licensed from e-book vendors that allow for unlimited content download. Student feedback on the project has been positive and the e-readers are always checked-out. The e-reader program is part of our mission to understand the information needs of the current and future students and to experiment with new technologies.

Our physical space is one-third the size of our former library, but the open floor plan of the new library and the foldable, stackable, moveable furniture allows multiple configurations within our 6,000 sq ft. space. Collaborative work areas for groups of 4 or more with tables pushed together, individual work at tables near the windows, as well as impromptu classroom seating for groups as large as 50 are all feasible. The technology in the library includes a 60”digital bulletin board for announcements of library events and information plus School of Engineering events and student projects, a rolling display cart housing a 60” monitor with touch capability, an information kiosk using a 23” touch screen computer for basic library information and a 3M RFID system for book self-check out and security.

When you define your library as a place for innovation and experimentation with information technology and digital content, the possible roles for librarians are limitless and the types of services offered are dynamic and ever-changing. This is a true definition of “future-ready.”

Helen Josephine is Head of the Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Library (http://lib.stanford.edu/englib), part of the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center at Stanford University.  She is a past-president of the Silicon Valley chapter of SLA and has been a member of SLA since 1999. She has also been active in many regional, state and national library groups, including the Arizona Online Users Group, California Academic and Research Libraries, and ALA.

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures.  Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Cindy Romaine, SLA President 2011, caught up with Guy at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, where he was talking about his new book Enchantment: the Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions. The ideas he brings forward in the book seem particularly relevant for information professionals right now.

This year, at the Consumer Electronic Show, you introduced ten ideas from your new book Enchantment: the Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions. I came away from your talk convinced that librarians and information professionals need to learn about enchantment and take that lesson to heart. Using a broad brush, tell us what Enchantment is about.

Did you hear the story that a reporter asked Tom Clancy what his new book was about and he said, “It’s about $26.00,”? Mine is about $14, street. Actually, my book is about learning skills to become more enchanting so that you can delight your customers, employees, and bosses.

One key point you mention in Enchantment is achieving trustworthiness, which requires a knowledge of our users. What’s the best way to gain that knowledge and trust?

There isn’t a “best way” to gain knowledge and trust. Rather, the process requires an array of skills. The starting point of becoming trustworthy is that you trust others. There is a definite order here: first, you trust others and then they trust you. Then you need to be a baker, not an eater. A baker makes a bigger pie so that everyone’s slice is larger. An eater just tries to get as much of a finite pie as possible. Finally, trustworthy people are transparent and give for intrinsic,  as opposed to quid-pro-quo, reasons.

In an era of diminished resources and limited bandwidth, it’s tempting for information professionals to hunker down and focus on their core competencies. Yet in your new book, you share your idea of “defaulting to yes.” How does that work?

Defaulting to yes and focusing on core competencies are not mutually exclusive. Defaulting to yes means that when you meet people, you’re always thinking, “How can I help this person? If she asks for help, I will try to help.” Whether you help along the lines of your core competencies or not isn’t the key. What’s important is that you want to say yes and help.

I would think this is how librarians think anyway. Isn’t your default attitude to help people find information? Librarians can skip this part of the book.

This is me enchanting my boss. What does it look like?

Like it or not, the key to enchanting your boss is to drop everything when your boss asks you to do something. This can produce sub-optimal prioritization of tasks in the “big picture,” but it works. I never said enchanting people would be easy.

As you’d be the first to admit, not everyone has your phenomenal chutzpah. So, some of your prescriptions may seem a bit daunting. Can anyone be an enchanter? Please expand on this a little.

Enchantment is a matter of degrees, not either/or. Almost everyone can be more enchanting. Enchantment is like fitness: almost everyone can be more fit. Imagine if people were either fit or not fit, and there wasn’t anything you could do to change that.

I’m intrigued by your concept of reciprocity. In fact, I’ve been drawn into it, in asking you for this blog post—a great bit of mental jujitsu, by the way. What do you mean when you advise people to say “I know you would do the same for me?”

Reciprocity is what makes society work, and when society doesn’t work, it’s often because someone has violated the basic principle that if people help you, you should someday help them back. My hero, Robert Cialdini, is the person who taught me that when people thank you for doing something, the optimal response is “I know you would do the same for me.”

This phrase communicates three important points: first, I believe you’re an honorable person; second, we both know I did something significant for you; and third, someday you should repay me. That’s a lot of meaning packed into a simple phrase.

Cindy Romaine & Guy Kawasaki

In your book, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit you encourage people, when investigating their competitors to, “by all means, suck up to a research librarian.” We certainly appreciate the plug! Can you explain what you meant there and provide an example of your relationship with research librarians over the years?

Research librarians at the time I wrote that book held the keys to the golden castle of all the knowledge that was written down on paper. Mere mortals had a difficult time acquiring this knowledge without help. I can remember using the Reader’s Abridged Guide to Periodical Literature for hours in my youth.

Fast forward to today. There’s probably more knowledge than ever, and it’s more accessible than ever but the reinvented research librarian holds the key for using the Internet in the most effective manner. Many, but not all, people know how to use Google and Wikipedia, but Google and Wikipedia do not provide all of human knowledge. Some of that knowledge is locked away in private databases and some of that knowledge is difficult for a novice to find. That’s where research librarians still hold the key. They are the ultimate information curator no matter what hocus, pocus you hear about the “semantic web.”

You have your hand in many pies—writing, speaking, and running your company Alltop.com and Garage Ventures. How has a librarian or information professional helped you along the way?

Honestly, I don’t do much in-depth research for my writing, speaking, and running Alltop.com. The nature of my work is grinding it out and sucking it up. I’m the Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) of technology.

What’s your advice for a new college graduate just entering the workforce as an information professional?

The bottom line is that the Internet is the greatest threat or greatest promise ever to an information professional. On one hand, it democratizes information–bad news, does this mean information professionals are no longer necessary? On the other hand, there is so much information that it’s harder to find good, credible sources–good news, does this mean information professionals are more necessary than ever? A new college graduate should understand this dichotomy and, I think, has to reinvent what “information professional” means.

Get enchanted! Find Guy Kawasaki’s new book at his website: Enchantment: the Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions.

by Reece Dano, Oregon Chapter, Advertising& Marketing Division

Much has been made about design-thinking and its supposed ability to summon up innovation and transform organizations. True, its flashier proponents have led many to question the scope of its utility. However, working as an information specialist within a design consultancy, I’ve seen how carefully designed systems, products and communication methods can change lives. So what is it all about?

In brief, design-thinking is any process that allows you to change your point of view. These processes often use abductive thinking to promote creativity and temporarily subdue logical constraints. Participants in design-thinking activities are asked to make logical leaps in service of idea generation. The more ideas generated in this manner, the more your default (and possibly stale) thinking patterns are shaken and called into question.

The change of perspective design-thinking grants can lead to the acceptance of information that opens you to greater flexibility. For information professionals, this flexibility can inspire more relevant user-oriented services, career agility and the chance to envision even greater opportunities.

Design-thinking isn’t that hard. Changing your point of view is.

If you’re interested in opening your current services to a creative examination, here are some questions you can ask yourself to kick off a design-thinking session. Some of these questions are challenging. Others may seem a bit silly. However, the insights gleaned from all can easily lead to new and fruitful perspectives.

• If I were to plot my services on an axis from least-used to most-used, what would I see?
• If I were to plot my services on an axis from most-mission-critical to least-mission-critical, what would I see?
• If I transformed these axes into a Cartesian coordinate system, where would my services lie? Would I feel the need to reposition any of these services to a new quadrant?
• If the CEO or president of my organization suddenly became my assistant, what would I have them do? Why? What would that say about me and my role?
• If the receptionist of my organization suddenly became my assistant, what would I have them do? Why? What would that say about me and my role?
• How would I characterize the differences between the tasks I would assign the CEO versus the receptionist? What does that say about me and my role?
• If I had to take away all my services, save for one, which one would remain? Why? Would this remaining service be the core of my identity? Should it?

As you can see, these questions are loaded with imaginary scenarios that could easily lead to oversimplification. However, the purpose of these questions is not to generate carefully framed hypotheses – at least not yet. Rather they are meant to provoke thought, begin dialog and reposition perspectives.

Try them out. Come up with your own. See if you can use them to spot emerging opportunities for you, your customers and the information industry as a whole.

Reece Dano is an embedded Information Specialist within the Consumer Insights and Trends Analyst Group at Ziba Design. He has worked in both corporate and academic libraries since 1999. He holds an MLIS from the University of Washington iSchool. He currently serves on the board of the Special Library Association’s Division of Advertising and Marketing and is Chair of SLA’s First Five Years Advisory Council. He was a recipient of the SLA Rising Star Award in 2010.

by Jason Kramer, Executive Director, New York State Higher Education Initiative

Here we are in the information age and librarians – information professionals – everywhere seem glum.  Shrinking budgets and changing technology are frightening and worse, but if librarians do not take a more active role in defining the future someone else will do it.  The result for the librarian and the library could be disastrous.

The firmament has been shaken and we are in the midst of the third great revolution in information.  In the first the great Library at Alexandria sparked a revolution in collecting information.  In the second, Gutenberg’s press changed forever the way information is disseminated.  Now, in our digital age, information is being collected, disseminated, and created like never before.  Amidst this eruption in information the librarian should be more important than ever.

If this opportunity were not enough to motivate you to be “future ready,” consider the challenges.  The rise of the internet has many questioning the relevance of libraries and widespread fiscal and budget problems threaten the funding of even the most beloved library.

Ready or not, the future is here.  The choice before you is to affect the change all around you, or merely absorb it.  

One way forward is to wield a none-too-subtle mace.  Through Marketing, Advocacy, Collaboration, and Experimentation, you can mold the future.

Marketing the library involves educating everyone about the role and importance of libraries.  With a clear consistent message it is possible to capture attention and minds.

Advocating for the library is a task that falls to each of us.  The decision-makers and stakeholders of our libraries must be persistently lobbied.  They must be brought to understand that libraries are not a money-eating building, but a dynamic tool that can solve greater problems.  Information is the raw material of the information age, with libraries the vital infrastructure for progress.

Collaboration is a habit that must be extended beyond the usual partners.  Think of non-traditional collaborations.  Business, entrepreneurs, researchers, health practitioners, mechanics, programmers and nearly everyone else relies on information to succeed in their jobs.  Work together and they will become your best advocates.

Finally it falls to us to experiment.  Pursue your goal, but always try new approaches, different angles, and creative collaborations.  No one has ever succeeded in anything grand on the first effort.  Keep at it.

Now is the moment to build the library of tomorrow.  The future is ready for you, are you ready for the future?

Jason Kramer is the Executive Director of the New York State Higher Education Initiative, a non-profit organization advocating for the interests of the public and private academic and research libraries of the state. He has held various public affairs and communications positions and served as a guest lecturer at several colleges and universities in New York.

by Bill Fisher, Silicon Valley and Oregon Chapters, Leadership & Management, Business & Finance Divisions

Among the many responses this question may elicit, one that resonates with me is the idea that we need to understand and evaluate our heritage, our history and how we address our current circumstances. This outlook is influenced by an article I used this past Fall in preparing for a presentation on change. The article dealt with two major forest fires — one in 1949 and the second in 1994 and the inability of firefighters at both these fires to anticipate and respond to rapid change — they were not future ready. Thirteen firefighters died in the 1949 fire and fourteen died in the 1994 fire. As the title of the article (“Drop Your Tools”) suggests, these firefighters were not agile and paid the ultimate price for this lack of agility. The author defined tools very broadly to include the professional practices and patterns of thinking these firefighters took with them into the field as well as their axes, shovels and chainsaws.

As we look to be future ready as information professionals, as members of a professional association, or as members of both our work and non-work communities, we need to continually assess our tools and determine if they are viable for what lies ahead. No matter how well a tool has served us in the past, we need to be creative in using old tools in new/different ways as well as search for and perhaps develop new tools to remain relevant in the future.

Bill Fisher is an SLA Fellow and is Professor at the School of Library & Information Science, San Jose State University.  He has held numerous leadership positions at the chapter, division, and national level.

by John Creighton

20^th Century centralized institutions were created to solve a specific set of problems:  Scarce resources, high production and carrying costs, cumbersome logistics and limited (by today’s standards) communications.

Traditional libraries are a perfect example of a centralized institution. The cost to produce and store books, periodicals and other information was expensive and required a large amount of space. Very few people could afford to purchase their own reading collection or had the shelf space to store more than a few books. The solution: public libraries. Communities pooled their resources (taxes) to provide people with access to information.

When people share resources, it is necessary to create a set of rules and regulations to ensure fairness and equity in how resources are distributed and used. Libraries made rules such as “a person can only check out a book for one week so others have a chance to read it, too.” A system of penalties and, sometimes, rewards were put in place to encourage people to follow the rules.

It was and is the responsibility of public boards and administrators of centralized institutions to decide how to allocate scarce resources. Many public decision makers followed the mass market axiom of, “What will help (or appeal to) the most people for the longest time.” Controversy emerged when people couldn’t agree on how to spend their pooled resources. Should the library buy a controversial book or not?

Centralized institutions also need a set of rules to function as an enterprise. For instance, communities typically could neither afford nor wanted to keep their libraries open twenty-four hours per day. Libraries set hours of operation so people would know when they could access information.

For nearly a century, perhaps more, people have been satisfied with this relationship with public and private institutions because centralization was the most practical thing to do.  People deferred to boards to make decisions; they conformed to the institution’s rules and regulations, and embraced the systems of penalties and rewards (how many readers remember the importance of perfect attendance at school). Our language developed to reflect our willingness (even if we grumbled) to conform to the needs of the centralized institution: Working nine-to-five, working for the weekend, spring break, summer vacation, 10 o’clock news, morning paper.

People’s willingness to conform to the needs of centralized institutions is waning. People have lost their patience with public boards and other centralized decision makers. People aren’t willing to conform to the institution’s hours of operation. They want access to information now, on their own time. And, people ignore penalties and rewards. For instance, few schools award “perfect attendance” and many parents scoff at attendance policies.

Why have people lost their patience with 20^th Century centralized institutions? The problems these organizations were designed to solve are less severe or non-existent.  Put another way, it is economically possible and logistically practical for people to get what they want, when they want, how they want it.

Resources are more abundant than they were in the past. The costs to produce and carry goods are lower. The digitization of books and information is wonderful example of these shifts.  The marginal costs to produce, ship and store a book are all moving toward zero.

People are less interested in pooling their resources to buy things like books because more and more people can afford to purchase and store their own.  People are less interested in the product that appeals to the masses and more interested in products customized to their individual interests and needs. And, there is not as much need for people to agree on how to allocate scarce resources. Don’t like the history textbook the local school board chose for your child? There are several others online and the cost is next to free – or soon will be.

Indeed, people have come to expect options and choices. The idea of “one size fits all” is considered as old as the steam engine train. And, people’s growing expectations are not ending with choice. Increasingly, people expect to design, produce and manage their own experiences.  They will gravitate toward institutions that help them do these things.

21^st Century institutions will need to help people solve a new set of personal and social problems. On the personal side of the ledger, the challenges of growing importance include how to help individuals:

• Identify, organize and create options
• Make informed and satisfying choices
• Gain access to the tools of production, distribution, and collaboration
• Form ad hoc, short term and long term communities
• Sustain action over time.

On the social side of the ledger, the challenges are more difficult because the demand to solve them is not on the forefront of people’s minds. But, to ensure the ongoing health of our communities and our democracy, we will need to figure out ways to bridge differences between an increasingly diverse and segregated society and foster the democratic skills to ensure that we are able to make decisions around resources we still must share.

This is the challenge for libraries and other public institutions. How to make the shift from 20^th Century centralized practices to 21^st Century platform practices.

John Creighton, a Longmont, Colorado leadership consultant, writes on community life and public leadership at johncr8on.com. He can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook.  See John’s presentation, “Emboldened Individuals – Platform Organizations” on SlideShare and read more of his work in Dispatches From The Heartland at the Communities at the Washington Times.

Pam Sandlian Smith, Library Director, Anythink Libraries, Thornton, CO

 “Gone is the time when companies could react quietly by just managing their assets.  Gone is the time when the success of the future was modeled on the past.  Disruption is a way of unearthing new opportunities.  It means being nonconformist, unorthodox, rebellious. It means always trying to change the rules.  It means believing that a company can transform its future through the sheer power of an idea.”   

Jean-Marie Dru, Beyond Disruption: Changing the Rules in the Marketplace

When the future is uncertain, to some people the safest thing is either to do nothing new, or simply accelerate strategies that worked in the past.  As marketing genius, Jean-Marie Dru notes, our future success cannot be modeled on the past.  To be future ready requires a willingness to rethink the rules, to be disruptive.  To be future ready requires a willingness to invent a future, hopefully one that works better than the present or the past.

Imagining our future at Anythink Libraries required a team of people who were willing to abandon library structures that were not working for our customers, or were not sustainable in a world of limited resources.  It required a collaboration of people who had infinite trust in each other’s abilities and perspectives.  It required a willingness to live with ambiguity as we were challenged to find the right answer, not the first answer, or the safe answer, but the answer that fit the criteria of a new paradigm. 

Instead of designing a library for books, we designed a library for idea people.  A place for people to connect, interact, discover, even play with information.  Playing with ideas, creating a place to think, discover and honor one’s inherent sense of creativity required a rethinking of our roles and responsibilities.  Our internal manifesto indicates a responsibility very different from merely organizing information:

You are not just an employee, volunteer or board member.  You do not merely catalog books, organize periodicals and manage resources.  You are the gateway into the mind of the idea people who come to our facilities to find or fuel a spark.

Part Wizard, Part Genius, Part Explorer

It is your calling to trespass into the unknown and come back with a concrete piece someone can hold onto, turn over, and use to fuel their mind and soul.

As Anythinkers, we are becoming future ready by exploring the responsibility of being part wizard, part genius, part explorer.